Nils Joachim Christian Vibe Stockfleth (11 January 1787 in

Fredrikstad Fredrikstad (; previously ''Frederiksstad''; literally "Fredrik's Town") is a city and municipality in Viken county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Fredrikstad. The city of Fredrikstad was founded in ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

– 26 April 1866 in

Sandefjord Sandefjord () is a city and the most populous municipality in Vestfold og Telemark county, Norway. The municipality of Sandefjord was established on 1 January 1838. The municipality of Sandar was merged into Sandefjord on 1 January 1969. On 1 ...

) was a Norwegian cleric who was instrumental in the first development of the written form of the

Northern Sami Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ...

language. Stockfleth compiled a Norwegian-Sami dictionary, wrote a Sami grammar and translated a portion of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...

into the

Sami language Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

Education and early career

His parents were Dean Niels Stockfleth (1756–1794) and his wife was Anne Johanne Vibe (1753–1805). He was a student in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...

from 1803 to 1804, when he was hired as an undersecretary in the Danish Chancellery ( da, Danske Kancelli). He attended lectures on law, and for a time he studied

carpentry Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters t ...

. In 1808 he was commissioned as a

lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often ...

in the

Danish Army The Royal Danish Army ( da, Hæren, fo, Herurin, kl, Sakkutuut) is the land-based branch of the Danish Defence, together with the Danish Home Guard. For the last decade, the Royal Danish Army has undergone a massive transformation of structur ...

; he took part in the

Battle of Sehested The Battle of Sehested was fought between Danish and Russian-Prussian-British troops at Sehested (in Holstein) on 10 December 1813 during the War of the Sixth Coalition. The Danish Auxiliary Corps, which fought on the side of the French ...

(

Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein (; da, Slesvig-Holsten; nds, Sleswig-Holsteen; frr, Slaswik-Holstiinj) is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Sc ...

) during the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fre ...

. After the Denmark-Norway union ended in 1814, Stockfleth joined the

Norwegian Army The Norwegian Army ( no, Hæren) is the land warfare service branch of the Norwegian Armed Forces. The Army is the oldest of the Norwegian service branches, established as a modern military organization under the command of the King of Norway ...

as an officer posted to

Valdres Valdres () is a traditional district in central, southern Norway, situated between the districts of Gudbrandsdalen and Hallingdal. The region of Valdres consists of the six municipalities of Nord-Aurdal, Sør-Aurdal, Øystre Slidre, Vestre Sl ...

. Karl Vilhelm Hammer
"Stockfleth, Nils Joachim Christian Vibe"
in ''Nordisk familjebok'',2nd ed., v. 26, columns 1454-1455, Stockholm: Gernandts boktryckeri, 1917. He resigned from the army in 1823 to study

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

, graduating in 1824. In March of the following year he became pastor of

Vadsø Vadsø (; sme, Čáhcesuolu; fkv, Vesisaari) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark County, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Vadsø, which was the administrative centre of the former Finnmark county. O ...

, transferring to Lebesby in 1828 so that he could more easily meet with the nomadic Sami.

Linguistics research and field work

From 1836 Stockfleth taught

Sami languages Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

and

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

in Christiania (now the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

). In 1838 he travelled to Finland and gained the support of

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...

s Gustaf Renvall (1781–1841), Reinhold von Becker (1788–1858), Andreas Sjögren (1794–1855) and

Elias Lönnrot Elias Lönnrot (; 9 April 1802 – 19 March 1884) was a Finnish physician, philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry. He is best known for creating the Finnish national epic, ''Kalevala'', (1835, enlarged 1849), from short ...

(1802–1884). In 1839 he ended his pastoral duties to devote himself fully to understanding Sami culture, travelling several times to

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

and

settlements in both

and

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

. Influenced by Enlightenment thinkers like

Johann Gottfried Herder Johann Gottfried von Herder ( , ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, '' Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism. Biography Born in Mohr ...

, he worked assiduously for what he saw as the betterment of the Sami people, especially in the literary field. Stockfleth and the Danish

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...

and

Rasmus Christian Rask Rasmus Kristian Rask (; born Rasmus Christian Nielsen Rasch; 22 November 1787 – 14 November 1832) was a Danish linguist and philologist. He wrote several grammars and worked on comparative phonology and morphology. Rask traveled extensively to ...

cooperated to develop a means of accurately recording a written form of the

so that it could be used as a medium for the publication of religious books. At a time when powerful people, both in government and in the press, believed that the Sami people should be forced to attend schools with

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

being the sole language of instruction and that Sami-language teaching would delay efforts to modernize and assimilate the

Sami people Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

, Stockfleth succeeded in publishing several Sami readers and a Sami grammar.

Kautokeino 1851-52

In 1851 Stockfleth travelled for the last time to the

Finnmark Finnmark (; se, Finnmárku ; fkv, Finmarku; fi, Ruija ; russian: Финнмарк) was a county in the northern part of Norway, and it is scheduled to become a county again in 2024. On 1 January 2020, Finnmark was merged with the neighbour ...

region of Norway. The

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...

bishop of Oslo Oslo bishopric is the Church of Norway's bishopric for the municipalities of Oslo, Asker and Bærum. It is one of Norway's five traditional bishoprics and was founded around the year 1070. History Oslo was established as a diocese in 1068. It w ...

immediately encouraged him to go to

Kautokeino Kautokeino ( no, Kautokeino; se, Guovdageaidnu ; fkv, Koutokeino; fi, Koutokeino) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino. Other village ...

in the hope that Stockfleth — who knew the Sami culture, was fluent in Sami and was respected among the Sami because of his books — would be able to reconcile a group of

Laestadian Laestadianism, also known as Laestadian Lutheranism and Apostolic Lutheranism, is a pietistic Lutheran revival movement started in Sápmi in the middle of the 19th century. Named after Swedish Lutheran state church administrator and temperanc ...

Sami schismatics with the official Lutheran state church. He did meet many of the Sami at one of their religious meetings, but they were in the grip of an experiential ecstasy which was quite foreign to the learned theologian. At one point he lost his temper and began to beat the ecstatic participants with his hands and with a stick, but to no avail. Although he found the uproar of this first meeting frightening, some of the Sami people did continue to meet with him afterwards, but little came of their talks and Stockfleth travelled away from Finnmark a few months before the Kautokeino Uprising. In 1853 he was awarded a state pension and moved to

Selected works

* 1840: ''Grammatik i det lappiske Sprog, saaledes som det tales i norsk-Finmarken.'' (Grammar of Sami, Norwegian Finnmark dialect). Christiania: Grøndahl. * 1840: ''Det nye testamentet'' (

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...

in Sami) * 1848: ''Bidrag til kundskab om finnerne i kongeriget Norge'' * 1848: ''Bidrag til kundskab om qvænerne i kongeriget Norge'' * 1852: ''Norsk-lappisk ordbog'' (Norwegian-Sami dictionary) * 1860:
Dagbog over mine missionsreiser i Finmarken
'("Journal of my mission trips to Finnmark") * 1896: Johannes Nilson Skaar, Posthumous publication of Nils Vibe Stockfleth's Autobiography (to 1825) and Letters (1825–1854).

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stockfleth, Nils Vibe 1787 births 1866 deaths Laestadianism Northern Sámi Norwegian lexicographers 19th-century Norwegian Lutheran clergy Norwegian philologists People from Fredrikstad Translators of the Bible into Sámi People in Sámi history 19th-century translators 19th-century lexicographers