Dag Alvar Strömbäck (13 August 1900 – 1 December 1978) was a Swedish folklorist, historian of religion and

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 strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

. He was a professor at

Uppsala University Uppsala University (UU) () is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially fou ...

and also headed the

Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore The Institute for Language and Folklore (, acronym Isof), is a Swedish government agency with the purpose of studying and collecting materials concerning dialects, folklore and onomastics. In June 2006 the Swedish government decided to centraliz ...

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

Early life and education

Strömbäck was born in Järbo but grew up from the age of three in

Alfta Alfta is a locality situated in Ovanåker Municipality, Gävleborg County, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to t ...

, where his father was appointed

pastor A pastor (abbreviated to "Ps","Pr", "Pstr.", "Ptr." or "Psa" (both singular), or "Ps" (plural)) is the leader of a Christianity, Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutherani ...

. His elder brother

Helge Strömbäck Vice Admiral Helge Hjalmar Immanuel Strömbäck (26 July 1889 – 20 March 1960) was a Swedish Navy officer. He was the Chief of the Naval Staff from 1942 to 1945 and the Chief of the Navy from 1945 to 1953. Early life Strömbäck was born on ...

became a vice-admiral and Chief of the Swedish Navy.

Bo Almqvist Bo Gunnar Almqvist (5 May 1931 – 9 November 2013) was a Swedish academic and folklorist. Early life Bo Gunnar Almqvist was born on 5 May 1931 in Edsgatan, a small community in Alster, a farming district in the province of Värmland, Sweden, an ...

"Dag Alvar Strömbäck"
'' Svenskt biografiskt lexikon'', retrieved 9 July 2023 . After a classical education at

Norra Latin Norra Latin is the familiar Swedish name of a historic Stockholm school more properly known as ''Högre allmänna läroverket för gossar å Norrmalm'' ("public senior secondary school for boys at Norrmalm"). Completed in 1880, for over a hun ...

in Stockholm, Strömbäck studied

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

and history of religion at Uppsala University, spending some time also at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

and the

University of Iceland The University of Iceland ( ) is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' school to a modern co ...

(where he was an instructor in Swedish in 1926). He earned a B.A. in 1921 and a doctorate in Old Norse in 1935 with the thesis ''Sejd: Textstudier i nordisk religionshistoria'' (

Seiðr In Old Norse, (sometimes anglicized as ''seidhr'', ''seidh'', ''seidr'', ''seithr'', ''seith'', or ''seid'') was a type of Magic (paranormal), magic which was practiced in Vikings, Norse society during the Iron Age Scandinavia, Late Scandinavian ...

: Textual Studies in the History of Norse Religion).

Career

While completing his doctoral studies, Strömbäck worked at the university library in Uppsala and then from 1929 as a

lexicographer Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines: * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionary, dictionaries. * The ...

and editor with the ''

Svenska Akademiens ordbok A complete set of ''Svenska Akademiens ordbok'', as of late 2014. The majority of the volumes remain unbound in this set. ''Svenska Akademiens ordbok'' (), abbreviated SAOB, is a historical dictionary of the Swedish language published by the Swe ...

'', the national dictionary project, in

Lund Lund (, ;"Lund"
(US) and ) is a city in the provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, southern Swed ...

; he continued to work on the dictionary until 1940. In 1935 he became a

docent The term "docent" is derived from the Latin word , which is the third-person plural present active indicative of ('to teach, to lecture'). Becoming a docent is often referred to as habilitation or doctor of science and is an academic qualifi ...

in Icelandic philology at

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

. In 1937–38, he was a

visiting professor In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting scientist, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic fo ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

and was offered a permanent position, but he returned to Sweden in 1939 after one further year. In 1940, he became a director of the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore in Uppsala, where in 1944 he also became chief archivist. He continued to head the Institute until his retirement. In 1941, he became a docent in

Nordic languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...

at Uppsala University; in July 1947 he was appointed Professor of Norse and Comparative Folklore. He took up the position in July 1948 and retired in July 1967.Bo Almkvist
"Obituary: Dag Strömbäck (13.8.1900–1.12.1978)"
''

Folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

'' 90.1 (1979) 98–104, , (subscription required). From 1959 to 1963, he was a member of the Swedish National Council for Research in the Humanities. He became a member of the

Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy The Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy () in Uppsala is one of 18 Swedish royal academies and dedicated to the study of Swedish folklore. Its name is often expanded to ("...for Swedish Folk Culture"). The Academy was founded on 6 November 1932, on ...

in 1935 and served as its president from 1957 to 1966, of the

Royal Society of the Humanities at Uppsala The Royal Society of the Humanities at Uppsala () is a Swedish Royal academy for the study of the humanities. Founding The society was founded in 1889 by a donation from tannery factory owner Jacob Westin in Stockholm who gave SEK 50,000 in his ...

in 1941, and of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities also called simply the Royal Academy of Letters or Vitterhetsakademien abbreviated KVHAA ( or or ) is the Sweden, Swedish Swedish Royal Academies, royal academy for the Humanities. Its ...

in 1945, serving as its president from 1965 to 1973. He edited three major journals for many years: ''Arv'', ''Saga och sed'', and ''Svenska landsmål och svenskt folkliv'', the first two then published by the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy and the last later taken over by it. Strömbäck retired from Uppsala University in 1977.

Selected publications

Strömbäck viewed the study of medieval Norse texts as inseparable from that of folklore, and resisted both purely methodological discussions and the subsuming of folklore by

ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

Books

* ''Sejd. Textstudier i nordisk religionshistoria''. Stockholm, 1935 (dissertation) * ''Tidrande och diserna. Ett filologiskt-folkloristiskt utkast''. Lund, 1949 * ''Folklore och Filologi: Valda uppsatser utgivna av Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien 13.8 1970''. Acta Academiæ Regiæ Gustavi Adolphi 48. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1970 (selected essays) * ''The Conversion of Iceland: A survey''. Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 6. London, 1975 * ''Den osynliga närvaron: studier i folktro och folkdikt''. Ed. Gerd Jonzon. Hedemora: Gidlund, 1989 (posthumous essay collection)

Articles

* "Att helga land: Studier i Landnáma och det äldsta rituella besittningstagandet". In: Östen Undén, ed. ''Några sysnspunkter på begreppsbildning inom juridiken: Festskrift tillägnad Axel Hägerström den 6 september 1928 av Filosofiska och Juridiska Föreningarna i Uppsala''. Uppsala / Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1928. pp. 198–220 * "Författarskap och tradition i den isländska ättesagan". Kungl. humanistiska vetenskapssamfundet i Uppsala, ''Årsbok'', 1943. pp. 37–55 * "Att binda helskor: anteckningar till Gisle Surssons saga". Kungl. humanistiska vetenskapssamfundet i Uppsala, ''Årsbok'', 1952. pp. 37–55

Honours

Strömbäck was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Iceland and the

University of Aberdeen The University of Aberdeen (abbreviated ''Aberd.'' in List of post-nominal letters (United Kingdom), post-nominals; ) is a public university, public research university in Aberdeen, Scotland. It was founded in 1495 when William Elphinstone, Bis ...

. A

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

entitled ''Folkloristica'' was published in 1960 to honour his 60th birthday.

Personal life and death

He married Rosalie Olivecrona on 24 September 1927; they had one daughter, , a journalist and editor. He suffered a serious illness in 1974, but recovered; he died in

Uppsala Municipality Uppsala Municipality () is a municipality in Uppsala County in east central Sweden. Uppsala has a population of 211,411 (2016-06-30). Its seat is located in the university city of Uppsala. Uppsala Municipality was created through amalgamations t ...

on 1 December 1978 and is buried in the old cemetery at Uppsala.Göran Åstrand, ''Här vilar berömda svenskar'', 1999, p. 121 .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Strömbäck, Dag 1900 births 1978 deaths Swedish folklorists Swedish historians of religion Germanic studies scholars Members of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities Old Norse studies scholars Uppsala University alumni Academic staff of Uppsala University Writers on Germanic paganism 20th-century Swedish philologists People from Ovanåker Municipality Burials at Uppsala old cemetery