| Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition | Public Domain via Project Gutenberg |
(1833-1907), Norwegian philologist, was born at Laurvik, Norway, on the 5th of January 1833. He was educated at Christiania, Copenhagen and Berlin, and in 1866 he became professor of comparative philology and Old Norse at Christiania University. In addition to collecting Norwegian folk-songs and traditions, and writing on Runic inscriptions, he made considerable contributions to the study of the Celtic, Romance, Oscan, Umbrian and Etruscan languages. He was the author of a very large number of books on philology and folklore. His principal work, a critical edition of the elder Edda (Norroen Fornkvoedi), was published at Christiania in 1867. He maintained that the songs of the Edda and the earlier sagas were largely founded on Christian and Latin tradition imported into Scandinavian literature by way of England. His writings also include Gamle Norske Folkeviser (1858), a collection of Old Norse folk-songs; Bidrag til den aeldste skaldedigtnings historie (Christiania, 1894); Helge-digtene i den Aeldre Edda (Copenhagen, 1896, Eng. trans., The Home of the Eddic Poems, 1899); Norsk Sagafortaelling op Sagaskrivning i Island (Christiania, 1901), and various books on Runic inscriptions. He died on the 8th of July 1907.
For a further list of his works see J.B. Halvorsen, Norsk Forfatter-Lexikon, vol. i. (Christiania, 1885).