Carl Richard Unger (2 July 1817 – 30 November 1897) was a

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 ...

historian 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 especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

. Unger was professor of Germanic and

Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...

philology at the

University of Christiania 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 ...

from 1862 and was a prolific editor of

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

texts.

Early life

Unger was born in Christiania, now

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

, to Johan Carl Jonassen Unger and Annemarie Wetlesen. Between 1830 and 1832 he lived in

Telemark Telemark is a traditional region, a former county, and a current electoral district in southern Norway. In 2020, Telemark merged with the former county of Vestfold to form the county of Vestfold og Telemark. Telemark borders the traditional ...

with the poet and priest Simon Olaus Wolff. He graduated from school in 1835.

Academic career

Unger studied philology after school but did not receive a degree as mathematics, a subject with which he struggled, was compulsory for philologists. However, in 1841 he was awarded a scholarship to continue studying

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

and

Old German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...

. In 1845 Unger began lecturing on Old Norse at the University of Christiana. He was appointed lecturer of Germanic and Romance philology in 1851 and became professor in 1862.

Edited works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Unger, Carl Richard 1817 births 1897 deaths Norwegian philologists Germanic studies scholars Old Norse studies scholars Academic staff of the University of Oslo 19th-century philologists 19th-century Norwegian historians 19th-century Norwegian male writers Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala

Early life

Academic career

Edited works

See also

References