Knut Bergsland (7 March 1914 – 9 July 1998) was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor 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 ...

from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic (especially

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 ne ...

) and

Eskaleut languages The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...

Career

He was born in

Kristiania Oslo ( or ; ) 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 of 1,064,235 in 2022, an ...

as a son of engineer Einar Christian Bergsland (1883–1945) and Henriette Louise Krogh Raabe (1883–1958). He was the brother of sports administrator Einar Bergsland. He finished his secondary education in 1932, and enrolled at the

. He also studied at the

École des Hautes Études École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

and the Institut Catholique from 1935 to 1936. He graduated with the cand.philol. degree in 1940, having specialized in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, but now concentrated more on the

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 ...

. His first linguistic work was a grammar of the Southern Sámi language, released as ''Røros-lappisk grammatikk'' in 1946. This work earned him the dr.philos. degree, and it is still the reference grammar of this language. In 1947 Bergsland was appointed professor in

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th centur ...

at the University of Oslo, succeeding Konrad Nielsen. He continued his work on Sami languages, and also did important research in

, firstly a historical grammar of Kalaallisut (or Western Greenlandic), and then a dictionary and reference grammar of

Aleut Aleuts ( ; (west) or (east) ) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleuts and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska ...

. His interest in these languages arose during two stays as a visiting scholar; respectively at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

in 1948 and the

Indiana University at Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

in 1949–1950. He continued studying Aleut after retiring as a professor in 1981. Bergsland's professorship was vacant until 1987, when Ole Henrik Magga replaced him. Bergsland's final works were ''Aleut dictionary – Unangam tunudgusii'' (1994), ''Aleut Grammar'' (1997) and ''Ancient Aleut Personal Names'' (1998). He died in July 1998. Bergsland held an

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

References

1914 births 1998 deaths Linguists of Sámi Finno-Ugrists Norwegian Latinists Academic staff of the University of Oslo Historical linguists Linguists of Eskimo–Uralic languages Linguists of Eskaleut languages Aleut language 20th-century Norwegian linguists Eskimologists Greenlandic language {{cultural-anthropologist-stub