Upsala Simsällskap is a Swedish swimming club based in

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the c ...

and founded there in 1796, making it the oldest existing sports club in Sweden. It claims to be the oldest swimming club in the world. Since 1991, Fyrishov is the home pool of Upsala SS.

History

The society was founded by the mathematician and astronomer

Jöns Svanberg Jöns Svanberg (1771–1851) was a Swedish clergyman and natural scientist. Life He was born on 6 July 1771 in Ytterbyn, Sweden and died on 15 January 1851 in Uppsala, Sweden. Career He entered Uppsala University at the age of 16. He re ...

(1771–1851) together with some colleagues at the university as a way to remedy the general lack of swimming skills. The same year the society was founded, Svanberg arranged a mock "graduation ceremony" (''promotion''), modelled after the academic ceremony, where he and some of his colleagues awarded themselves the master's degree (''magister'') and their pupils the degree of bachelor (''kandidat'') in swimming. The ''simpromotion'' and these "degrees" were taken over by other Swedish swimming clubs and are still used in Swedish swimming schools. After Svanberg had temporarily left Uppsala for Stockholm, Gabriel Marklin, otherwise remembered as an eccentric scientific collector, briefly took care of the swimming school, to be succeeded for a few years by Carl Gustaf Grahl, the first professional swimming instructor in Sweden. By that time, Svanberg had returned to Uppsala as professor of mathematics. In the middle of the 19th century, a bath house was built and later a

springboard A springboard or diving board is used for diving and is a board that is itself a spring, i.e. a linear flex-spring, of the cantilever type. Springboards are commonly fixed by a hinge at one end (so they can be flipped up when not in use), and ...

for

diving Diving most often refers to: * Diving (sport), the sport of jumping into deep water * Underwater diving, human activity underwater for recreational or occupational purposes Diving or Dive may also refer to: Sports * Dive (American football), a ...

. The

Isander In Greek mythology, Isander or Isandrus (Ancient Greek: Ἴσανδρόν means "like a man") or Peisander, was a Lycian prince and the son of King Bellerophon. Family Isander's mother was Philonoe, daughter of the King Iobates. In some acc ...

dive (or half gainer), one of the most common dives in springboard diving, was named after Lars Fredrik Isander (1828–1893), active in the Society and later lecturer at the Gymnasium in Linköping, and the Mollberg dive (full gainer) was named after Anders Fredrik Mollberg, swimming instructor for the society (1878–1879), who supposedly invented it by accident when he was actually intending to do an Isander dive. It actually appears to be considerably older and is described already in ''Underrättelser i simkonsten'', a Swedish instruction book in swimming from 1839. Anecdotes describe Mollberg's extraordinary gymnastic ability and how he once made two consecutive "Mollberg" dives while slightly tipsy, leaving spectators wondering how he came out of the water alive. Upsala S had their first Olympic diver at the

1906 Summer Olympics The 1906 Intercalated Games or 1906 Olympic Games was an international multi-sport event that was celebrated in Athens, Greece. They were at the time considered to be Olympic Games and were referred to as the "Second International Olympic Games ...

, when

Otto Hagborg Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', '' Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded f ...

participated. In 1910, Upsala Simsällskap entered competitive swimming and is one of the most successful swimming clubs in Sweden. Upsala S had their first Olympic swimmer at the

1960 Summer Olympics The 1960 Summer Olympics ( it, Giochi Olimpici estivi del 1960), officially known as the Games of the XVII Olympiad ( it, Giochi della XVII Olimpiade) and commonly known as Rome 1960 ( it, Roma 1960), were an international multi-sport event held ...

, when Inger Thorngren participated.

Athletes

Swimmers

''Swimmers that have participated in the Summer Olympics while representing Upsala SS:'' Anders Bellbring 1970

* Anders Bellbring *

Leif Ericsson Leif Erikson, Leiv Eiriksson, or Leif Ericson, ; Modern Icelandic: ; Norwegian: ''Leiv Eiriksson'' also known as Leif the Lucky (), was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to have set foot on continental Nort ...

* Jennie Johansson * Per-Alvar Magnusson * Rikard Milton * Rolf Pettersson * Inger Thorngren * Christoffer Wikström

Divers

''Divers that have participated in the Summer Olympics while representing Upsala SS:'' * Eskil Brodd

References

Nordisk Familjebok
s.v "Simsällskap"

("Uppsala Swimming Society. A brief history", in Swedish)
About Anders Fredrik Mollberg

Google cache Search engine cache is a cache of web pages that shows the page as it was when it was indexed by a web crawler. Cached versions of web pages can be used to view the contents of a page when the live version cannot be reached, has been altered or ...

from the website of the Swedish Sports Confederation ( Riksidrottsförbundet) (in Swedish) *''

Nationalencyklopedin ''Nationalencyklopedin'' (; "The National Encyclopedia" in English), abbreviated NE, is a comprehensive contemporary Swedish-language encyclopedia, initiated by a favourable loan from the Government of Sweden of 17 million Swedish kronor in 1 ...

'', s.v. "Isanderska hoppet", "Mollbergska hoppet", "Upsala Simsällskap" (in Swedish).

External links

Upsala Simsällskap
main page {{DEFAULTSORT:Upsala Simsallskap Upsala SS 1796 establishments in Sweden Upsala SS Upsala SS Clubs and societies in Sweden Sport in Uppsala