Harald Bjorvand (born 30 July 1942) is a Norwegian linguist. He was born in

Askim Askim () is a town and a former municipality in (from January 1, 2020) Indre Østfold municipality in the county of Østfold, Norway. The administrative centre of the Askim municipality was the town of Askim. Askim was established as a municip ...

, and graduated from 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 ...

in 1970. He was a

research fellow A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a p ...

at the same institution from 1972 to 1974, ''amanuensis'' from 1974 to 1987, associate professor from 1987, and professor from 1990. He took the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1988 with the thesis ''Holt og Holtar. Om utviklingen av det indoeuropeiske kollektivum i norrønt på sammenlignende grunnlag''. His fields of specialty are general comparative language history, general Indo-Germanic linguistics, all archaic

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

(

Old West Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was 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 ...

, Gothic,

Old High German Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...

etc.), and Germanic linguistics in general, including

runes Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

, and

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

. His most famous work is a new

etymological dictionary An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and ''Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Webster's'', will contain some etymological informat ...

(''Våre Arveord'' "Our inherited words") for Norwegian, which is a collaboration with Fredrik Otto Lindeman, another linguist professor in the Indo-Germanic field.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bjorvand, Harald 1942 births Living people Linguists from Norway University of Oslo alumni Academic staff of the University of Oslo Germanists Linguists of Germanic languages Linguists of Indo-European languages People from Askim Runologists