Einar Haugen | |
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| Born | Einar Ingvald Haugen (1906-04-19)April 19, 1906 Sioux City, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | June 20, 1994(1994-06-20) (aged 88) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Spouse | |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D. |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Linguist |
| Institutions | |
Einar Ingvald Haugen (/ˈhaʊɡən/; April 19, 1906 – June 20, 1994) was an Americanlinguist and writer known for his influential work in Americansociolinguistics[1] and Norwegian-American studies,[2][3] includingOld Norse studies.
Haugen was aprofessor atUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison andHarvard University.[4] He also served as president of theLinguistic Society of America, theAmerican Dialect Society, and theSociety for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. Haugen was also a member of the Board of Editors of theNorwegian-American Historical Association.[5] In 1972 he was awarded anhonorary degree, doctor philos. honoris causa, at theNorwegian Institute of Technology, later part of theNorwegian University of Science and Technology.[6]
Haugen was born inSioux City, Iowa, to Norwegian immigrants fromOppdal Municipality inTrøndelag county, Norway. When he was a young child, the family moved back to Oppdal for a few years, but then returned to the United States. He attendedMorningside College in Sioux City but transferred toSt. Olaf College to study withOle Edvart Rølvaag. He earned his B.A. in 1928 and immediately went on to graduate studies in Scandinavian languages under professorGeorge T. Flom at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was awarded thePh.D. in 1931.[7]
In 1931, Haugen joined the faculty of theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison. He would spend more than thirty years in Madison, finally leaving in 1962 to accept a position atHarvard University. Before his departure, he recruited Norwegian scholar andHamsun expertHarald Næss to Wisconsin to serve as his successor.[8]
At Harvard, Haugen was made Victor S. Thomas Professor of Scandinavian and Linguistics and remained on faculty until his retirement in 1975.
Perhaps his most important work wasThe Norwegian language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior (ISBN 0-253-34115-9). In addition to several important works within these fields, he wrote the authoritative work on the dialect of his ancestral home of Oppdal and a book entitledThe Ecology of Language, with which he pioneered a new field of linguistics later calledEcolinguistics. Einar Haugen also wroteNorwegian English Dictionary/Norsk engelsk ordbok (ISBN 0-299-03874-2).[9][10] His last book was a biography of the Norwegian virtuoso violinistOle Bull co-written with his daughter, Camilla Cai.[10][11]
TheEinar and Eva Lund Haugen Memorial Scholarship has been established by the Norwegian-American Historical Association to honor Einar Haugen and his wifeEva Lund Haugen (1907–1996). Additionally, the Boston Chapter of the American-Scandinavian Foundation voted to establish theEinar and Eva Haugen Prize. The prize is awarded annually to an undergraduate or graduate student for excellence in the field of Scandinavian languages and literature at Harvard University.[12][13]
