Nils Joachim Christian Vibe Stockfleth (11 January 1787 inFredrikstad,Norway – 26 April 1866 inSandefjord) was a Norwegian cleric who was instrumental in the first development of thewritten form of theNorthern Sámi language. Stockfleth compiled a Norwegian-Sámi dictionary, wrote about Sámi grammar and translated the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament of theBible into the Northern Sámi language.[1][which?]
His parents were Dean Niels Stockfleth (1756–1794) and his wife Anne Johanne Vibe (1753–1805). He was a student inCopenhagen from 1803 to 1804, when he was hired as an undersecretary in theDanish Chancellery (Danish:Danske Kancelli). He attended lectures on law, and for a time he studiedcarpentry.
In 1808 he was commissioned as alieutenant in theDanish Army; he took part in theBattle of Sehested (Schleswig-Holstein) during theNapoleonic Wars. After theDenmark-Norway union ended in 1814, Stockfleth joined theNorwegian Army as an officer posted toValdres.[2] He resigned from the army in 1823 to studytheology, graduating in 1824. In March of the following year he became pastor atVadsø Church, transferring toLebesby Church in 1828 so that he could more easily meet with the nomadic Sámi.
From 1836 Stockfleth taughtSámi languages andFinnish inChristiania (now theUniversity of Oslo). In 1838 he travelled to Finland and gained the support ofFinnishphilologistsGustaf Renvall (1781–1841),Reinhold von Becker (1788–1858),Andreas Sjögren (1794–1855) andElias Lönnrot (1802–1884).[2]
In 1839 he ended his pastoral duties to devote himself fully to understanding Sámi culture, travelling several times toSámi andFinnish settlements in bothNorway andSweden. Influenced byEnlightenment thinkers likeJohann Gottfried Herder, he worked assiduously for what he saw as the betterment of the Sámi people, especially in the literary field. Stockfleth and theDanishpolyglot andphilologistRasmus Christian Rask cooperated to develop a means of accurately recording a written form of theSámi language[which?] so that it could be used as a medium for the publication of religious books.
At a time when powerful people, both in government and in the press, believed that the Sámi people should be forced to attend schools withNorwegian being thesole language of instruction and that Sámi-language teaching would delay efforts tomodernize and assimilate theSámi people, Stockfleth succeeded in publishing several Sámi readers and a Sámi grammar.
In 1851 Stockfleth travelled for the last time to theFinnmark region of Norway. TheLutheranbishop of Oslo immediately encouraged him to go toKautokeino in the hope that Stockfleth — who knew the Sámi culture, was fluent in Sámi and was respected among the Sámi because of his books — would be able to reconcile a group ofLaestadian Sámi schismatics with the official Lutheran state church. He did meet many of the Sámi at one of their religious meetings, but they were in the grip of an experiential ecstasy which was quite foreign to the learned theologian. At one point he lost his temper and began to beat the ecstatic participants with his hands and with a stick, but to no avail. Although he found the uproar of this first meeting frightening, some of the Sámi people did continue to meet with him afterwards, but little came of their talks and Stockfleth travelled away from Finnmark a few months before theKautokeino rebellion. In 1853 he was awarded a state pension and moved toSandefjord.
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