Bo Almqvist

Bo Gunnar Almqvist (5 May 1931 - 9 November 2013) was a Swedish academic and folklorist.

Biography

Almqvist was born in Edsgatan, Sweden in 1931. He entered Uppsala University in 1950, studying Nordic languages and folklore. While there, he learned Irish from Caoimhín Ó Danachair. In 1953 Almqvist first visited Ireland on a scholarship to study Irish at the UCD summer school. He graduated from Uppsala in 1954 and took a BPhil degree in Icelandic language and literature at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. Almqvist worked at the University of Iceland as lecturer in Swedish from 1956-60. He returned to Sweden in 1960 and lectured at Uppsala University, completing a PhD thesis on magical, satirical and insult poetry in the Nordic countries (Norrön niddiktning, 2 vols. 1965, 1972).

Between 1966 and 1972 Almqvist carried out fieldwork in the Dún Chaoin Gaeltacht, working with traditional storytellers such as Mícheál Ó Gaoithín and Cáit ‘Bab’ Feiritéar. In 1972 Almqvist was appointed Professor of Irish Folklore at UCD. He developed the academic study of Irish and comparative folklore at UCD and served as director of the archive of folklore, later the National Folklore Collection. Along with Pádraig Ó Héalaí, he edited Béaloideas, the journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society, for twenty years.

Almqvist married Irish writer Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and had three children with her: Marja, Ragnar and Olaf.

Selected Works

Norrön niddiktning. 2 vols. Stockholm : Almqvist & Wiksell. 1965, 1972.

An Béaloideas agus an Litríocht. Baile an Fheirtéaraigh, Co. Chiarraí, Ireland : Cló Dhuibhne. 1977.

Viking Ale: Studies on Folklore Contacts between the Northern and Western Worlds. Presented to the Author on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday. ed. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne-Almqvist and Séamas Ó Catháin. Aberystwyth: Boethius Press. 1991.

References

Obituary, The Irish Times, 16 November 2013.

Terry Gunnell, 'In Memoriam: Bo Almqvist (1931-2013)', Folklore 125 (August 2014), 258-61.

Anne Markey and Anne O'Connor (eds). Folklore and Modern Irish Writing. Sallins, Co. Kildare, Ireland : Irish Academic Press. 2014.