Name Jens Friis Role Author | Movies Laila | |
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Died February 16, 1896, Oslo, Norway Books Lajla: A New Tale of Finmark | ||
Jens Andreas Friis (2 May 1821 – 16 February 1896) was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer and author. He was a university professor and a prominent linguist in the languages spoken by the Sami people. He is widely recognized as the founder of the studies of the Sami languages. Today he is also commonly associated with his novel, Lajla: A New Tale of Finmark which became the basis for a 1929 silent film.
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Background
Friis was born in Sogndal in Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. He was the son of church vicar Soren Hjelm Friis (1781-1856) and Charlotte Lovise Cammermeyer (1789-1869). He was the brother of priest and politician Nicolai Friis. Friis completed his final exams from Møllers Institute in Christiania in 1840 and earned his cand.theol. in 1844. From 1847-49, he was a research fellow in Sami and Finnish. By the autumn of 1849, he went on a grant to Kajaani, Finland to continue his studies under Lönnrot Elias, the founder of Finnish folklore studies. Friis stayed for a time in Finnmark and in return he assumed teaching ministry for priests.
Career
Friis was appointed reader in Sami languages at the University of Kristiania (now University of Oslo) in 1863. Three years later he was awarded a chair in the Lapp and Kven languages, with a special duty in translation. He published on the Sami language and mythology as well as travel literature about Northern Norway. Friis established the northern Sami orthography, which although modified through three spelling reforms is in common usage. Until the Konrad Nielsen's dictionary Lappisk ordbok was published in three volumes between 1932 and 1938, Friis' Sami dictionary was the most important of its kind. Friis also translated With Nansen over Greenland in 1888: My journey from Lapland to Greenland by Samuel Balto from the original Sami into the Norwegian language.
Friis' ethographical maps
Friis published three series of thematic maps covering Norway north of the Ofotfjord. First edition in 1861, second in 1888/1890. Each household was coded by a trivariate symbology denoting (1) ethnic group (2) household member's fluency in the Norwegian, Sami and Kven language and (3) whether the family lived in a goahti. These maps, in addition to the censuses of 1865, 1875, 1891 and 1900 provide a valuable resource of knowledge of the ethnicity and language in the circumpolar region decades before the enforcement of Norwegian as the single official language in schools.