In 2018 the following individuals received prizes from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy. The prizes were presented at the Academy’s Annual Gathering.
Nils Ahnlund Prize Fund
Professor Orvar Löfgren, Lund, for his wide-ranging achievements in the field of ethnology, which have contributed very substantially to the development of the subject.
Jöran Sahlgren Prize Fund
Professor Gunnstein Akselberg, Bergen, for his outstanding research on Scandinavian place-names, much of which has focused on key issues of onomastic theory.
Professor Ann-Marie Ivars, Helsingfors/Helsinki, for her work on the rural and urban Swedish dialects of Finland, on which she has produced several significant studies in recent years.
Dag Strömbäck Award Fund
Associate Professor Mikael Males, Oslo, for his innovative contributions to research on Old Norse skaldic poetry and mythology.
Anders Diös Fund for Swedish Local History Research
Associate Professor Karl Axel Lundqvist, Skellefteå, for his important work on popular piety within local revival movements, which has been presented in a series of studies of the Swedish Evangelical Mission (EFS).
Dr Terese Zachrisson, Jonsered, for her PhD thesis in history: Mellan fromhet och vidskepelse: Materialitet och religiositet i det efterreformatoriska Sverige (Between piety and superstition: Materiality and religiosity in post-Reformation Sweden), a skilfully executed and interesting analysis of the encounter between evangelical orthodoxy and traditional piety.
Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy Fund for Swedish Folklife Studies
Jan Owe, BA, MS, Bro, for his important contributions to runology, not least his invaluable technical assistance with the internationally appreciated Scandinavian Runic-Text Database.
Dr Britta Zetterström-Geschwind, Norrtälje, for her doctoral thesis in ethnology, Publika museirum – materialiseringar av demokratiska ideal på Statens historiska museum 1943–2013 (Public museum spaces: Materialisations of democratic ideals in the Swedish History Museum 1943–2013), a study rich in content and ideas concerning the spaces and materiality of museums in relation to cultural policy objectives.
Torsten Jancke Memorial Fund
Associate Professor Ingmar Jansson, Uppsala, for his outstanding research on the Viking Age and his unparalleled efforts to promote contact between researchers in Scandinavia and eastern Europe.
Professor Kyrre Kverndokk, Oslo, for his important contributions to key areas of Norwegian folklore scholarship, with an emphasis on studies of collective memories and natural disasters.
Professor Gudlaug Nedrelid, Kristiansand, for her important achievements in Scandinavian personal names research, in particular her writings on surnames.
Dr Sofia Lodén, Uppsala, for her significant studies of Old Swedish chivalric romances, setting these works in their European context.
Dr Madeleine Modin, Tyresö, for her PhD thesis in musicology, Museala och musikaliska föreställningar om historiska instrument: En studie av Musikhistoriska museet 1899–1918 (Perceptions and presentations of historical musical instruments: A study of the Stockholm Museum of Music History, 1899–1918), in which she skilfully and convincingly explores an important era in Swedish musical history.
Dr Sofia Pereswetoff-Morath, Vallentuna, for her innovative contributions in runology, manifested in her dissertation Vikingatida runbleck: Läsningar och tolkningar (Viking Age runic plates: Readings and interpretations), in which an exceptionally complex body of material is presented and successfully interpreted.
Harry Karlsson Fund for Folklife Studies
Professor Mats Morell, Uppsala, for his many years of distinguished research in agricultural history, in particular his study of its basis in traditional peasant life.
Erik and Dency Östhol Endowment Fund
The artist Þórhallur Þráinsson, Reykjavík, for his many years of high-quality, scholarly based work on drawn, multidimensional reconstructions of Nordic archaeological and historical source material.
Sten Carlsson Memorial Fund
Bjørn Aksdal, Senior Researcher, Trondheim, for his wide-ranging and important research on traditional musical instruments in Norway in interaction with the country’s living folk music scene.
Gösta Berg Memorial Fund
Per Gustavsson, Bjärnum, and Professor Ulf Palmenfelt, Visby, for their extensive, three-volume work Folksagan i Sverige (The folktale in Sweden), a gold mine both for readers with a general interest in folktales and for scholars working on popular narrative traditions.
Scholarship from the Marie-Louise and Gösta Virding Fund
The farmer Lars Larsson, Vassmolösa, for his dedicated research into the local history of Ålebo in south-east Småland and for thirty years of contributions to the publication of Södermörekrönikan (The Södermöre chronicles).
In 2017 the following individuals received prizes from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy.
Nils Ahnlund Prize Fund
Professor Bengt af Klintberg, Lidingö, for his outstanding research and public education efforts relating to local and migratory legends, folk poetry and folktales.
Jöran Sahlgren Prize Fund
Associate Professor Peder Gammeltoft, Copenhagen, for his distinguished writings on Scandinavian onomastic research, with a particular focus on names of Scandinavian origin in Britain, the Faroes and Iceland.
Dag Strömbäck Award Fund
Associate Professor Pernille Hermann, Aarhus, for her extensive and high-quality scholarly writings in the field of Old Norse philology and her contributions to the international research project Memory and the Pre-Modern North.
Anders Diös Fund for Swedish Local History Research
Associate Professor Kajsa Andersson, Stockholm, for her important editions presenting new Sami research to both a domestic and an international audience, in five substantial volumes with texts in English, French and Swedish.
Juta Holst, Tallinn, for her important contributions to the documentation of the Swedish-language culture of Estonia, manifested for example in the book Spítam, en by att minnas (Spítam, a village to remember).
Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy Fund for Swedish Folklife Studies
Former museum director Jan-Olof Montelius, Falun, for his successful efforts as a museum director, scholar and roving public educator to draw attention to the history of the public road system in Sweden.
Former regional archivist Carina Strömberg, Frösön, for her achievements as a driving force behind numerous regional research gatherings in Vilhelmina, which have shed light on many different facets of local history and folk culture.
Torsten Jancke Memorial Fund
Professor Henrik Williams, Uppsala, for his persevering and successful efforts to strengthen in a variety of ways – including through his own research and as the initiator of the popular colloquium series Runråd and the Uppsala Runic Forum – the position of runology as a field of research in Sweden, but also internationally.
Emeritus Professor Olavi Korhonen, Boden, for his wide-ranging and in-depth contributions to the field of Sami research, including, not least, dictionary work, translations and extensive documentation relating to the Sami.
Associate Professor Agneta Ney, Uppsala, for her outstanding research at the interface between history, Old Norse philology, history of religions, iconography and archaeology, most recently finding expression in her monograph on Sigurd Fafnesbane.
Dr Ida Tolgensbakk, Oslo, for a well-written and well-structured dissertation in folklore studies that enriches our understanding of migration and cultural encounters.
Dr Agnieszka Backman, Uppsala, for her dissertation Handskriftens materialitet: Studier i den fornsvenska samlingshandskriften Fru Elins bok (Codex Holmiensis D 3) (The materiality of the manuscript: Studies in Codex Holmiensis D 3, the Old Swedish multitext manuscript Fru Elins bok). In this pioneering work, she sheds instructive light on the Old Swedish manuscript culture, and in particular on the participation of women in that culture.
Dr Ingunn Marit Røstad, Nittedal, for her PhD thesis Smykkenes språk: Smykker og identitetsforhandlinger i Skandinavia ca. 400–650/700 e.Kr. (The language of jewellery: Jewels and the negotiation of identity in Scandinavia AD c. 400–650/700), in which she convincingly demonstrates how jewellery, and hence dress, dynamically communicated cultural and ethnic identity in the Migration and early Merovingian Periods.
Harry Karlsson Fund for Folklife Studies
Associate Professor Markus Idvall, Lund, for his outstanding contributions to regionality research and his successful, bridge-building cultural studies of patient experiences in modern health care.
Erik and Dency Östhol Endowment Fund
Dr Anund Lindholm, Lövånger, for his cogent studies of post-glacial land uplift along the coast of Västerbotten, resulting in revised interpretations of several place-names, and for his research in Kallviken, Lövånger, which has proved of importance for maritime history.
Sten Carlsson Memorial Fund
Associate Professor Torgny Nevéus, Uppsala, former Academy Steward at Uppsala University, for his wide-ranging writings in social and cultural history, in which, from the vantage points of particular individuals and groups that have otherwise received little attention, he sheds light on the emergence of modern Sweden.
Gösta Berg Memorial Fund
Associate Professor Dan Lundberg, Stockholm, Chief Librarian at Musikverket, for his outstanding ethnomusicological research, with a focus on contemporary musical life.
Marie-Louise and Gösta Virding Fund
Dr Ingrid Nettervik, Växjö, for her continuing research and public education work relating to the literature and cultural history of Småland.
The 2017 prizewinners. Photo: Bengt Backlund.