Henrik Samuel Nyberg


Henrik Samuel Nyberg was a Swedish scholar of broad interest and a well known expert of Iranology and Arab studies.

Life

Nyberg was born in Söderbärke in Southern Dalecarlia on 28 December 1889. When he was 19, he moved to Uppsala to undertake university courses. There, he studied from Classical languages to Sanskrit and to the Semitic idioms. Nyberg set up the Middle Persian curriculum as a possible subject of study at the University of Uppsala and he felt the need for teaching it by meeting Western scholarly standards. Nyberg’s single most important contribution to the study of Iranian religions is his Irans forntida religioner. Overall, Nyberg was a scholar of extremely broad interests, competent in a number of different fields, both in Semitic and Iranian studies.
He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1943, and of the Swedish Academy from 1947.
Bo Utas is Nyberg's most prominent pupil in the field of Iranian Studies.

Works