Amund B. Larsen

Amund Bredesen Larsen (15 December 1849 – 27 April 1928) was a Norwegian linguist. He was one of the first to study Norwegian dialects and made the first dialect map of any Nordic country.

Early and personal life He was born in Grue as the son of bailiff Christoffer Larsen and his wife Olea Bredesen Ramsøyen, and was named after his maternal grandfather. He was an older brother of Bastian Reinhold Larsen. He grew up in Grue, but in 1866 he moved to Christiania and took his examen artium. He eventually graduated with the cand.philol. degree in 1878. In June the same year he married Henriette Caroline Sætre; the marriage lasted until her death in 1881. He then married the Danish-born Anna Cathrine Lund in May 1887.

Career Larsen worked as a teacher in Trondhjem from 1879 and in Arendal from 1883. He published two works about dialects in Trondhjem and Trøndelag: Oplysninger om Dialekter i Selbu og Guldalen (1882) and Oversigt over de trondhjemske dialekters slægtskabsforhold (1886). In 1894 he took the dr.philos. degree with the thesis Lydlæren i den solørske Dialekt især i dens Forhold til Oldsproget, on the dialect of his native Solør. when Larsen had managed to visit most of Norway. He also made the first dialect map of any Nordic country, in 1887. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

He died in April 1928 in Bærum, He built the house at 7 Kringsjåveien, Jar, prior to his death which looked much as it had when he built it up until 2009. His son of the same name followed in his footsteps as a dialect scholar, but died already in 1929.