Dag Strömbäck

Dag Alvar Strömbäck (13 August 1900 – 1 December 1978) was a Swedish folklorist, historian of religion and philologist. He was a professor at Uppsala University and also headed the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore at Uppsala.

Early life and education Strömbäck was born in Järbo but grew up from the age of three in Alfta, where his father was appointed pastor. His elder brother Helge Strömbäck became a vice-admiral and Chief of the Swedish Navy.

After a classical education at Norra Latin in Stockholm, Strömbäck studied Old Norse and history of religion at Uppsala University, spending some time also at the University of Oslo and the University of Iceland (where he was an instructor in Swedish in 1926). He earned a B.A. in 1921 and a doctorate in Old Norse in 1935 with the thesis Sejd: Textstudier i nordisk religionshistoria (Seiðr: Textual Studies in the History of Norse Religion).

From 1959 to 1963, he was a member of the Swedish National Council for Research in the Humanities. He became a member of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy in 1935 and served as its president from 1957 to 1966, of the Royal Society of the Humanities at Uppsala in 1941, and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in 1945, serving as its president from 1965 to 1973. He edited three major journals for many years: Arv, Saga och sed, and Svenska landsmål och svenskt folkliv, the first two then published by the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy and the last later taken over by it. He suffered a serious illness in 1974, but recovered; he died in Uppsala Municipality on 1 December 1978