By Loraine Jensen on behalf of the AARS Board of Directors.
Uppsala University and the AARS have had a long and happy partnership working together with the goal of expanding knowledge about runic script throughout Scandinavia and North America.
Two individuals at Uppsala University have been particularly important in furthering this effort: Vice-Chancellor Eva Åkesson and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Anders Malmberg, both of whom will retire from their positions in December 2020. Both have been wonderful friends of the AARS, promoting research at Uppsala University and recognizing the university’s special place in runic studies. The vast landscape surrounding the university, with its hundreds of Viking-era runestones, gives the university a unique research resource, and we are grateful for their strong support of Uppsala University’s world-renowned runologist, Professor Henrik Williams.
For the past three years, about a dozen American rune enthusiasts, mostly from Minnesota, have travelled in late summer to Sweden for a runestone field trip in and around Uppsala, directed by Professor Williams. We have been most appreciative, even overwhelmed, at the hospitality shown us by the university, and we are forever grateful to Eva Åkesson and Anders Malmberg for the kindness and warmth that they showed in hosting three years of rune round participants. For us, it was an extraordinary experience of goodwill, and we wish them all the best for the future.
We look forward to an ongoing relationship with Anders Malmberg, who is president of the American Friends of Uppsala University (AFUU).
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Malmberg hosting rune rounders at lunch at Uppsala University.
Vice-Chancellor Åkesson and Professor Williams, showing us the special Uppsala University library collections on runes.