Olov Bertil Anderson Collection

About the collection

Anderson's donation amounts to 80 books, including textbooks from the 1950s and 60s, concerning various Caucasian languages and meant for the elementary school. The collection further includes other topics such as history of literature, linguistics, dictionaries, fiction, history and biographies. Some of the material is issued in various Caucasian languages, and some of it has been translated to Russian. For the interested reader, there are books in and on the following languages: Chechen, Avar, Abkhaz, Lezgian, Tajik, Abaza, Ingush, Kabardian, Circassian, Adyghe, Nogai, Karakalpak, Lak, Uzbek, Tabasaran, as well as several Dagestanian languages.  

Acquisition history

Olov Bertil Andersson donated his books to several of the Swedish university libraries. The books have a specific label denoting his donation. 

Biography

Olov Bertil Anderson was born on March 18, 1920 in Filipstad. Already as a child he was interested in languages and at 12 began learning Russian on his own. He attended Lund University, and with the aid of a scholarship he began studying Chinese in Stockholm in the 1940s. His teacher was the famed professor Bernhard Karlgren (1889–1978). Following his studies, Anderson travelled to both Shanghai and Hong kong and eventually settled in the United States, where he studied at Berkeley University. Throughout the years, he was awarded a number of grants and scholarships, which enabled him to travel in Asia.  

Already in 1961 he was teaching Chinese in Lund, but at the time he still lived in Gothenburg. In the autumn of 1962 he was made substitute director of the East Asian seminar, located on Bredgatan 4 in Lund and subsequently he moved to Skåne. At this time, he also held a position as researcher within East Asian languages at the University of Copenhagen. 

Anderson was the first person to teach Chinese in Lund, and worked as course co-ordinator for one or more study associations; he later expanded this work to Uppsala, where he began teaching Chinese at the university in 1976.

He continued to teach South East Asian topics, mainly to the staff of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as people working in development countries, but also to other interested students from the Nordic countries. Apart from working at the universities of Gothenburg, Lund and Uppsala, he also taught in Copenhagen.

Anderson often featured in the press, where he answered questions concerning the culture and literature of various Asian countries. He wrote reviews, and clarified anything from written characters to naming conventions. He also worked as a translator, and presented lectures broadcast over the radio. He wrote textbooks on a number of subjects, and served as a consultant in many different contexts.  

Olov Bertil Anderson would move house many times during his life. He eventually settled in Uppsala, where he passed away on September 1^st, 1993, leaving a son and a partner.

Read more

Bergström, Per. Säpoagenten vid Lunds universitet. In: Tysk, Karl-Erik (red), Alla tiders Skaraborg: en antologi från Skaraborgs akademi, 2023, p. 97-118.

Caucasian languages, Wikipedia

Knutsson, Bengt. Säpoagenten vid Lunds universitet. In: Skånska paradoxer, 2024, p. 65-76.

Olov Bertil Anderson in Libris

Suggested research topics

• An overview of the collection's contents. What is represented here, and how does it mirror the time and context of the material? 
• Biographical research.
• Comparative studies of other, similar collections of books on Caucasian linguistics.

Please contact us if you have any suggested research topics you would like to share! 

Help us

Have you got skills or knowledge concerning Caucasian languages? Would you like to contribute to our work with the collections? Please contact us!