Georg Sverdrup
Encyclopedia
Georg Sverdrup born Jørgen Sverdrup, was a Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 philologist, who is well known for being a member of Norwegian Constituent Assembly
Riksforsamlingen
Norwegian Constituent Assembly is the name given to the 1814 Constitutional Assembly at Eidsvoll in Norway, that voted the Norwegian Constitution and formalised the dissolution of the union with Denmark...

 in Eidsvoll
Eidsvoll
is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Romerike traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Sundet.-Name:...

 in 1814 and later the parliament. He was also responsible for building the first Norwegian university library
University Library
University Library refers to academic libraries at universities, such as:*Basel University Library*Cambridge University Library*Cornell University Library*De La Salle University Library*Durham University Library*University of the East Library...

. He was the uncle of the well known prime minister Johan Sverdrup
Johan Sverdrup
Johan Sverdrup was a Norwegian politician from the Liberal Party. He was the first Prime Minister of Norway after the introduction of parliamentarism. Sverdrup was Prime Minister from 1884 to 1889.- Early years :...

 (1816-1892).

He represented Christiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 at the Constitutional Assembly. He was the last president of the Assembly, chosen the second last day, May 16. He led the election of the king and gave the closing speech May 17. He was later elected to the Norwegian Parliament in 1818 and 1824.

The University of Oslo
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...

 was established in 1811 under the name Royal Frederick University, but due to the Napoleonic War it was not until 1815 that Sverdrup could receive the 50,000 volumes, then in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, intended for the new university library
University Library of Oslo
The University Library of Oslo is a library connected to the University of Oslo.Like the University, it was established in 1811 with Georg Sverdrup as the first head librarian. It originally doubled as the Norwegian national library, and was located at the old University of Oslo campus.In 1913 the...

. It took another year for the government to provide adequate localities for the collection, and not until 1828 was the library finally completed, with a total of 90,000 volumes.

Apart from this, Sverdrup was also a popular lecturer of Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

.

Georg Sverdrup is buried at Vår Frelsers gravlund
Vår Frelsers gravlund
Vår Frelsers gravlund is a cemetery in Oslo, Norway, located north of Hammersborg in Gamle Aker district. It was created in 1808 as a result of the great famine and cholera epidemic of the Napoleonic Wars. Its grounds were extended in 1911. The cemetery has been full since 1952...

.

The new university library at Blindern
Blindern
Blindern is the main campus of the University of Oslo, located in Nordre Aker in Oslo, Norway.-The campus:Most of the departments of the University of Oslo are located at Blindern; other, smaller campuses include Sentrum , Gaustad , St...

, finished in 1999, is named after Georg Sverdrup. It today houses more than 2,000,000 books.

External links

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