Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1966, Page 11

Inger Margrethe Boberg
23 July, 1900-9 May, 1957
Archivist in the Dansk Folkemindesamling (Danish Folklore Archives) at
the time of her death, Dr. Inger Margrethe Boberg had given thirty years
of her life to the cause of folklore, especially that of her own country.*)
Reared in an atmosphere of scholarship she early found her interest
aroused by that inspiring teacher, C. W. von Sydow, under whom she
studied in Lund. Here she came close to all that was central to folklore
scholarship of the middle twenties, in the days when in addition to von
Sydow there were such outstanding figures still active as Kaarle Krohn
and Johannes Bolte. How stimulating such a center as the Dansk Folke-
mindesamling could be in those days I discovered when in 1927 I spent
several months there.
She began to produce first-rate investigations from the very beginning,
as seen by her study of the tale of the Princess on the Glass Mountain.
Here she displayed a real knowledge of the historic-geographic method,
not only as worked out by Finnish scholars, but as modified by the opini-
ons and practices of von Sydow.
It was in 1935 at a Folktale Congress at Lund that I first met Miss
Boberg. She was already spending her days in the Dansk Folkeminde-
samling in Copenhagen and had published enough to make her known
even to American workers. While, as always, she was withdrawn into
herself, we came to realize that here we had not only a genuine scholar but
a person of great integrity.
During these years of the late thirties she continued producing works
large and small. Her interest at that time was mostly concerned with
legends — such as the traditional inhabitants of mounds, fairy-like crea-
tures of all kinds, and these she studied not only on a national scale, but
where appropriate, from a broader point of view.
*) For many of the facts in this brief sketch I am dependent on the obituary by Erik Dal
which appeared in Danske Studier 1957, pp. 5-9 and the Introduction to her work
Dansk Folketradition by Iørn Piø (Danmarks Folkeminder No. 72 pp. 7-9). For readers
who do not read Danish I have not hesitated to borrow freely from these sketches.