Carl Wilhelm von Sydow

Von Sydow was born on 21 December 1878 in Ryssby to Otto Ludvig von Sydow, a member of the Von Sydow family, and friherrinnan Göthilda Rappe. Von Sydow was educated in Växjö. In 1897, Von Sydow entered Lund University and earned his master's degree in 1908 with a study of the legend of Finn and his wife and his doctorate in 1909 with a thesis titled Två spinnsagor—en studie i jämförande folksagoforskning (Two Spinning Legends—A Study in the Comparative Study of Folk Legends). During his university studies, he taught at folk high schools and met the Danish folklorist Henning Frederik Feilberg, who inspired him to begin collecting folk tales. In 1907 he published Våra folkminnen—Folksaga, folksägen, folktro (Our Folklore—Folktale, Legend, and Folk Belief) and participated in the founding of the Federation of Folklore Fellows' Communications in Copenhagen. Another folklorist who influenced him was Axel Olrik, who was to have been the disputant for his PhD thesis. ==Career==

Von Sydow was appointed a lecturer in Nordic and comparative folkloristics at Lund University in September 1910, In April 1940 he was awarded a personal chair. He was a pioneer of radio lecturing, beginning in 1926. In the 1930s he was a founding member of the Nazi-sympathising (National Swedish-German Association) and served as vice president, but in April 1940 he resigned his membership. In addition to his publications on folklore, von Sydow contributed to the establishment of methodical study in the field in Sweden, beginning with Tors färd till Utgård (Thor's Journey to Útgarð), one of his areas of particular interest was Celtic influence in Germanic folklore and literature, and Irish Gaelic was among several languages he learnt in adulthood and one he taught at Lund in the 1920s. and suggested several other terms, such as dite (a saying) and memorate (a personal narrative, usually concerning a supernatural encounter). Starting in the 1920s, he came to regard many supernatural beings and customs in modern folk belief as ficts, fanciful explanations often meant to manage children by creating a bogeyman, and therefore came into conflict with other scholars' religio-historical theories, such as Wilhelm Mannhardt's analyses of harvest customs. He also came to repudiate the Finnish School in folklore studies as atomistic; he focussed on the transmission of folktales between individuals, for example drawing a distinction between 'active' and 'passive' tradition carriers or bearers (tale tellers and audience members). ==Personal life==

On 5 June 1906, Von Sydow married the painter (; 1865–1924). Von Sydow and Anna had one son. On 10 June 1926, Von Sydow married his second cousin friherrinnan Maria Margareta "Greta" von Sydow (), a folk high school teacher. Von Sydow and Greta had one son, the actor Max von Sydow. On 4 March 1952 Von Sydow died in Lund, aged aged 73, and was buried in the family plot at the North Cemetery in Lund. ==Honours==

• Honorary doctorate, National University of Ireland, 1937 ==References==