[1] Bo Gunnar Almqvist was born on 5 May 1931 in Edsgatan, a small community in Alster, a farming district in the province of Värmland, Sweden, an area noted for its old customs and traditions.
She had a remarkable repertoire of traditional proverbs to be used on any occasion, and her knowledge of folklife crafts and calendar customs deepened her son's interest in the folkways and oral culture of his native region.
[1] In 1950 Bo entered Uppsala University to study Nordic languages and literature, along with English.
Dag Strömbäck, professor of folklore at Uppsala, became a lifelong friend and greatly influenced Almqvist's choice of career.
Almqvist developed a great interest in, and knowledge of, comparative philology and historical linguistics.
After graduating from Uppsala in 1954, he spent a year on a scholarship in Reykjavík studying Icelandic language and literature.
Almqvist returned to work in 1960 to the folklore department in Uppsala University, as docent (1965–7) and acting professor (1967–9).
He successfully defended his doctoral thesis in Uppsala, and Norrön niddiktning: traditionshistoriska studier i versmagi was eventually published in two volumes, in 1965 and 1972.
His findings, on the magical power of satire and attitudes to manliness in Old Icelandic poetry, were regarded as a major contribution to the study of Old Norse literature and to ethnography.
[1] From 1953, when he attended a summer school in UCD, Almqvist spent months at a time doing fieldwork in Ireland, especially in Dunquin and Dingle, County Kerry.
His scholarly reputation and European perspective underpinned the development of the study of folklore as an academic discipline in Ireland through the introduction of new courses and inspiring fieldwork, and his influence hastened the disappearance of the rather parochial attitude to Irish tradition evident in some earlier studies.
From 1968 he was a member of the editorial board of Tidskrift for Nordisk folkeminneforskning (later Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore).
His influence on them and popularity with international colleagues was evident in two festschriften, Viking ale (1991) a collection of his own major articles published to honour his sixtieth birthday, and Northern lights (2001) for his seventieth.
Almqvist was a member of the Royal Irish Academy (elected 1981) and of the Swedish Kungliga Gustav Adolfs Akademien, as well as other learned societies.
Almqvist's first marriage, in Iceland, had been to Jane Houston (died 2018), an American textile artist and photographer, who became an expert on traditional Irish white embroidery; they had one daughter, Marja.
[1] After a short illness, Bo Almqvist died on 9 November 2013 in Loughlinstown Hospital, Dublin.
His funeral was from the Church of our Lady Seat of Wisdom, Belfield, to Mount Jerome crematorium.
An Anecdote in Old Icelandic Literature and Its Counterpart in Irish Folk Tradition' Béaloideas 27–28 (1973) 1–58 (first published in Swedish in Scripta Islandica 17 (1966)).
The Proceedings of the International Folk Epic Conference, University College, Dublin, 2–6 September 1985.
Some Irish Folklore Motifs in the Old Icelandic Traditions about Wineland’ in Folke Josephson (ed.
)), 'Paidreacha agus Orthaí ó Bhab Feiritéar (Prayers and Charms from Bab Feiritear)' Béaloideas 73 (2005) 135–171.