Nils Vibe Stockfleth

Nils Joachim Christian Vibe Stockfleth (11 January 1787 in Fredrikstad, Norway – 26 April 1866 in Sandefjord) was a Norwegian cleric who was instrumental in the first development of the written form of the Northern Sámi language.

Bible Translators Theologians From 1836 Stockfleth taught Sámi languages and Finnish in Christiania (now the University of Oslo).

In 1838 he travelled to Finland and gained the support of Finnish philologists Gustaf Renvall (1781–1841), Reinhold von Becker (1788–1858), Andreas Sjögren (1794–1855) and Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884).

Influenced by Enlightenment thinkers like Johann Gottfried Herder, he worked assiduously for what he saw as the betterment of the Sámi people, especially in the literary field.

Stockfleth and the Danish polyglot and philologist Rasmus Christian Rask cooperated to develop a means of accurately recording a written form of the Sámi language[which?]