Albert Lange Fliflet

Who is Albert Lange Fliflet?

Albert Lange Fliflet was a Norwegian philologist and translator. He is best known for translating Kalevala.

He was born in Inderøy as a son of dean Andreas Vilhelm Agersborg Fliflet and nurse Charlotte Lange. He grew up in Stjørdal and Øvre Sandsvær, and learned Latin, Hebrew, German and English from his parents. He started learning Finnish after the Finnish geology professor Aarne Laitakari visited the district in 1923, catching his interest in the language. The two subsequently wrote letters to each other. Fliflet finished his secondary education in 1926 in Kongsberg, and after enrolling at the Royal Frederick University in the same year, he graduated with the mag.art. degree in Finno-Ugric languages in 1938.

He worked as a school teacher in Tromsø from 1939 to 1941, and as a lecturer at the University of Bergen from 1964 to 1978. In between he worked as a freelance translator from Latin, German, Finnish, Hungarian and Dutch into Norwegian; mostly poetry. His first poetry translation was the anthology Finland synger from 1947. In 1967 he released Kalevala in Nynorsk. Fliflet also contributed to Norsk allkunnebok.