Israel Ruong

Who was Israel Ruong?

Israel Ruong was a Swedish-Sámi linguist, politician and professor of Sámi languages and culture at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

Israel Ruong spoke Pite Sámi as his mother tongue. His parents were catechists, who lived on the shores of Lake Labbas in the Sámi village of Harrok. His parents and a number of his siblings succumbed to the Spanish flu that rampaged through Arjeplog in 1920. His upbringing in Harrok is described in detail in his article "Harrok-ett samiskt nybygge i Pite Lappmark", which was published in the Festschrift for Asbjørn Nesheim entitled Kultur på karrig jord : festskrift til Asbjørn Nesheim. He received his training to become a teacher in Luleå, after which he went on to worked as a teacher in the nomad school in Jukkasjärvi. In 1943, he defended his dissertation entitled Lappische Verbalableitung dargestellt auf Grundlage des Pitelappischen. From 1947 to 1967, he served as the inspector for nomad schools in Sweden. Ruong served as associate professor in Sámi languages and Ethnology at the University of Uppsala from 1949 to 1969, at which point in time he was promoted to professor. As a linguist, Ruong worked on various aspects of the Sámi languages, especially on their morphology. Together with Knut Bergsland, he created the Bergsland-Ruong orthography for Northern Sámi in 1948. Thanks to the new orthography, Ruong was able to publish schoolbooks in Sámi. In 1970, he published a grammar book in Northern Sámi called Min sámegiella.