Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study
organization
The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study (SASS) is a scholarly society that aims to advance the study, teaching and research in America of the languages, literature, history, culture and society of the Scandinavian or Nordic countries and to foster closer relationships between people interested in the field of Scandinavian studies.
History
The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study (SASS) was founded in 1911. Julius E. Olson from the University of Wisconsin–Madison served as the first President. In the same year, the first SASS conference was held at the University of Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois. No annual meeting was held in 1933 or between 1943 and 1945. In 2003, the society was admitted as a member of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Publications
The society publishes the quarterly journal Scandinavian Studies (ISSN 0036-5637), which has been published by Brigham Young University, and since 2013 by the University of Illinois Press. Susan Brantly, professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is the current editor. The society also publishes an internal newsletter, SASS News and Notes (ISSN 0891-7477) and arranges an annual conference.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study” as organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7552282. VIAF identifies the subject as 144255845. The Library of Congress control number is n85209368. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1933, 1943 and 1945.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study primary sources, Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study archive and Society research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.