Jensen, Alfred

Jensen, Alfred, b 30 September 1859 in Fors, near Güavle, Sweden, d 15 September 1921 in Vienna. Prominent Swedish Slavist. He wrote articles on Taras Shevchenko in Swedish and a book in German, Taras Schewtschenko: Ein Ukrainisches Dichterleben (1916), and translated some of his poems into Swedish. In 1909 he visited Ukraine and became personally acquainted with Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky; his translation of two of the latter’s stories appeared in 1909 (Ivilt üaktenskap). Jensen produced a monograph on Hetman Ivan Mazepa in 1909 and studies of Hetman Pylyp Orlyk and the Voinarovsky family (notably, Andrii Voinarovsky). In 1921 he edited a Swedish collection on Ukrainians, which was published in the Nationernas Bibliotek series as Ukrainarna. A member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1911, he contributed to its periodicals and followed closely Ukrainian academic activities, about which he informed the Swedish public.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]