The recent announcement of the establishment of a Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literature at Northwestern University was, of course, received with great satisfaction by Swedish-Americans; likewise the report that our young and gifted countryman, A. Louis Elmquist, had been appointed head of this new department.

Professor Elmquist, whose parents came from Ljuder Parish in Kronoberg Province, Sweden, was born in 1884 on a farm near Parker's Prairie, Minnesota. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1904, and took his master's degree at the same school the following year. From 1904 to 1905 he was also a fellow in Greek, and taught both this language and Latin at his alma mater. From 1906 to 1909 he studied at Leipzig, Germany, as well 2as at the universities of Uppsala, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark.

The professor has from his earliest youth been interested in philology, and having taken up both Greek and Latin in college, he became a teacher of these languages before he was twenty years old. Later he continued his linguistic studies, and became familiar with Sanskrit as well as with the Slavic and Gothic languages.

Among the scientific treatises which he has published may be mentioned: "On the Question of the Authorship of the First Part of Teronimo"; an article in the Swedish periodical, Language and Style, on the subject "Repetitions in the Works of Selma Lagerlof"; a school edition of Selma Lagerlof's The Saga of an Estate,with vocabulary and notes, published by Bonnier's in Stockholm, and also a school edition of Helena Nyblom's The Chimes, also published by Bonnier's. He is now working on a series of articles of a more popular nature, which will be published in the near future.

During the current semester there are fifteen students in the Scandinavian department of Northwestern University, and a Scandinavian club has already been established. The department's activities will be broadened, and new courses added as conditions require.