Axel Sommerfelt in the history of social anthropology

Abstract

An unsung alumnus of the Manchester School, Axel Sommerfelt (b. 1926) published little during his career, but has nevertheless had a major impact on contemporary Norwegian anthropology. Following six years as a lecturer in Salisbury, he taught at the University of Oslo from 1966 until his retirement in 1996. This article traces his intellectual itinerary. Beginning with a re-study of Fortes's Tallensi material, Sommerfelt later carried out fieldwork on inter-ethnic relations in south-western Uganda. He distinguished himself from his Norwegian colleagues through an interest in colonial history, nationalism and structural power which tends to be absent from Fredrik Barth's work. Sommerfelt's teaching and mainly unpublished writings reveal him as a supporter of a strong empiricist programme and a skilled Africanist who would have been a worthy contributor to the Manchester School, had he only published his work.