Lars Warme correspondence, 1957-1989

Lars Warme was a professor of Scandinavian and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. Born October 12, 1928, in Orrabäck, Småland, Sweden, he went to Lund University and came to the U. S. in 1957. He worked in the travel industry and taught at the Cathedral School in San Francisco before returning to graduate school at the University of California Berkeley at age 40. Warme spent time teaching at the University of British Columbia. Then, in 1975 he joined the UW Department of Scandinavian Studies faculty where he is credited with strengthening the department’s areas of research and teaching. At UW he was recognized for his teaching with an Excellence in Teaching award and served as a mentor for many students before retiring in the 1990s. He was also a writer, with multiple publications, an art collector, a cook, and a gardener.

After coming to the U. S. Warme kept constant correspondence with his family in Sweden. He wrote extensive reports on his experiences in Colorado, San Francisco, Berkeley, Vancouver, and Seattle which he sent to his parents, Svea and Joab Warme, and to his brother and sister-in-law, Olof and Shelagh Warme. These letters gave insights into his experiences as an immigrant and as a UW faculty member in the 1970s and 1980s. Warme created copies of his “samlade brev”, or collected letters, from the 1940s through the 1980s. These were kept in the possession of Paul Norlen following Warme’s passing in 2007 before being donated to the University of Washington Special Collections.

[Sources: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/seattletimes/name/lars-warme-obituary?id=28863744taught, https://scandinavian.washington.edu/history, and Paul Norlen correspondence]