We are saddened to announce the sudden passing of Rune Kyrkjebø on December 22, 2023. He was the assistant national coordinator of CLARINO and a member of the CLARIN Center Assessment Committee and a member of the User Involvement Committee. Rune leaves behind his wife Tone Merete Bruvik (who is on the ) and two children.
Rune was a true humanistic scholar. He studied philology and got his PhD at the University of Bergen in 2001 with a text-critical analysis of Old Norse Kings’ sagas. He also studied theology and published a Norwegian psalm lexicon. In his work as researcher and later senior librarian, he was involved in very many Digital Humanities projects, such as the Wittgenstein Archives at Bergen, the Norwegian Language Collections, the lexicographical projects, and others. He published widely on mediaeval philology, transcription, OCR, and other aspects of digital text scholarship.
Rune became very engaged in CLARIN activities. With others, he gave CLARINO courses on language data management, produced a series of instructional videos on how to use CLARINO data and services, and kept the CLARINO Bergen Centre running. He was co-author of a chapter in the 2022 CLARIN book.
We will miss Rune not only because he was always interested, helpful and dedicated, but also because he did so with a smile and a genuine modesty and friendliness.
Written by Koenraad de Smedt