Audun Toven, knight of Norway, dies

Audun Toven, Pierce County’s knight of Norway, has died.

Toven, who spent nearly four decades as a professor at Pacific Lutheran University, taught Norwegian culture to thousands of students and community members and was instrumental in developing the Parkland school’s Scandinavian Studies program.

Toven had battled prostate cancer for several years. He was surrounded by family at his daughter’s home in Los Angeles when he passed Tuesday. He was 75.

Toven was known throughout the South Sound region and in Norway for his dedication to teaching others about Norwegian language, culture, history and politics. He saw himself as an ambassador to Norway, traveling between his homeland and the United States with student groups and teaching at the Oslo International Summer School for more than 25 years.

“Audun Toven’s unparalleled contributions, scholarship and service at Pacific Lutheran University and to the development of Norwegian-American relations almost defy enumeration,” University President Loren Anderson wrote in an announcement to the campus about Toven’s death.

Toven helped establish the Scandinavian Cultural Center, which opened at PLU in 1989, and was fundamental in creating an endowed professorship of Scandinavian Studies. Anderson awarded Toven the President’s Medal in 2010.

In 2001, Norwegian officials bestowed upon Toven the Order of Merit and gave him the title, “Knight of the First Class.” A humble man, Toven often chuckled when colleagues called him, “Sir.”

Toven also was a dedicated family man who made lunches every morning for his son and daughter when they were growing up, relatives said. He took them to Norway every summer to spend time on his family’s farm. He taught them to play sports and golfed with his son at the University Golf Course.

“He’s the most loving, gentle, sweet man,” his daughter, Brit Toven-Lindsey, said Thursday. “And we are really going to miss him.”

Toven was born Sept. 17, 1936, in Norway, the fourth of six siblings. He grew up on his family’s farm in southwestern Norway near Eidsvaag.

He received a teaching certificate from the University of Oslo in the early 1960s and dreamed of teaching English in Norway.

But he didn’t feel quite comfortable with the language, so he traveled to the United States with three other Norwegians as part of a cultural exchange program. Toven toured the country, performing folk dances and playing the Hardanger fiddle.

He later enrolled in graduate school at University of Washington, where he studied English and Scandinavian literature and taught Norwegian as a graduate assistant.

After getting his master’s degree, Toven accepted a teaching job in 1967 at PLU. He associated with the university even after he formally retired in 2005.

“Through his conscientious efforts, literally thousands of students studied the history, culture and language of Norway here at PLU,” Anderson wrote.

Toven created the Scandinavian Studies major in 1976 and encouraged students to study in Norway, but his reach extended beyond the university.

He taught folk dancing, led nighttime skiing lessons on Crystal Mountain, gave community lectures on all things Norwegian and played Norwegian music on public radio stations. He also helped organize visits from Norwegian royalty to the United States.

Susan Young, director of the Scandinavian Cultural Center, said Toven approached his community classes just like his lessons to university students.

“People who are in the community got a very, very special instructor,” Young said. “It was almost a mission for him.”

In the mid-2000s, Toven took up the effort to create an endowed professorship for Scandinavian Studies at PLU first started by Richard Svare and Bette Svare Parrot. Svare and Svare Parrot, brother and sister, began working on the endowment to honor their father, who taught at the university for more than three decades.

When they died in 2004 and 2005, respectively, they left money for the endowment, but it wasn’t enough to create a position.

Toven continued the fundraising effort after his retirement, and the professorship was announced in May during the third annual Syttende Mai – or Norwegian Constitution Day – celebration. During the event, Toven challenged the crowd to raise another $1 million for an endowed chair position.

“He pretty much did what he loved his whole life,” Toven’s son, Trygge Toven, said.

Toven is survived by his ex-wife, Iral, his two children, and a 3-year-old granddaughter, all of the Los Angeles area.

A memorial service is being planned at Pacific Lutheran University. The family plans to take his remains to Norway in December and bury him with other family members near the family farm.

Stacey Mulick: 253-597-8268 stacey.mulick@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/crime