Andreas Fridolin Weis Bentzon

Morra at Peppino Satta's wedding. Photograph by Andreas Fridolin Weis Bentzon, early 1900s, from Sardegna DL

The ethnomusicologist Andreas Fridolin Weis Bentzon, born in Copenhagen in 1936 and died in the same city in 1971, at only thirty-five years old, took photographs during the various research campaigns conducted during his long scientific stays in Sardinia, from 1953 to 1969. With his research work on launeddas, considered by ethnomusicology scholars to be a classic, he created one of the most important monographic collections of Italian popular music.

The history of the Bentzon Fund
The Fund was donated to ISRE by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the University of Copenhagen after the death of the scholar, following the interest of the Nuoro writer Maria Giacobbe, who had been living in the Danish capital for many years. The name of Benzton is mainly linked to the ethnomusicological work “The Launeddas. A Sardinian Folk Music Instrument”, Copenhagen 1969, still the most important work on the subject.
The materials preserved in the ISRE concern almost exclusively Nule, the small town of Goceanum, where Andreas Bentzon and his wife Ruth stayed for long periods between 1965 and 1969. They consist of a few thousand sheets typed in English, organized in “Topics”, “Sources” and “Personal Records”, produced or collected by Benzton and his wife Ruth and rearranged in Copenhagen by the group of students of the so-called Nule Gruppen; of manuscripts in Sardinian on traditions and events of the country written in particular by Michela Coloru, weaver and main collaborator of the anthropologist; of original documents relating to the social life of Nule, such as the accounts of the Barracellare company, etc. In addition, yes they keep more than a thousand photographs always taken in Nule, in a few other places on the island and in some places on the continent by Andreas and Ruth Bentzon. The digitized materials are currently the subject of an extensive study and scientific reorganization project entrusted by the ISRE to Professor Cosimo Zene, an anthropologist at SOAS in London, and a native of Nule.

Update

6/2/2026 - 12:53