Gunnar Valfrid Jarring (1907–2002) was a Swedish diplomat and leading Turkologist whose scholarship profoundly shaped the study of Eastern Turkic languages, including Uyghur. Trained at Lund University, he earned his PhD in 1933 with a pioneering dissertation on Eastern Turkic phonology and served as docent in Turkish linguistics. During the 1920s and 1930s, he conducted extensive fieldwork across Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang), Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Near East, producing foundational linguistic and ethnographic documentation of Uyghur and other Turkic communities.
Alongside a distinguished diplomatic career—serving as Sweden’s ambassador to the United States, the Soviet Union, and several Asian states, as well as Permanent Representative to the United Nations—Jarring continued to publish significant studies on Turkic languages. His long-term interest in Uyghur culture resulted in one of the largest and most detailed collections of Uyghur manuscripts, folklore, and linguistic materials preserved outside China. His work remains a core reference for scholars of the Uyghur language, Central Asian ethnography, and the broader Turkic world.
Publications by Gunnar Jarring
- Bourgeois, H. (1909). Notes Turkestan Oriental (Pdf)
- Hultvall, J. (2004). Mission and Change in Eastern Turkestan (Pdf)
- Jarring, G. (1935). The Ordam Padishah System of Eastern Turkistan Shrines (Pdf)
- Jarring, G. (1981). The New Romanized Alphabet for Uighur and Kazakh (Pdf)
- Jarring, G. (1991). Eastern Turkestanica in the Swedish National Archives (Pdf)
- Jarring, G. (1991). Prints from Kashghar (Pdf)
- Yildirim, I. (2017). Ildiko Beller Hann Kashgar Revisited Uyghur Studies in Memory of Ambassador Gunnar Jarring (Pdf)
