Template:Did you know nominations/Magnus Olsen

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:08, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Magnus Olsen

Magnus Olsen
Magnus Olsen
  • ... that the investigations of Scandinavian place names by Magnus Olsen (pictured) were instrumental in restoring confidence in Icelandic literature as a useful source for information on Old Norse religion? Source: Turville-Petre, Gabriel (1964). Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. Greenwood Press. p. IX. ISBN 0837174201. Outstanding modern works are those of J de Vries and G. Dumézil, to which reference will frequently be made in the following pages. Many have disputed the revolutionary conclusions of Dumézil, but the significance of his keen observations cannot be questioned. It is not too much to say that this scholar has restored out confidence in the validity of Norse tradition as it is expressed in the literary records of Iceland. In quite another way the studies of the late Magnus Olsen, who has investigated Scandinavian place-names in the light of ancient literature, have be no less important.

Improved to Good Article status by Krakkos (talk). Self-nominated at 20:05, 11 February 2021 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems

Hook eligibility:

Image eligibility:

  • Freely licensed: No - I'm not a copyright specialist, so I'd like a second opinion, but the licensing looks like it might have issues. The license template says it's public domain in countries where term is life + 70 years, but since the author is unknown, it's unclear that that applies. The template also asks for a U.S. public domain template to be included, but that is missing.
  • Used in article: Yes
  • Clear at 100px: Yes
QPQ: Done.

Overall: As a GA, article has been reviewed and affirmed to be in good shape, so I'm assuming compliance with neutrality/copyright etc. The picture has quite substantial JPEG artifacts. If we're able to resolve the licensing issues, it'd be good to get it from a higher-quality source.

Hooks are generally cited. For ALT1, hook appears to support that he helped keep the university preeminent, not make it preeminent.

On the interestingness criterion, the hooks suffer somewhat from being either too technical or for just asserting his importance without offering anything unusual that might pique someone's interest or explain why someone not super into philology should care about him. Sorry, but as a reader, I wouldn't really be tempted to click on any of them as currently written. Let me comb through the article and see if I can find anything better, and open to additional suggestions. (I also acknowledge I take a harder stance on interestingness than most DYK reviewers, so if others find the hooks interesting enough, I won't stand in the way.) {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:50, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Following up, I think that his resistance activities during the Nazi occupation of Norway are probably what'd be most likely to draw in readers. (I know it's not the biggest part of his life, but DYK hooks don't need to be comprehensive, just to get people to click.) If you found any particularly interesting details about what precisely caused him to be arrested or what happened to him when he was, those might make a good hook. Otherwise, something like this might be good:
ALT4: ... that Old Norse scholar Magnus Olsen (pictured) was imprisoned for resisting the Nazi occupation of Norway as dean of the University of Oslo? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 22:16, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for this thorough review. I have added the more appropriate license to the image. Well done on developing this hook. It appears that Olsen was arrested for criticizing the Nazi German occupiers. If the original hook is indeed too technical or difficult to simplify, I'm perfectly fine with opting for ALT4 as the hook. Krakkos (talk) 22:43, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
License now looks good, as it was released here. Overall, ready to go. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 08:13, 12 February 2021 (UTC)