Carl Døving

Carl Døving was born at Norddal, Norway, on March 21, 1867, and became a Lutheran pastor, translator, and student of hymnody in the United States. His ministry coincided with the transition of Norwegian-American congregations toward English-language worship. Rather than abandoning their Scandinavian inheritance, Døving helped make that inheritance singable in English. Hymnary indexes forty-five texts associated with him, most as translations, including hymns by Danish and Norwegian writers. He died in Chicago on October 2, 1937, and was buried in Decorah, Iowa.

Døving prepared his English version of Brorson’s hymn in 1909. It was published in The Lutheran Hymnary in 1913, a joint English-language collection developed by three Norwegian-American Lutheran church bodies. The committee asked Døving to serve as an adviser, and a history of the hymnal highlights both his extensive hymnological library and his research. His surviving book collection became a resource for later scholars and is represented in Lutheran archival holdings. The Døving text established the principal English form of Behold a Host, Arrayed in White, but later hymnals sometimes credited a composite translation or altered the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal version. His original translation must therefore be distinguished from later editorial revisions and from Gracia Grindal’s separate copyrighted translation.