Gunnar Jarring


Gunnar Valfrid Jarring was a Swedish diplomat and Turkologist.

Early life

Jarring was born in Brunnby, Malmöhus County, Sweden, the son of Gottfrid Jönsson, a farmer, and his wife Betty. He had four siblings. Jarring earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lund University in 1928, a Licentiate Degree in 1931, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1933 with his dissertation Studien zu einer osttürkischen Lautlehre. The same year he was appointed docent in Turkish linguistics at Lund University. Jarring also served as curator of Helsingborgs-Landskrona Student Nation at Lund University in 1933. He taught Turkic languages at the university for the rest of the 1930s. Jarring was also a board member of the Svenska orientsällskapet from 1936 to 1940 and of the Centralbyrån i Lund för populära vetenskapliga föreläsningar at Lund University from 1939 to 1941. He conducted study trips to, among others, Chinese Turkestan 1929-1930, to Moscow and Leningrad in 1934, to the Northwest India and Afghanistan 1935-1936, and to the Near East in 1940.

Diplomatic career

Jarring entered the Swedish diplomatic service and worked for the Swedish foreign service as attaché at their embassy in Ankara in 1940. He was head of Department B at the Swedish legation in Tehran in 1941 and acting chargé d'affaires in Tehran and Baghdad in 1945. Jarring served as acting first legation secretary in 1945 and acting legation counselor and acting chargé d'affaires in Addis Abeba in 1946. Jarring was then Swedish envoy to India in 1948 and to Ceylon in 1950 as well as to Iran, Iraq and Pakistan in 1951. He served as Director and head of the Political Department at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm from 1952 to 1956 and as an expert in the United Nations General Assembly in 1955.
After several other diplomatic missions, he was Sweden's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1956 to 1958, and sat in the Security Council for the last two of those years. He was ambassador to the United States from 1958 to 1964, and to the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1973, as well as Mongolia from 1965 to 1973. In that capacity he signed on behalf of his country on the Outer Space Treaty in January 1967.
After the 1967 Six-Day War and the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 242, Jarring was appointed by the UN Secretary-General U Thant as a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Middle East peace process, the so-called Jarring Mission. Jarring's methods of negotiation were used unsuccessfully until the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The mission officially lasted until 1991. The role of mediator in the Middle East conflict made Jarring decide not to give any interviews or comments, giving him the famous nickname "The Clam", sometimes even "The Super Clam".
Gunnar Jarring continued to publish studies on Eastern Turkic languages throughout his diplomatic career and after retirement. He is one of the few people to ever be mentioned by name in a United Nations Security Council Resolution, appearing in Resolution 331.

Personal life

In 1932, he married Agnes Charlier, the daughter of professor Carl Charlier and Siri Dorotea. He was the father of Eva.

List of Publications

Selected books

Selected articles