David Nyvall was well-known as a preacher in his teens in Vårmland, Sweden, where he was born January 19, 1863. His father, Karl Nyvall, was a colporteur (traveled and gave or sold Bibles) and an organizer of the Covenant Church movement.
However, David Nyvall wanted to be a physician and enrolled at the Carolinian Institute in Stockholm. Instead, because of his health, he became a teacher at the E. A. Skogsbergh’s school in Minneapolis, MN, in 1886. He had been schooled through the junior college at Gåvle, Sweden. Two years later, Nyvall taught in the Swedish department of the Chicago Theological Seminary, where the early Covenant pastors trained.
Skogsbergh had the idea to found a seminary for Covenant students, and with the help of Nyvall in 1891, they opened the school in Minneapolis with Nyvall as president and teacher of theology. Three years later they moved the seminary to Chicago and officially named it North Park College and Theological Seminary.
Much opposition came against Nyvall as president of the seminary. He was called a heretic, and several churches shut their doors to him.
So in 1905, Nyvall resigned and moved to McPherson, KS to found Walden College. Later this was sold to the Free Methodists. In 1908, he edited an early Covenant periodical called Veckobladet, but that didn’t satisfy him. He moved to become professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Washington.
Friends had prayed and hoped Nyvall would return to North Park College. And in 1912, he returned as its president and remained until 1923. He stayed on as dean of the seminary and finally as a teacher until 1941.
Though he was articulate in English, most of his books were written in Swedish. He wrote one book in English, The Swedish Covenanters, 1930. On his 70th birthday a volume of his essays, entitled Beacon Lights, was translated by E. Gustav Johnson and published. Nyvall contributed several texts and tunes for Sionsharpan, a song book.
David Nyvall died in St. Paul, MN, on February 6, 1946.
This Is My Father's World