 He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 1937, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters from 1957 and of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature from 1971.He was an honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America, the Societas Caucasologica Europaea and the Georgian Academy of Languages.He held an honorary degree at the Tbilisi State University and won the Nansen Medal in 1967.