Ursula Miriam Dronke (née Brown, 3 November 1920 – 8 March 2012Heather O'Donoghue
"Ursula Dronke obituary: Inspirational teacher of Old Norse literature specialising in the sagas and poetry of medieval Iceland"
''

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'' 25 March 2012.) was an English

medievalist The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

and former Vigfússon Reader in

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

and an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College. She also taught at the University of Munich and in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at

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Biography

Born in

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and raised in

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, where her father was a lecturer at Newcastle University, Ursula Brown attended Newcastle Church High School as a girl and began her academic studies as an undergraduate at the

University of Tours The University of Tours (), formerly François Rabelais University of Tours (), is a public university in Tours, France. Founded in 1969, the university was formerly named after the French writer François Rabelais. It is the largest university ...

in 1939, returning to England and enrolling in Somerville College, University of Oxford, after the outbreak of war. She then worked for the Board of Trade until 1946, when she returned to Somerville as a graduate student in Old Norse and beginning in 1950 was a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

and tutor in English. Her Bachelor of Literature thesis on an edition of ''Þorgils and Hafliða'' from the Sturlunga saga was passed by

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and Alistair Campbell in July 1949 and formed the basis of a monograph, ''Þorgils Saga ok Hafliða'', published in 1952. In 1960 Brown married fellow medievalist Peter Dronke, and moved with him to the University of Cambridge. They collaborated several times, and jointly gave the 1997 H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. In the early 1970s, Ursula Dronke was a professor and acting head of Old Norse studies at the University of Munich. In 1976, she was elected Vigfússon Reader in Old Icelandic literature and antiquities at Oxford, and became a research fellow of Linacre College there. She retired and became emeritus Reader and emeritus fellow in 1988. She was able to obtain an endowment from the Rausing family of Sweden to support the Vigfússon Readership in perpetuity. Dronke's edition of the ''

Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related ''Prose Edda'', although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse ...

'' with translation and commentary (three volumes published of a projected four) has been praised for its scholarship, insight, and skilful and poetic renderings.Heather O'Donoghue, Review of ''The Poetic Edda. Volume II: Mythological Poems'' by Ursula Dronke, ''The Review of English Studies'' New Series 50.198 (1999
pp. 215-17
The series "has completely dominated Eddaic studies worldwide, with the sophistication of its literary analyses and the tremendous breadth of background knowledge brought to bear on the poetry", and in particular, her translation of " Völuspá" "restored it as a work of art." Her collected essays, ''Myth and Fiction in Early Norse Lands'' (1996) relate a broad range of early Scandinavian literary and mythological topics to the Indo-European heritage and to medieval European thought, and " emonstratethe palpable enthusiasm of a fine scholar and teacher". In 1980 she gave the Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture for the Viking Society for Northern Research, and she was co-editor of the

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for Gabriel Turville-Petre.

Selected publications

Editions and translations

* (as Ursula Brown). ''Þorgils Saga ok Hafliða''. Oxford English Monographs 3. London: Oxford, 1952. * ''The Poetic Edda'' Volume I ''Heroic Poems''. Edited with translation, introduction and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University, 1969. * ''The Poetic Edda'' Volume II ''Mythological Poems''. Edited with translation, introduction and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University, 1997. * ''The Poetic Edda'' Volume III ''Mythological Poems II''. Edited with translation, introduction and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University, 2011.

Other books

* (with Peter Dronke). ''Barbara et Antiquissima Carmina''. Publicaciones del Seminario de Literatura Medieval y Humanística. Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma, Faculdad de Letras, 1977. * ''The Role of Sexual Themes in Njáls Saga: The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies delivered at University College London, 27 May 1980''. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1981.
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* ''Myth and Fiction in Early Norse Lands''. Collected Studies 524. Aldershot, Hampshire/Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, 1996. (Collected articles) * (with Peter Dronke). ''Growth of Literature: The Sea and the God of the Sea''. H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures 8. Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 1997-98.

Articles

* (with Peter Dronke). "The Prologue of the Prose Edda: Explorations of a Latin Background". ''Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. júlí 1977''. Ed. Einar G. Pétursson and Jónas Kristjánsson. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977. 153-76. * "The War of the Æsir and the Vanir in Völuspá". ''Idee, Gestalt, Geschichte: Festschrift Klaus von See''. Ed. Gerd Wolfgang Weber. Odense: Odense University, 1988. . 223-38. * "Eddic Poetry as a Source for the History of Germanic Religion". ''Germanische Religionsgeschichte: Quellen und Quellenprobleme''. Ed. Heinrich Beck, Detlev Ellmers and Kurt Schier. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 5. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992. . 656-84. * "Pagan Beliefs and Christian Impact: The Contribution of Eddic Studies". ''Viking Revaluations: Viking Society Centenary Symposium''. Ed. Anthony Faulkes and Patrick Thull. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1993.

References

Relevant literature

*C.A.L. Ursula Dronke (Obituary). ''Saga-Book'' XXXVI:117-120 {{DEFAULTSORT:Dronke, Ursula Academics of the University of Cambridge Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford English medievalists British women medievalists Fellows of Linacre College, Oxford Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Old Norse studies scholars Germanic studies scholars Translators from Old Norse 1920 births 2012 deaths 20th-century English translators 20th-century English women writers English women historians Translators of the Poetic Edda Writers on Germanic paganism English expatriates in Germany