Hilda Ellis Davidson
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Dr. Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson (née Hilda Roderick Ellis, 1 October 1914 - January 2006)[1] was a British antiquarian and academic, writing in particular on Norse mythology. Davidson used literary, historical and archaeological evidence to discuss the stories and customs of northern Europe. "Gods and Myths of Northern Europe" (Penguin Books, 1964) is considered one of the most thorough and reputable sources on Icelandic, Norse and Germanic mythology. Like many of her publications, it was credited under the name H. R. Ellis Davidson.
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[edit] Life
Hilda Roderick Ellis was born at Bebington, Wirral, Cheshire, in 1914. She was educated at Park High School for Girls, Birkenhead, and Newnham College, Cambridge, where she took Firsts in English and Archaeology. She received her Ph.D in 1940 after three years of research under Hector and Nora Chadwick into the pagan beliefs of Scandinavia. This provided the basis for her first major work, The Road to Hel (1943), originally published under her maiden name of Hilda Ellis, which drew on both literary and archaeological sources, a radical approach at the time.[2]
She was an assistant lecturer in English at the Royal Holloway College from 1939 to 1944, after which she worked as a part-time lecturer in English at Birkbeck College, London. From 1955, she was engaged in writing and research. She continued to combine material from a wide range of sources in her numerous later books on various aspects of Germanic paganism, and often drew on her knowledge of myth, legend and folklore to interpret archaeological finds.[2]
Her research focused especially on Old Norse mythology and religion. She became a lecturer and (from 1975 to 1980) Vice-President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, where she held a Calouste Gulbenkian Research Fellowship and was Director of Studies in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic antiquities. Another interest was in the history of folklore scholarship itself, which led to her editing with Carmen Blacker a collection of essays on Women and Tradition: A Neglected Group of Folklorists (2000).
She was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and from 1974-76 was President of the Council of the Folklore Society. Married with two children, she lived just outside Cambridge, where she ran the Cambridge Folklore Group.[2]
She died in Kent in January 2006, aged 91.
[edit] Publications
- (1941) "Fostering by Giants in Old Norse Sagas", Med. Aev. 10: 70-85.
- (1942) "Sigurd in the Art of the Viking Age", Antiquity 16: 216-36.
- (1943) The Road to Hel, Cambridge University Press, "originally part of a thesis accepted in 1940 for the degree of Ph.D. in the University of Cambridge."
- (1950) "The Hill of the Dragon" (Anglo-Saxon Burial Mounds), Folklore 61.
- (1950) "Gods and Heroes in Stone" In C. Fox and B. Dickens (eds.), The Early Cultures of North-West Europe (H.M. Chadwick Memorial Studies), 123-9, London.
- (1958) The Golden Age of Northumbria, Longmans, [a volume in the "Then and There Series"].
- (1958) "Weland the Smith," Folklore 69: 145-59.
- (1960) "The Sword at the Wedding" Folklore 71, 1-18.
- (1962) The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, Boydell Press, Woodbridge.
- (1963) "Folklore and Man's Past", Folklore, 74: 527-44, London.
- (1964) Book Review: Myth and Religion of the North by E. O. G. Turville-Petre. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson (History of Religion), 1964. Antiquity 38: 309-310.
- (1964) Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth. (later re-published as Gods and Myths of the Viking Age, Bell Publishing Company, 1980).
- (1965) "The Finglesham Man", Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, H.R.E Davidson and C. Hawkes, Antiquity, 39: 17-32.
- (1965) "Thor's Hammer", Folklore 76: 1-15.
- (1965) "The Significance of the Man in the Horned Helmet", Antiquity 39: 23-7.
- (1967) Pagan Scandinavia, (Ancient Peoples and Places 58) London.
- (1967) "The Anglo-Saxon Burial at Coombe [Woodnesborough], Kent", Medieval Archeology 11: 1-41 (by H.E. Davidson and L. Webster).
- (1969) Scandinavian Mythology, Paul Hamlyn, London.
- (1969) The Chariot of the Sun and Other Rites and Symbols of the Northern Bronze Age, by Peter Gelling and H.E. Davidson, Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, New York.
- (1969) "The Smith and the Goddess", Frühmittelalterliche Studiern (University of Münster) 3: 216-26.
- (1971) Beowulf and its Analogues, by George Norman Garmonsway, Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson, and Jacqueline Simpson; E. P. Dutton.
- (1972) "The Battle God of the Vikings", (G.N. Garmonsway Memorial Lecture, University of York, Medieval Monographs I, York.
- (1973) "Hostile Magic in the Icelandic Sagas", The Witch Figure, ed. V. Newall (london) 20-41.
- (1974) "Folklore and History", Folklore 85.
- (1975) "Scandinavian Cosmology" in C. Blacker and M. Loewe's Ancient Cosmologies, 172-97, London.
- (1975) "Folklore and Literature", Folklore 86.
- (1976) The Viking Road to Byzantium, Allen and Unwin, London.
- (1978) Patterns of Folklore, D.S. Brewer Ltd, Ipswich. [Appears to reprint earlier articles such as "Thor's Hammer" and "The Sword at the Wedding" also includes an essay on "Lady Godiva"].
- (1978) "Shape-changing in the Old Norse Sagas" in J.R. Porter's and W.H.S. Russell's Animals in Folklore, 126-42 Folklore Society, Ipswich.
- (1978) "Mithras and Wodan", Études Mithraïques 4: 99-110, Acta Iranica, Leiden.
- (1979) "Loki and Saxo's Hamlet", The Fool and the Trickster; Studies in Honor of Enid Welsford, ed. P.V.A. Williams (Cambridge) 3-17.
- (1979-80) Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes, Books I-IX [Peter Fisher Translation]: Edited with Commentary by H.E. Davidson, Woodbridge: Boydell.
- (Date unknown, pre-1980) Author of the article "Hero" in Encyclopedia Britannica.
- (1980) "Wit and Eloquence in the Courts of Saxo's Early Kings", "To be published as part of the Saxo Symposium, University of Copenhagen 1979."
- (1980) "Insults and Riddles in the Edda Poems", Published in Edda, A Collection of Essays, 25-46, University of Manitoba Icelandic Series 4, 1983.
- (1981) "The Restless Dead: An Icelandic Story", in H.E. Davidson and W.M.S. Russell's (eds.) The Folklore of Ghosts, Mistletoe Series 15, London Folklore Society.
- (1981) "The Germanic World" in M. Loewe and C. Blacker's Divination and Oracles,115-41, London.
- (1984) "The Hero in Tradition and Folklore: Papers Read at a Conference of the Folklore Society Held at Dyffryn House, Cardiff, July 1982" (World Bibliographical Series), Folklore Society Library.
- (1984) "The Hero as a Fool: The Northern Hamlet", The Hero in Tradition and Folklore, (ed. H.R.E. Davidson) 30-4, (Mistletoe Books, 19, Folklore Soc.) London,
- (1988) Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: early Scandinavian and Celtic religions, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
- (1989) The Seer in Celtic and Other Traditions, ed. by Hilda Ellis Davidson, John Donald Publishers, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1989.
- (1989) "Hooded men in Celtic and Germanic Tradition" in G. Davies, Polytheistic Systems, Cosmos 5, 105-124.
- (1989) "The Training of Warriors" in S. C. Hawkes, Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England.
- (1990) "Religious Practices of the Northern Peoples in Scandinavian Tradition", Temonos 26:23-24
- (1992) "Human Sacrifice in the Late Pagan Period of North-Western Europe" in M.O.H. Carver's The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe, 331-40, Woodbridge.
- (1992) "Royal Graves as Religious Symbols" in W. Filmer-Sankey's Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archeology and History 5, 23-31, Oxford.
- (1993) Boundaries and Thresholds: papers from a colloquium of the Katherine Briggs Club (editor).
- (1993) The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe, Routledge, London.
- (1993) "The Hair and the Dog", Folklore 104: 151-63 by H. E. Davidson and A. Chaudhri.
- (1993)The Seer in Celtic and other traditions'
- (1996) Katharine Briggs: Story-teller, Lutterworth Press.
- (1996) "Milk and the Northern Goddess" in S. Billington's and M. Green's The Concept of the Goddess, Routledge, New York. [This work is a tribute to Davidson].
- (1998) Roles of the Northern Goddess, Routledge, London.
- (2001) "The Wild Hunt" in Supernatural Enemies, Edited by H.E. Davidson and Anna Chaudhri. Carolina Academic Press, Durham, N. C.
- (2001) Women and Tradition, Hilda Ellis Davidson and Carmen Blacker, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, N.C.
- (2003) A Companion to the Fairy Tale, Hilda Ellis Davidson and Anna Chaudhri, Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
[edit] References
- E. O. James, review of Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, Folklore (1965).
- Michael Tucker, review of Myths and Symbols of Pagan Europe, Journal of Design History (1989).
