H. R. Ellis Davidson
Encyclopedia
Dr. Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson (born Hilda Roderick Ellis, 1 October 1914 - January 2006) was an English
antiquarian
and academic, writing in particular on Germanic paganism
and Celtic paganism. 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 Germanic mythology
. Like many of her publications, it was credited under the name H. R. Ellis Davidson. Davidson was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
, and was president of the Council of the Folklore Society
from 1974 to 1976, and served on the council from 1956 to 1986. Davidson has been cited as having "contributed greatly" to the study of Norse mythology
.
, Wirral
, Cheshire
, in 1914. She was educated at Park High School for Girls
, Birkenhead
. Later, Davidson received a First Class Honours degree from Newnham College, Cambridge
, in English, Archaeology and Anthropology, and afterward studied pagan Scandinavian religion
for her doctorate. In 1943, Davidson, under her maiden name Hilda Ellis, published her first book; The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature. Davidson was a lecturer at Royal Holloway College from 1939 to 1944 and after that at Birbeck College. In 1949, she joined the Folklore Society.
Davidson joined the Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge
in 1969 as a Calouste Gulbenkian
Research Fellow
, was appointed a College Lecturer in 1971, was an elected a Fellow in 1974, and was made Vice-President between 1975 and 1980. In 1980, Davidson also began working on a biography
of Katharine Mary Briggs
, which she published in 1986. Davidson received the Folklore Society's Coote Lake Medal in 1984, and her 1988 work Myths and Symbols of Pagan Europe won the Katharine Briggs Prize that year. Davidson was an honorary member of the Folklore Society beginning in 1985 and she founded the Katharine Briggs Club in January 1987. The first three publications of the club were edited by Davidson and the third was dedicated to her.
Another interest Davidson held 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). In Davidson's later work, she focused on cultural and religious links between Germanic and Celtic cultures, showcased at her presence at the Nordic-Celtic-Baltic Legend Symposiums in Ireland and Copenhagen throughout the 1990s. She was unable to attend the 2005 meeting due to poor health.
In her later years she ran the Cambridge Folklore Group. Davidson was a bellringer
and churchwarden
at her local church. Davidson died in Kent in January 2006, aged 91, leaving 2 children and 10 grandchildren.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
and academic, writing in particular on Germanic paganism
Germanic paganism
Germanic paganism refers to the theology and religious practices of the Germanic peoples of north-western Europe from the Iron Age until their Christianization during the Medieval period...
and Celtic paganism. Davidson used literary, historical and archaeological evidence to discuss the stories and customs of Northern Europe. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
, 1964) is considered one of the most thorough and reputable sources on Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology is a comprehensive term for myths associated with historical Germanic paganism, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, Continental Germanic mythology, and other versions of the mythologies of the Germanic peoples...
. Like many of her publications, it was credited under the name H. R. Ellis Davidson. Davidson was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...
, and was president of the Council of the Folklore Society
Folklore Society
The Folklore Society was founded in England in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts and crafts, customs and belief...
from 1974 to 1976, and served on the council from 1956 to 1986. Davidson has been cited as having "contributed greatly" to the study of Norse mythology
Norse mythology
Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...
.
Life
Hilda Roderick Ellis was born at BebingtonBebington
Bebington is a small town and electoral ward within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England. It lies south of Liverpool and west southwest of Manchester, along the River Mersey on the eastern side of the Wirral Peninsula...
, Wirral
Wirral Peninsula
Wirral or the Wirral is a peninsula in North West England. It is bounded by three bodies of water: to the west by the River Dee, forming a boundary with Wales, to the east by the River Mersey and to the north by the Irish Sea. Both terms "Wirral" and "the Wirral" are used locally , although the...
, Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
, in 1914. She was educated at Park High School for Girls
Park High School, Birkenhead
Park High School is a co-educational secondary school in Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula in England. The school is located near Birkenhead Park...
, Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...
. Later, Davidson received a First Class Honours degree from Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, and was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College...
, in English, Archaeology and Anthropology, and afterward studied pagan Scandinavian religion
Norse paganism
Norse paganism is the religious traditions of the Norsemen, a Germanic people living in the Nordic countries. Norse paganism is therefore a subset of Germanic paganism, which was practiced in the lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes across most of Northern and Central Europe in the Viking Age...
for her doctorate. In 1943, Davidson, under her maiden name Hilda Ellis, published her first book; The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature. Davidson was a lecturer at Royal Holloway College from 1939 to 1944 and after that at Birbeck College. In 1949, she joined the Folklore Society.
Davidson joined the Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
Lucy Cavendish College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is a women-only college, which admits only postgraduates and undergraduates aged 21 or over....
in 1969 as a Calouste Gulbenkian
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is a Portuguese private foundation of public utility whose statutory aims are in the fields of arts, charity, education, and science...
Research Fellow
Research fellow
The title of research fellow is used to denote a research position at a university or similar institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a principal investigator...
, was appointed a College Lecturer in 1971, was an elected a Fellow in 1974, and was made Vice-President between 1975 and 1980. In 1980, Davidson also began working on a biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Katharine Mary Briggs
Katharine Mary Briggs
Katharine Mary Briggs was an English writer, who wrote The Anatomy of Puck, the 4-volume Dictionary of British Folk-Tales, and various other books on fairies and folklore.-Biography:...
, which she published in 1986. Davidson received the Folklore Society's Coote Lake Medal in 1984, and her 1988 work Myths and Symbols of Pagan Europe won the Katharine Briggs Prize that year. Davidson was an honorary member of the Folklore Society beginning in 1985 and she founded the Katharine Briggs Club in January 1987. The first three publications of the club were edited by Davidson and the third was dedicated to her.
Another interest Davidson held 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). In Davidson's later work, she focused on cultural and religious links between Germanic and Celtic cultures, showcased at her presence at the Nordic-Celtic-Baltic Legend Symposiums in Ireland and Copenhagen throughout the 1990s. She was unable to attend the 2005 meeting due to poor health.
In her later years she ran the Cambridge Folklore Group. Davidson was a bellringer
Change ringing
Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a series of mathematical patterns called "changes". It differs from many other forms of campanology in that no attempt is made to produce a conventional melody....
and churchwarden
Churchwarden
A churchwarden is a lay official in a parish church or congregation of the Anglican Communion, usually working as a part-time volunteer. Holders of these positions are ex officio members of the parish board, usually called a vestry, parish council, parochial church council, or in the case of a...
at her local church. Davidson died in Kent in January 2006, aged 91, leaving 2 children and 10 grandchildren.
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: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature, 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 Encyclopædia 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.