Peter Foote
Some very sad news: Professor Peter Foote died on Tuesday 29 September. Peter was undoubtedly one of the seminal figures in twentieth-century medieval Scandinavian studies. Perhaps best known to a wide readership for The Viking Achievement, which he wrote with David Wilson, Peter’s contributions to the field were many and varied and continued late into his long life. His editions are masterful, and his critical work full of knowledge, good jugdement, wit and style. He will be missed by his many friends in Iceland and Scandinavia, but particularly so in London, where he was first Professor of Scandinavian Studies at University College London (where he continued to teach now and then until 2006, over twenty years after his retirement) and a doyen of the Viking Society for Northern Research. Although I only got to know him in the last five years, I shall remember him with great fondness and gratitude for his generosity and sage advice. It is undoubtedly the end of an era.
Administered by
R.I.P.
There is a full obituary for Peter on the Times Website: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6873187.ece
UCL and the Viking Society are planning a memorial even in his honour for March next year.
That is sad news! Peter’s works were key formative elements in my early days as a fan of Old Norse — I knew his name long before I ever got to university. It was both thrilling and daunting to meet him in my occasional visits to the UCL Old Norse reading group when I was a grad student in the UK. He will be missed, but his scholarship will surely continue to be required reading for long years to come!
Another, rather belated obituary of Peter has now come out in the Guardian — a paper of which Peter was a devoted reader. This one’s by Alison Finlay. (The Times obituary was by Michael Barnes.)
This is truly sad.
I was hoping to meet the man one day. His work has been crucial in my own. He paved the path and made it easier to walk for subsequent English scholars.