The deep connection between British curiosity and Icelandic literary tradition owes much to the careful work of Andrew Wawn, born in Wirral, Cheshire in October 1944. Recognised as an expert in the field of Anglo-Icelandic literature, Wawn has spent decades exploring and teaching the ways that Iceland’s medieval stories have travelled and transformed across the British Isles.
A shift in scholarly passions
Wawn’s early academic life was rooted in England, where he received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Birmingham. During this time, his main focus was medieval English literature. Yet beyond his central studies, he found himself drawn to Old Norse, attending additional classes that would eventually steer his career in a Nordic direction.
After earning his PhD in 1969, Wawn began teaching at Keele University. Here, the enjoyment he found in reading ‘fornar íslenskar bókmenntir’ (ancient Icelandic texts) soon outweighed his initial interests in English literature. His growing enthusiasm led to the introduction of Old Icelandic courses at Keele, where students could examine sagas in their original language. In 1978, Wawn travelled to Iceland for the first time, a visit that sparked both a personal affection for the country and a deepening research interest in cultural exchanges between Iceland and Britain.
Bridging literary cultures
When Wawn moved to the University of Leeds in 1983, he joined a department with a history of Icelandic studies stretching back to J. R. R. Tolkien’s time. At Leeds, he further developed courses in both Old and Modern Icelandic, finding inventive ways to keep students engaged in the face of changing university structures and competing academic interests. His focus was not only on language, but also on the long and sometimes surprising story of how Iceland’s sagas reached British readers, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Separate from his university teaching, Wawn worked extensively as an editor, notably for the journal Leeds Studies in English and the Saga-book of the Viking Society for Northern Research. He also held the presidency of the Viking Society, further cementing his position in the world of northern European literary scholarship.
Wawn’s own writing has been central in explaining how the Viking past was adopted and adapted in Britain. His notable book, ‘The Vikings and the Victorians,’ traced how nineteenth-century Britain reimagined medieval Scandinavia. His skill as a translator introduced many Icelandic works to English-language audiences, including studies on key figures such as Hallgrímur Pétursson and explorations of saga-writing itself.
His contributions did not go unnoticed in Iceland; in 2007, he received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Falcon for his dedication to Icelandic literature. Upon retiring in 2009, he was honoured with a Festschrift, a collection of scholarly essays, marking his long impact on the field.
