Bertha Phillpotts

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Dame Bertha Surtees Phillpotts (1877–1932) was an English scholar in Scandinavian languages, literature, history, archaeology and anthropology.

[edit] Biography

Bertha Phillpotts was born in Bedford, and educated at home before going to the University of Cambridge. She studied medieval and modern languages, Old Norse and Celtic at Girton College between 1898 and 1902, and then travelled to Iceland and Copenhagen as a research student. She worked as a librarian at Girton College from 1906 to 1909, and in 1913 she became the first Lady Carlisle Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. She became the Mistress of Girton College in 1922, a post she held until 1925 when she became a research Fellow for the college. From 1926 until her death in 1932 she was director of Scandinavian studies and university lecturer at Giron college.

Her research included translations of old Icelandic sagas and studies on the influence of Old Norse and Icelandic on the English language.

In 1929 she was created a Dame of the British Empire for her services to education.

In 1931 she married the astrophysicist professor Hugh Newall.

The Dame Bertha Phillpotts Memorial Fund for the promotion of Old Norse and Icelandic Studies at the University of Cambridge awards grants and scholarships for postgraduate students and other scholars in the relevant fields^[1].

[edit] Scholarship

Among Dame Berta Phillpotts's published works are:

Kindred and Clan (1913)
The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama (1920)
The Life of the Icelander Jón Ólafsson, Traveller to India (written in Icelandic in 1611 and translated and edited by Bertha S Phillpotts in 1923)
Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought (1928, reprinted in Interpretations of Beowulf: a critical anthology. R.D. Fulk, ed. Indiana University Press, 1991)
Edda and Saga (1931)

Works published about Dame Berta Phillpotts include:
Gunnell, Terry. 1999. "Dame Bertha Phillpotts and the Search for Scandinavian Drama". In Anglo-Scandinavian Cross-Currents 1850-1914, ed. Inga-Stina Ewbank (Norvik Press: Norwich). pp 84-105.