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Dr Hilda Ellis Davidson, who died in January 2006, had for many decades been a distinguished scholar in the field of Scandinavian mythology and religion, whose books reached a wide readership and whose enthusiasm for her subject was an inspiration to many-myself included. Time and again, over the years, one would hear Hilda gleefully discussing some new archaeological discovery or theory with the cry, "It's so exciting!" And when she described it, it certainly was.
Hilda obtained a First Class Honours degree at Newnham College, Cambridge, in English, Archaeology and Anthropology, after which she studied pagan Scandinavian religion for her doctorate. This resulted in her first book in 1943 (under her maiden name of Hilda Ellis), The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature. Although an early and imperfect work, it already showed what was to be characteristic of her approach, the use of written and archaeological evidence of different periods to cast light upon each other. This was a bold innovation, at any rate in British academia, where Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic were at that time taught purely as literary and linguistic subjects. It was met...