Andrew Wawn

Andrew Nicholas Wawn (born October 1944) is emeritus professor of Anglo-Icelandic literature at the University of Leeds and an expert on Old Norse sagas and their reception in the modern era.

Early life Andrew Wawn was born in Wirral, Cheshire, England, in October 1944. He attended Birkenhead School, where he cultivated an interest in golf. Following a BA at the University of Birmingham, he completed his PhD there in 1969 with a thesis entitled "The Plowman's Tale: Critical Edition". Alongside his studies of medieval English at Birmingham, he also took part in extramural classes in Old Norse.

Career In 1972, Wawn gained a lectureship at the University of Keele, At Leeds, while continuing to teach medieval English, Wawn extended his teaching from Old to Modern Icelandic, succeeding in sustaining students' interest in the subject in the face of the introduction of shorter modules, which reduced the scope for language-learning, and the attractions of other literature on an increasingly diverse syllabus. and subsequently to Professor of Anglo-Icelandic Studies.

Wawn's monograph The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-century Britain (2000) was the first book-length treatment of the reception of the Vikings in the Victorian age. Roberta Frank found that 'in its broad canvas and energetic research, its pace and wit and its learning lightly worn, Wawn's book is exemplary, a work of humane and original scholarship'.

Wawn edited the journal Leeds Studies in English solo from 1992 to 1994, and was co-editor from 2003 to 2008. In the year of his retirement, his sixty-fifth birthday was marked by the publication of a Festschrift.

Selected publications Author The Anglo Man: Þorleifur Repp, Philology and Nineteenth-Century Britain, Studia Islandica 49. Reykjavík, 1991. Northern Antiquity: The Post-medieval Reception of Edda and Saga. Hisarlik Press, 1994. The Iceland Journal of Henry Holland, 1810 (Hakluyt Society, Second Series). 1999 The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-century Britain. D.S. Brewer, 2000.

Editor Approaches to Vinland. 2001. (Sigurður Nordal Institute Studies, 4) (edited with Þórunn Sigurðardóttir) Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T.A. Shippey. 2008. (Making the Middle Ages) (Joint editor)

Translator Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age, trans. by Andrew Wawn. Reykjavík, 1998. Margrét Eggertsdóttir, Icelandic Baroque: Poetic Art and Erudition in the Works of Hallgrímur Pétursson, trans. by Andrew Wawn, Islandica 66. Ithaca, 2014. Úlfar Bragason, Reykjaholt Revisited: Representing Snorri in Sturla Þórðarson's Íslendinga saga, trans. by Andrew Wawn, Rit, 106 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, 2021)