Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle

Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle (15 July 1941 – 16 January 2010) was a Danish archaeologist specialising in early Christianity in Britain.

Education and career Birthe Kjølbye was born in Sønderborg on 15 July 1941. Her father Axel Kjølbye was a solicitor and active member of the resistance movement during the German occupation of Denmark in the Second World War, using his office opposite the Gestapo headquarters in Sønderborg to hide in plain sight. Kjølbye-Biddle studied archaeology at Aarhus University from 1960 to 1972, graduating with a Magister's degree. As a student she worked on excavations in Aarhus and Hedeby, both dating to the Viking era, and also spent a year at the University of Edinburgh, where she studied the Early Bronze Age under Stuart Piggott.

Kjølbye-Biddle was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1976 and won its Frend Medal for "contributions to the study of archaeological and material remains of the early Christian Church" in 1986. A Festschrift edited by Martin Henig and Nigel Ramsay was presented jointly to Kjølbye-Biddle and her husband in 2010; it included a tribute from Margrethe II.

Excavations In 1964 Kjølbye-Biddle joined the excavations at Winchester Cathedral, where she gained a reputation in English field archaeology as the "dynamic pipe-smoking young Danish woman [...] imposing new standards of rigour".

Kjølbye-Biddle and Biddle also worked at St Albans Cathedral and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.