Peter Hayes Sawyer

Peter Hayes Sawyer (25 June 1928 – 7 July 2018 ) was a British historian. His work on the Vikings was highly influential, as was his scholarship on Medieval England. Sawyer's early work The Age of the Vikings argued that the Vikings were "traders not raiders", overturning the previously held view that the Vikings' voyages were only focused on destruction and pillaging.

Biography Sawyer was born in Oxford, England, on 25 June 1928, the son of Grace Woodbridge and Bill Sawyer, a tobacconist. He retired early from Leeds in 1982 and was subsequently (in 1998) given the title emeritus professor. Sawyer continued his teaching and research at University of Gothenburg as a docent, and had various stints as a visiting professor in the United States: at the University of Minnesota from 1966 to 1967 and then again in 1984, and at the University of California, Berkeley in 1985.

He died in Uppsala, aged 90, in July 2018.

Works

(Subsequently digitised and revised as The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, first published 2010)