Ursula Dronke

Ursula Miriam Dronke (née Brown, 3 November 1920 – 8 March 2012) was a medievalist and former Vigfússon Reader in Old Norse at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College. She also taught at the University of Munich and in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge University.

Born in Sunderland and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, where her father was a lecturer at Newcastle University, Ursula Brown began her studies as an undergraduate at the University of Tours in 1939, returning to England and enrolling in Somerville College, University of Oxford, after the outbreak of war. She then worked for the Board of Trade until 1946, when she returned to Somerville as a graduate student in Old Norse and beginning in 1950 was a fellow and tutor in English. Her Bachelor of Literature thesis on an edition of Þorgils and Hafliða from the Sturlunga saga was passed by J. R. R. Tolkien and Alistair Campbell in July 1949 and formed the basis of a monograph, Þorgils Saga ok Hafliða, published in 1952.

In 1960 Brown married fellow medievalist Peter Dronke, and moved with him to the University of Cambridge. They collaborated several times, and jointly gave the 1997 H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.

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