1. Edward Oswald Gabriel Turville-Petre was an English philologist who specialized in Old Norse studies.
43 Facts About Gabriel Turville-Petre
1. 2.
Gabriel Turville-Petre eventually became Professor of Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at the University of Oxford and a leading member of the Viking Society for Northern Research.
3.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was the husband of fellow philologist Joan Turville-Petre, who was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse studies at Oxford.
4.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was born at his family's ancestral home of Bosworth Hall, Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire on 25 March 1908.
5.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was the youngest of the five children of Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald Henry Philip Turville-Petre and Margaret Lucy Cave.
6.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was educated at Ampleforth College and entered Christ Church, Oxford University, in 1926, taking a Third in 1930.
7.
Gabriel Turville-Petre made his first of many visits to Iceland as an undergraduate in 1931.
8.
Gabriel Turville-Petre spent much time on the remote farms in the northern and eastern parts of the island, and developed a strong fascination with the traditional way of life of the Icelanders.
9.
Gabriel Turville-Petre became fluent in Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish and German, and was proficient in French.
10.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was Honorary Lecturer in Modern Icelandic at the University of Leeds from 1935 to 1950.
11.
Gabriel Turville-Petre joined the Viking Society for Northern Research in 1935, and was elected to its Council in 1936.
12.
Gabriel Turville-Petre would be closely associated with the Society for the rest of his life, publishing numerous papers, reviews, translations and editions for it.
13.
From 1936 to 1938 Gabriel Turville-Petre was Lektor in English at the University of Iceland, during which he served as the British pro-consul in Reykjavik.
14.
In 1939, Gabriel Turville-Petre became Joint Honorary Secretary and Joint Editor of the Saga-Book, which is published by the Viking Society for Northern Research.
15.
Gabriel Turville-Petre resigned as an editor in 1963, but continued to hold the position of Joint Honorary Secretary until his death.
16.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was appointed the first Vigfusson Reader in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at University of Oxford in 1941.
17.
Gabriel Turville-Petre spent much of World War II in the Foreign Office, and was not able to take up his position at Oxford until 1946.
18.
Apart from the dispute with Wrenn, Gabriel Turville-Petre was not involved in many scholarly controversies.
19.
Gabriel Turville-Petre had little patience for charlatans, but was known for his tolerance and kindness to amateurs genuinely interested in gaining knowledge in his fields of expertise.
20.
In 1944, Gabriel Turville-Petre published an essay on Gisli Sursson, revised and republished in Nine Norse Studies.
21.
Gabriel Turville-Petre suggested that the Icelandic writers both preserved older Scandinavian oral traditions and developed newer ones.
22.
Gabriel Turville-Petre suggested that Celtic settlers in Iceland significantly contributed to the distinctive characteristics of Icelandic literature, particularly its poetry.
23.
Gabriel Turville-Petre believed that Thorgilsson was an important source for the later Landnamabok.
24.
Gabriel Turville-Petre believed that the Egil's Saga had been written by Snorri Sturluson.
25.
In 1953, Gabriel Turville-Petre was appointed Professor at the University of Oxford.
26.
Gabriel Turville-Petre received the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Falcon in 1956, and the even more prestigious Grand Knight's Cross of the Order of the Falcon in 1963, both of which were conferred upon him by the President of Iceland.
27.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was the recipient of honorary doctorates from University of Iceland and Uppsala University, and was a member of many Icelandic and Scandinavian learned societies, including the Icelandic Literary Society, the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, and the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg.
28.
Since the early 1930s, Gabriel Turville-Petre had published numerous influential papers on Old Norse religion, particularly on Norse deities such as Odin and Freyr.
29.
Gabriel Turville-Petre disagreed, and believed that Snorri Sturluson's writings were based on genuine material.
30.
Between 1953 and 1955, Gabriel Turville-Petre published sympathetic reviews of three of Dumezil's monographs in the Saga-Book, and in 1956 he invited him to lecture at the University of Oxford.
31.
Gabriel Turville-Petre published the article "Professor Dumezil and the literature of Iceland" in Hommages a Georges Dumezil.
32.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford in 1964.
33.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was visiting professor at the University of Melbourne in 1965.
34.
Gabriel Turville-Petre predicted that Australia would in time become the leading nation on Icelandic studies in the English-speaking world.
35.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1973.
36.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was succeeded as Vigfusson Reader at Oxford by Ursula Dronke.
37.
Gabriel Turville-Petre saw clear parallels between the Norse skalds and the Irish fili.
38.
Gabriel Turville-Petre died of cancer in Oxford on 17 February 1978.
39.
Gabriel Turville-Petre bequeathed his personal library to the English Faculty Library of Oxford University.
40.
Speculum Norroenum, a festschrift in Gabriel Turville-Petre's honor edited by Ursula Dronke, was published by the University Press of Southern Denmark after his death.
41.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was highly regarded as a teacher and academic supervisor, and was responsible for the tutoring of generations of scholars in his fields.
42.
Gabriel Turville-Petre was a distinguished scholar on Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse studies at Oxford.
43.
Gabriel Turville-Petre had a strong passion for, and great knowledge of, ornithology.