User:Yngvadottir/Preben Meulengracht Sørensen

Preben Meulengracht Sørensen (1 March 1940 – 21 December 2001) was a Danish scholar of medieval Icelandic literature and history and Old Norse religion.

Early life and education

Meulengracht Sørensen was born in Odense and educated at Svendborg Statsgymnasium. He earned his Cand. Phil. in Danish and Icelandic from Aarhus University in 1968.

Career and publications

He began his academic career as lector in Danish at the University of Iceland, from 1966 to 1970. He then returned to Aarhus University as a lector in the Department of Scandinavian Language and Literature, later being promoted to professor. He remained there until 1994, while teaching and researching for short periods in Frankfurt, London, Berkeley, Copenhagen, Bonn and Reykjavík; from 1977 to 1980 he was a researcher in medieval studies at Odense University. From 1994 to 1999 he was professor of Old Norse at the University of Oslo; he then chose to return to Aarhus University.

Meulengracht Sørensen integrated the study of Icelandic history and society with that of the literature, which had traditionally been studied in Denmark from a primarily philological standpoint. His first book, Saga og samfund: En indføring i oldislandsk litteratur, published in 1977 and in 1993 in English translation as Saga and Society: An Introduction to Old Norse Literature, was influential. In 1980 he published Norrønt nid: Forestillingen om den umandige mand i de islandske sagaer; this appeared in English translation in 1983 as The Unmanly Man: Concepts of sexual defamation in early Northern society, the first in The Viking Collection, a book series which he founded with Gerd Wolfgang Weber. In 1993, he earned his doctorate with a work building on Norrønt nid, Fortælling og ære: Studier i islændingesagaerne; he was the only Danish scholar to earn a doctorate from a Danish university in the 20th century for work on Old Icelandic literature. With Gro Steinsland, he published two books for more general readership, Før Kristendommen: Digtning og livssyn i vikingetiden in 1991 and Viking Age Man in 1994. At fortælle historien – Telling History, a selection of his articles, was published in 2001.

He was also a contributor to the Icelandic–Danish dictionary published in 1976, translated modern Icelandic literature by Guðbergur Bergsson, Svava Jakobsdóttir and Tryggvi Emilsson, and wrote many articles about literature for the newspaper Jyllandsposten.

Personal life and death

Meulengracht Sørensen and his first wife, Elín Stefánsdóttir, had four children. He remarried to Birte Daugaard Jørgensen. He died in Århus of cancer, aged 61.

Honours

In 1993 he was awarded the Dag Strömbäck prize of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy in Uppsala. In October 2001 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Iceland. A festschrift, Artikler: Udgivet i anledning af Preben Meulengracht Sørensens 60 års fødselsdag 1. marts 2000, was published in 2000.

References

Category:Old Norse studies scholars Category:1940 births Category:2001 deaths Category:People from Odense Category:Aarhus University alumni Category:Academic staff of Aarhus University Category:Academic staff of the University of Oslo‎ Category:Academic staff of the University of Iceland