In memoriam, Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson (16.12.1970 – 6.6.2026)

In memoriam, Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson (16.12.1970 – 6.6.2026)

Marteinn was a presence in my mental world before I ever met him. My friend and mentor Haki Antonsson, as part of his thankless task to impress some medieval history into the minds of his mostly provincial British students, would sometimes mention Marteinn in the course of his seminars. Normally these references would be to Marteinn's iconoclastic theories (for example, his contention that the myth of the god Týr losing his left hand was a back-formation from the rune ᛏ becoming ᛐ, or his proposal that papar place-names had more to do with breast-shaped topography, "paps", than Celtic hermits monks called papar).[1] Sometimes, though, Haki would allude to Marteinn's personality as being unusually, admirably roguish.

It must have been late 2011 when I finally met the figure who had lurked in the background of Haki's teaching. It was at a dinner on the top floor of a beautiful eighteenth-century townhouse on Nybrogade in Copenhagen, hosted by a bohemian set of Old Norse philologists, including Hugh Atkinson and Christian Etheridge. Clad in an effortlessly stylish Italian ensemble, a rollie louchely perched on his lower lip, Marteinn held forth on all aspects of medieval culture, and a great many more topics besides. I was dumbfounded by his erudition, and the eclectic way he drew connections between topics which others missed.

I was in town for just a few days, so Marteinn suggested we meet one-to-one on the afternoon before my flight from Copenhagen to London departed. His opening gambit, as we sat in the student bar at the now-demolished KUA campus, was "what if Old Norse literature were composed by a hive intelligence?". I was immediately hooked on this man's thoughts. It was the depth of the Danish winter, and the afternoon quickly surrendered to darkness, urgently reminding me that I needed to get to the airport to make my way home. But I couldn't tear myself away. Marteinn kept the iconoclastic readings of Old Norse literature flowing – the beers, likewise. I ended up making my flight with just minutes to spare, more intoxicated than I have ever been on an aeroplane or any other medium of public transport. When I finally made it back to my mouse-infested abode in Colliers Wood, and crashed down onto my bed, my head was still spinning, both with alcohol and with ways of thinking about Old Norse which I had never previously dreamt possible.

Marteinn was born in Reykjavík in 1970. His family situation was atypical for Iceland at the time. His father was a financier, and a leading light in Iceland's adoption of Chicago-school economics. His mother was American immigrant to Iceland, a renowned neurologist with connections to the Illinois intellectual and cultural elite. Marteinn mentioned to me several times that he was sometimes bullied at school on account of not being "properly Icelandic". It was in his childhood that he first met Haki, and as the two young men progressed to adolescence, they would fortify each other's passion for the endless pageant of the Middle Ages.

He read for his first degree at the University of Iceland, where he worked towards an unusual joint qualification in Theology and Folklore. It was here that he was taught by Ásdís Egilsdóttir, who remained a source of inspiration and friendship for him throughout his life. This early education was reflected in his general method: Marteinn did not exhibit the general pattern of Old Norse scholars to tend either towards a more chirographic, more Christian, more High Medieval pole, or a more folkloric, more pagan, more Early Medieval pole. For Marteinn, the two tendencies were merged in rapturous synthesis. His published work and his conversation wove together onomastics and toponymy with church art and philology, and more besides.

From Iceland, Marteinn proceeded to the University of St. Andrews for his first graduate degree, where he was supervised by Barbara Crawford. The Department of Mediaeval History there was one of the most important centres for the study of the Middle Ages, hosting such names as Robert Bartlett and Hugh Kennedy. Marteinn long held a reverence for the institution. His MPhil thesis, submitted in 1996, remains a standard reference work for those writing about Jón Halldórsson (d. 1339), the only Dominican to hold the bishopric of Skálholt in Iceland.[2] Haki, who was also studying under Crawford, was his flatmate there. St. Andrews is one of those places which traditionally suffer from a "town versus gown" distinction. But Marteinn breezed across this divide, and was regularly to be found at a pub for locals where he made firm friendships. Thirty years after he left St. Andrews, he recalled frequently with great warmth of the people he had befriended there.

After his MPhil, Marteinn undertook his PhD at the University of Cambridge. The dissertation which he produced there was an iconoclastic deconstruction of the pre-Christian deity Týr, who Marteinn convincingly argued to be largely a series of medieval misunderstandings and scholarly guesses, rather than a distinct god in whom pagans really believed. It reads like a fanfare, with diverse instruments of scholarship arranged to create unexpected harmonies: The fresco of Chaldon church in Surrey, the clockwork structuralism of Dumézil (left utterly in pieces by Marteinn), skaldic verse, and Danish place names, to name just a few topics discussed.

Following his time at Cambridge, Marteinn took up the adjunktur/lektorat in Icelandic which has long been hosted at Den Arnamagnæanske Samling in Copenhagen, one of the most prestigious scholarly institutions for Old Norse matters. Marteinn had already established a connection to Copenhagen by securing a fellowship for Icelanders there during his PhD studies. He loved the city, and his flat at Under Elmene became a regular meeting place for Old Norse scholars. Many a philologist or historian has spent nights, weeks or even months on Marteinn's sofa or in his spare room. Indeed, perhaps like a maverick K.B. MacFarlane, much of Marteinn's impression on scholarship should be sought in the results of the conversations he had with guests and friends, rather than the printed record.

It was towards the end of his adjunktur that Marteinn entered his Inferno Period, to borrow a phrase from Strindberg's biography. Marteinn himself mostly frowned on describing the experience as anything like a mental health crisis. He saw it as a spiritual revelation. It culminated in a period of being committed to a psychiatric ward in Iceland. In the period after his release, I was his flatmate for a few months in Copenhagen. It was a strange time. Marteinn roamed the streets of the city, dancing, socialising, and easily making friends with the gadefolk, perhaps drawing on that same magnanimity of spirit which had seen him integrate with the people of St. Andrews years earlier. He was living at such a pace, with such tremendous expenditure of energy, as I have never seen a human do. He entertained notions regarding the supernatural which were well beyond the confines of normal experience. Nonetheless, his capacity for intellectual thought was not extinguished. He could flit from saying things which seemed delusional to saying things which were insightful. Sometimes, disturbingly, the two could merge. He could conduct an orchestra of learning in order to argue for propositions which I found troubling.

Marteinn's inferno came at the time when his adjunktur was expiring. As things stood back then, it was never going to be feasible for him to apply for the lektorat. He was left without a formal affiliation. But it would be wrong to say that his career as a scholar ended there. It did, of course, in strictly institutional terms, but as the flames of the inferno slowly receded to glowing coals, Marteinn continued to read voraciously, to participate in academic conferences or invited lectures, and to publish. These efforts included contributing to the introduction for the Íslenzk fornrit edition of Jómsvíkinga saga, together with Þorleifur Hauksson, and an excellent chapter on the figure of Master Perús in the Old Norse exempla.[3] Marteinn's abode at Under Elmene retained the character of a scholarly salon. A visit would almost always entail perusing his formidable library, often while he poured himself a porter and rolled a cigarette, as he casually explained a new interpretation of a given medieval source which would invariably blow your mind, whether you agreed or not.

The lockdown of March 2020 brought Copenhagen's bustling street-life to a halt, and with it most of Marteinn's legendary hikes-cum-friend-making-sallies through the city. He entered what his friends sometimes thought of as his "retirement". Italian bella figura gave way to dressing gowns and birkenstocks (though he could still scrub up when required). A man who had lived as much amongst the drunks, streetwalkers and vagrants as amongst the scholars suddenly found himself largely confined to the few square metres of his home. As the Danish authorities lurched between lockdowns and liberalisations and back again, Marteinn found time to collaborate with his friend, the director Bergur Bernburg, on a documentary about his life. The film was released in 2025 as Veðurskeytin "Storm Alerts" to much acclaim. Marteinn was, rightly, very proud of it. Incidentally, this was the second time Marteinn's experiences had been adapted to an aesthetic genre. Bergsveinn Birgisson's 2009 novel, Handbók um hugarfar kúa, is widely understood to be a roman à clef about Marteinn. Few academics can say their lives were so interesting that they merited such treatment.

We were all heartbroken when Marteinn was diagnosed with the emperor of maladies, cancer. His sickness was detected at an advanced stage, and Marteinn was initially given just days to live. In typical Danish fashion, he was sent home with a bag of painkillers (commonly called a tryghedspakke "comfort package", called by Marteinn a hjem-og-dø pakke "go home and die package"). Such was the vitality in him that the pakke did not see him off. Instead, much to everyone's surprise, he presented again at the hospital, very much alive. The baffled staff realised that they better give him some chemotherapy, although there could be no hope of a cure. He lived for two years when initial medical opinion had thought him lucky to survive two days. In this time, he frequently drew on the metaphysical insights revealed to him in his inferno period. There were, of course, moments of indescribable sadness, but he always considered the end of his life with a philosophical, curious attitude which amazed all who knew him. At his passing, I think of the words of Solomon: "But though the righteous be prevented with death, yet shall he be in rest. For honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the grey hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age" (Wisdom 4:7).

It was the opinion of St. Augustine, and many other medieval Christians, that at the resurrection we will be reunited, all in fine fettle, all restored to the age of thirty-three.[4] Marteinn's death makes me wish, more than ever, that Augustine was right. I hope Marteinn will greet us again one day, robed in impeccable Italian attire. In my most optimistic moments, I see him waiting for us with a pint of some dark, robust brew, with a rollie drooping nonchalantly from his mouth, and with another, outrageous interpretation of the sagas he has been saving for just the occasion.

R.C., corr. H.A.