Hilda Ellis Davidson studied Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse under the Chadwicks at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she took Firsts in English Literature and what was then known as Archaeology and Anthropology. She received her Ph.D. in 1940 for a thesis on beliefs about the dead in Old Norse literature. She lectured in English Language and Literature at Royal Holloway College and Birkbeck College in the University of London, and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1950. In 1973 she became a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, where she was Vice-President from 1975 until 1980. She was President of the Folklore Society from 1973 to 1976, and General Editor of the nineteen Mistletoe Books published between 1974 and 1984. She is married, with two children and ten grandchildren, and lives in Cambridge.
Hilda Davidson’s publications include The Road to Hel (1943), The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England (1962; 1994), The Viking Road to Byzantium (1976), Patterns of Folklore (1978), Commentary on Books I–IX of Saxo Grammaticus (1980), Katherine Briggs, Storyteller (1986), Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe (1988), The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe (1993), and numerous articles in books and periodicals. She continues to work on the pre-Christian religion and folklore of north-western Europe.