Author: Wormius, Olaus
Biography:
WORMIUS, Olaus (1588-1654: Wikipedia)
The Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrach was the first translation into English of any of the Latin versions of Scandinavian runic literature collected by the Danish physician and antiquary Ole Worm. The translator, Hugh Downman (q.v.), in keeping with the current trend for Nordic myth and Ossian, in a prefatorial note presents the poem as an illustration of the “manners and sentiments of the northern nations” of the 8th century when it was supposedly composed. Ole Worm was born in Aarhus, Denmark, on 13 May 1588; his father was the burgomaster or mayor. A polymath, he studied humanities at the university of Emmerich and theology at the university of Marburg in Germany; took a degree in medicine at the university of Basel in Switzerland (1611); travelled in Italy and France and practised medicine in London; and returned to Denmark in 1613 to take up a position as professor of belles lettres at the university of Copenhagen, where he later added chairs in Greek and medicine. He married three times (1615, 1630, 1639) and had at least seven children. Worm was a keen collector both of antiquities and of objects of natural history: he kept one of the last recorded Great Auks as a (living) pet, and one of his sons published a catalogue of his cabinet of curiosities, the Museum Wormiarum, after his death. He was personal physician to Christian IV of Denmark (1577-1648). He stayed in Copenhagen to treat the sick during an epidemic of bubonic plague but contracted the disease himself and died on 31 Aug. 1654. He published extensively on medicine, natural history, Danish antiquities, and other subjects—invariably in Latin. (“Ole Worm,” Wikipedia 19 July 2024; “Worm, Olaus,” NBG 46: cols. 835-6) HJ