Prizes & Funding

Research Support Fund

Aims

The purpose of the fund is to assist in the development of the study of the literature, history, language, archaeology of early and medieval Scandinavia (including its relationship with other areas and cultures).

The fund is administered by a committee which is responsible to the Council of the Society (see below), and which will consider written applications made in the appropriate form.

Applications and Selection

The Council of the Viking Society expects and encourages a wide variety of applications to the fund. Along the guidelines it will use in evaluating applications will be the following:

  1. It will seek to support those projects which promise the greatest benefit as a contribution to scholarship, the personal scholarly development of the applicant(s), and/or the expected academic benefit to any group(s) to be visited by the applicant(s).
  2. Proposals should be practicable within the time scale envisaged by the applicant(s), and financial estimates should be realistic. Applicants should demonstrate, where possible, that they have explored and followed up other possible sources of funding. The committee may offer a grant less than the full sum requested.
  3. Where more than one application is perceived to have merit, preference may be shown to those whose financial need is greatest. This proviso will not automatically disadvantage applicants who have part-funding from elsewhere.
  4. Applicants should normally be members of the Viking Society; in special circumstances, non-members may be considered.
  5. Students may apply for grants for specific purposes, but the fund will not be used to provide scholarships for the total or partial support of students in their work for any level of degree.
  6. Where more than one application is received from members of a single institution, the relevant senior member(s) of that institution may be invited to indicate an order of priority between them. The committee will take such advice into account, but will not be obliged to follow any such order of priority in the awards it makes.
  7. The age, creed, nationality, political opinions, race, sex or sexual orientation of any applicant will not be used by the committee as grounds for discriminating either in favour of or against his or her application.

Guidance to applicants

  1. Applications, following the general pro forma below, should be made in writing (either in hard copy or by e-mail) to:

Dr Hannah Burrows
Hon. Secretary, Viking Society for Northern Research
Crombie Annexe
Meston Walk
Aberdeen
AB24 4FX
e-mail: hannah.burrows@abdn.ac.uk

  1. There are three rounds of application each year, for which the deadlines are 1st February, 1st May, and 1st October. Late applications, or applications for retrospective awards, will only be considered under exceptional extenuating circumstances.
  2. A final report will be required from all recipients of grants, together with an account of expenditure with appropriate receipts. The report and account of expenditure, with appropriate receipts where possible, should be sent to the Hon. Secretary of the Viking Society at the address above within three months of incurring the expenditure for which the grant was awarded. If the project is not complete when this report is submitted, a further report should be submitted on completion of the project. The Hon. Secretary will forward all accounts of expenditure to the Treasurer, and reports will be placed on the Society’s website.
  3. It is expected that, except by prior agreement, any publishable work resulting from activities funded by the Society in this way will normally be offered first to the Society for publication, although there will be no obligation on the Society’s part to publish it. Wherever it is published, it should contain an acknowledgment of the support provided by the Society.

The Committee

The committee, which is a sub-committee of the Council, has three members: the President, the Hon. Secretary responsible for the Fund, and one other member of the Society (who need not be a member of the Council). Committee members are elected by the Council, subject to confirmation by the Society at its AGM.

The President serves on the committee ex officio, and therefore for two years, the Hon. Secretary for the duration of his or her term of office. The other member serves for four years, and on retirement from the committee will not normally be elected to a second, consecutive term.

If any member of the committee becomes unavailable during his or her period of office, the Council may co-opt a replacement for all or part of the remainder of the term of office of the member being replaced.

Funds

The funds available for disbursement by the committee are determined by the Council; the normal practice is for a variable annual grant to be considered and agreed at the summer meeting of the Council, to run for the following academic year.

The fund may be suspended by the Council or abolished by an AGM or EGM of the Society.

Application Form for Research Support Fund

The Peter Foote Memorial Bursary

The Viking Society awards an annual bursary in honour of Professor Peter Foote, who died in 2009. Having in mind his conviction that young scholars should spend as much time as possible experiencing at first hand the culture of Scandinavia (including Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes), his family made a generous donation to the Society to fund an annual bursary for a postgraduate student to spend time studying or researching in Scandinavia. This sum was supplemented by the proceeds of an auction, run by the Viking Society, which distributed Peter’s magnificent library to appreciative scholars and readers. The first bursary, worth £900, was awarded for 2013-14.

The Peter Foote Memorial Bursary honours the commitment of the late Peter Foote to scholarship, and particularly his belief that scholarship within the field of Scandinavian studies is enhanced by the opportunity to spend time studying in Scandinavia itself. The Bursary, generously funded by donations in memory of Peter Foote and a donation from the Foote family, is awarded to assist with travel to and from and / or subsistence while in Scandinavia (including Faroe, Finland, Greenland, and Iceland), in order to undertake study or research, for a period of not less than one week and not more than one year. It will not be awarded for the purposes of participation in a conference or training programme.

Applicants must be postgraduate students at a higher education institution in Britain and Ireland, whose postgraduate studies are in any field of Scandinavian studies from the Viking period to the end of the Middle Ages. They should also normally be members of the Viking Society. The Bursary is to the value of £1000.00.

In the case of more than one application, the Bursary will go to the project which, in the Research Committee’s view, promises the greatest benefit as a contribution to scholarship and / or to the personal scholarly development of the applicant. Preference will normally be given to applicants registered for a PhD in a British university. Preference may also be shown to the applicant whose financial need is greatest.

A final report will be required from the Bursary holder, together with an account of expenditure with appropriate receipts. The report and account should be sent to the Joint Hon. Secretary of the Viking Society (Dr Hannah Burrows, Centre for Scandinavian Studies, Crombie Annexe, Meston Walk, Aberdeen AB24 3FX; electronic copies may be emailed to hannah.burrows@abdn.ac.uk) within three months of the end of the project for which the Bursary was awarded. The report will be placed on the Society’s website, and the award holder will also be invited to a meeting of the Viking Society to make a brief presentation about their research.

Applications, using this form, should be sent by e-mail to hannah.burrows@abdn.ac.uk. The deadline for the 2024-25 award is 01 August 2024.

The Margaret Orme Prizes

The Society annually awards two prizes, known as the Margaret Orme Prizes, one to be awarded to an undergraduate or recently graduated student (other than students at those stages from Oxford and the Department of Scandinavian Studies of University College London) and the other to a first-year graduate student (normally a taught graduate student) of Universities and Colleges in the United Kingdom and Eire who has distinguished himself or herself in fields of study appropriate to the Society’s interests. The Prize will consist of free membership of the society for five years from the date of the award, with an immediate gift of £75 (a sum which will be reviewed from time to time) and of such publications of the Society (excluding back-numbers of the Saga-Book before Volume XX) as the prize-winner may care to select from those available in print, up to a value of £100 (members’ prices).

A nomination for the award should be sent either by the teacher responsible for the relevant field of study or by the Head of Department to the Joint Honorary Secretaries of the Society at the address below on or before 1 August (in the case of undergraduate students) or on or before 1 September (in the case of first-year graduate students).

The nomination should be accompanied by a statement of the particular grounds for the recommendation and, if desired, by not more than one piece of written work by the student in question. Any information about examination marks or results will, of course, be treated with the strictest confidence. Adjudication by a panel appointed by the Council will normally be completed by 1 November. Any written work submitted will be returned as soon as a decision is made.

Applications should be sent to the Joint Honorary Secretary, Dr Hannah Burrows; please email hannah.burrows@abdn.ac.uk.

Previous awardees

The prize winners in 2023 were:

The Margaret Orme Undergraduate Prize: Kameron Sahota (York)

The Margaret Orme Undergraduate Prize: not awarded


The Townsend and Turville-Petre Prizes

Two other prizes of the same value as the Margaret Orme Prize are awarded annually to students who have distinguished themselves in the field of Old Norse studies. These are the Townsend Viking Society Prize, awarded to a student at the Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, and the Turville-Petre Prize, which is awarded to a student at the University of Oxford. These prizes are awarded on the nomination of the appropriate academic staff.

Previous awardees

The prize winners in 2023 were:

The Townsend Viking Society Prize: not awarded

The Turville-Petre Prize: Elena Vermeer (Trinity College, Oxford)