Obituary

Phillip Marshall (P.M.) Mitchell, former curator of the Fiske Icelandic Collection, died March 27. He was 82.

A 1938 graduate of Cornell, Mitchell formed a close friendship with Halldór Hermannsson, the Fiske Collection's first curator. He wrote Halldór's biography (1978; Islandica XLI), a study that is a tribute to the first curator's bibliographical acumen.

Mitchell earned his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in 1942, writing his dissertation on Old Norse-Icelandic Literature in Germany, 1789-1849. During the World War II, he served as an army intelligence officer in the European Theatre of Operations.

Mitchell had a long and distinguished career as a scholar of German and Scandinavian literatures. In September 1986, after 28 years on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he became curator of the Fiske Icelandic Collection. Retiring from that role in 1993, he continued serving as series editor of Islandica through 1997. While curator, he also taught Danish as an adjunct professor in the Department of Modern Languages.

His published studies in Danish, German and Icelandic bibliography were numerous. He also was a translator of essays of Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa). In addition, he edited several volumes of the Ausgewählte Werke of Johann Christoph Gottsched.

Mitchell's wife, Merete, a native of Denmark, and their four children survive him. He was mentor and foster father to Professor Vivian Greene-Gantzberg of the University of Maryland, who died in 1998.