Jane Johnson

Why did you choose to study Scandinavian Studies in general and at UCL in specific?

I discovered the Icelandic sagas when I was 10 or and became obsessed with them; at Goldsmiths, while taking my English degree, I loved the Old Icelandic element of the course, so opted to continue my studies at UCL, having put my roots down in London.

What did you like most about your degree programme?

We were a small group, which made for open and interesting discussions and more contact with tutors. My particular interest was Icelandic, ancient and modern (not much difference in the language) and talking with visiting Icelandic tutors was great fun.

What was it like being a student at the Scandinavian department?

I absolutely loved it, though learning four languages in not much more than a year was hard work.

How has your degree been of benefit to you since you took your degree?

By a combination of extremely good luck and opportunism I managed to land a job at George Allen & Unwin Publishers in the year that I graduated with my Masters. I started as a secretary, a position for which they told me I was ridiculously over-qualified, but to work at the house which published JRR Tolkien was too good a chance to miss out on. A year later they made me Tolkien Editor, in charge of publishing the list. My first meeting with his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, was memorable. We shook hands and I complimented him on his edition of Hervarar Saga. He was, I think, rather taken aback, but we got on very well after that. Since then, I oversaw the centenary celebrations for Tolkien, and became Fiction Publishing Director for HarperCollins Publishers, a position I still hold while working part time and remotely. In 2000 I found myself working on Peter Jackson's movie trilogy adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, and engaged in deep conversations with director and cast about the source material such as the Elder Edda; and as a result, I believe, was hired to write the Visual Companions to accompany the films, which provided me with the funding to go part-time as a publisher and devote more time to writing. As a novelist, I wrote a fantasy trilogy with its roots in Icelandic history, some children's novels with mythological aspects to them, and now make more of my living from writing than from publishing. So my studies have had some curiously tangible, if completely unforeseeable and unplanned, results.

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