Hans Frede Nielsen was born in Bramming, Denmark, on 20. May 1943, the son of Frede Nielsen and Sonja Nielsen. Nielsen studied
English and
German at the
University of Copenhagen from 1963 to 1966. He received a Trinity College Foreign Bursary, which enabled him to earn a
BA (1968) and
MA in
Anglo-Saxon Studies at
Cambridge University. Among his teachers at Cambridge were
Dennis Howard Green. Returning to Denmark, Nielsen worked as a high school teacher for several years. From 1975, Nielsen lectured at the Institute for English at
Odense University. He received his
PhD in November 1980 with the thesis
Old English and the Continental Germanic languages, which has subsequently been published in several editions. In 1999, Nielsen was appointed Professor of Historical Linguistics at the University of Southern Denmark. He retired as
Professor Emeritus in September 2006, but continued to teach and research until his death in 2021. Nielsen was a Member of the
Fryske Akademy (1996). He was a co-founder and co-editor of the journal
NOWELE, published by
John Benjamins Publishing Company. ==Selected works==