With great sadness, we share with you the news that our dear colleague and friend Dr. Matti Kilpiö passed away on May 28.
Matti defended his PhD thesis, supervised by Tauno F. Mustanoja and Matti Rissanen, at the University of Helsinki in 1989. For more than fifty years, he was attached to the Department of English (later Department of Modern Languages) as a teacher in various positions, and he continued as an active researcher until the end of his life. His extensive thesis “Passive Constructions in Old English Translations from Latin: with Special Reference to the OE Bede and the Pastoral Care” bears witness for his lifelong passion for Old English, Latin, historical syntax and all aspects of the history of the English language, including lexicography and manuscript studies. His major research interests lay in the corpus-based study of variation and change in English, and he was a contributing member of the VARIENG research unit from its very beginning.
In addition to his monograph thesis, Matti published more than 30 articles on topics ranging from OE to ModE, from medieval manuscript studies to Finnish translations of early English texts. He wrote the entries for ‘be’ and ‘have’ for the huge Toronto Old English dictionary project, contributed to the Year’s Work in Old English Studies and reviewed a large number of articles for various publications. He was a devoted university teacher and supervisor of both MA theses and PhD theses who always found time to listen to young scholars and support them whatever the problem was. His knowledge and wisdom, his passion for music, his interest in the humanities and European languages in general and in the secrets of the history of English in particular seemed never-ending.
In Matti Kilpiö we have lost an outstanding scholar, humanist, teacher, mentor, and an unparalleled friend of extreme kindness and generosity. He will be sorely missed.
Kielen kannoilla 
I was so sorry to read this news. Matti (along with Leena Kahlas-Tarkka) kindly agreed to supervise my Ph.D. during my Erasmus year at Helsinki 2003-4, and was really supportive both then and in the following years when I was variously job-hunting and working at the Collegium. That characterisation ”a friend of extreme kindness and generosity and a heart of gold” is exactly how I experienced Matti.
It was Matti Kilpiö who, a few years ago, wrote to tell me that Matti Rissanen had passed away: ”I am only slowly beginning to realise how much I have lost. I got to know Matti in the late sixties and we soon made friends. At that time I couldn’t have foreseen that he would become my supervisor, colleague and my eaxlgestealla in research, corpus compilation and teaching for fifty years. His optimism – as you well know – was infectious, his energy unfailing. Like the whole Varieng group, I miss him dearly.” Now it’s my turn to miss my departed supervisor, who, like his friend and mentor, was also optimistic, energetic, and enthusing.
Working with Matti K. was of course partly rewarding because he was such an acute linguist and committed scholar. Reading my sprawling thesis draft when I arrived at Helsinki in summer 2003 was not a small task! ”I would say you’ve broken the back of this thesis” he told me, to my relief, in our first supervision. I remember after one or another seminar that he had a question to ask, but that unlike your common-or-garden audience member he said ”I think it will be clearer if I use the blackboard” and walked down to the front of the lecture room, picked up the chalk, and spelled out on the board whatever set of sound-changes he was inviting the speaker to contemplate. He wasn’t showing off — just being unselfconsciously practical and helpful. I never saw Matti teaching, but I got an impression then of how being a teacher and being a researcher constituted a natural continuum for him.
I also remember the story of how the fire alarm went off in Metsätalo because someone’s waste paper basket had caught fire, and everyone evacuated the building — except Matti, who was concentrating on something too much to notice the fire alarm going off, and was still patiently at work when everyone returned!
But much more than Matti’s intellect, I remember his generosity, humanity, and spirit of fun. He wasn’t showy, yet he always stood out as a true original. I’ve been remembering the ”Anglo-Saxon feast” that SUB ry organised not long after I started as a postdoc at the Collegium, in autumn 2005, probably just after Matti’s sixty-sixth birthday. It was all gloriously silly; my job was to provide the students with an Old English phrasebook to facilitate their dinner conversation and at one point in the evening to resurrect a slain guest by means of an Old English charm. Matti attended as an abbot and Leena as an abbess and clearly had a rich appreciation of getting to be part of the silliness of the students. The next day Matii emailed this verse to the organisers:
Micel wæs se medudream mettas ful gode,
wæs cycenþenung cynewyrðe,
wenedon us to wiste þa þe win bæron.
Æthelbald wæs arful, Ælfgar swa same,
blisfulran feorme findeþ man næfre!
Þis giedd awrat abbod Matti of Kilpiö eallum SUB-wifmannum and SUB-mannum
þe þæt æfengereord gearwedon. Ic eow þancie of innemestan heortan!
For readers who have not had their noses buried in Old English phrasebooks lately, this meant:
The mead-joy was great, table-companions excellent;
the kitchen-service was worthy of a king;
those who bore the wine gave us expectation of feasting.
Æthelbald was honourable, Ælfgar the same:
no-one will ever encounter more enjoyable provision!
Abbot Matti of Kilpiö wrote this verse for all those SUB-women and SUB-men who prepared that evening meal. I thank you from the depths of my heart!
The joy of multilingualism and philological experimentation was everywhere with Matti, whether pointing out an interesting etymology to me (kengäs ”shoe” and kinkku ”ham” are etymologically the same word; Old English siþþan ”afterwards” is, weirdly, not cognate with Finnish sitten) or just switching to a dead language partway through an email. One day he signed off an email ”writyn in hast (as the Pastons said)”, another ”dum spiramus, speramus!” (”while there is breath there is hope!”) Accordingly, he was enormously supportive of my stumbling efforts to use Finnish, despite the considerable inconvience of communicating with such an incompetent speaker.
But his joy in life also came from music; he would often talk about how his father had wanted him to study medicine whereas he had wanted to go to the Sibelius Academy; and they settled on an English degree as a compromise. Matti was always clear that English had been good to him, but he was an excellent viola-player and singer, and clearly got a huge amount from these activities. ”Apropos of fiddling”, he once wrote to me, ”I have a violin bow which I haven’t used for ages, because it is in a decrepit state: there’s hardly any hair left and the screw at the frog end doesn’t function. I took it to a string instrument maker’s shop on Tuesday and asked Ilkka Vainio, the luthier, whether it would be worth the trouble to have it re-haired and repaired. He had a close look at the bow and told me that it was a genuine Winkler bow. He also gave a price estimate: 2,500 euros. I was flabbergasted: I had had no idea that I had had such a treasure since my student days just gathering dust. Of course I decided to have it repaired: 170 euros is a small sum compared to the value of the fiddlestick”. Somehow this story feels like a metaphor for Matti: carrying around great treasures as though they were as light as fiddlesticks. He would frequently contribute music to parties or departmental away-days, but the loveliest thing about this was how appreciatively he would listen to the much less classical (and usually much less competent) music made by the likes of me, Beth Fox and Samuli Kaislaniemi on the same occasions. Matti appreciated great music, but he also truly appreciated spirited attempts, and that was characteristic of how he encouraged the people around him in all their endeavours.
Luckily for me, I made it back to Finland in summer last year for the first time in ages; I emailed my old friends to see if they wanted to come to the pub, and sure enough Matti made time amidst a busy family life to join us. He seemed just like he always had, which was joyous. The last message I had from Matti reads
Leofa Alaric,
Ic cume to beorsele on Frigedaege!
Matti
This feels like a fitting last message to have had from Matti Kilpiö, teacher, scholar, and friend.