Jón Viðar Sigurðsson graduated from Háskóli Íslands in 1984 with a BA in history and Icelandic literature and was granted a Cand. Phil. degree at the University of Bergen (spring 1987). He worked at the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Bergen (Riksantikvaren in Bergen).
On 1 January 1989, Jón Viðar was granted a three-year PhD scholarship by the Research Council of Norway and completed his PhD at the University of Bergen in 1993. From 31 July 1991 until 31 December 1994 he was Associate Professor at the Department of History of the University of Bergen. During this period he was also an associate member of the Centre for European Cultural Studies, University of Bergen (1 August 1992 – 31 December 1994).
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson was appointed Associate Professor at the Department of History at the University of Oslo on 1 January 1995. From 1 September 2002 until 31 December 2004 he was the director of the Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies.
He has been Professor at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History since 1 September 2006, and head of the department from 1 January 2021. He was also the leader of the project “Transformation in the Viking Age and Norse Middle Ages” (1 January 2004 – 30 June 2006).
In 2007/2008, he was a member of the research group at the Norwegian Centre for Advanced Study, entitled “The Power of the Ruler and the Ideology of Rulership in Nordic Culture 800-1200”, led by Professor Gro Steinsland from the University of Oslo.
In 2017/2018 Jon Vidar was leading a research group with Hans Jacob Orning at the Centre for Advanced Study, entitled “The Nordic ‘civil wars’ in the High Middle Ages from a cross-disciplinary and comparative perspective”.
He was also member of the editorial boards for the series “The Northern World”: “North Europe and the Baltic c. 400-1700 AD. Peoples, Economies and Cultures” (Brill) and “Early European Research” (Brepols), and “Northern Medieval World: On the Margins of Europe”, and Medieval Institute Publications Western Michigan University.
Since 1999 Jón Viðar Sigurðsson has published 21 monographs, anthologies and textbooks; since 2004 almost 60 articles and chapters. Almost all of his publications for the past ten years have been in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies, the most important being:
- Det norrøne samfunnet. Vikingen, kongen, erkebiskopen og bonden, Oslo, Pax 2008.
- Viking Friendship. The Social Bond in Iceland and Norway, c. 900-1300, Ithaca, Cornell University Press 2017.
- Skandinavia i vikingtiden, Pax 2017.
- with Colman Etchingham, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, (TCNE 29), Turnhout, Brepols 2018.
- with Bjørn Poulsen, and Helle Vogt eds, Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050–1250. Volume I: Material Resources, Routledge, 2019.