In his inaugural lecture in 1964, on Færeyinga saga,[2] Foote looked forward in this spirit to the college teaching modern Icelandic and Faroese,[3] and treating Scandinavian history as a unified field.
confers a welcome freedom, so that I may with perfect propriety offer a lecture on an Icelandic text concerning Atlantic islanders of Norwegian origin whose descendants have now for some centuries technically owed allegiance to the Danish crown".
[2] Foote expanded the new department during his tenure, adding first a full-time position in Scandinavian philology (1964), then another in Norse studies (1965), classes in Faroese (1968), then a teaching assistantship in modern Icelandic (1970s), and finally after considerable effort a lectureship in Nordic history (1970).
[2][5] In 1951 Foote married Eleanor McCaig, from the Stranraer region, whom he had met in the Far East during World War II when she was a nurse.
[3] He enjoyed walking and bell-ringing, and participated until 2008 in a reading group that took its name, the Orðhenglar ("Pedants"), from his insistence on correct Icelandic.