[3] Bremmer received his master's degree in English language and literature from the University of Groningen in 1977.
From 1976 to 1977 he studied at Oxford University as a Harting Student, with Anglo-Saxonists such as Bruce Mitchell, Tom Shippey, and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill.
In 1986 he gained his PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen, with a dissertation on a late Middle English treatise on the five senses, directed by F.N.M.
"[12] In 2009 he published a kind of alphabet book with 26 terms from the Christian lexicon, Van Ambt tot Zonde ("From office to sin"),[13] illustrated by Geert de Groot, which explains the Christian connotations of such concepts as sin and foreskin;[14] the booklet collects articles originally published in the national daily Nederlands Dagblad.
[15] Bremmer serves on the editorial board of the journals The Heroic Age,[16] Neophilologus, and NOWELE, and on the advisory board of the journals Anglo-Saxon and Studies in Medievalism and of the series Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library.