Notes on Contributors
Jens Bjerring-Hansen is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Copenhagen, specialising in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. He is the author of the monograph Ludvig Holberg på bogmarkedet (2015). His most recent volume is Scandinavian Exceptionalisms (2021, co-eds T. Jelsbak and A. Mrozewicz). Currently, as the PI of the project Measuring Modernity (2020–4), he is engaged with the so-called ‘Modern Breakthrough’ in late nineteenth-century Scandinavian literature and culture.
Jon Haarberg is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. His interest in the history of catechism in Denmark–Norway developed from his commentary on Petter Dass’s bestselling Catechism Songs (1715; critical edn Katekismesanger, Oslo, 2013). In 2017 he published a book exploring the rise and fall of Norwegian national literature: Nei, vi elsker ikke lenger. Litteraturen og nasjonen (Oslo) and in 2022 a history of catechisms in Norway, Historien om Norges viktigste bok: katekismen (Oslo).
Ruth Hemstad is Research Librarian in History at the National Library of Norway and Associate Professor II, Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo. She has published on transnational Scandinavian history, Scandinavianism and Nordic cooperation 1800–1930s. Her latest publications include Litterære verdensborgere. Transnasjonale perspektiver på norsk bokhistorie 1519–1850 (co-eds A. M. B. Bjørkøy et al., Oslo, 2019), Frie ord i Norden? Offentlighet, ytringsfrihet og medborgerskap 1814–1914 (co-ed. D. Michalsen, Oslo, 2019), ‘Scandinavian Sympathies and Nordic Unity: The Rhetoric of Scandinavianness in the Nineteenth Century’, in M. Hilson et al. (eds), Contesting Nordicness from Scandinavianism to the Nordic Brand (Berlin, 2022) and ‘Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad: Literature, Sociability, and Pan-Scandinavian Associational Life in German-speaking Europe 1842–1912’, in M. Federhofer and S. Meyer (eds), Mit dem Buch in der Hand (Berlin, 2021).
Janicke S. Kaasa is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Oslo. Her current research focuses on early children’s magazines in Scandinavia. Recent publications include: ‘Å gi sin daler med glede: Barn som forbrukere i Ungdommens Ven (1770)’ in Barnboken, 42 (2019) and ‘“Saavel fra fjerne Lande som fra vort eget Hjem”. Importert materiale i Billed-Magazin for Børn’, in A. M. B. Bjørkøy et al. (eds), Litterære verdensborgere (Oslo, 2019).
Ellen Krefting is Professor of History of Ideas at the University of Oslo. Research interests include media, genres and forms of knowledge in eighteenth-century Europe and Denmark–Norway. She has published extensively on Spectator-type journals, e.g., ‘Society and Sentiment. (Hi)storytelling in Copenhagen’s Den patriotiske Tilskuer 1761–63’, in K.-D. Ertler et al. (eds), Storytelling in the Spectators (Berlin, 2020), ‘The Spectatorial Press in the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway’ with A. Nøding in M. Doms (eds), Spectator-type Periodicals in International Perspective (Berlin, 2019), and Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change, with A. Nøding and M. Ringvej (eds) (Leiden, 2015).
Karin Kukkonen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. She specialises in the eighteenth-century novel in a European context and is interested in how eighteenth-century reading practices compare to emerging ones of the digital age. In this context, she has published 4E Cognition and Eighteenth-Century Fiction: How the Novel Found its Feet (Oxford, 2019), A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics: Neoclassicism and the Novel (Oxford, 2017) and (with A. V. Čepič) on reading practices in International Journal of the Book 71.1 (2019).
Ulrik Langen is Professor of Modern History at the University of Copenhagen. He has published on a variety of subjects within the field of modern cultural history. In several prize-winning books and articles, he has focused specifically on social interaction in the urban setting of eighteenth-century Copenhagen. His latest publications include Struensee (Aarhus, 2018); ‘The Post Office Feud. Sensing Urban Disturbance in late Eighteenth-Century Copenhagen’, in The Senses and Society, 12:2 (2017), ‘Pride and Resentment: French Émigrés and Republicans in the Streets of Late Eighteenth-Century Copenhagen’, in E. Chalus and M. Kaartinen (eds), Gendering Spaces in European Towns, c. 1700–1914 (London, 2019) and Grov Konfækt, Tre vilde år med trykkefrihed 1770–73 (with H. Horstbøll and F. Stjernfelt) (Copenhagen, 2020; English edn, The World’s First Full Press Freedom: The Radical Experiment of Denmark–Norway 1770–73 (Berlin, 2022)).
Aina Nøding is Research Librarian in Book History at the National Library of Norway, PhD in comparative literature (2007, University of Oslo). Latest books include the edited volumes Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change (co-eds E. Krefting and M. Ringvej; Leiden, 2015) and Litterære verdensborgere (co-eds A. M. B. Bjørkøy et al.; Oslo, 2019) and a biography of the writer Claus Fasting (Oslo, 2018). Recent articles include three on Danish and Norwegian periodical fiction, published in Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Literature (New York, 2017); in M. Doms (ed.), Spectator-type Periodicals in International Perspective (Berlin, 2019; with E. Krefting) and in K.-D. Ertler et al. (eds), Storytelling in the Spectators (Berlin, 2020).
Jonas Nordin is Professor of Book and Library History at Lund University. His latest publications include ‘Northern Declarations of Freedom of the Press: The Relative Importance of Philosophical Ideas and of Local Politics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 81:2 (April 2020), with J. Chr. Laursen; ‘Spirit of the Age: Erik Dahlbergh’s Images of Sweden’s Past’, in B. Roling and B. Schirg (eds), Boreas Rising: Antiquarianism and National Narratives in 17th- and 18th-century Scandinavia (Berlin, Boston, 2019); ‘From Seemly Subjects to Enlightened Citizens: Censorship and Press Freedom from the Middle Ages to the 18th Century’, in Press Freedom 250 Years: Freedom of the Press and Public Access to Official Documents in Sweden and Finland – A Living Heritage from 1766 (Stockholm, 2018).
James Raven is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and a Fellow of Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. He studied the international reception of Erik Pontoppidan’s The Natural History of Norway (1752–3) for the LitCit project. His latest books include Bookscape: Geographies of Printing and Publishing in London before 1800 (Chicago, London, 2014) and What is the History of the Book? (Cambridge, 2018). He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Thor Inge Rørvik is Lecturer in History of Ideas at the University of Oslo. He is co-author of Universitetet i Oslo, b. 2: Vitenskapenes universitet 1870–1911 (The University of Oslo, vol. 2; Oslo, 2011) and author of several articles on Norwegian history of ideas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, e.g. ‘The Child in the Early Nineteenth-Century Norwegian School System’, in R. Aasgaard, M. J. Bunge and M. Roos (eds), Nordic Childhoods 1700–1960. From Folk Beliefs to Pippi Longstocking (London, 2018).
Karen Skovgaard-Petersen is Dr.Philos., director of the Society for Danish Language and Literature. Her main research interests are early modern historiography and philology and the writings of the Dano-Norwegian Enlightenment author Ludvig Holberg. Recent publications in English are ‘Holberg’s Autobiographical Letters’ and ‘Journeys of Humour and Satire – On Holberg’s Peder Paars and Niels Klim’ in K. Haakonssen and S. Olden-Jørgensen (eds), Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754). Learning and Literature in the Nordic Enlightenment (London, 2017); ‘A Lutheran Appropriation of the First Crusade: The Danish Historian Anders Sørensen Vedel’s Apology for Editing Robert of Rheims’, in J. M. Jensen et al. (eds), Fighting for the Faith (Stockholm, 2018).
Iver Tangen Stensrud is an independent historian, PhD 2018 (History, Oslo School of Architecture and Design). His main research interest is Norwegian illustrated periodicals in the mid-nineteenth century. His thesis discusses the illustrated press, architecture and urban development in nineteenth-century Oslo. Recent publications include ‘The Magazine and the City: Architecture, Urban Life and the Illustrated Press in Nineteenth-Century Christiania’ (PhD thesis, 2018); ‘Xylography’, in M. Hvattum and A. Hultzsch (eds), The Printed and the Built (London, 2018); ‘Christiania, det gamle og det nye’, Kunst og Kultur 102:1 (April 2019).
Frederik Stjernfelt is Professor of Semiotics, Intellectual History and Philosophy of Science at Aalborg University Copenhagen. He has published, inter alia, on cognitive semiotics and the philosophy of Charles Peirce, the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, the philosophy of science of the humanities. Recent publications include Your Post Has been Removed. Tech Giants and Freedom of Speech (Cham, 2019; with A. M. Lauritzen); Grov Konfækt: Tre vilde år med trykkefrihed 1770–73 (Copenhagen, 2020; with H. Horstbøll and U. Langen; English edn, The World’s First Full Press Freedom: The Radical Experiment of Denmark–Norway 1770–73 (Berlin, 2022)); ‘Conscious Self-Control as Criterion for Reasoning’, Cognitive Semiotics, 14:1 (2021).
Jonas Thorup Thomsen obtained a PhD in History (2022) from Aarhus University with the thesis Danish Clergymen and their Book Collections: An Investigation into Clerical Libraries, Book Distribution, and Knowledge Circulation in Denmark, c. 1685–1810. His current project examines Danish lending libraries of the eighteenth century as arenas for the circulation of knowledge.