Literary Citizenship takes
Early Modern and Enlightenment books and other prints in and from Scandinavia, especially Norway and Denmark, as vantage points for a wider study of the actual geographies of texts: of how they spread and shaped – and were shaped by – knowledge, ideas, emotions, politics, social practices, genres, reading and trade.
1 Cf. M. Espagne and M. Werner (eds), Transferts (Paris, 1988); J. Freedman, Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe (Philadelphia, 2012); S. Frost and R. W. Rix, Moveable Type, Mobile Nations (Copenhagen, 2010); T. Munck, Conflict and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2019); M. Ogborn and C. W. J. Withers (eds), Geographies of the Book (Farnham, 2013); J. Raven, Bookscape (Chicago, London, 2014); S. J. Shep, ‘Books Without Borders: The Transnational Turn in Book History’, in R. Fraser and M. Hammond (eds), Books Without Borders, vol. 1 (Basingstoke, 2008). In doing so, we may not always escape the inherent methodological difficulties of being situated in a particular region or nation, with its nationally defined archives and collections. However, the following chapters discuss new ways of surveying these texts and their dissemination, bearing in mind Jeffrey Freedman’s observation that ‘books have not been as respectful of national borders as the historians who study them’.
2 Freedman, Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe, p. 1. Indeed, the history of what constitutes today’s Scandinavian nations and languages is well suited to exploring the inherent methodological difficulties of terms such as transnational/-regional/-cultural/-lingual, conundrums that are shared by cultural historians around the world. Like so many other ‘national’ histories of the book – but particularly pertinent in the case of Norway – the histories of the book in Scandinavia are those of transnational and transcultural mobility, transfer and adaptation. Norway, which for four centuries was more or less politically subordinated to Denmark (1397–1814), followed by a century as an autonomous, but junior, partner in a personal union with Sweden (1814–1905), held the position as a periphery within the periphery. As an integrated part of the Danish realm since 1537 and eventually sharing the same written language, its literary field was dominated by Denmark and continued to be so during the nineteenth century. Contact and exchanges between the Swedish realm (which included Finland until 1809) and Denmark and Norway remained limited, even after 1814, with the exception of certain pan-Scandinavian literary initiatives (cf. Bjerring-Hansen in this volume).
3 R. Hemstad, ‘“En skandinavisk Nationalitet” som litterært prosjekt: 1840-årenes transnasjonale offentlighet i Norden’, in A. Bohlin and E. Stengrundet (eds), Nation som kvalitet: Smak, offentligheter och folk i 1800-talets Norden (Bergen, 2021), pp. 311‒32; K. H. Ekman, ‘Mitt hems gränser vidgades’. En studie i den kulturella skandinavismen under 1800-talet (Gothenburg, Stockholm, 2010); T. van Gerven, Scandinavism. Overlapping and Competing Identities in the Nordic World 1770–1919 (Amsterdam, 2022). These prominent features call for resisting ‘methodological nationalism’ and necessitate an approach that moves beyond the national, acknowledging the importance of translation and transmission across political, cultural, linguistic and temporal borders, while accounting for local specificities.
4 See L. Howsam, ‘The Study of Book History’, in L. Howsam (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to History of the Book (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 1–13, at pp. 10–12. History is unavoidably written from specific points of view, including geographical ones. In taking our departure from Norway and its close political, linguistic and cultural ties with Denmark in the long eighteenth century, while also including the broader Scandinavian context of Sweden, we gain at least three things. Firstly, by presenting Norwegian cases and perspectives often omitted in other Scandinavian studies, this volume offers new understandings of discrepancies, interactions or parallels within the region due to differences in political power, religious practices or natural resources and conditions between the three kingdoms.
5 See S. A. Reinert, ‘Northern Lights: Political Economy and the Terroir of the Norwegian Enlightenment’, The Journal of Modern History, 92 (March 2020), 76–115; J. Israel, ‘Northern Varieties: Contrasting the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish-Finnish Enlightenments’, in E. Krefting et al. (eds), Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change (Leiden, 2015), pp. 17–45. Secondly, we aim to escape the traditional nationally oriented history writing, particularly as found in a young modern state such as Norway, by focusing on transnational relations both within and beyond Scandinavia. Finally, an important goal is to expand opportunities for non-Scandinavian scholars to track the journeys of printed books, illustrations and news, and their social effects, further north. These transnational entanglements between centres and (semi-)peripheries offer future studies a more comprehensive material on the history of print, knowledge and communication, especially in the long eighteenth century.
6 M. Werner and B. Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory (2006); D. Bellingradt and J. Salman (eds), Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe (Cham, 2017). Books in Scandinavia were on the one hand shaped by a European market and tradition, and on the other they constitute an important and different case of regional and local adaptation. The three Scandinavian countries, constituting two different yet kindred language areas, were marked by what has been termed ‘Northern Enlightenment’ and later the phenomenon of Scandinavian world literature (notably featuring Ibsen and Strindberg).
7 N. Fulsås and T. Rem, Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama (Cambridge, 2018). The term ‘Northern Enlightenment’ points to the particular character of the Enlightenment movement in Scandinavia and the northern German states with its close ties to state administration, the Church, universities and local governments, setting its content and society apart from other regional and national Enlightenments.
8 E. Krefting et al., ‘Introduction’, in E. Krefting et al. (eds), Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change (Leiden, 2015), p. 9. Recurring international topics of the day, such as tolerance and defence of civil liberties (including freedom of print), were widely debated. However, in the dual monarchy of Denmark–Norway these battles took place within the framework of the absolutist state, not outside them. Furthermore, Northern Enlightenment was largely state-sponsored and loyal to the absolutist Lutheran regime. With some exceptions, critique took the form of self-critique in the ‘patriotic’ debates over reform, progress and human betterment. Historical writing, law and moral discourse dominated the intellectual field and the burgeoning public sphere.
9 K. Haakonsen and H. Horstbøll (eds), Northern Antiquities and National Identities. Perceptions of Denmark and the North in the Eighteenth Century (Copenhagen, 2008); H. Evju, Ancient Constitutions and Modern Monarchy. Historical Writing and Enlightened Reform in Denmark–Norway 1730–1814 (Leiden, 2019). By exploring the duality between openness to radical European and North American ideas and their local adaptation, important traits of transnational European entanglements are revealed in Scandinavian book and media history. Consequently, new light is shed on both the European and regional book markets, the development of a bourgeois and popular public sphere and the impact of new media on intellectual, social and political change.