Fast forward a hundred years, we have the short-lived but ambitious journal
Nordia established by the energetic editor and author Jens Kragh Høst. It was part of a short but remarkable blossoming of cultural Scandinavianism in the 1790s, fuelled by Danish intellectuals, not least Høst.
1 In 1796, after giving up on Nordia, Høst, along with the literary historian Rasmus Nyerup and the poet Jens Baggesen, founded Det Skandinaviske Literaturselskab (Scandinavian Literary Society) with its own periodical, Skandinavisk Museum, irregularly published in seven volumes 1798–1803. On these early efforts of ‘Scandinavianism’ within periodical culture, see R. Hemstad, ‘I ‘Tidens Fylde’. Panskandinaviske publisister og transnasjonale tidsskrifter’, in A. M. B. Bjørkøy et al. (eds), Litterære verdensborgere: Transnasjonale perspektiver på norsk bokhistorie 1519–1850, (Oslo, 2019), pp. 377–404, especially pp. 382–4. The editor presented the project as follows in the subscription plan, which was bilingual Swedish-Danish in its original form, printed in two columns:
However, few means would be able to contribute to a mutual literary knowledge as fast and as effective as a monthly, which was common to the literature of both people. […]
This monthly shall in accordance with its intent deliver, first, hitherto unpublished works of poetry as well as articles of common interest in prose, second, Danish translations of remarkable Swedish poetry and scholarship, and vice versa.
Furthermore, Nordia shall bring an overview of literature, theatres, and political events of both states. The original content comprises of a mixture of Swedish and Danish, and, to ensure a complete understanding of everything for all readers of both nations, a Swedish dictionary for Danes and vice versa, which is offered for free to subscribers of the journal in separate sheets.
Copenhagen, 20 Dec. 1794, Jens Kragh Høst.
2 J. Kragh Høst, ‘Subskribtionsplan. Nordia’, Kiøbenhavnske lærde Efterretninger, no. 3 (1795), 46–7. Danish orig.: ‘Men faa Midler vilde virksomt og hastigt kunne bidrage til indbyrdes literarisk Bekjendtskab, som et Maanedsskrift, der blev fælles for begge Folkeslags Literatur. […] Dette Maanedsskrift skal i Overensstemmelse med sin hensigt levere hidtil utrykte Arbejder saavel Poesier, som prosaiske Afhandlinger af almeeninteressant Indhold, deels Dansk Oversættelse af mærkelige svenske Poesier og Afhandlinger, og omvendt. Desuden skal Nordia meddele en Udsigt over begge Staters Literatur, Skuepladse og politiske Begivenheder. Det Originale indrykkes i Flæng paa Svensk eller Dansk, og for at gjøre det alt forstaaeligt for samtlige Læsere af begge Nationer, udkommer en Svensk Ordbog for Danske og omvendt, som arkviis overlades Maanedsskriftets Subskribenter gratis.’Clearly, the belief that a monthly journal was the most effective means of knowledge sharing lingered from the first generation of literary journals. Regarding the contents of the journal, a principal difference compared to the Nova literaria is the extent to which a definition of ‘literature’ comprised poetry and imaginative writing. However, the most interesting and experimental aspect of the make-up of the journal is the language policy and the practical and didactical measures connected to it. Whereas all the intended readers of the Nova literaria would understand Latin, the bilingual concept of Nordia, with contributions in both Swedish and Dano-Norwegian (in translation when at hand), was more tentative, risky in fact, from the outset by anticipating problems of understanding due to linguistic barriers. Hence, interim two-way dictionaries on separate sheets were offered free of charge to the subscribers of the journal.
The transnational character was of course completely different to the early literary journals. It was not a matter of promoting scholarship and connecting to Europe. The ambition was to strengthen the sense of community between Sweden and Denmark–Norway, something which was emphasised again and again in the rather vague and bleak poems of the journal, full of symbolic subtleties: the opening poem addressed Nordia as a Nordic muse, invoking an antiphony by the Nordic goddesses of singing, Svea and Dania.
With only four issues in total,
Nordia is yet another short-term publication in Dano-Norwegian periodical literature. But what went wrong in this case? In his memoirs from the 1830s, Høst the editor mentions several factors, most importantly the impact of the great fire in Copenhagen in 1795, but also more self-critically: the drop in renown of the contributors as well as in the quality of the contributions.
3 J. Kragh Høst, Erindringer om mig og mine Samtidige (Copenhagen, 1835), pp. 33–4. The latter was definitely a valid point, but actually one that could be raised against the inaugural issue as well, offering a lot of rhetorical talk of the idea of a pan-Scandinavian literary culture but no actual contributions to it. His opinion was shared by the polite reviewer of the
Kiøbenhavnske lærde Efterretninger (i.e. Copenhagen learned/literary news), who praised the idea of the journal rather than its content. Of more interest are the reviewer’s complaints about the poor infrastructure of the Scandinavian book market, particularly the ties between Denmark and Sweden:
when a newly published publication makes headlines in Hamburg and arrives two days later in Copenhagen, so would a shipment of every interesting book published in Stockholm or Uppsala immediately be on its way to Denmark by waggon post […] the reality is that the books are upheld by wind, weather, season, or the business of shipbrokers.
4 [anon.] ‘Nordia’, [Review] Kiøbenhavnske lærde Efterretninger, no. 9 (1795), 128–9. Danish orig.: ‘ligesom naar et nyt udkommen Skrift gjør Sensation i Hamborg, det om to Dage er i Kjøbenhavn, saaledes vilde ogsaa af hver en interessant Bog, som udkom i Stockholm eller Upsal [sic], ufortøvet afgaae et Partie Exemplarer med agende Post ned til Danmark, og ikke have nødig at oppebie den saa langsomme og af Vind og Vejr Aarstid og Mæglers dependerende Skibsleilighed.’Thus, important obstacles to a pan-Scandinavian journal were of a practical nature. There were linguistic problems. At first sight, the accompanying dictionaries seemed a luxurious service, but they were also addressing a fundamental problem of language barriers. And there were geographical hindrances. Denmark was better connected with Germany than with Sweden. However, the map sketched by the reviewer, pinning out the Northern European literary centres of Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Uppsala was also a mental one. In the review a subtle, epochal animosity towards German cultural hegemony is expressed, as seen for instance in the complaint that Danish readers were familiar with the most insignificant notices in Hamburg journals but not with the significant works by Swedish writers.
5 Ibid. p. 129.From this perspective, the efforts of regionalisation in
Nordia can be seen as measures to counter German domination of the Danish literary culture as well as the book market.
6 For more on this cultural and mental turn from Germany towards Sweden and Scandinavia, see for example Rasmus Glenthøj, e.g. Experiences of War and Nationality in Denmark and Norway 1807–1815 (Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 1–27, and Vibeke Winge, ‘Dansk og tysk 1790–1848’, in O. Feldbæk (ed.), Dansk identitetshistorie, vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1991), pp. 110–49. In terms of the journal’s impact in this regard, the reviewer is realistic but hopeful: ‘Rome was not built in one day.’
7 [anon.], ‘Nordia’, p. 131. He expressed a hope that enterprises like Høst’s journal would improve cross-national reading skills, granting Danish and Swedish publishers ‘the pecuniary advantage’ of doubling their area of interest.
8 Ibid. pp. 131–2. During the course of the nineteenth century further attempts were made to unite the Scandinavian book market, with some success as Tor Ivar Hansen has argued. While the movement aiming to unite the Scandinavian countries, which later would be known as ‘Scandinavianism’, failed on an institutional level and as a large-scale political project, it succeeded in creating a common literary consciousness,
9 T. I. Hansen, ‘Bøker og skandinavisk forbrødring. Et forsøk på en bokhistorisk tilnærming til skandinavismen’, in R. Hemstad et al. (eds), Skandinavismen. Vision og virkning (Odense, 2018), pp. 163–86. even though, you could add, robust infrastructural successes such as pan-Scandinavian publishers, book series or journals were absent.