1700-tal: Nordic Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies

‘Blind Dislike of Anything New’

2024-12-11T08:19:27+01:00

The first textbook on midwifery written in Icelandic was published in 1749. Its origin can be traced to several late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century European pioneers in obstetrics and anatomy. Despite its scientific background, the book received mixed reactions from its readers,which demonstrates a culture of scepticism towards change and innovation in eighteenth-century Iceland.

2024-07-08T16:58:51+02:00

Förord

2024-07-08T16:56:51+02:00

Academic precarity in Germany – #IchBinHanna in #ResearchWonderland

2024-07-01T15:19:26+02:00

Att fostras till forskare

2024-12-11T08:19:21+01:00

Hvordan – og hvorfor – starte en organisasjon for forskere tidlig i karrieren?

2024-12-11T08:19:19+01:00

Charlotte Appel og Nina Christensen (red.), På sporet af børn og bøger. Læsekultur og medier 1750-1850 (København: Gads Forlag, 2023). 352 s.

2024-07-01T13:53:56+02:00

Ruth Hemstad, Jannicke S. Kaasa, Ellen Krefting and Aina Nøding (eds.), Literary Citizenship in Scandinavia in the Long Eighteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2023). xii+330 pp.

2024-07-01T13:57:27+02:00

Magnus Tessing Schneider & Meike Wagner (red.), Performing the Eighteenth Century: Theatrical Discourses, Practices, and Artefacts (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2023). 312 s.

2024-07-01T14:03:07+02:00

Peter Thule Kristensen (red.), Lauritz de Thurah - Barokkens arkitektur og verdensbillede (København: Strandberg, 2023). 432 s.

2024-07-01T14:10:26+02:00

Anna Perälä, Boktryckarnas ädla konst. Persondikter 1605–1764 (Helsingfors/Stockholm: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2023). 256 s.

2024-07-01T14:23:36+02:00

Hrefna Robertsdottir & Johanna Th. Gudmundsdottir (red.), Landsnefndin fyrri 1770–1771. Den Islandske Landkommission 1770–1771 (Reykjavik: Sögufélag, 2016–2022). 4757 s.

2024-07-01T14:19:35+02:00

Charlotta Wolff, Johan Fredrik Aminoff: kustaviaani kahdessa valtakunnassa [Gustavian i två riken] (Helsinki: Otava, 2022). xx + 352 s.

2024-07-01T14:14:35+02:00

Janne Haikari, Marko Hakanen, Anu Lathinen & Alex Snellman (red.), Adelns historia i Finland (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2023). xx + 443 s.

2024-07-01T14:27:20+02:00

Trygve Riiser Gundersen, Haugianerne 1. Enevelde og undergrunn (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2022). 704 s.

2024-07-01T14:33:06+02:00

My Hellsing & Johanna Ilmakunnas (red.), Shopping i Stockholm. Sociala praktiker på gatunivå 1700–1850 (Stockholm: Stockholmia förlag, 2023). xx + 195 pp.

2024-07-01T14:34:35+02:00

Ella Viitaniemi (toim.), Kirkko, papisto ja yhteiskunta 1600–1800 [Kyrkan, prästerskapet och samhället 1600–1800] (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2023). xx + 311 s.

2024-07-01T14:40:09+02:00

A tale of two Germanias

2024-12-11T08:20:18+01:00

Tacitus’ Germania was translated into Danish twice in the 1790s, first by the historian and jurist Gustav Ludvig Baden (1764–1839) in 1795, and then by his father, the professor of rhetoric Jacob Baden (1735–1805) in 1797. Both translations can be understood as part of a sustained effort to introduce Tacitean and other concepts from classical literature to enrich philosophical reasoning in the vernacular.

The politics of the translations were radically at odds. Through the rhetorical use of conceptual vocabulary, exhaustive footnotes, and an unstable temporality, G. L. Baden constructed a narrative of a democratic republican and rationalist ‘golden age’ relevant for contemporary Denmark-Norway. Jacob Baden’s foreignizing translation was a conservative response. It employed a stable modern historicity which separated the ‘golden age’ from the barbarous reality of northern antiquity.

The article raises the question of the significance of oblique argument in the constrained Danish-Norwegian public sphere of the 1790s. The form of G. L. Baden’s translation is characterised by a temporal and linguistic strategic ambiguity. This provided a veil of deniability for the translator, but the translation was clearly understood to be a radical polemic, eliciting reactions in the public sphere.

”Att efterfölja amazonernas exempel”

2024-12-11T08:20:10+01:00

This article presents the previously unknown Swedish text “Fruntimbernas tapperhet” [The bravery of women], which has been preserved in manuscript in the archive of the Gothenburg family Alströmer. This text, which is based on a Latin dissertation from 1716, contains a discussion of around 15 female exemplars who all demonstrate women’s ability to demonstrate the virtue fortitude. This is the first known Swedish-language text that uses female exemplars to construct an argument about women’s bravery. After an introduction wherein we describe the archival source and discuss dating and authorship, we offer a transcription of the full text. Thereafter, we develop an analysis of the text’s most distinguishing features. The text is situated within the context of the early modern querelle des femmes, and we discuss the fact that strikingly and unusually, the author of “Fruntimbernas tapperhet” is primarily preoccupied with martial fortitude and with women who transgress gender norms in various ways.

Broken promises of marriage in early eighteenth-century Norway

2024-12-11T08:20:20+01:00

In early modern Norway, the engagement was by law binding and many people were in this period subjected to prosecution for breaking a promise of marriage. This article sheds light on the agency of women seeking justice for broken promises of marriage in early eighteenth-century Norway – a period in which the legislation and judicial practice in such cases was at its strictest – exemplified with a specific case-study from Northern Trøndelag. The case concerned two people from the upper echelon of society, Margrete Bull and Christian Rosenkrantz, and is in some ways a typical example of how such matters could be handled in court in this period. According to Margrete, Christian had given her a promise of marriage and made her pregnant, but Christian denied both the engagement and the fatherhood and moreover married another woman of higher standing. In a period of four years, from 1707 to 1711, the case was addressed multiple times in the local court, the Chapter Court (Kapittelrett) and finally in the Supreme Court of Denmark-Norway. In the end, Margrete Bull was the victorious party and was awarded with a sizable compensation. In line with previous research on the topic, this case demonstrates the importance of honor and local support, but moreover indicates that only those in possession of sufficient resources could take a trial to the level presented here.

”Jag må nu dö medan jag har förståndet qwar, så kan jag weta på hwem jag tror”

2024-12-11T08:20:15+01:00

This article explores ten women’s experiences of being on trial for witchcraft and enduring torture in Sweden in 1757, as they were retrospectively accounted for during a review trial in 1760, at which these women sought relief and tort. Contrary to previous scholarship on both torture in general and torture in connection with early modern witch trials, which has approached torture either as a ritual of power and punishment or a ritual of forced conversion, I depart from a phenomenological stance of the body in order to understand how these women experienced the ways body, pain and mind were related with one another. Thereby, I uncover how the women experienced their torments as an escalating procedure aiming to affect their minds (förstånd), both by inciting affective movements and by inducing pain. Moreover, I connect these experiences to what the women understood to be at stake during their torments: their access to mind/reason, which, in turn, was the faculty enabling them to believe in God. Finally, I argue that the ability to believe in God through reason conditioned their various ways of explaining the relations between body, pain and mind.

Musikkselskapets portrettmedaljonger

2024-12-11T08:20:07+01:00

In 1786, three large portrait medallions were commissioned for the Musical Society in Trondheim, Norway. The medallions were made from wood and painted with antique-style portraits of three local musicians – Niels Krog Bredal, Johan Peter Thams, and Johan Daniel Berlin. The medallions are owned by the NTNU University Museum and currently exhibited at the Ringve Music Museum. Two similar medallions of unknown origin exist; a portrait of Christian Frederik Hagerup, and a medallion bearing the initials P.B. and the date December 31st, 1786.

The article conducts a multi-disciplinary study of the five medallions from an object-based research perspective. The authors’ differing museum backgrounds offer the double perspectives of music and cultural history together with material and art history. A technological investigation of the medallions is combined with analyses of style, motives, and décor, against the background of biographical and contextual information. Two likely artisans are indicated, and new light is shed on the «unexplained» medallions. The medallions’ designs are contextualized with reference to the tradition of memorial coins, and the medallions’ social function is construed as part of a bourgeois strategy for self-representation and identity formation.

”Det bästa svenska lustspel i fosterländsk anda”:

2024-12-11T08:20:04+01:00

The article constitutes a close study of the comic play På Gröna Lund (1856) by Hedvig von Numers, viewed as a significant contribution to the cultural memory of Sweden’s Gustavian era (1772-1809). Building on recent research into the workings of cultural memory, the play is studied from several complementary angles. To begin with, by studying the conditions of its staging and its reception by an audience, we investigate how a feeling of historical authenticity was created. In the next step, the historical content of the play is interpreted and contextualised by relating it to popular and scholarly historiography of the period, and by studying its use of comic conventions in the service of historical representation. Taken together, these approaches show the complex workings of nineteenth century memory culture when confronted with the recent Gustavian past.

Olof Blomqvist, I Want to Stay. Local Community and Prisoners of War at the Dawn of the Eighteenth Century (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2023). xx + 371 pp.

2024-07-01T13:38:03+02:00

Lotta Nylund, Alexander Lauréus genremålningar och den tidiga romantikens visuella kultur (Helsingfors: Humanistiska fakulteten vid Helsingfors universitet, 2023). 428 s.

2024-07-01T13:48:31+02:00