Making Nordic Historiography: Connections, Tensions and Methodology, 1850-1970 9781785336270

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K Making Nordic Historiography L

MAKING SENSE OF HISTORY Studies in Historical Cultures General Editor: Stefan Berger Founding Editor: Jörn Rüsen Bridging the gap between historical theory and the study of historical memory, this series crosses the boundaries between both academic disciplines and cultural, social, political and historical contexts. In an age of rapid globalization, which tends to manifest itself on an economic and political level, locating the cultural practices involved in generating its underlying historical sense is an increasingly urgent task. For a full volume listing please see back matter.

Making Nordic Historiography Connections, Tensions and Methodology, 1850–1970

Edited by Pertti Haapala, Marja Jalava and Simon Larsson

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017 Pertti Haapala, Marja Jalava and Simon Larsson All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-626-3 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-627-0 ebook

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Introduction Nordic historiography: from methodological nationalism to empirical transnationalism Simon Larsson, Marja Jalava and Pertti Haapala Chapter 1. Writing our history: the history of the ‘Finnish people’ (as written) by Zacharias Topelius and Väinö Linna Pertti Haapala

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Chapter 2. The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography 55 Ingi Sigurðsson Chapter 3. Cultural aspects of the pan-Scandinavian movement: the perspective of historians Kristín Bragadóttir

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Chapter 4. National, international or transnational? Works and networks of the early Nordic historians of society Marja Jalava

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Chapter 5. Scientific historiography and its discontents: Danish and Swedish ‘aristocratic empiricism’ Simon Larsson

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Chapter 6. Nationalist internationalism: Danish and Norwegian historical research in the aftermath of the First World War Jon Røyne Kyllingstad

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Contents

Chapter 7. Nordic networks at work: power struggles in the Scandinavian historical field, 1935–1942 Pelle Oliver Larsen

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Chapter 8. The rhythm and implicit canon of Nordic history by Eli F. Heckscher and Eino Jutikkala Petteri Norring

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Chapter 9. Negotiating Norden: Nordic historians revising history textbooks, 1920–1970 Henrik Åström Elmersjö

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Chapter 10. Loneliness: being a woman in the Nordic community of historians Mervi Kaarninen

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Chapter 11. Trans-Nordic neo-empiricism in a European setting – or, why did Foucault leave Uppsala? Peter Edelberg

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Index 311

Acknowledgements

This book is a result of cooperation of historians from all five Nordic countries. A research project called ‘Nordic Historiography beyond Methodological Nationalism’ was hosted by University of Tampere and funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS). A generous grant from NOS-HS made it possible to do the research work, arrange numerous workshops and write a joint book. Several people in addition to the authors played an important role in planning and promoting the project. The editors and authors want to thank especially Bo Stråth, Ragnar Björk, Jan Eivind Myhre, Narve Fulsås, Dorthe Gerd Simonsen and Claus Møller Jørgensen for their ideas, comments, support and good company. Pertti Haapala, Marja Jalava, Simon Larsson

INTRODUCTIO N

Nordic historiography: from methodological nationalism to empirical transnationalism Simon Larsson, Marja Jalava and Pertti Haapala

Decentring the national in history writing ‘History can be living politics, – so that the past issues and present-day controversies are entwined with each other to such an extent that one cannot separate them’, wrote the Norwegian historian Halvdan Koht in 1920 (Koht 1920: 2 [italics in the original]). According to him, this had been the case in nineteenth-century Norway, where history writing had become intermingled with the question of whether the Norwegians should strive for an independent nation-state or stay in a union with Sweden. The answer to this question determined whether the past was interpreted from a national or a regional perspective. Like most of their European colleagues, Norwegian historians mainly chose the former option.1 The modern (scientific) discipline of history cultivated an intimate relationship with the nation-state, which has ever since had a profound impact on the choice of themes, basic concepts, theories of explanation and the construction of grand narratives.2 To cite the historian Jarle Simensen, history ‘arose as the child – and tutor – of the nation state’, consequently making national history predominant in the profession (Simensen 2000: 90). Simultaneously, however, diverse regional, international and global frameworks have continued living in the margins, or as an element of Notes for this section begin on page 20.

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national history, occasionally gaining more ground when the benevolence of nationalism has been seriously challenged, such as in the aftermath of the horrors of the First and Second World Wars (Robin 2009: 486–87). One of the terms stemming from such alternative ways of framing the past is the adjective ‘transnational’. It first appeared in scholarly literature as early as 1862, when the German linguist Georg Curtius used it to buttress his argument that every language is fundamentally transnational (etwas transnationales). This first sporadic usage of the term already conveyed its basic meaning: the idea of going beyond or transcending national space, persons or notions of belonging. From the 1940s onwards, the term slowly started to gain in popularity. On the one hand, it was used in economic analyses to explain expanding capitalist practices, financial flows and the growing integration of trade and production that bound European countries together and with other areas of the world. On the other hand, it was adopted by those scholars of international relations and law who were critical of overly state-centric approaches and chose to focus on non-interstate, bordercrossing relations between individuals, organizations and other phenomena. Nevertheless, it was only in the 1980s, boosted by debates on globalization, that the term ‘transnational’ really made its breakthrough in scholarly vocabulary. Initiated by anthropology, cultural studies and the sociology of migration, other disciplines such as history, geography, gender studies, religious studies and political science soon followed. As a result, the term eventually attained the position of the most commonly used term in the US academic world in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Saunier 2009). Analogous to the adjective ‘national’ some 150 years ago, ‘transnational’ has consequently become a highly politicized term. Intermingled with diverse globalization discourses and understood as an ism, ‘transnationalism’ has increasingly been used to signify a worldview that, depending on the viewer, either favourably promotes the free circulation of people, ideas and goods or else threatens the sovereignty of nation-states (Saunier 2009: 1054; see also Robin 2009: 488–89). This choice also seems to determine, at least in part, the particular perspective according to which the past is interpreted. Generally speaking, post-nationalist scholars have claimed that the nation-state has monopolized the historical imagination to such a degree that historians have tended to ignore anything beyond the uniform, all-encompassing national narrative. Thus, the mission is to rescue the past from the nation, to cite the historian Prasenjit Duara’s famous rallying cry from 1995. In this situation, seemingly progressive identities are conceived of and offered to historians who abandon the national framework and strive for a type of world citizenship (Robin 2009: 488–91). In contrast, critics of the market-driven globalization hype have pointed out that nation-states, or at least some of them, have performed the role of welfare states, protecting



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their citizens from the harsh inequalities and oppressions that reside outside the nation-state regime (e.g. Robin 2009: 491–93). From this point of view, post-nationalist detachment mostly means that, by the rationale of our times, professional historians should no longer focus on the nationstate and instead transform themselves into a free-floating, yet anglophone, global knowledge elite, detached from local loyalties and responsibilities. Since the national framework is still the framework of political democracy, some historians have interpreted this demand as an authoritarian attack on the traditional democratic core of historiography (Tvedt 2012: 500; see also Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002: 307). The present volume stems from an awareness that ideological components are often mixed with methodological ones during transitory phases, or ‘turns’, such as the recent post- or transnational turn in historical research. In this situation, it is essential to distinguish between the ideological currents surrounding our rethinking of the past and the actual methodological benefits that no doubt can be found by decentring the national framework within history. The overarching aim of this volume is to contribute to this methodological enterprise – not by renaming things, but by writing the ‘societal history’ of historiography. This is an important task not only for the field of Nordic historiography, but for the ongoing global debate on the nature of historiography. To borrow Mattias Midell and Lluís Roura’s term, there is a certain discourse of newness (Middell and Roura 2013: 5, 22–23) that permeates so much of academic knowledge production, most explicit in the application genre formed by the (always fierce) struggle for funding. The notion that ours is an age of globalization demanding quick fixes – in this case, the abandonment of the national framework in historiography – bears some resemblance to the linear, and superficial, logic. The discourse of newness rests on the assumption that our experience in the present is uniquely rich compared to experiences in the past, and that it is also well reflected upon by us. It may, however, very well be the case that conceptual quick fixes to adapt to a perceived globalization on one level actually reinforce the hampering national framework on another. This risk is imminent because our knowledge of the global processes in the present and of our own position in it is incomplete. Globalization is certainly one of the most complex historical phenomena that there is, and as historians we hold a specific responsibility to provide a perspectival distance to discourses emanating from it. What this volume intends to show is that the tension between the global and the national in historiography is not a new challenge, but a durable dilemma that has been met with a plethora of different approaches by historians from a plethora of different positions in the past. To begin with, we want to take seriously the post-nationalist demand to reconsider whether historians have overvalued territorial states and

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national cultures in their scholarly practices. Although few Northern European academic historians nowadays study history with the obviously nationalist aim of legitimizing a particular nation-building project, it is certainly true that various nation-states still tend to serve as the constant unit of observation throughout all historical transformations, the ‘thing’ whose change history is supposed to depict (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002: 305). For instance, in Swedish historiography the idea of a ‘Sweden proper’, a nation-state defined by its contemporary borders, emerged after the Napoleonic Wars as the core unit for assessing the entire history of the Swedish Realm from the dawn of time to the present. This national definition of history has largely ignored the fact that the south-western part of present-day Finland was an integral part of ‘original’ Sweden from its consolidation in the fourteenth century until 1809. Similarly, Finnish historiography has long emphasized the existence of a separate Finnish nationality ‘under Swedish power’ and before the ‘Swedish conquest’ (see Engman 1994; Østergård 1997: 58–59; Jalava 2013: 253; Villstrand 2009). Likewise, many Norwegian historians took great pains to demonstrate the unbroken continuity of the history of Norway from the Viking era to the nineteenth century, thereby downplaying the significance of the nearly four hundred years during which the country was a part of the Danish Realm. Danish historians, for their part, adjusted their thinking at the turn of the twentieth century to explain a history of Denmark inside the more restricted borders that were established in the wake of the loss of the Schleswig-Holstein region to Prussia and Austria in 1864 (Kirby 1991: 10–11; Aronsson et al. 2008: 262, 266, 281; Jalava 2013: 253). Somewhat paradoxically, the intense inter-Nordic research cooperation since the 1960s has reinforced rather than transgressed the national perspective, precisely because its favourite method of comparison has been a systematic comparison on the level of the Nordic national welfare states (Mishkova, Stråth and Trencsényi 2013: 296–97). As the historian Angelika Epple points out, the criticism of a narrowly national and/or state-centric framework does not necessarily mean that the historical significance of nation-states and the differences in local opportunity structures and political cultures should be denied. Instead, the issue at stake is that there are multiple relations between different localities and actors, and the national scale is only one of many possible spatial dimensions. Hence, in the present volume our overall objective is not so much to efface or underrate nation-states; rather, we no longer conceive of such entities as fixed, but as fluid, relational and historically changing (Epple 2012: 163–64, 168–70). While certain movements, flows and circulations in history have arguably both transcended and reinforced the boundaries between nations and states, we choose to use nationalism as a global



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ideology as our starting point, i.e. we treat the national and the transnational as mutually supplemental perspectives rather than pitting them against one another – and hence explain the historicity of the national. Instead of taking the path towards global historiography, which would render our empirical aim too unwieldy, we have chosen to develop the transnational dimension, focusing more intensively on the relational aspects that constitute the national, the international and the transnational. For our purposes, the term ‘transnational’ refers to the economic, social, cultural and political links between people, spaces and institutions that cross or transcend nation-state borders, whereas the term ‘international’ is related to the actions between national governments and actors or else concerns the toing and froing of items (people, goods, ideas, etc.) from one nationstate context to another (Vertovec 2009: 1–3; Iriye 2013: 15–16, 48–49). By using a combination of comparative and entangled histories approaches, we aim to develop a transnational perspective on the history of Nordic historiography that clearly demonstrates how the national fabric and local debates were – and constantly are – intertwined with particular actors, issues and processes that cut across the so-called international, the national and the local (see also Saunier 2013: 140). While nation-states will thus remain a part of the spatial dimensions within which we operate, we nevertheless believe that historical research and historiography as such can be denationalized such that the national dimension and nationalism are clearly set apart from one another.

Methodological nationalism: the historians’ besetting sin? In academic historiography, the debate over the proper framing and role of nation/state/society has recently revolved around the term ‘methodological nationalism’. The term first arose out of heated debates in sociology and anthropology (see, e.g., Giddens 1973: 265; Smith 1979: 191; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002; Chernilo 2008), and it has since then presented itself as a focal point in the challenges that globalization presents to historiography. This term refers to the tendency to equate nation-states with the social unit of society and to define them as closed containers of historical development. While nation-states with their contemporary borders have been taken for granted as ‘natural’ units for analyses and comparisons in the field of history, national historiography has tended to bypass, or frankly exclude, flows, linkages and identities that cross or supersede other spatial units or the phenomena and dynamics within them. Methodological nationalism has further been reflected in the national data sets and archival systems that have strongly structured knowledge about the world into separate national

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compartments (see, e.g., Kocka 2003: 42–43; Werner and Zimmermann 2006: 33–43; Levitt and Khagram 2008: 6; Conrad 2010: 74–75; Amelina et al. 2012: 2–3). Indeed, national archives, museums and libraries can be seen as materializations of national consciousness, manifesting in a very tangible way the fact that the nation has a history ‘of its own’, that it ‘owns’ a history (Verschaffel 2012: 29–30; Porciani and Tollebeek 2012). Simultaneously, however, it has also been argued that the social sciences in general and classic theories of modernity in particular have had a blind spot when it comes to understanding the rise of nation-states as well as nationalism and ethnicity. While the grand theorists from Marx and Weber to Durkheim and Parsons have considered nationalism to be a transitory stage on the way to a modern, rationalized and individualized class society, their schemes have been shielded from the overwhelming and obvious fact that nationalist politics and conflicts have shaped the whole history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this sense, as the sociologists Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller note, methodological nationalism may also refer to the ways in which the nationalist forms of inclusion and exclusion that bind modern societies together have served as an invisible, self-evident background even to the most sophisticated theorizing about the modern condition to such an extent that nation-state principles have vanished from sight altogether (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002: 303–4). In the Nordic countries, the history of historiography is one of those subfields of historical scholarship in which methodological nationalism – understood as the naturalization of nation-states as the self-evident, privileged units of historical study – has been a normal state of affairs. So far, research has mostly remained limited to the study of national historiographical traditions, and even explicit attempts to write a Nordic history of historiography have usually been organized as ‘anthology comparisons’, in which historians contribute from their distinctly national perspectives.3 Moreover, the few existing comparisons have, as a rule, been limited to the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which have mutually comprehensible languages, whereas Finland and Iceland have been left out of such (hi)stories (Meyer 2000; Torstendahl 2011).4 Our collective volume on the history of Nordic historiography is held together by a series of questions concerning methodological nationalism. First, we take a critical look at our scholarly predecessors. How was the national framework incorporated into their research practices and scholarly discourses? What efforts were made by past historians to distance themselves from narrowly nationalist perspectives? What options or alternatives were there to methodological nationalism, and to what extent is it fair to apply this label to our tradition? In other words, we want to offer a more



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nuanced picture of the situation than merely drawing a rather simplistic black and white opposition between the late ‘reactionary’ national historians and present-day ‘progressive’ transnational historians. Second, we aim to overcome methodological nationalism in our own research by emphatically focusing on the interacting processes, cultural transfers, network-building and border-crossing circulation of cultural products rather than on single, bounded national cases. Instead of just adding Danish history, Finnish history, Icelandic history and so on, and calling the sum total Nordic history, we have adopted the framework of the Nordic region, which is in turn put into a larger European framework and, to some extent, a framework focusing on the global circulation of ideas. Our common perspective can be described as empirical transnationalism,5 which is, above all, interested in analysing the concrete actors and mechanisms involved in transmissions and the determinants impacting such transmissions. For instance, we ask how certain ideas and practices have circulated through historians’ networks, the channels through which historiographical products have flowed, how certain scholarly trends have been translated and adapted to different local conditions, and why certain ideas and practices have taken root while others have been ignored. In other words, the objective of our research has not been to take an ideological stand for or against the transnational approach as an alternative to a national or local approach, but to study the interaction between different levels without a priori giving greater analytic weight to one level over another. While drafting this volume, it soon became evident that individual historians would play a large role in our story, but, nonetheless, that is how it happened: national histories were written by individual historians under more or less unique conditions, and, particularly before the Second World War and the expansion of higher education, the number of professional historians was relatively small. Empirical transnationalism is based on a critical assessment of some of the defining characteristics of the history of historiography as it developed as a research field in the latter half of the twentieth century. The first characteristic concerns the relationship between the history of historiography and philosophy. After the Second World War, the history of historiography was often perceived from a teleological, legitimizing standpoint. It was a story of the progress of historiography towards becoming a ‘real’ science. This entailed a teleological dependence on a stable, supra-historical definition of science, one based on definitions borrowed from other disciplines and often (if not always) provided by philosophy, that is to say, logical positivism. The ‘postmodern’ narrativist critique of historiography, provided by Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, among others, probably owes much of its perceived controversiality to a sort of contrast

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effect with the logical positivists’ rigid definition of science. Chris Lorenz, Carlo Ginzburg and others have argued that Ankersmit and White simply repeat the position of positivism by inverting it (Ginzburg 1991; Lorenz 1998, 2014). The ‘post-foundationalist’ position adopted by Lorenz, for example, corresponds well with developments in the history of science. In the expanding field of science studies, physics models built by philosophers no longer serve as the blueprint that other disciplines should try to emulate, partly because physics itself now defies the philosophers’ original models. The concept of science has taken on a broader meaning and has been subjected to massive historicization and philosophical critique.6 ‘Science’ is no longer regarded as a stable concept, but rather as a multifaceted empirical phenomenon embedded in differing social, economic and cultural contexts. This is a development that the history of historiography can both benefit from and contribute to. We want to know more about the complex interplay of factors actually determining historiography. We hold no philosophical claims concerning the telos of historiography – hence the empirical in empirical transnationalism. The teleological view of historiography progressing towards a more advanced scientific state was an attempt to renew legitimacy for historians during the Cold War era, when history once again was challenged by social sciences on the rise. But according to Peter Edelberg’s chapter in the present volume, it was also something more. In the chapter ‘Trans-Nordic neo-empiricism in a European setting’, he argues that the joint production of ‘ahistorical’ historical methodologies in the 1960s reflected not only narrow, scholarly questions but also the broad sociopolitical and temporal concerns of the Nordic welfare states. In this context, Popper’s critical rationalism was tied to ‘piecemeal social engineering’ and an ideal philosophy for progressive middle-of-the-road historians of the period. Another defining characteristic of the history of historiography ‘in the old sense’ has to do with its claim to depict international, general progress via national examples, usually referred to as ‘paradigms’. Here, we emphasize that the international arena is not a neutral vehicle of progress, but is instead sustained by relations between nations, where some countries – usually the biggest, but sometimes just the lucky ones – have a tendency to get the upper hand. The assumption that international progress can clearly be discerned from a neutral point of view often underpins a teleological view of historiography and results in a certain intertwining of methodological nationalism and internationalism. For instance, in the classic textbook Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Georg G. Iggers divides the topic at hand into three distinctly national paradigms, a German, a French and a British one, thus equating modern historiography with these few national and dominating forms (Iggers 2005).7



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This tendency to entangle the national and the international recurs in several chapters of our volume, for instance in Jon Røyne Kyllingstad’s chapter ‘Nationalist internationalism: Danish and Norwegian historical research in the aftermath of the First World War’, in which he compares the internationalist initiatives of Danish and Norwegian scholars in the general chaos following the Great War. He notices certain Nordic similarities in the various attempts to promote small-state and progressive nationalism as examples of peaceful nationalism aided by historical scholarship. At the same time, however, there were important differences between the Danish and Norwegian attempts. A politically contentious issue pressed Danish historians into their transnational endeavour: the fate of the Schleswig-Holstein region, in which both Danish and German ethnicities were mixed. The research programme of the leading Danish historian Aage Friis was outlined as a sort of source-critical, objectivist diplomacy, designed to counteract chauvinist interpretations from both the German and Danish sides. This antichauvinism – anti-political yet very close to politics – was what the Danish historians offered to the world. Norwegian nationalist internationalism was a much broader and multidisciplinary endeavour, one in which a conception of Norwegian history rather than the actions of Norwegian historians was the decisive factor. Norwegian peace-promoting efforts in the 1920s were initiated through the founding of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning) in 1922 in Oslo. The plan was to bring leading international scholars to the Institute because Norwegian culture was considered to be particularly well suited to comparative research. This was, indeed, methodological nationalism of a very sophisticated kind, where the tension between localizing and universalizing tendencies seemed to have been resolved. The harmonious mixing of nationalism and internationalism in Norwegian historical culture is evident also in Marja Jalava’s comparison of the networks and methodologies of the early Norwegian and Finnish historians of society in the first third of the twentieth century. Historians from both countries shared methodological assumptions regarding the extent to which nationalism and internationalism were related. The national constituted the building block for, and also the stepping stone into, the international realm. Whereas the Norwegians managed to promote their nation as a constitutive part of the international realm, the Finns had a more unfavourable position both because political divisions in Finland were much more severe, particularly after the 1918 civil war, and also because the international realm itself had a certain Drang nach Westen as one of its constitutive traits. This is evident in what Jalava calls the ‘politics of comparison’. It seems that the Finnish scholars were eager to compare their nation with their Western neighbours, while Norwegian scholars mostly avoided ‘the East’

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both in their methodological frameworks and in terms of networking. The fact that most Finnish scholars had command of the Scandinavian languages, but other Scandinavians did not know Finnish, further strengthened the lack of symmetry in comparative interests. Simon Larsson’s chapter ‘Scientific historiography and its discontents: Danish and Swedish “aristocratic empiricism”’, offers an example of the multilayered and spatial dimensions of transnationalism. The chapter circles around the intimate transnational network between Danish professor Erik Arup and Swedish professor Lauritz Weibull during the first half of the twentieth century. They both presented themselves as proprietors of a particular brand of anti-chauvinist, source-critical methodology, but while this identity was much more comfortable for Weibull, who was professor at the more peripheral University of Lund in the south of Sweden, this ‘outsider’ status with respect to the nationalist framework brought severe stress upon Arup, who was professor at the more central University of Copenhagen. While Weibull’s methodological identity was reinforced by regional and transnational dimensions involving both modern Denmark and Sweden, Arup, who had started out as a transnational comparativist, became obsessed with the national framework at the peak of his career and deliberately promoted methodological nationalism.

Norden as a historical and historiographical region The transnational perspective of the present volume focuses, above all, on linkages and networks within Norden, that is to say, its focus is on the present-day Nordic countries. The concept of Norden and the special qualities of being ‘Nordic’ (shared and non-shared concepts and identifications) must obviously be open to critical analysis, for otherwise we would simply be replacing methodological nationalism with methodological Nordicism. Particularly in the case of Denmark and Sweden, and to a certain extent Norway, the nineteenth-century historiographical constructions of the nation went hand in hand – and were compatible – with the construction of an overarching Scandinavian or Nordic nation and the idea of a shared Scandinavian or Nordic past. In many instances, as already mentioned above, the Scandinavian or Nordic region served merely as a more expansive way of framing the nation-states instead of adding an alternative spatial dimension to them. This is why the double bond of region-building as nation-building must be acknowledged, and vice versa (Mishkova, Stråth and Trencsényi 2013: 258–61, 264),8 which is the topic of Kristín Bragadóttir’s chapter in this volume. By focusing on Danish and Icelandic historians’ interpretations of Scandinavism she highlights the complex interplay of ‘macro- and



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micro-nationalisms’ that have been characteristic of such nineteenth-century European pan-isms as Scandinavism. In the eyes of scholars from outside the region, the Nordic countries often appear quite similar to one another. To cite the Israeli-American sociologist Amitai Etzioni, ‘There is no region in Europe and few exist in the world where culture, tradition, language, ethnic origin, political structure, and religion – all “background” and identitive elements – are as similar as they are in the Nordic region’ (Etzioni 1965: 220–21). To be sure, Nordic histories certainly have a number of common features. Already the long political history of Nordic composite states, ever since the founding of the Kalmar Union in 1397,9 makes it difficult to discuss the past of one Nordic country without mentioning any of its neighbours. Other features that have been used to justify the thesis of a specific Nordic developmental trajectory include such elements as the idea of an original peasant freedom and the strong role of the peasantry in local government; a socially inclusive and democratic concept of the people (folk; in Finnish, kansa) that diverges from more holistic and populist notions of German Volk and völkisch; the religious identity of folk and state, which is institutionalized in Lutheran state churches; the integration, more or less contested, of social movements (such as labour, revivalist and feminist movements) into the national narratives; and finally, the present-day issues of international migration and the history of minorities whose numbers have traditionally been relatively small. Moreover, the development of the Nordic countries into welfare states also followed rather similar patterns. In short, there is a long tradition of viewing the Nordic countries as one region based on considerable historical evidence (see, e.g., Sørensen and Stråth 1997; Götz 2003; Myhre 2012: 280). At the same time, however, it has to be emphasized that these parallels are by no means self-evident given the diversity of the Nordic historical heritage. First, the Nordic countries have had diverse cultural and geographical inclinations (Drang) in the East-West/South-West axis. Roughly speaking, this axis separates the Atlantic, sea-facing Norden (Iceland, Norway and, with some reservations, Denmark) from the Baltic, land-based Norden (Finland and Sweden).10 Even today, these different inclinations are reflected in the fact that Denmark, Iceland and Norway are member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whereas Finland and Sweden have remained militarily non-aligned countries. Second, the Nordic countries represent historically different ideal types of nations. Denmark and Sweden have a long history as composite states, Norway and Iceland have interrupted state histories, and Finland was never an independent state before 1917. Third, the past power relationships have been reflected in the construction of centres and peripheries within Norden. In historical scholarship, similar to many other academic fields, Copenhagen and Stockholm until

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the Second World War played the role of centres to which more peripheral actors travelled to have access to source materials in the archives of the old capitals and, simultaneously, to appropriate new ideas to apply to local contexts. In the case of Norway and Iceland, Copenhagen was also the major university town until 1811 and 1911, respectively, when the present-day University of Oslo and the University of Iceland were founded.11 Finally, the strong tradition of national(ist) history writing has tended to emphasize the uniqueness of each country, thus undermining similarities and emphasizing differences. According to one playful remark, this has resulted in the idea of ‘one Nordic model with five exceptions’ (see Østergård 1997: 42–47, 69–70; citation in Hilson 2008: 113). In striking a balance between shared histories and imagined communities, a useful theoretical concept is the German term Geschichtsregion (‘history region’ or ‘historical region’), which has its origins in the interwar debate on how to define ‘Eastern Europe’. To cite the historian Stefan Troebst, the term ‘stands for the construction of a meso-region which over a long period of time is characterized by an individual cluster of social, economic, cultural, and political structures and which is larger than a single state yet smaller than a continent’. As Troebst emphasizes, it is, above all, a heuristic concept for comparative and entangled histories approaches in order to identify transnational or translocal structures, features and linkages common to a constructed meta-region that is, in general, not congruent with geographical or political boundaries. Thus, a historical region should definitely not be perceived in an essentialist or geo-determinist manner (Troebst 2003, citation on 173). On the contrary, the well-known dynamism and flexibility of such concepts as Norden, Scandinavia, the Nordic countries and Northern Europe over time should prevent scholars from resorting to the self-fulfilling prophecy of employing regional concepts.12 In addition to being a historical region, Norden can be defined as a historiographical region. To borrow from the historian Jan Eivind Myhre’s definition, this term refers to a meso-region whose countries, or parts of them, cooperate in terms of historical organizations, conferences, joint research projects and more informal networks. It may also refer to historical debates or discourses as to whether such regions exist in the first place and, if so, what they consist of. Historiographical regions are usually seen as having come about as a result of one or more of the following interrelated elements: mutually understandable languages, a common historical heritage or a common geopolitical situation (Myhre 2012: 280).13 Similar to the notion of Norden as a historical region, its history as a historiographical region is long and entangled. For instance, the histories written at the Royal Academy of Turku in Finland (the present-day University of Helsinki) from the seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century



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belong to the genre of writing about the history of the Swedish Realm, while simultaneously following European trends of biblical and state histories quite closely (Tommila 1989: 23–41). Along with the rise of nineteenthcentury ‘scientific’ history, the European intellectual impulses that shaped professional historiography in the Nordic region continued to be more or less the same from the time of German idealism and the critical spirit of Historismus onwards. In addition to wide-ranging personal contacts, the institutionalization of a transnational Nordic academic community took place at the turn of the twentieth century; it was initially based around and reinforced by the Congresses of Nordic Historians (Nordiska historikermötet), particularly since the 1920s. After the Second World War, the notion of a common Nordic historiographical region was further asserted, first through the founding of two English-speaking historical journals, Scandinavian Economic History Review (1953) and Scandinavian Journal of History (1976), and, second, by arranging Nordic Historians’ Conferences on Historical Method (Nordiska historiska metodkonferenserna) from 1965 to 1993 and Nordic Women’s and Gender Historians’ Conferences (Nordiska kvinnohistorikermötet) from 1983 onwards. Furthermore, closer cooperation among Nordic historians has been encouraged through the incentive of public research funding for joint projects. The present volume is a prime example of this official promotion of inter-Nordic research cooperation, as it is based on a four-year research project funded by the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS).14 Once again, it must be emphasized that this rich array of diverse interNordic activities has by no means resulted in a ‘Nordic regime of historiography’ in the sense that one could define a distinctive ‘Nordic school’ of interpretation, theory or methodology. Somewhat paradoxically perhaps, as already mentioned, the undeniably strong sense of regional communality in the Nordic countries has rather been based on the assumption of the distinctiveness of each Nordic nationality to the extent that the much-promoted idea of ‘Nordicity’ seems to reveal itself mostly through the separate nation-states. For instance, Finns have emphasized the Nordic nature of their history, society and culture in contrast to the East without any reference to similarity with Denmark.

The concept of region in overcoming methodological nationalism The most obvious reply to the challenge that globalization poses to historiography would be to simply abandon the nation-state framework. The usefulness of global, long-term macro-history notwithstanding, our aim is,

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in part, to qualify knowledge with respect to the national framework rather than abandoning it entirely. Since our aim is also to distinguish between the political currents and methodological benefits both inherent in any challenge of globalization, we have considered other ways to approach the problem than merely resorting to global history. The concept of region is not in and of itself a sinecure to the maladies of methodological nationalism. This is evident from recent research, and perhaps one could argue further that regional history, just like universal history, often serves as an amplifier in projecting the national framework onto the larger screen of progressive civilization. But the lesson to be learned here is not that regionalism has been futile or compromised. Rather, it is a lesson that concerns one of the most basic assumptions about knowledge: that the general by default is worth more than the particular. This is arguably one of the notions underpinning the present temptation to simply abandon the national framework for more general ones, a temptation that promises an effortless conceptual escape from national narrow-mindedness to broad-minded global perspectives. The movement from the particular to the general is, however, a false view of how progress works in empirical sciences, which both history and natural sciences belong to. Already at the end of the nineteenth century, historians dreamed of mimicking natural science in the sense that some general laws of history could be sought out and established. This yearning was based on a one-sided and static view of the natural sciences. Viewed dynamically, that is historically, it is evident that knowledge in the natural sciences has improved via a consistent interplay between the particular and the general. The perceived ‘laws of nature’ have crumbled time and again in the face of inferences from very particular experiments. We would like to launch regionalism as a sort of testing ground, a laboratory perhaps, where a discussion of the national and the global in historiography can be furthered, while at the same time avoiding the superficiality that might be the result of an all too effortless shift of conceptual frameworks. Instead of just substituting a single one-sided methodology for another, our methodological strategy is to add alternatives and to counter methodological nationalism with plurality. A globalist, internationalist discourse cannot stand as the sole option. The regional alternative can be quite useful in the present situation, when the task is, on the one hand, to criticize methodological nationalism, and, on the other, to avoid conveying political messages in the language of methodology. The choice to regard Norden as a historical and historiographical region is not simply a device to limit our investigation; nor is it a postulate that transnational or translocal regions and region-building would be somehow more ‘natural’ or ‘disinterested’ than the nation-state and nation-building framework. Indeed, the construction



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of diverse regional categories has been an inseparable part of empire-building and state-building during both the era of empires and the era of modern nation-states. Regionalist, imperialist and nationalist projects have been closely interwoven, and these distinctions often collapse when particular examples are addressed (Applegate 1999: 1164–65; Arias 2010: 30–31; see also Jalava 2013: 247–48). The raison d’être of methodological nationalism was, and arguably is, identity formation. Popular Finnish historiography from the early nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century was, according to Pertti Haapala’s chapter in this book, quite successful as an aspect of methodological nationalism in this respect. Frank Ankersmit has recently argued that the quest for identity is essential to all writing of history. Several objections can certainly be raised to this perspective, and our view of identity formation is decidedly more on the constructivist and spatialist side than that of the neo-essentialist Ankersmit (Ankersmit 2012: 4). But he is still undoubtedly correct in suggesting that identity formation and historiography are tied so closely together that one cannot hope to ‘solve the problem’ once and for all. The ambiguity of identity – selective perceptions, cults of origin, the ‘othering’ of counterparts and so on – is a problem tied so closely to historiography that one cannot hope to escape it simply by abandoning the national framework or adopting an ontology that declares everything outside of the academy to be semi-real social constructs. The solution to this dilemma is to acknowledge the agency inherent in the writing of history and to acknowledge also the bias inherent in the methodological choices all historians have to make. This leads us to the second reason as to why we have settled for the concept of Norden instead of other existing alternatives, such as Scandinavia, Northern Europe or the prolific globalist discourse. We did this because the concept of Norden, in its modern political framework, holds a political bias that we prefer to the bias of existing alternatives. There is a certain Nordic legacy that we must consider when we ourselves engage in region-building in the historiographical field. As already mentioned, international observers have often highlighted the similarities between the Nordic countries as the main reason for considering Norden a coherent region. This, however, is not our approach. Setting aside the many cultural similarities of the Nordic societies stretching from the twelfth century into the welfare states of the twentieth century, setting aside also the classical, the German and other pre-modern conceptions of Norden (Kliemann 2005), and focusing instead on the modern political concept (Østergård 2013), we think that such a Nordic legacy might consist of a successful mixing of the national framework and transnational reflexivity, a social and cultural process, rather than a fixed geographical space. This means, for example, that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

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might belong to our historical and historiographical region, as we indeed look forward to in the continued transnational mapping of Nordic historians (Branch 1999). The preconditions for a ‘post-imperial’ Norden were created in the crucial years of 1809 and 1814. The struggle for supremacy in the Baltic Sea region between Sweden and Denmark had from the early sixteenth century been the decisive political conflict in the area. It had waned gradually since the end of the Swedish Realm in 1721, and the Russian Empire had since then emerged as the dominating military force in the region, pushing the former ‘arch-enemies’ into similar positions. The new ‘Scandinavian’ spirit still reverberated with imperial aspirations. Finland belonged to the Russian Empire beginning in the year 1809, and Sweden consequently adapted a loose and dim union with Norway, as had Denmark with Iceland. Political amateurs dreamed of a new Scandinavian ‘superstate’, and the Danish monarchy was quite interested in gaining Swedish support for the upcoming conflict over Schleswig-Holstein, still a part of Denmark until its defeat by Prussia and Austria in 1864. After that, imperial reverberations gave way to cultural and political emancipation processes that were, at least in certain circles, quite vacuous. Many aspects of these processes simply mirrored a lust for entertainment and spectacle among the nobility, such as the 1901–1926 Nordic precursor to the Winter Olympics, Nordiska spelen, which were usually held in Stockholm (Ljunggren 1997). But prominent intellectuals rarely took part in these types of activities. In Nordic historiography, there was no topos of translatio imperii like, for instance, Byzance après Byzance (1935), which the Romanian scholar Nicolae Iorga produced for the Balkan region. The purpose of the regional dimension at the beginning of the twentieth century was not to present a unity, cooperative framework with respect to the outside world, as with the economic cooperation underpinning the present-day European Union. To be fair, the Nordic regional dimension has never been very strong compared to the national dimension. Nonetheless, its potential helped to increase self-reflexivity within and between existing nation-states. The independence of the various Nordic countries seemed natural at this point, and such an awareness promoted mutual recognition of common interests. An interesting tension between the historical and the historiographical region evolved, which, in some cases, served to balance out nationalism in the above-mentioned sense. An example of this evolving process is provided in Ingi Sigurðsson’s chapter ‘The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography’. Sigurðsson’s chapter focuses on the importance of Grundtvigianism, a particular brand of Danish historical nationalism, for the country of Iceland, where it was institutionalized based on the Danish folk high school movement and at the emerging University of Iceland in the capital city of Reykjavik. As it



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turned out, the originally Danish idea was ultimately used to combat Danish imperialism. This demonstrates the extent to which a certain type of nationalism had become self-sufficient and self-regulatory in the historiographical region of Norden. The most typical feature of the transnational historiographical region most probably has to do with the networks formed between historians. Several chapters in our volume touch upon this theme, but none more diligently than Pelle Oliver Larsen’s ‘Nordic networks at work: power struggles in the Scandinavian historical field, 1935–1942’. Larsen’s study focuses on the competition for professorial chairs in the Scandinavian countries. As it turns out, there were no transnational applications for professorial chairs, although expert reviewers were often recruited from the neighbouring countries in an attempt to add objectivity to the often-infected disputes for chairs. Attempts were made to form transnational networks to control the Nordic field of historiography, and sometimes the expectations regarding social relations were fulfilled, while at other times historians were disappointed. A different type of network existed between the Swedish economic historian Eli F. Heckscher and the Finnish historian Eino Jutikkala. Sweden, in particular, was similar to the UK in that the disciplines of history and economic history had been divided into separate departments. Therefore, Heckscher, Sweden’s most respected historian at an international level in the twentieth century, was in many ways an outsider among the national community of historians. His wide-ranging ideas on how to reconcile the national and the international contexts found their most natural Nordic counterpart in Jutikkala. Despite being almost thirty years his junior, Jutikkala similarly was subject to the relative outsider status of an economic historian, particularly during his early career, and so he considered Heckscher something of a role model.15 In the chapter ‘The rhythm and implicit canon of Nordic history by Eli Heckscher and Eino Jutikkala’, Petteri Norring compares the periodizations that both historians used in their respective histories, demonstrating that there were important similarities between them: both tried to reconcile the framework of the nation with the supposedly universal condition of modernity. They also had a strong awareness of methodological nationalism in their own respective Swedish and Finnish traditions, which they aimed to overcome. The connection between an outsider status and a receptiveness to new research ideas is further strengthened in Mervi Kaarninen’s chapter on the Nordic female historians. Since Norden as a historiographical region – similar to academic historians’ communities in general – was a strictly male-dominated arena up until at least the 1960s, women were usually marginalized from the tradition of constructing grand national narratives.

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Thus, it is no coincidence that one of the very earliest pioneers of transnational history in Norden was a female historian, Ingrid Semmingsen (née Gaustad), who made her scholarly breakthrough in 1938 on the history of emigration from Norway to the US. An impressive feature of the Nordic historiographical region manifested itself in the efforts to revise history textbooks conducted by the Norden Associations (föreningarna Norden) between the years 1919 and 1972, which is discussed by Henrik Åström Elmersjö in his chapter (see also Åström Elmersjö 2013). The idea to revise existing history textbooks developed early on the associations, which were devoted to general pacifism and internationalism throughout the 1920s. Åström Elmersjö argues that methodological nationalism was built into the organizational structure of the project, and to some extent this was evidently the case. To some extent, the work of the Norden Associations was commendable with respect to its transnational and progressive purposes because of the fact that there was no central Nordic committee, but five national committees dedicated to cooperation. The committees systematically sought out controversial topics from a historiographical standpoint in the other countries’ textbooks. They then produced written criticisms, which often met with ‘counter-criticisms’ from the responding party. Interestingly enough, it was the clash of perspectives rather than some harmonizing agreement that was presented to the public. The transnational historiographical dialogue itself – rather than consensus – was regarded as the central value of the project, and it thus transcended the traditional notions of objectivity by way of performativity and perspectivism. The dialogical framework exposed and clarified implicit methodological nationalism in all five Nordic countries without any intention of escaping to the global level. Although the history textbook revision process ended in 1972, there is still much to learn from this enterprise regarding how to overcome methodological nationalism. Instead of focusing on general, abstract agreements reflecting how prior historians were unable to transcend their national biases compared to our present efforts, the case of the textbook revision process suggests that we need to keep the discussions relatively specific. This means that empiricism rather than a general, and much more abstract, conceptual discussion is called for. It also indicates that the transnational potential of the Nordic regional framework has not yet been exhausted, but can be put to use to solve problems other than the ones dealt with by the Norden Associations. A transnational framework has an inherent, demythologizing potential with respect to the situated methodologies of historians focusing purely on the nation-state. Last but not least, however, we would like to emphasize that the purpose of this volume is not to produce some verdict on the nation-state, be that favourable or unfavourable, but rather to further the debate on



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methodological nationalism and the position of the nation-state in historiography. Global and domestic politics, local power struggles and the geopolitical position of one’s native country obviously have had – and continue to have – an impact on what a historian accepts or rejects in his or her studies and the types of network-building in which he or she is able to participate. In the end, it is decisive how the work is received by the academic community and within the broader ideological environment. Moreover, since the cooperation of Nordic historians has often been, particularly in historical organizations and congresses, mediated through the various nation-states, it is useful to conceptually distinguish between the terms ‘transnational’ and ‘international’, although, in practice, they have often overlapped in historical studies, and cooperation among nations (i.e. internationalism) has also fostered interpersonal connections across national boundaries (i.e. transnationalism). Above all, however, it is worth keeping in mind, as the 1920 citation from the Norwegian historian Halvdan Koht in the first sentence of our introduction points out, that history – be it national, transnational or global – can be a type of living politics such that past issues and present-day controversies are intimately intertwined with one another. In this sense, as the historian Arif Dirlik puts it, the past is not just a legacy but also a project, and it is our duty as historians to ask ourselves what our project might be (Dirlik 2005: 410). Simon Larsson, Ph.D., is researcher in the Department for the History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, Sweden. He is currently heading the project ‘An Example for All Seasons? The Theory of History in Contemporary Economic Thought’ funded by the Bank of Sweden tercentenary foundation. His recent publications in the field of historiography include ‘A Circling of the Wagons: The “Historical Method” and Disciplinary Boundaries’, in Boundaries of History, ed. Jan-Eivind  Myhre (Scandinavian Academic Press, 2015); and ‘Historieskrivningen och nationen’ [‘Historical Writing and the Nation’], in Temp. Tidsskrift for historie 12/2016. Marja Jalava obtained her Ph.D. in Finnish and Nordic history at the University of Helsinki in 2005. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Political History at the University of Helsinki. Her recent publications on the history of historiography include a co-edited anthology Kirjoitettu kansakunta [The Written Nation] (SKS, 2013); ‘“Kulturgeschichte” as a Political Tool: The Finnish Case’, in Historein 11/2011; and ‘Nordic Countries as a Historical and Historiographical Region: Towards a Critical Writing of Translocal History’, in História da Historiografia 11/2013. Her ongoing research focuses on academic historiography, emotional habitus and political regimes in

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postwar Europe. She is working on a collective volume, European Intellectual Space: A View from Its Margins, dealing with the hierarchical dimensions of intra-European intellectual encounters. Pertti Haapala is Professor (since 1997) of History at the University of Tampere, Finland. Since 2012 he has been the director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Historical Research (History of Society). He has published widely on Finnish social history, methodology and historiography, and contributed to international anthologies including: The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories, ed. Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (Palgrave McMillan, 2008); War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, ed. Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (Oxford University Press, 2013); and The Finnish Civil War 1918: History, Memory, Legacy, ed. Tuomas Tepora and Aapo Roselius (Brill, 2014).

Notes 1.  In the similar case of Finland, historians developed an idea whereby the geographic and natural area and its people made up the nation and its history, i.e. any type of history other than national history was almost a logical impossibility. This was explicit in the influential works of Zacharias Topelius (Tiitta 1994; see also Pertti Haapala’s chapter in this volume). 2.  A wider European view of this relationship is presented in Berger 2015. 3.  For a general critique of an excessively nationalist emphasis in Nordic historiography, see, e.g., Kirby 1991: 10–11; Hilson 2008: 13–16. See, however, Aronsson et al. 2008 for a good (albeit sketchy) initial effort at writing a Nordic historiography. 4. In the history of the welfare state, a more universal Nordic approach has been applied by, e.g., Christiansen et al. 2006. 5.  For more on the term ‘empirical transnationalism’, see Levitt and Khagram 2008: 5–6, 12. 6.  Traditional philosophy of science has lost ground to science and technology studies (STS). Scholars in this field have come to view science in a thoroughly historicist manner, focusing on the social and cultural embeddedness of scientific conduct and objectivity claims. See, e.g., Proctor 1991; Porter 1995; Daston and Galison 2007. Peter Novick’s (1988) That Noble Dream should be seen as an early precursor to these works in the field of the history of historiography. 7.  The first English version of the book was published in 1997 and an edition that included a new epilogue by the author was produced in 2005. 8. In general terms, the Scandinavian region consists of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, whereas the Nordic region also includes Finland and Iceland. 9.  The Kalmar Union (1397–1523) was founded as a counterforce to the Hanseatic League, and it joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including Finland) and Norway (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the islands of Shetland and Orkney).



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10.  Denmark’s border with Germany has tied it more closely to continental Europe than is the case with Iceland and Norway, whereas the latter has an Arctic connection to Russia. See Neumann 1994: 62–64; Østergård 1997: 70. 11.  Uppsala University in Sweden (founded in 1477) and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark (founded in 1479) were founded in the Catholic Middle Ages, although they were soon closed due to the political turbulence of the period and reopened only in 1595 and 1537, respectively. The Royal Academy of Turku in south-west Finland (the presentday University of Helsinki) was founded in 1640 and was among the oldest universities of the Swedish Realm. For instance, it is twenty-six years older than the University of Lund, which was founded in 1666 (Svensson 1987: 16–20). 12.  For more on the concept of Norden, see, e.g., Stråth 2009; Jalava 2013; more generally, see also Schenk 2004. 13.  Diverging from Myhre, the concept of a historical region (history region) is here separated from the concept of a historiographical region because, while a meso-region may arguably have a common past, there may presently be no cooperation whatsoever between countries that once formed a territorial unit. 14.  For more on inter-Nordic cooperation in history, see, e.g., Jalava 2013: 254–56; Mishkova, Stråth and Trencsényi 2013: 296–97. 15.  Jutikkala was initially nominated an extraordinary professor of economic history at the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Social Sciences in 1947, and he managed to obtain a full professorship in Finnish history at the Faculty of Arts only in 1954.

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Torstendahl, R. 2011. ‘Scandinavian Historical Writing’, in S. Macintyre, J. Maiguashca, and A. Pók (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol. 4: 1800–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 263–82. Troebst, S. 2003. ‘Introduction: What’s in a Historical Region? A Teutonic Perspective’ European Review of History 10(2): 173–88. Tvedt, T. 2012. ‘Om metodologisk nasjonalisme og den kommunikative situasjonen – en kritikk og et alternativ’, Historisk tidsskrift (Norway) 4: 490–510. Verschaffel, T. 2012. ‘“Something More than a Storage Warehouse”: The Creation of National Archives’, in I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 29–46. Vertovec, S. 2009. Transnationalism. London/New York: Routledge. Villstrand, N.E. 2009. Riksdelen: Stormakt och rikssprängning 1560–1812. Helsingfors: SLS. Werner, M., and B. Zimmermann. 2006. ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflectivity’, History and Theory 45(February): 30–50. Wimmer, A., and N. Glick Schiller. 2002. ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’, Global Networks 2(4): 301–34.

CHAPTER

1

Writing our history The history of the ‘Finnish people’ (as written) by Zacharias Topelius and Väinö Linna Pertti Haapala

Introduction A typical way of writing history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, and in the Nordic countries, was to create national narratives. Despite a variety of forms, these narratives were stories of a particular nation, histories of ‘our people’. National narratives were written by professional historians, but not only by them. More important than erudite academic research was the wider history culture that was maintained by politicians, journalists and novelists, and above all by the reception of history among wider audiences. That is how history – or competing versions of it – became general knowledge and a basis for national identity. In many cases, the story of a nation’s past became the basis for a widely accepted political identity.1 In Finland, historical research was at the centre of political debates throughout both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The key figures in the debates were politically active historians and top politicians, who employed history in support of their particular political visions. The most influential and the most exploited writers of history were, however, the novelists Zacharias Topelius (1818–1898) and Väinö Linna (1920–1992). In a way, they replaced academic historians as great narrators, as novelists usually did, but they were not simply an alternative to academic research: Notes for this section begin on page 49.

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Topelius was himself a professor of history and Linna wanted to challenge academic historians in their own field. In other Nordic countries, novelists and academic historians stayed more clearly in their own ‘field’ (Aronsson et al. 2008). The role of Topelius and Linna as writers of history is an interesting case with which to analyse how fiction and research interact with one another, that is, what history actually is and what explains the way a particular narrative is received, whether it be artistic or scientific. The works by and influence of Topelius and Linna are but one example of how history was written in the Nordic countries at the time. They both wrote national histories per se, but they did it in a transnational fashion, which will be described in greater detail below. Both had connections to and much influence in other Nordic countries. That is to say, they became to some extent a part of Nordic heritage despite their much touted ‘Finnishness’. More broadly, their works and reception reflect the power and success of methodological nationalism in historiography and in making identities. This was not limited to Finland or to similar ‘peripheral’ or ‘oppressed’ nations, as Finland was usually defined by others and by the Finns themselves. While the case of Finland was unique in its own way, it was at the same time universal and in many ways reflects the role of historical writing in (any) society.2

Important men Zacharias Topelius (1818–1898) and Väinö Linna (1920–1992) were the two most successful and best-selling authors in Finland in the twentieth century. They, if anyone, were the two men who created the popular historical imagination in Finland by answering the question, ‘What is our history?’, and hence, ‘What is our (ideal) identity?’ They were in many ways similar and opposite types of thinkers. Topelius, though a professor of history, became famous by writing fiction, a great number of historical novels and children’s books. His Maamme kirja [Book of Our Land] was the foremost history textbook used in elementary schools between the 1870s and the 1940s, and it was read and commented on a great deal after the Second World War as well. Topelius created the canon of talking about ‘us Finns’, which has been repeated in Finland right up until the twentyfirst century. Linna was a novelist who challenged professional historians in their ideas – often quite successfully – but was never accepted by professional historians of his generation. Linna also created a new canon of seeing ‘us Finns’, one that is still much repeated in public discussions, in political rhetoric and even in business management (Arnkill and Sinivaara 2006).



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Both for Topelius and Linna, the idea of a nation was the key concept in defining history and identity. Both emphasized that the Finnish nation included all of the people living in Finland. Still, both writers emphasized the homogeneity of the nation, the need for compromise and the need to strive for the common good. Their ideal picture of nationhood failed to take into account the linguistic and ethnic minorities living in Finland, like the Swedish speakers, the Sámi peoples, Russians and other foreigners; however, when either author did occasionally mention such peoples, they were tolerated and treated fairly. Most important was the fact that they regarded ordinary people as the backbone of the nation, that is to say, ordinary people were elevated to the status of those who made history. The big difference between Topelius and Linna was, of course, the point in time at which they wrote. To Topelius’s way of thinking, social harmony was based on Christianity and on the order created by a hierarchical society. Linna’s vision was the opposite: he struggled against the old regime, in which individuals were seen as basically unequal and the intellectual autonomy of the lower classes was not respected. He believed that a true nation (or any true community) consisted of independent individuals who did not want to benefit at the expense of others.3 While this democratic idea was not very original at the time, Linna became quite popular as an advocate of the cultural capacity of the lower social strata. He was himself the best example of social mobility. He also succeeded in another way: over the course of time, his fictitious working class heroes became fictitious national heroes (Arnkil and Sinivaara 2006). Though Topelius and Linna belonged to different worlds, there are several good reasons to write about them in a single chapter and to compare their work, life, social contexts and importance. This comparison will shed light on how history was actually written in two different centuries, how it was received and how historical identities were constructed. The relationship between Topelius and Linna is interesting. On the one hand, Linna became famous because he challenged the nationalistic and patriotic historical narratives of Topelius and J.L. Runeberg, the other literary hero of the later nineteenth century.4 Linna often critically referred to the conservative worldview of the previous century as ‘Topelian’ or ‘Runebergian’. On the other hand, Linna’s own works replaced the Topelian view of history, and his version became the new national master narrative for several decades after the Second World War. Linna was even called the ‘new Topelius’ – often with both a sense of irony and admiration (Varpio 1980). Linna achieved a position similar to the one Topelius previously had enjoyed as an idealized patriarch, even having a statue erected in his honour at an early age. In his fifties, Linna was offered and gladly assumed the role of a ‘great man’ in Finnish society, a role he had criticized so harshly as a young author

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(Varpio 2004: 612–37 and 640–51). Moreover, it is of special interest here that Linna’s narrative strategies were, despite his critiques, in many ways similar to those employed by Topelius. From a Nordic standpoint, it is interesting that even though both Topelius and Linna wrote about Finland from a very nationalistic perspective, they both were well known and widely read in other Nordic countries as well, especially in Sweden. Since Topelius wrote his books in Swedish, like Runeberg, they were widely distributed and readily available in other Nordic countries. Linna’s books were translated from Finnish into Swedish immediately after they were published in Finland. Linna valued the Nordic realists (Knut Hamsun, Vilhelm Moberg, Ivar Lo-Johansson) very highly, and his Nordic colleagues, such as Moberg, Lo-Johansson and Moa Martinsson, were enthusiastic about Linna’s work. Topelius and Linna greatly influenced the Nordic imagination with respect to Finnish history and to some extent Swedish history too. Topelius’s Fältskärns berättelser (1853–1867) told of the joint history of Finns and Swedes from 1630 until 1772, and it was a commercial success in Sweden as well.5 This was natural in a way, because Finland had been a part of Sweden from the Middle Ages until 1809, when it was annexed to Russia as an outcome of the Napoleonic Wars. In other words, Finns had long belonged to the Swedish tradition. Therefore, it is no small wonder that six of Topelius’s poems are still included in the official Swedish Lutheran hymnal and he is listed in the dictionary of Swedish literature, though he was never a citizen of Sweden and his parents had also been born in Finland.6 In 1918, the Swedish Academy organized celebrations to honour the one hundredth anniversary of Topelius’s birth, and it asked a famous author, Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlöf, to write about Topelius. She was a great fan of Topelius and had close contacts with Finnish artists. In 1920, she published a biography on Topelius, and the book was immediately translated into Finnish (Lagerlöf 1920a; in Finnish, Lagerlöf 1920b; see also Zacharias Topelius hundraårsminne 1918). The book portrays Topelius and his works as fine representations of Finnish national culture, which had Swedish roots, of course, and which bound the fates of the two nations within the same cultural family. Lagerlöf even refers to Sweden as Topelius’s ‘own land’ (Lagerlöf 1920b: 388). The expression is metaphoric and refers to Topelius’s native language, Swedish. Lagerlöf’s praise of Finnish culture was not accidental or a matter of personal feelings; rather, it reflected the current political situation. Finland had just gone through a brutal civil war in which hundreds of Swedish volunteers had joined the government troops against the Finnish Red Guards and the Bolsheviks.7 Lagerlöf did not comment on the war, but she spent a number of pages describing the Finns’ long-time struggle for political freedom and cultural independence.



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She saw Topelius as a personification of the purpose of history and of God. The same sentiments can be found in Topelius’s own works, but in a milder form. Topelius died in 1898, just one year before Finland’s constitutional conflict with Russia began, which caused much debate in all of the Nordic countries (Tommila 1999: 270–89).8 Linna’s reception in Sweden was also related to war: the Second World War. Once again, a campaign in support of Finland was organized in Sweden under the title ‘The Cause of Finland is Ours’. Sympathy for Finland did not take the form of military support, but the atmosphere after the war was very empathetic because of Finland’s wartime experiences and examples of Finnish heroism. Väinö Linna happened to write about the war in a way that was just as appealing for Swedes as it was for Finns. His war novel Tuntematon sotilas [Unknown Soldiers], which combined vivid realism with a democratic and pacifist attitude, was a success in Sweden too. After his subsequent books, published in 1959–1962, Linna received the Nordic Council Literature Prize and even became a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the early 1960s. His international success was also made possible because he had some influential advocates in Sweden, like editor and author Olof Lagercrantz and historian Sven Ulric Palme, people with close connections to and an interest in Finland.9 Thus, it was not an accident that Linna’s long-time debate with Finnish historians began with an interview in a Swedish paper, Dagens Nyheter, in 1960. The interview promoted the cause of Finland in Sweden, ensured strong sales of Linna’s work in Sweden and offered him a ‘neutral’ platform from which to gain greater visibility in Finland.10 A third interesting topic combining Topelius and Linna has to do with their ‘method’, how they crafted their books, who influenced them and how they constructed their influential narratives, which moved between history and fiction, between facts and imagination.11 Both writers emphasized in their comments that there could be no history without poetry, that is, there could be no story without a poet’s intuition. Still, their audiences read their books as if they reported historical facts, the true story. The public’s realistic reading of Topelius and Linna was an obscure phenomenon and an interesting reminder of the nature of historical knowledge. Despite the fact that readers realized they were reading fiction, they seemed to be seeking the real past. Correspondingly, and logically, the basic argument made by those who criticized Topelius and Linna was that their stories were not true, but constructed, biased or misleading – even purposefully so. In the end, the influence of Topelius’s and Linna’s histories stems from the way in which their books were received, with the most important point being how their works were received by wider audiences, including ordinary Finns, the cultural elites, the media and the authorities. The reception

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tells us much about the social context in which the books were read, about the questions being asked and expectations that the books were responding to. A final topic of interest here is the political role of the authors, that is to say, their relationship to power: who supported and encouraged them, and how they and their works were used in politics and in social life. Without these factors it is difficult to understand the unparalleled success and influence of the two writers.

Men and their work Both Topelius and Linna became national celebrities. Statues of them were erected during their lifetimes. They are both historical legends and subjects of a number of laudatory books. The popular image of both is still basically positive; they are still viewed from a historical standpoint as representatives of ‘our common task’. Neither Topelius nor Linna has been much criticized as a person. So there are no hidden histories of them; their life stories are told in accordance with their remarkable work. Topelius wrote a charming autobiography, but the book ends before his academic and political career began (Topelius 1923). Valfrid Vasenius published a six-volume, detailed biography of Topelius in 1912–1931. The book provides a positive and valuable description of his life and work.12 Lagerlöf used it as her major source. A shorter version was written by Topelius’s grandson, Paul Nyberg, in 1949 (in Finnish, Nyberg 1950). The first modern and comprehensive analysis of Topelius’s political thinking and influence was published by Matti Klinge in 1998.13 All of Topelius’s works have been published in several collections, and his plays, operas and stories have been filmed and are still performed on stage. His stories were published in major European languages during his lifetime, but it is fair to say that he did not enjoy much success outside of Scandinavia.14 Linna was born in 1920, 102 years after Topelius’s birth and twentytwo years after his death. They did not belong to related generations but instead were men of different centuries who lived in different worlds despite their intellectual connections. Linna was not willing to write his – expected – autobiography and he was unwilling to comment on his own past or be commented on. He burned his memoirs and the manuscripts and, after his death, the family left almost nothing to researchers. Linna, however, did donate a large set of biographical interviews to posterity, but those tapes have not yet been published. They were used, however, in the massive biography written by Yrjo Varpio in 2006, fourteen years after Linna’s death (Varpio 2006).15 The collected works of Linna, including a valuable volume of his many unpublished essays, came out in six volumes



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in 2000 (Linna 2000). Linna has been studied much as a novelist. His influence has been commented on a great deal but not researched carefully.16 It is self-evident that Linna was the most read and the most influential author in twentieth-century Finland. All of his books were made into films and have been seen by all Finns – at school if not elsewhere. His fictional characters still predominantly represent the Finnish mentality, or at least have become stereotypes. Perhaps because of the deep resonances with Finnish reality, experiences, memory and emotions, his books and films did not achieve international success outside of Scandinavia. Also, the epic narration of Finland during the war years came off as slightly ‘old-fashioned’ on an international level, and the early translations of his books into English and other major languages were quite poor (Varpio 1979; Kilpeläinen 2006).17 People expected more, precisely because the ‘heroic’ history of Finland was widely known in Europe and in the USA, and Finland enjoyed a great deal of sympathy internationally for its fight during the Winter War. But the story offered by Linna was not that story; it was an ironic conversion of it. The lives of both men have become the stuff of legend, but they were real persons whose experiences undoubtedly were reflected in their works. They both lived in social and political conditions not of their own choosing, and both had to struggle to achieve the position they finally attained. But they lived under lucky stars – and used that metaphor in their books. They can both be seen as examples of a certain cultural and political milieu, namely the rise of integrating nationalism in the nineteenth century and its reshaping after the Second World War.

Angry young men Neither Topelius nor Linna belonged to the privileged strata of society at the time in which they lived, though Topelius came from much better circumstances. His family was educated, his grandfather was a church painter and his father was a medical doctor who was interested in folklore. The family was of Finnish origin but spoke Swedish as their mother tongue, the official language of Finland at the time. In addition, the family had close connections to Sweden. Topelius’s father had served in the Swedish army during the war against Russia in 1808–1809; the family escaped to Stockholm but returned to Finland, now a Grand Duchy of Russia, in 1811. Lagerlöf emphasizes how the family, both grandfather in his time and then his grandsons, had suffered under the Russian occupation, how the land had been morally devastated, but how a patriotic mindset had motivated them to stay in Finland and make the land into a ‘rose garden’. Topelius’s father died when he was twelve and so during his education he

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was surrounded by ladies and friendly servants. He liked reading; one of his favourite books was Anders Fryxell’s Swedish history for youngsters.18 Zacharias was ‘the happiest child on earth’, wrote Lagerlöf, echoing what Topelius himself said of his childhood (Lagerlöf 1920b: 25–31).19 It has been taken for granted that Topelius’s happy childhood and school years were reflected in his career as the author of much-loved children’s books. For this reason, Topelius has been called ‘Mr Fairy Tale’ since his own time, and his reputation and influence in this field can hardly be overvalued. According to Lagerlöf, Topelius’s books belonged to the childhood of all Swedish children too, and translations into Norwegian and Danish were published soon after as well. The best known and the most distributed book, the Book of Our Land, was written originally for children, and it was used in elementary schools as a basic history book until the 1940s.20 As an old man, Topelius remembered his childhood as an ideal way of life, the type of ‘rose garden’ he wished for everyone. He has been called an eternal optimist, kindness itself (Lagerlöf 1920b: 388–89).21 On the other hand, his reputation as a serious historian has suffered because of the idea that he primarily wrote for children; in this light, the nickname ‘Mr Fairy Tale’ refers critically to a person whose thinking is not grounded enough in facts. Interestingly, Linna was given the same nickname by his modernistic critics; he was seen as writing fictitious history in a childish way just like Topelius (Varpio 2006: 477 and 496). Linna was born into a poor rural family of ten children two years after the civil war of 1918. It has been well documented both by himself and others that Linna knew well the rural class society of his time, the experiences of the landless, the life of the crofters (torpare) and the distant and different Swedish-speaking lifestyles of those living in the affluent manors. But he did not suffer personally; his father was a butcher and somehow managed with his small business. His parents were not interested in politics, and they had no contact with the labour movement. Linna went to school in a rural village and was not very interested in and had no vision of his future. He read Topelius’s Maamme kirja [Book of Our Land] (Topelius 1985), which he later described as the most influential book he had read in his life. He was first impressed by it as a boy, and later the same book served as a framework for his historical critique. Linna lost his father early too, which meant social decline for the family and, for Linna, feelings of being an outsider. Frustrated with country life and farm work, he moved into town at the age of eighteen and worked at the Finlayson cotton mill in Tampere. He was an outsider there too. These conditions made him into a ‘social observer’, as he explains. Later, he was often accused of holding a ‘social grudge’ against the ‘bättre folk’ (better people), an accusation he always denied. Linna was a keen reader from an early age – ‘escaping the real world’ – but he had no



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artistic ambitions before his twenties. He entered military service in 1940 and fought in the war until the summer of 1944 (Varpio 2006: 22–135; Syrjä 2004: 30–118). Whereas Topelius became a student at the University of Helsinki, Linna became a soldier, but both became writers. Topelius began his career as a journalist in 1841 and published social reports, short historical stories, poems, a historical picture book of Finland and stories for children. His first full novel, Hertiginnan af Finland [The Countess of Finland], was published in 1850 and was the first historical novel written in Finland. Before that time, he had written a (short) dissertation in history and taken part in the nationalistic student and literary movement called Fennomania. He lived and worked among the circle of leading intellectuals, men such as J.L. Runeberg and J.V. Snellman. In 1848, he was already a political figure and the same age as Karl Marx. Topelius was certainly aware of what was happening in continental Europe. He was one of those intellectuals who developed the idea of Finnish patriotism, that is, one who argued in favour of further developing a sense of Finnish national identity while under Russian rule. Topelius is famous for a speech given to students in 1843, when he was twenty-five: ‘Do the Finnish People Have a History?’22 His answer was negative – because the Finns had no state and no identity as a nation. But that did not have to be the final answer. A history of Finland should be written, and that, he believed, was his task together with his fellow Fennomans. In 1854, Topelius was nominated Professor of History at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki. This came as a surprise to both him and others. He was then thirty-six, and had few scientific credits for professorship (Klinge 1998: 27–30 and 260–300). Linna’s university was the battlefields of the Second World War. He was serious when he claimed later, as an acknowledged author, that university would have spoiled his originality as a thinker. He spent five years in service and survived only through good luck. During those years, he continued reading and began writing about his wartime experiences. He took part in writing competitions and enjoyed some success. He sent a larger manuscript titled Sotakronikka [A War Chronicle] to a publisher, who rejected it. Linna destroyed the manuscript but decided to become a writer regardless, now ‘with his own voice’ (Varpio 2006: 125–27). He returned to the cotton mill and lived a double life. His hidden life was that of a budding writer who systematically studied literature, history and philosophy and was hard at work preparing a new manuscript. His first book, Päämäärä [The Goal], was published in 1947. It is a story of a young and desperate man who wants to become an author. Linna was twenty-seven years old and received some recognition as an ‘exceptional working man’. In fact, he also belonged to a literary circle of men just like himself, many of whom went on to have

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fine careers (Varpio 2006: 170–78 and 200–221).23 His second novel, Musta rakkaus [Black Love], came out the following year. His real breakthrough came in 1954, when Tuntematon sotilas [Unknown Soldiers] was published. It was a huge success and Linna suddenly became known as the first author of the nation. He was then only thirty-four. A decisive turn in Topelius’s career came with his compromise with Russian rule in Finland. This was not his original intention, but nonetheless that is how it went. His professorship was – in part – intended as a way to pacify Finland during the critical years of the Crimean War, 1853–1856. The Russians were truly worried about Swedish revanchist ideas and the ultimate loyalty of the Finns. Topelius responded by writing that Finns were willing to defend their country – and Russia – against attacks by the British and French as well as advances by the Muslim religion.24 Not everyone understood this line of thought and many Finns viewed Topelius as a traitor.25 That hurt him deeply and made him cautious about politics. After the war, the situation improved. During a visit by Czar Alexander II, Finland was rewarded for its loyalty with a number of social and political reforms, and Topelius was now regarded as a man of political wisdom, a reputation he enjoyed for the rest of his life. Later, in 1875, he was nominated rector of the university, but he spent most of his time as a writer and left politics to younger men (Nyberg 1950: 350–60; Klinge 1998, passim).26 Linna’s war novel was a thick description of the war against Russia, but his work was mostly welcomed because it was critical of the war – unlike most war novels then published. It is a widely shared interpretation that Linna actually helped Finns to accept the new political realities and to cooperate more with the Soviet Union after the defeat. He was a conformist in that sense. In both cases, Topelius and Linna succeeded in writing a story that helped Finns to construct a new national identity in a difficult situation. Linna’s book was read as a critical micro-history of the war, while at the same time it was a story of personal and collective survival. Linna succeeded in somehow clarifying what the complicated war was all about (Arnkill and Sinivaara 2006).27 Only that kind of reading experience can explain the enthusiastic reception of the book. There were critical tones too, but they came from the right, which had lost much of its reputation after the war along with Hitler. Linna was not a political person, but his writing took on a political meaning due to the nature of the times, as had also been the case for Topelius.28 The years after the war and the publication of Unknown Soldiers were an intensive time for Linna. He was reading everything, including history, and writing about his theoretical ideas. All of this is well documented in his Esseitä [Essays], which were published in 2000, and are the key to his final ‘historical’ masterpiece, more than 1,500 pages on a family saga that spans



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the years from the 1870s until the 1950s (Linna 2000). Täällä pohjan tähden alla [Under the North Star] came out in three volumes in 1959–1962. He wrote it when he was between the ages of thirty-five and forty, but he writes like an old man, the grand narrator, who puts the lives of small people in a large historical setting – which is reminiscent of Topelius. Topelius’s career and position were set by the time he reached the age of forty. He was involved in everything, but he wrote more novels, children’s stories, poems, songs and plays than historical studies. His historical masterpiece, Fältskärns berättelser [The Surgeon’s Stories], was fiction too. It became a popular work in all of the Nordic countries and was translated into English.29 It may seem strange that Topelius, the man who invented Finnish history, wrote about Sweden in Swedish, and especially the Swedish ‘era of great power’, which was not a happy time in Finland as nearly 100,000 people lost their lives in the continuous series of wars. For Topelius, that was the ‘prehistory’ of Finland, i.e. the history of Finland emerged from the Swedish tradition after it had been annexed to Russia. He was convinced that the Swedish culture and language (his mother tongue) would ultimately disappear in Finland. Although The Surgeon’s Stories was fiction, it was based on well-known historical facts. Topelius employed the widely read works of Anders Fryxell and Erik Gustaf Geijer. At the centre of the novel are the succeeding generations of two families, a noble family and a peasant family. It is a story about two social classes, about the king and the people, and about Sweden and Finland struggling in the European wars. Typically, Topelius emphasized the role of the ‘free’ peasants and their loyalty to the king while condemning the nobility for its selfishness. Here, he followed Geijer as opposed to Fryxell. This strategy fit well with the idea of the emerging history of the Finnish people (folk). Although popular in Sweden, Topelius was also criticized for reworking Swedish history into Finnish history. The criticism was justified. Topelius’s fiction was a typical narrative in that it produced an imagined history of an imagined nation – and did it so well that readers could easily imagine themselves living in that world. Here, Topelius succeeded as well as his model, Walter Scott (Engman 2009: 249–67; Hatavara 2015; Syväoja 1998).30 Topelius’s story of the shared history with Sweden ends happily before the tragic war in 1808–1809. No one, except for a few nobles, wished for annexation to Russia, but when it happened the elites still saw many new opportunities. A new, more or less separate social entity called ‘Finland’ emerged, with its own legislation and administration. A new kind of identity gradually developed, one that reflected the new conditions. ‘We are no more Swedes, we will not become Russians, let us be Finns’ became a wellknown phrase connected to A.I. Arwidsson.31 Topelius was one of those

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elites who adjusted and turned the defeat of 1809 into a victory of sorts. A hundred years later, Linna ends his war novel with the same idea, but told in the form of a sports joke: ‘The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics won, but the good second was the small and persistent Finland’.

The Book of Our Land Topelius’s best known and most influential work was, however, the Book of Our Land (first published in Swedish1875; in Finnish, 1876). It was a kind of synthesis of his thinking, though it was intended as a school textbook. The last print, edited by Topelius himself, had two hundred titled chapters and consisted of almost six hundred pages.32 Several shorter versions were printed too. It was printed fifty-two times in Finnish and twenty in Swedish (three million copies) and was read in all Finnish schools and widely in Sweden as well, where it was published and sponsored by powerful Albert Bonnier. The book was still in use when Väinö Linna went to school. It is difficult to explain why the book had such a powerful influence; it was not simply forced reading. The best guess is that people found in it an ideal identity. The educators at least thought of it in that way. Topelius said that his book was ‘a gift from above’. Its purpose was to teach the history of Finland, to teach people about themselves and to present the uniqueness of the nation. It was a politically savvy book too. The original version was pro-Finnish, but without being anti-Swedish or anti-Russian. In the twentieth century, the book was frequently revised, with some chapters left out and new ones added in. Outdated chapters were removed, facts were corrected and new chapters were written by professional historians like Eino Jutikkala. Additions mostly followed the new phenomena of everyday life. Cars and other new technology were introduced when describing the modern world, and political changes such as independence in 1917 and the Winter War of 1939 were told in the style of Topelius. These minor additions clearly changed the political leanings of the book after Topelius’s death: Finland’s historical gratitude and debt to its neighbours, Sweden and Russia, disappeared in the newer versions. The structure of the Book of Our Land is a bit clumsy, with so many more or less fragmented chapters, but it is written in an appealing way, from a child’s perspective.33 The book opens with a chapter called ‘Home’: ‘This book tells about Finland. It tells about the fatherland. What is Finland? It is a country among other countries. What is fatherland? It is our big home’. The second chapter is called ‘Fatherland’: ‘One morning I stood on a high ladder. I could see far around … I knew that the world was big, but I had not realized that it was that big. And it occurred to me again, an amazing



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idea, that all this was our land, our big home’. After that, a mother figure tells illustrative stories about the fatherland. Chapter 7 begins as follows: ‘Now I understand. This is my fatherland. I can call it in Finnish or in Swedish, but it is always the same land. All its boys and girls belong to the same nation (folk) whatever language they speak’. The story continues with the idea that the Finns have a unique single nation, but that they lived in close connection to other nations.34 Then follows a long list of short stories about Finnish geography, descriptions of the land and important (meaningful) places, and so forth. Chapter 50 includes J.L. Runeberg’s famous poem on poverty and trust, Bonden Paavo, now with a new title, Patience, and one chapter is dedicated to the modest-looking but always reliable ‘Finnish horse’. The second part (People) tells of the Finnish people, its tribes, languages, mentalities, qualifications, culture and wisdom, and ethnic groups (including the friendly Russians, Jews, Roma and Sámi). This section emphasizes how the Finnish people are specific and unique due to their Nordic nature; other kinds of people would have not survived here. After several chapters concerning nature, the second section outlines the basic events of Finnish history, often through specific personalities. Less than one sixth of the book deals with the nineteenth century, i.e. more recent times and the present. Chapters on the Russian Czars, constitution, government, economy, school, church and culture draw a picture of a just, stable, unified, equal and loyal society ruled by the Czar. But above him were God and the law of Finland (Topelius 1985: 539 [Society and Government]). This order was not accidental. The Book of Our Land ends as it began. In Chapter 199, it is early summer and a child returns home from school: ‘The road feels long, but my heart is so full … How much have I learned since the morning I stood on the ladder at home and wondered that curious word, our land! Now I know it, or a small part of it …’. The child explains what he/she has learned about his/her own land, its history and its people. In the long list of positive lessons, ‘there remained only one enemy: laziness’. A people living in the cold land survives through hard work only. Finns had survived with God’s help. It was also God’s purpose that Finland had been separated from Sweden and annexed to Russia, where Finnish people would become a model for the less fortunate peoples and the whole of humankind (Topelius 1985: 564). The emotional story ends with the following words: ‘Blessed God, you have given me all this – mother, home, fatherland!’ It is easy to see that the child’s experience in reading the Book of Our Land is a metaphor for the emerging historical consciousness of a nation. The book was written by a university professor who explained that all history was the work of God, and so was the making of the Finnish nation. This process was supported by the Christian belief that the Finns had adopted

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from Europe and by the Swedish institutions they had inherited. When the Napoleonic Wars separated Finland from Sweden, it was not an accident but the cleverness of history that gave the Finnish nationality the opportunity to flourish. The process required, however, that people become aware of their historical existence. To fulfil that purpose, history books, schools and educated children were needed. The Book of Our Land looks like a unique book, but it was in fact a typical product of the time when seeking to put a national stamp on the past.35 The format of Topelius’s book was also widely replicated, especially the idea of presenting the fatherland and its history for children. Best known is Augustine Fouillée’s Le Tour de la France par deux enfants, which was published in 1877 and also served as an important schoolbook until the twentieth century. His model was followed in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden (Cabanel 2007; Hill 2008: 125–33). Topelius used more pages for history than others did and he also introduced the idea of the bird’seye perspective in discussions of the landscape, which is also a dominant part of Selma Lagerlöf’s famous book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige.36 In her case, Topelius was a source of inspiration, as he was for the Norwegian Nordahl Rolfsen, who first translated Topelius’s tales and then wrote a similar kind of textbook for Norwegian children (Rolfsen 1892– 95), and new prints and editions were produced until the 1950s.

Linna’s conversion Väinö Linna has explained that Topelius’s Book of Our Land was the first and most important book he read. He read a great deal, but Topelius is the author he returned to most often. Topelius’s work was a kind of mind map for Linna’s historical three-volume novel Under the North Star. He makes several direct references to Topelius’s books in it. Likewise, one cannot imagine the key character, Jussi Koskela, and his mentality without knowing Runeberg’s Bonden Paavo, a poem that Linna learned by reading Topelius’s book. The second volume of Under the North Star was published in Sweden with the title Högt bland Saarijärvis moar, which was copied from Bonden Paavo. The book series ends with the song ‘Lake Inari’ – also from Topelius’s book and hence known to everyone from childhood. Just before Elina, the major female character in the book, dies in her rocking chair, she is listening to that particular song on the radio, performed by schoolchildren. That must be a reminder of Topelius’s influence from Linna’s own childhood (Varpio 2006: 54–56). There is also an ironic chapter in Linna’s book about studying Topelius at school. The young son of Akseli Koskela, the hero of the novel and the



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convicted Red commander in the civil war, trips over his words when reading about the ‘War of Liberation’, as it was called in the Book of Our Land, against the red experience The father is disturbed by the occurrence and gives his son some advice: ‘Read with such deep thought that you really learn it …’. This is again a reference to Linna’s own experiences and reflects his (later) dislike of the patriotic education he had received. Linna had read, of course, the later versions of the Book of Our Land, which included chapters not written by Topelius. Still, as a boy Linna had been inspired by the exciting historical stories in the book and its description of the awakening of the child’s worldview. It is evident, too, that Topelius’s ideas of social harmony, solidarity and equality were appealing in the less harmonious world into which Linna had been born. In his youth, he had been told that the civil war was a topic not to be discussed, and even though his everyday life had not been surrounded by politics, he had still felt the social tensions in the community and had personally escaped them in the world of books. During his school years, Linna seems to have accepted the nationalistic interpretations of history without any serious resistance, though he was known by his peers as a witty fellow – called a ‘priest’. His critical and ironic reading of Topelius and other national narratives came later. He began to rethink the civil war only after the Second World War at the age of twenty-five, and after his first literary experiments (Varpio 2006: 56–64). Linna did not write any detailed counter-narrative to Topelius’s stories. His critique was more ideological, political or philosophical, and it was reflected in his books as references, as irony and as hints evidenced in the characters of the novels, in situations and in the narrator’s own comments (Nummi 2000; Varpio 2006, passim). He was clearer and even somewhat aggressive in his essays and speeches when explaining his thinking and writing. He was opposing the conservative, nationalistic, upper class, elitist, Runebergian or Topelian ‘ideology’ (Linna’s term), which refused to recognize the intellect of the ordinary people. He never used typical political names and did not identify himself as a socialist in the common rendering of the term. He was very disturbed when he was labelled or treated as a ‘writing working man from Tampere’, a disparaging definition for a certain type of pseudo-intellectual. Although there were true intellectuals around him, he felt like an outsider among the cultural elite and was quite nasty in his comments, disparaging some of his opponents even in his novels. In his early novel Päämäärä [The Goal], a young author, the alter ego of Linna, says that ‘second class writers don’t come from here [factories]. They are raised in the universities’ (Varpio 2006: 163; Linna 2000: 78–81 [written in 1955]).

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Linna wrote and published essays on writing, philosophy and history before and while writing his master novels, and after their publication when defending his books. Those writings prove that he was well aware of the literate world of the time. His style was original, not that of ‘culture sharks’, and his reasoning was professional. He wrote about history and society as any social scientist when explaining his approach and methodology: ‘My latest novel is not purely historical, it is my worldview projected in history’ (Linna 2000: 108 [written in 1959]). He analysed history as a conceptual presentation of reality: ‘A fairy tale as a metaphor can tell us more about the reality than a historical novel [or study – PH], which is not more than a series of observations in a poor and meaningless order’ (Linna 2000: 425 [written in 1974]). Linna saw himself as a kind of historian because he wrote about past reality, but he was not a typical one because he chose to write fiction. In fact, he was sure that he was closer to the real world and the truth than ordinary historians were. This justified his critique of ‘ideological’ history. For him, nationalism could not be the content of history as it was presented in the historiography of his time. Nationalism was an ideology, a fading idea, but for some time it worked as ‘a social bond’. He drew parallels between nationalism and socialism, which he defined as an ‘idea borrowed from the Christian belief’ (Linna 2000: 57–77 [written in 1953, unpublished]). In his later years, Linna adopted the role of a pure novelist and said he was ready to leave history ‘in the hands of professionals’. Before that, however, he openly challenged the existing historiography: ‘I was compelled to present my view of history’. This was because ‘a nation cannot hide its past forever’. He meant especially the biased history of the civil war of 1918, but he had in fact a broader picture in mind. One year before the first volume of Under the North Star was released, he described the idea of his novel as any historian would: his sources, the social environment, the actors, their motives and his methodological ideas (Linna 2000: 114–30 [written in 1961]). ‘The theme of the first part is the crofter question, which works as a socio-psychological introduction to the second part, the civil war. The third part describes the diversification of social structure caused by the war, emergence of new forms of social life, and their impact on attitudes and patterns of thinking’, he said. Linna explained that he left the urban milieu out of the novel because it did not fit into the structure, but also because he regarded the crofter question (landownership) to be the key to the history of the time. This was a conclusion stemming from actual history and not an artistic choice. He wanted to show the ‘elementary causation’ of Finnish history through the story of one village – just like any micro-historian. It was his job to correct the picture because Finnish historiography thus far ‘had been mostly just [the] abuse of history’ (Linna 2000: 106–13 [written in 1959]).



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He wanted to return history to the people from whom it had been stolen. In a famous speech delivered on Runeberg’s Day in 1964 at Åbo Akademi, a Swedish-speaking university in Finland, Linna claimed that the intellectuals had actually betrayed national history. They had created an ideal picture of the people and its past, and as soon as the ‘Holy Picture’ proved to be false, the solution was not to repaint it but to kill the model. That was a harsh accusation levelled against the elite and the generations that claimed they had liberated Finland during the two world wars. Linna said that he was so popular because he ‘liberated the Finnish people mentally from their distressing clothes’. If Topelius gave history a purpose, then Linna said he gave the Finnish soldier something that Runeberg (and Topelius) had forgotten: a head. That is, his characters, ordinary people, were real, feeling, thinking and reasoning individuals. In the ‘bourgeois ideology’, they were just playing roles written by others (Linna 2000: 238–51 [written in 1964, unpublished]).

The battle with historians Linna’s war novel, Unknown Soldiers, prompted much discussion, admiration and hatred, but no real historical debate. Linna was criticized for insulting Finnish soldiers and especially the honour of officers and the Lotta Svärd, the female volunteers who worked at the front (Varpio 2006: 340–75). The ‘historical facts’ of the novel and Linna’s critique of wartime policies were mostly accepted. The war had just ended, wartime leaders were sentenced for cooperating with Nazi Germany and the Russians put pressure on Finland, but the country remained unoccupied and independent. In this situation, and later, Linna was credited with the fact that his novel was important in summarizing the recent wartime experiences and dealing with so many traumas, both political and personal (Kinnunen and Kivimäki 2012).37 The second success, Under the North Star, dealt with an even deeper trauma, the civil war of 1918. This war had not been handled openly during the prior decades and people had been repressing a great deal of sorrow and hate. The reception of Linna’s book was largely enthusiastic. On the other hand, many colleagues, the modernists, regarded the book as oldfashioned, even nationalistic, storytelling. Some said that it was good history but bad literature, while others, the conservative critics, said that Linna’s stories were good literature but bad history. Among them were professional historians, who felt that Linna had entered their territory. Many were hurt by the claim that Finns had been lied to about their past. Linna replied that he was not accusing historians of lying, but he simply asked what they were

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doing when Finnish history was written (Linna 2000: 114–38; Varpio 2006: 484–515). When the first two parts of Under the North Star were published, some historians commented on its historical correctness.38 Viljo Rasila, a crofter’s son and student of Eino Jutikkala, wrote about the ‘historical truthfulness’ of the novel and found several mistakes, mostly details about everyday life. Rasila emphasized that the book was not a documentary but a novel, one that sought to describe the real past. Hence, it was important to review it from this angle too. He concluded that Linna was writing ‘in a sense false history’. While the book might be ‘a good depiction of human life, [it was] not [a good depiction] of a crofter’s life’. Linna wrote a somewhat nasty reply to Rasila and wished him luck in finalizing his dissertation. Afterwards, Jutikkala referred to Rasila’s work when he criticized the public discourse for neglecting the results of recent research. He did not mention Linna by name, but Linna’s novel was the reason Jutikkala chose to write about ‘Facts and Dogmas’, as his article was titled (Jutikkala 1961). Jutikkala wanted to prove that the ‘crofter question’ was not the reason for the civil war in 1918, as was widely believed by Linna and his readers. Jutikkala was right, of course: the war had broader roots and it was largely an urban conflict. Linna’s story is an outline of the experiences of those from rural southern Finland. In that environment, no doubt, the land question was acute and it was politicized in the fashion depicted by Linna (Haapala 2014). Another young historian and later professor, Seikko Eskola, wrote a review entitled ‘The Historian Väinö Linna’. He was asked to write the review for the leading student paper ‘because Linna’s book was history, not literature’. Eskola also found mistakes in the areas he was studying, in the political history of social policy. In addition to Eskola, several critics noted that Linna’s portrayal of the educated people of the time was not ‘true’ but a rancorous caricature. This was certainly the case (Haapala 2001). The actual battle with historians began with Linna’s interview in Dagens Nyheter, the leading newspaper in Sweden, in November 1960. Before that, his books had been translated into Swedish and were given excellent reviews by such prominent figures as Jörn Donner, Olof Lagercrantz, Vilhelm Moberg, Moa Martinsson, Ivar Lo-Johansson and the historian Sven Ulric Palme (whose father was killed in the civil war as a volunteer on the White side) (Varpio 2006: 389, 499 and 577–78). The interview in Dagens Nyheter was titled ‘Väinö Linna and the White Lie of Finland’.39 Linna stated that ‘the truth had been hidden … history had been falsified … and the public life of independent Finland was based on a lie’, among other things. The editor simplified his accusations by writing that Under the North Star was ‘a re-evaluation of the civil war’. Finnish historians did not react immediately, but they formulated a harsh attack two weeks



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later when a Swedish-language Finnish paper, Hufvudstadsbladet, asked their opinion of Linna’s claims. In a widely disseminated article, ‘Who Is Right about 1918?’, all of the historians (six men) answered that Linna wrote only the ‘red truth’ and actually nothing new.40 Pentti Renvall, the highest authority in the field at the time, made it clear that Linna’s interpretation was not accepted in Finland, contrary to what some in Sweden believed. Linna had chosen a very one-sided view. While Renvall acknowledged that Linna had the right to do this as a novelist, from the standpoint of history his work had to be evaluated by scientific standards, and in that respect Linna was on weak ground. Renvall concluded by saying that ‘Linna has a frightening lack of historical perspective and knowledge’.41 It is evident that Renvall had not read the novel and so he used the space to provide his own explanation of events: the Reds attacked the legal government and were punished accordingly. Sven Lindman was more moderate and said that merely counting bodies and presenting half-truths did not help promote the cause of history. It would take time to find a more balanced synthesis. Yrjö Blomstedt emphasized that the truth had not been hidden and that Linna was simply not familiar with the recent research, such as Juhani Paasivirta’s book Finland in 1918 (Paasivirta 1957). Blomstedt concluded: ‘The re-evaluation of 1918 doesn’t come from Tampere’.42 He was supported by Professor L.A. Puntila, who also reminded readers of Paasivirta’s work and advised Linna to keep out of historians’ field of study because he had no competence there; he also cautioned that Linna should be more careful in the way he expressed things because so many read his work. The only one who was somehow positive about Linna’s novel was a professor of political science, Jan-Magnus Jansson. He did not comment much on Linna’s book, but reminded readers that a purely legal perspective on the revolt might be too narrow and that the motives of the Reds needed to be understood as well. Jansson also referred to Paasivirta’s study. It is interesting that so many critics mentioned Paasivirta. When his book, the first balanced study of 1918, was first published a few years before Under the North Star, professional historians like Puntila had not viewed it favourably at all. In a short debate among historians, Paasivirta remained alone in his perspective.43 His book was not largely known or accepted; it was read, however, mostly by leftists and by Väinö Linna himself. It became known much later that Paasivirta and Linna had been in contact with one another and that the publisher had hired Paasivirta to review Linna’s manuscript – to avoid mistakes with respect to facts. In the debate with other history professors, Paasivirta had helped Linna privately (Varpio 2006: 428–29 and 503). Linna’s response to historians included comments on the major historical facts, including the struggle over the Law of Supreme Power enacted

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in Finland in the summer of 1917.44 He did not take back his claims that conservatives had lied to the people, but he avoided criticizing individual historians: ‘I did not talk about the possible good purposes our historians may have. Instead, I ask what actually happened’. Linna was typically ironic about ‘the coming objective historiography’ and about his ‘inability’ to understand history, saying, ‘That might be the case, but perhaps not a predetermined truth’ (Linna 2000: 114–38). Linna’s major argument in his defence was that in previous historiography the workers had not been seen and analysed as subjects of history but merely as the antithesis of the White narrative, i.e. the official history. Accordingly, the working people had no rational motives and their actions were explained by their ‘deficiency’. Linna denied that he was writing in favour of the Reds. Instead, he wrote that he wanted to explain the roots and mechanisms of the revolt. He congratulated Yrjö Blomstedt, son of an elite family, for not knowing the true meaning of misery. With respect to the claims about the Russian impact on the revolt, Linna answered with a joke: ‘A crofter and father in Tavastland may buy a television if his neighbour has one, but he does not run through the forest killing people simply because that happens to be a fashion in the neighbourhood [Russia]’ (Linna 2000: 114–38). In the debate, Linna played the role of historian in such a way that he entered their territory, and his arguments could have been written by any historian. Later, he emphasized that his books were novels not historical accounts, but in 1960–1961 and prior to that he had strongly defended his ‘view of history’ and his purpose, i.e. to ‘explore the real causalities of the historical phenomena and the people’s real motives’. He called his analysis ‘sociology’, which, according to him, threatened bourgeois historiography, which to his way of thinking was not very advanced methodologically anyway (Linna 2000: 114–38). Today, this critique sounds justified: Finnish historiography in the 1950s and 1960s was stuck in methodological nationalism and in a simplistic type of historicism: ‘We didn’t theorize and were proud of it’ (Virrankoski 1991; Ahtiainen & Tervonen 1996).

The peace after the war Linna won the battle against the historians, at least in the public arena. He became a celebrity whose views were asked about everything. Historians had to live in his shadow. When Linna celebrated his sixtieth birthday in 1980, he was at the peak of his popularity in the nation. He held an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the University of Tampere and was appointed an academician in sciences, not in literature. Linna particularly



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enjoyed this revenge against the historical community. He was honoured with a Festschrift titled ‘The Author of the Second Republic’ (Varpio 1980). The preface was written by President Urho Kekkonen, the founder of ‘the second republic’. Linna’s work had by this time become accepted as ‘official history’. He defended modernization, social consensus, the welfare state and ‘peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union’. In the Festschrift, Linna was praised by politicians and other prominent figures, as well as by historians (Varpio 2006: 562 ff). Nils-Börje Stormbom, who translated Linna’s books into Swedish and initially provoked the debate with historians, credited Linna for producing new historical research that had finally begun to correct the biased traditional picture. Jaakko Paavolainen, who had published a massive study of the terror in 1918, proved that Linna had been right in his description of unjustified violence by both sides. Matti Klinge asked if Under the North Star should be named the ‘national novel of Finland’. His answer was in the affirmative because the book symbolized, even by its very name, the idea of national integration. Klinge added that Linna was important in opening up the path to becoming new historiography (Varpio 1980: 242–43). This was a common view at the time, but in fact Linna was not needed for new historical research. It is true that he inspired public discussion, but the most important works on the civil war, on the land question, on labour history and on the Russian question were not dependent on Linna’s contribution. They were written before or simultaneously with Linna’s work, and those particular studies that came out after Linna were critical of both traditions of history writing, Red and White. On the other hand, Linna’s story has not been proved wrong in any serious way; it just does not provide the whole picture of the society of that time (Haapala 1995, 2009). By 1980, Linna himself was the only critical voice with respect to his work. He commented on his speech about J.L. Runeberg in 1964 by saying, ‘Now seen behind several cultural layers, that speech seems outdated and unnecessary’. Linna said that he had nothing against the great poet; Runeberg just happened to represent the type of ‘social authority’ under which the lower classes had had to live at the time, and from which he had wanted to liberate himself and the nation (Linna 2000: 252–56 [written in 1980]). Antti Eskola, a well-known sociologist and crofter’s son from the village discussed in the novel, explained that Under the North Star ‘rehabilitated the popular culture, which people had taken pride in and felt to be their own, but which had been transformed into signs of lower origin and lower value by the school education’ (Varpio 1980: 199–200). Linna restored the identity and dignity of the common people. In doing so, he was in good company with the social scientists who were promoting the idea of modern man and a rational society (Ahtiainen et al. 1994). Paradoxically,

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he accomplished this objective by writing ‘old-fashioned narratives’, as the modernists ridiculed him for doing. Later, even they came around to admire Linna for his writing. The debate with historians was not often remembered afterwards, as the contradictions and tensions between Linna and historians ultimately vanished. Linna emphasized the artistic values of his work and historians admitted Linna’s value for research. Also, the old type of cultural frontline between the nationalistic elite and the people was no longer relevant later in the twentieth century. The talk about Linna’s need for revenge disappeared and Linna was able to transcend his sense of inferiority. In 1955, when beginning to work on Under the North Star, Linna had written: ‘If an author with a working class background is accused of [harbouring a] social grudge, we may request as well that the people will be liberated from the way [so-called] civilized people portray [them]’ (Linna 2000: 81). Two decades later, in the 1970s, his portrait of the people was generally accepted as the correct one. Linna died in 1992 and was buried at the state’s expense – the highest official honour in Finland.

Writing our history Topelius and Linna wrote – deliberately – about ‘our history’, the past they identified as theirs and that of the people for whom they wrote. That is to say, they were constructing new identities for themselves and for their readers and creating new connections between themselves and their readers, between the past and the present. That was the content of their story, the history of a specific nation. Their method, or the form of the story, was fiction, which allowed them to create an appealing narrative structure in their books. Part of that structure had to do with how they conceptualized and contextualized the past and gave it meaning. That is how fiction works – and scientific historiography as well (Linna 2000: 523–31). The historical fiction written by Topelius and Linna did not remain in the world of fiction; instead, their stories were read and experienced as true and common history. Accordingly, their narratives replaced academic narratives, a fact that annoyed many professional historians. Still, it would be naive to distinguish their work, its reception and its impact from the works of ‘proper’ historians. Topelius and Linna created a historical imagination, just as any researcher aspires to do. The truthfulness of their work was not a problem for their readers or for themselves. For Topelius, objectivity was not a matter of evidence but the overall purpose of history: history was the work of God.45 Linna, for his part, criticized the reputed objectivity of ‘ideological’ history. He responded to the problem of truth in succinct



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fashion that his books were not true, but they told about reality (Linna 2000: 176–182 and 422–430). Both writers believed that fictional elements belong to any historical narrative. That topic can be discussed widely, but here it is relevant simply to point out that historiography, whether in an academic context or not, is just one representation of the world (Danto 1989: xiii). In the end, the most important issue at stake is precisely what becomes ‘our’ history, how it is selected and by whom. The case of Topelius and Linna is a fine example of how that process occurred at two distinct points in time in Finnish history. It is also a story of the power of methodological nationalism. They accepted and promoted the idea of national history, that the nation (or the people) was the proper subject of history. Hence, their work followed the European pattern of historiography, in which the history of a nation was the so-called master narrative (Aronsson et al 2008).46 Topelius and Linna wrote in a transnational fashion, speaking a universal language of nationalism, but they influenced a particular nation, that is, people living in a particular time and place. They produced a coherent image of the past in a very complex societal and political environment. That is typical of historiography too, and reminds us of the dangers of methodological nationalism and all dogmatic ways of thinking about the past. The extreme popularity of Topelius and Linna may be explained by the excellence of their books, but only to a certain extent. More important was that they wrote what people wanted to read, i.e. they provided answers to the critical questions of the time. Linna’s favourite book was Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He must have noticed Tolstoy’s nasty comment about academic historians: ‘modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked’.47 It is open to debate whether or not Tolstoy knew what ‘real history’ was, but he was right in that irrelevant stories do not become history, however true the details might be. Another precondition for the success of Topelius and Linna was that their answers were accepted by the political leadership too. Few authors have been praised and rewarded by the state authorities as lavishly as Topelius and Linna. Still, they have not been accused of merely seeking to please those in power. They pleased the powerful but avoided the reputation of political lackeys. Instead, they enjoyed a shared respect by both the authorities and the masses. In sum, their work and careers were favoured by the political conditions of Finnish society, which made them nation builders per se. The conditions included the complicated position of Finland between (and as part of) Sweden and Russia, which created a demand for their work: the separation and annexation in 1809, the emergence of a new state, the crisis of 1899–1919, independence, the Second World War and the Cold War, when Finns were balancing between East

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and West. In these crises, Topelius and Linna paved the way for reorienting the nation and national perspective on the past. One can add a list of accidental factors too. An important detail in the case of both authors was the fact that they had high-level supporters in Sweden, who also had their own interests at heart. The history of Topelius and Linna, as presented above, may be called a ‘social history of historiography’. The major aspect of and explanation for their success (or failure) was their role in society. That role can either be constructive or deconstructive, and often is both at the same time. Topelius and Linna promoted social cohesion, which made them politically important. At the same time, they promoted a type of historical knowledge that remained in the sphere of methodological nationalism and was a limited view in many ways, as such broad visions of history usually are. The dangers of nationalism or any dogmatic view of history have been discussed a great deal. The famous phrase by Paul Valery after the First World War is still worth remembering: ‘History is the most dangerous product of human brains’.48 In 1990, the 78th Nobel Symposium in Stockholm discussed the ‘conceptions of national history’ and the fact that the problem of nationalism had not yet disappeared. In his comments, Theodore Zeldin compared historians stuck in their profession to prisoners in jail who plan to escape. Some did not want to escape because ‘everything is okay in this prison’. Other participants said that ‘we would like escape, but where should we go, and what shall we do when we have escaped?’ Zeldin was rather dissatisfied with his colleagues who defended national history. For his part, he argued that the national identity was no longer a relevant starting point when writing history, even national histories (Lönnroth, Molin and Björk 1994: 293–94). The purpose of telling the story of Topelius and Linna here is not to defend methodological nationalism or even their political agendas, but to show how things went and to learn from it; for instance, we might consider what alternatives there might have been. This chapter has offered a glimpse of the actual roles of those who wrote our history. Pertti Haapala is Professor (since 1997) of History at the University of Tampere, Finland. Since 2012 he has been the director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Historical Research (History of Society). He has published widely on Finnish social history, methodology and historiography, and contributed to international anthologies including: The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories, ed. Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, ed. Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (Oxford University Press, 2013); and The



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Finnish Civil War 1918: History, Memory, Legacy, ed. Tuomas Tepora and Aapo Roselius (Brill, 2014).

Notes 1.  Several volumes of Palgrave Macmillan’s Writing the Nation series provide a broad overview of this European phenomenon. See, especially, Berger and Lorenz 2010, and Berger 2015. 2.  In addition to the books about Europe mentioned above (note 1), see also Hill 2008. 3. Linna’s polemic social thinking is well demonstrated in a collection of his essays, which were published as a book of six hundred pages in 2000 (Linna 2000). 4.  Linna often lumped Runeberg and Topelius together, but Runeberg did not write prose and he dealt with history only at a symbolic level in his poems, though he was extremely influential in his time among the (small) educated circles and was considered the Finnish ‘national poet’ even more than Topelius (Klinge 2004; Wrede 1988). 5.  The Surgeon’s Stories was published first as a collection of short stories in the 1850s and 1860s and later as a book, first in Sweden. See below for more information. 6.  Svenskt författarlexikon: Biobibliografisk handbok till Sveriges moderna litteratur. The series is today available online: http://runeberg.org/sfl. 7.  A comprehensive and recent account of the complex civil war can be found in Tepora and Roselius 2014. 8.  A number of European intellectuals (for example, A.E. Nordenskiöld, Ernst Haeckel, Wilhelm Windelband, Theodor Mommsen, Emile Zola, Anatole France, Herbert Spencer, Florence Nightingale) – 1,063 in all – raised their voices in support of Finland by signing a declaration known as Pro Finlandia, which was delivered to Nicholas II. Nordic historians were well represented in the campaign. One of them, Harald Hjärne from Uppsala, refused to sign the declaration because he saw the protest as incorrect. A prominent friend of Finland in Sweden was the banker and politician Sven Palme, whose son, historian Olof Palme, was killed as a volunteer in the Finnish civil war. See also note 9. 9.  Sven Ulric Palme was the son of Olof Palme, whose mother was of Finnish nobility. Her other grandson was the later prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme (1927–1986). Olof Lagercrantz (1911–2002) was the grandson of Professor Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847), the ‘founding father of Swedish national history’, and the author and editor of Dagens Nyheter in 1960. He was married to a Finn and organized the campaign to support Finland in the Winter War against Russia in 1939. 10. Linna’s visibility in Sweden was organized by Olof Lagercrantz and Nils-Börje Stormbom who translated Linna’s books into Swedish. See note 41 and Varpio 2006: 388–90, 502–3, 521–22 and 577–78. 11.  Here, a literary analysis is largely left out, which simply shows that both Topelius and Linna were familiar with literary conventions and followed the models and canons of their time, i.e. the basic lines of European literature. They were original only in the way they successfully employed the transnational ideas in a Finnish context. In the case of Topelius, numerous literal quotations are explicit, whereas in the case of Linna they are more implicit and often ironic. See Kaljundi, Laanes and Pikkanen 2015: Introduction; Klinge 1998; Hatavara 2007; Rantanen 1997; Nummi 1993 [English title: Heroes of Our Noble Nation: The National Tropes and Väinö Linna’s Novels The Unknown Soldier and Under the North Star]; Nummi 2000. For more on the ‘realistic’ reading of Linna, see Arnkill and Sinivaara 2006. Varpio (2006) has noticed how people tend to confuse Linna’s figures with real persons.

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12.  An exception in the tradition is Forsgård (1998), who pays attention to the older Topelius’s anti-Semitism, emphasis on the Bible and conservative attitudes regarding modernization, i.e. trends that are more or less the opposite of his earlier thinking. 13.  Another basic work on Topelius as a geographer is Tiitta 1994. 14.  Topelius’s writings, diaries and correspondence have been published and are mostly available online at http://www.topelius.fi. 15.  This is a basic book on Linna and his fate, written very much from Linna’s own perspective. His friends and colleagues have published a number of memoirs about Linna. See, in particular, the book by Linna’s editor (Syrjä 2004). 16.  Linna’s career and importance were highlighted on his sixtieth birthday and in the resulting Festschrift (Varpio 1980). A collection of revisionist analyses of Linna’s influence can be found in Arnkil and Sinivaara 2006. 17.  Kilpeläinen asks in the title of his article (p. 74) ‘Excuse me, is this the same book?’ A new and much-praised translation into English was published in 2015 in the Penguin Classics series (Linna, Unknown Soldiers). 18.  Anders Fryxell, Berättelser ur Svenska Historien: Till ungdomens tjenst utgifven. The series began in 1828 and consisted of forty-nine volumes. 19.  Translations from Finnish and Swedish are by the author if not mentioned otherwise. 20.  The original in Swedish, Boken om vårt land, was first published in 1875, translated into Finnish in 1876, and subsequently revised numerous times during Topelius’s lifetime and after. 21.  Whether this is true or not is not important here; he remained in history as an ideal, a tranquil and somehow feminine person. His everyday life perhaps was not always that tranquil and his thinking was not without contradictions (see Mazzarella 2009). Mazzarella (b. 1945) opens her conclusion with the following words: ‘I may belong to the last generation that was brought up with Topelius’s books … I learned to read with Topelius’ (2009, 175). 22. The speech was further developed and published in 1845: ‘Äger finska folket en historia?’ in Joukahainen, vol 2/1845, 189–217. In Sweden it was harshly criticized and it was claimed Finland had a history, that of Sweden. Nybergh 1950: 168–169. 23.  One of the members of this circle was the theorist and translator Alex Matson (1888– 1972), who is known for his book Romaanitaide [The Art of Novel, 1947]. They studied Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, new American literature and Georg Lukacs. It must be due to Matson’s influence that so many of Linna’s ideas are now reminiscent of those of Paul Ricoeur and Hayden White. 24.  A poem defending Russian war policy, ‘Ensimmäinen veripisara’, was published in a newspaper in May 1854 in Swedish and later in English: ‘The First Drop of Blood’. See Nyberg 1950: 296–337. 25.  Lagerlöf writes very emotionally about this issue (Lagerlöf 1920b: 351–67). Nyberg, Topelius’s grandson, writes that the poem was of poor quality and politically stupid. 26. Topelius is barely mentioned in a massive political history of nineteenth-century Finland (Jussila 2004) but was a key figure in cultural life. 27.  For more on the postwar crises, see Kivimäki and Hytönen 2015. In English, a good account of the war and its aftermath can be found in Kinnunen and Kivimäki 2012. 28.  For more on the public reception of Unknown Soldiers, see Varpio 2006: 318–65. The original uncut version (manuscript) was titled Sotaromaani [War Novel], and it was published in 2000. It is more aggressive and less politically correct than the final book published in 1954. 29. The original was published as a book series in Sweden (Topelius 1853–1867). A Finnish translation appeared in 1878–1882, and soon thereafter an English version: The Surgeon’s Stories (1882−1884). 30. For Scott’s influence on Topelius, see Hatavara 2015; Klinge 1998: 39–126; Hroch 1999.



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31.  Arwidsson was a radical intellectual who was expelled to Sweden in 1821 and was later declared a national hero. Actually, the phrase was not invented by him but by some of the leading aristocrats who compromised with the Russians in 1809. See Wassholm 2016. 32. The Book of Our Land was a continuation of his earlier ‘geographic’ descriptions of Finland and contains chapters from those previous texts: Naturens book [The Book of Nature] (1856), Finland framställd in teckningar [Finland in Pictures] (1845) and En resa I Finland [Travels in Finland] (1873). 33. The book has two hundred chapters divided into six parts: Land, People, Pagan Gods and Folklore, Stories from Catholic Times, Stories from War Times, Stories of Recent Finland. The quotations here (Topelius 1985) are from the last Finnish edition written and accepted by Topelius, translated into Finnish by Paavo Cajander, and first published in 1899. 34.  ‘Nation’ here is a slightly inadequate translation: in the Finnish language, kansa refers both to nation, people and folk. Elementary school is in Finnish kansa-koulu, where the people (kansa) learn the history of the nation (kansa). 35. Berger (2015) lists a number of cases, and Berger and Lorenz (2010) analyse the multiple ways of doing this. 36.  The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson (Lagerlöf 1906–1907) was widely translated into other languages, including Finnish. Topelius had a similar interest in geography and he represents the ‘national landscape’ usually as a lake viewed from above along with forest and basic rock formations. 37.  Between 1950 and 1980, more than a thousand fiction and non-fiction books on the Finnish experience in the Second World War were published, i.e. there was no ‘imposed silence’ about the war in Finnish cultural memory, but Linna’s work was simply voted the best by readers (Kinnunen and Jokisipilä 2012). 38.  The debate with historians is told in detail in Haapala 2001. 39. Mauritz Edström, ‘Väinö Linna om Finlands vita lögn’. Dagens Nyheter, 13 November 1960. 40.  Hufvudtadsbladet, 27 and 29 November 1960. 41.  Ibid.; see also Haapala 2001. 42.  The phrase refers to Linna’s hometown and to the decisive and violent Battle of Tampere in 1918. See Hoppu et al. 2010. 43.  Paasivirta’s study (1957) was reviewed critically by Professor Puntila in Historiallinen aikakauskirja 1958: 338–39; and 1959: 14–21. 44.  The actual question was, who was ruling Finland? If it was the Russians, who among them? Or, if it was the Finns, then who among them and with whose support? This was the major political crisis that ultimately led to the civil war (Haapala 2014). 45.  Topelius did not write explicitly about the methodology of history, but his colleagues and friends did; they were true Hegelians. See Koskinen 1879 [English title: The Leading Ideas in the History of Mankind]. 46. Klinge (2012) provides an insightful but fragmented account of Finnish historywriting in the nineteenth century in a European intellectual context. 47. Tolstoy, War and Peace, second epilogue, ch 1, 2298/2378. Project Gutenberg (original in Russian 1869). 48.  The citation is from Butterfield 1951: 167.

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Bibliography Ahtiainen, P., et al. (eds). 1994. Historia, sosiologia ja Suomi. Helsinki: Hanki ja jää. Ahtiainen, P., and J. Tervonen. 1996. Menneisyyden tutkijat ja metodien vartijat. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura. Arnkill, E., and O. Sinivaara (eds). 2006. Kirjoituksia Väinö Linnasta. Helsinki: Teos. Aronsson, P., et al. 2008. ‘Nordic National Histories’, in S. Berger and C. Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 256–82. Berger, S., and C. Lorenz (eds). 2010. Nationalizing the Past: Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Berger, S. (with C. Conrad). 2015. The Past as History: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Butterfield, H. 1951. History and Human Relations. London: Collins. Cabanel, P. 2007. Le tour de la nation par des enfants: Romans scolaires et espaces nationaux, xixe– xxe siècles. Paris: Belin. Danto, A. 1989. Connections to the World. New York: Harper & Row. Engman, M. 2009. Pitkät jäähyväiset: Suomi Ruotsin ja Venäjän välissä vuoden 1809 jälkeen. Helsinki: WSOY. Forsgård, N.E. 1998. I det femte inseglets tecken: En studie i den åldrande Zacharias Topelius livsoch historiefilosofi. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland. Fryxell, A. 1828–1893. Berättelser ur Svenska Historien: Till ungdomens tjenst utgifven, del 1–49. Stockholm: L.J. Hjerta. Available online: http://runeberg.org/svhistfry/. Haapala, P. 1995. Kun yhteiskunta hajosi: Suomi 1910–1920. Helsinki: VAPK. Haapala, P. 2001. ‘Väinö Linnan historiasota’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1: 25–34. Haapala, P. 2009. ‘Talous- ja sosiaalihistorian tutkimus Suomessa’, in S. Kangas et al. (eds), Historia eilen ja tänään. Helsinki: Suomen tiedeseura, pp. 70–82. Haapala, P. 2014. ‘The Expected and Non-Expected Roots of Chaos: Preconditions of the Finnish Civil War’, in T. Tepora and A. Roselius (eds), The Finnish Civil War 1918: History, Memory, Legacy. Leiden-Boston: Brill, pp. 21–50. Hatavara, M. 2007. Historia ja poetiikka Fredrika Runebergin ja Zacharias Topeliuksen romaaneissa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Hatavara, M. 2015. ‘Composing Finnish National History’, in L. Kaljundi, E. Laanes and I. Pikkanen (eds), Novels, Histories, Novel Nations: Historical Fiction and Cultural Memory in Finland and Estonia. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society SKS, pp. 79–97. Hill, C.L. 2008. National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in Japan, France, and the United States. Durham, NC/London: Duke University Press. Hoppu, T., et al. (eds). 2010. Tampere 1918: A Town in a Civil War. Tampere: Vapriikki. Hroch, M. 1999. ‘Historical Belles-Lettres as a Vehicle of the Image of National History’, in M. Branch (ed.), National History and Identity: Approaches to Writing National History in the North-East Baltic Region, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, pp. 97–108. Jussila, O. 2004. Suomen suuriruhtinaskunta 1809–1917. Helsinki: WSOY. Jutikkala, E. 1961. ‘Uskonkappaleita ja tosiasioita’, Suomalainen Suomi 1961: 6. Kaljundi, L., E. Laanes and I. Pikkanen (eds). 2015. Novels, Histories, Novel Nations: Historical Fiction and Cultural Memory in Finland and Estonia. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society SKS. Kilpeläinen, T. 2006. ‘Anteeksi mutta onko tämä sama kirja?’ in E. Arnkill and O. Sinivaara (eds), Kirjoituksia Väinö Linnasta. Helsinki: Teos, pp. 75–102.



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Kinnunen, T., and M. Jokisipilä. 2012. ‘Shifting Images of “Our Wars”’, in T. Kinnunen and V. Kivimäki (eds), Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations. Leiden: Brill, pp. 443–50. Kinnunen, T., and V. Kivimäki (eds). 2012. Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations. Leiden: Brill. Kivimäki, V., and K.-M. Hytönen (eds). 2015. Rauhaton rauha: Suomalaiset ja sodan päättyminen 1944–1950. Tampere: Vastapaino. Klinge, M. 1998. Idylli ja uhka: Topeliuksen aatteita ja politiikkaa. Helsinki: WSOY. Klinge, M. 2004. Poliittinen Runeberg. Helsinki: WSOY. Klinge, M. 2012. A History both Finnish and European: History and the Culture of Historical Writing in Finland during the Imperial Period. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. Koskinen, Y. 1879. Johtavat aatteet ihmiskunnan historiassa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Lagerlöf, S. 1906–1907. Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige. Stockholm: Bonnier. Lagerlöf, S. 1920a. Zachris Topelius: Utveckling och mognad. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers. Lagerlöf, S. 1920b. Sakari Topelius. Porvoo: WSOY. Linna, V. 1947. Päämäärä. Porvoo: WSOY. Linna, V. 1948. Musta rakkaus. Porvoo: WSOY. Linna, V. 1954. Tuntematon sotilas. Porvoo: WSOY. Linna, V. 1959–1962. Täällä Pohjantähden alla, 1–3. Helsinki: WSOY. Linna, V. 2000. Esseitä. Kootut teokset VI. Helsinki: WSOY. Linna, V. 2001–2003. Under the North Star, 1–3. trans. Richard Impola. Beaverton: Aspasia Books. Linna, V. 2015. Unknown Soldiers, trans. Liesl Yamaguchi. London: Penguin Books. Lönnroth, E., K. Molin and R. Björk (eds). 1994. Conceptions of National History: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 78. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Matson, A. 1947. Romaanitaide. Helsinki: Tammi. Mazzarella, M. 2009. Ei kaipuuta, ei surua: Päivä Zacharias Topeliuksen elämässä. Helsinki: Tammi. [In Swedish: Ingen saknad, ingen sorg. En dag i Zacharias Topelius liv. Helsingfors: Schildt & Söderström, 2009.] Nummi, J. 1993. Jalon kansan parhaat voimat: kansalliset kuvat ja Väinö Linnan romaanit Tuntematon sotilas ja Täällä Pohjantähden alla. Helsinki: WSOY. Nummi, J. 2000. ‘Pentinkulman viimeinen taisto ja historian loppu’, in Väinö Linna, Kootut teokset III. Helsinki: WSOY, pp. 5–30. Nyberg, P. 1949. Z. Topelius: En biografisk bildning. Helsingfors: WSOY. Nyberg, P. 1950. Z. Topelius: Elämänkerrallinen kuvaus Z.Topelius. Helsinki: WSOY. Paasivirta, J. 1957. Suomi vuonna 1918. Porvoo: WSOY. Paavolainen, J. 1966–1967. Poliittiset väkivaltaisuudet Suomessa, 1–2. Helsinki: Tammi. Rantanen, P. 1997. Suolatut säkeet: Suomen ja suomalaisten diskursiivinen muotoutuminen 1600luvulta Topeliukseen. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Rolfsen, N. 1892–1895. Læsebog for folkeskolen. Oslo: Jakob Dybwads Forlag. Syrjä, J. 2004. Muistissa Väinö Linna. Helsinki: WSOY. Syväoja, H. 1998. Suomen tulevaisuuden näen: Nationalistinen traditio autonomian ajan historiallisessa romaanissa ja novellissa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Tepora, T., and A. Roselius (eds). 2014. The Finnish Civil War 1918: History, Memory, Legacy. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Tiitta, A. 1994. Harmaakiven maa: Zacharias Topelius ja Suomen maantiede. Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands natur och folk, H. 147. Helsinki: Suomen tiedeseura. Tommila, P. 1999. Suuri adressi. Helsinki: WSOY.

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Topelius, Z. 1845. ‘Äger finska folket en historia?’. Joukahainen (2/1845): 189–217. Available online: http://www.topelius.fi/faksimil.php?id=59&page=1. Topelius, Z. 1845. Finland framställd in teckningar. Helsingfors: A.W. Gröndahl & A.C. Öhman. Several reprints and online: http://www.topelius.fi/faksimil.php?id=250. Topelius, Z. 1850. Hertiginnan af Finland. Helsingfors: A.W. Gröndahl. Available online: http://topelius.fi/index.php?docid=116. Topelius, Z. 1853–1867. Fältskärns berättelser. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag. Topelius, Z. 1856. Naturens bok. Helsingfors: Förf:s förlag. Topelius, Z. 1873. En resa-l-i Finland. Helsingfors: F. Tilgmans. Available online: http:// www.topelius.fi/faksimil.php?id=263&page=-17 Topelius, Z. 1882–1884. The Surgeon’s Stories: A Series of Swedish Historical Romances in Six Cycles. Chicago, IL: Jansen, McClurg & Company. Topelius, Z. 1923. Elämänkerrallisia muistiinpanoja [published by Paul Nyberg]. Helsinki: Otava. Topelius, [Z]. 1985. Maamme kirja. Helsinki: WSOY [original text: 16. edition in Finnish 1899]. The first edition in Finnish (1876) is available online: http://s1.doria.fi/helmi/ bk/1800/fem19980049/slides/001.html Varpio, Y. 1979. Pentinkulma ja maailma: Tutkimus Väinö Linnan teosten kääntämisestä, julkaisemisesta ja vastaanotosta ulkomailla. Porvoo: WSOY. Varpio, Y. (ed.). 1980. Väinö Linna: toisen tasavallan kirjailija. Porvoo: WSOY. Varpio, Y. 2006. Väinö Linnan elämä. Helsinki: WSOY. Vasenius, V. 1912–1931. Zacharias Topelius ihmisenä ja runoilijana I–VI. Helsinki: Otava. Virrankoski, P. 1991. ‘Tannerin seminaari’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1991: 99–108. Wassholm. J. 2016. ‘Kansallisen suurmiehen muisto’, in I. Sulkunen, M. Niemi and S. Katajala-Peltomaa (eds), Usko, tiede ja historiankirjoitus. Suomalaisia maailmankuvia keskiajalta 1900-luvulle. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, pp. 269–299. Wrede, J. 1988. Se kansa meidän kansa on: Runeberg, vänrikki ja kansakunta. Helsinki: Gummerus. Zacharias Topelius hundraårsminne. Festskrift den 14. Januari 1918. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskap.

CHAPTER

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The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography Ingi Sigurðsson

Introduction There are many instances in history of a Nordic thinker having considerable influence in Nordic countries other than his or her own. One such thinker was the Danish ecclesiastic, poet, historian and educator, N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). Grundtvig, a very important figure in Danish cultural history, was influenced both by the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Outside Denmark, the impact of his ideology was deeply felt in Iceland and the Faroe Islands as well as in Norway, where Danish cultural influence remained strong after the dissolution of the Danish-Norwegian state in 1814. Grundtvig’s writings were also known in Sweden. The folk high school movement was to a very considerable extent inspired by Grundtvig.1 The movement spread from Denmark, where it began in the mid nineteenth century, to Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. A number of Icelanders attended folk high schools both in Denmark, particularly in Askov, and in Norway. Many of them had considerable influence in Iceland. It is in some cases difficult to distinguish between the direct influence of Grundtvig’s ideology on the one hand and, on the other, the impact that he had indirectly through the folk high school movement. Rather, this must be seen as a whole. This chapter will to a certain extent focus on the Danish Notes for this section begin on page 74.

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folk high school movement because it played a fundamental role in transmitting Grundtvig’s ideology to Icelanders. In Icelandic historiography, the impact of his ideology can be seen particularly in works that were written for a wide audience: textbooks intended for children and lectures that were given to the general public. Here his influence is most obvious. Therefore, an analysis of historical works of this type forms the core of this chapter. In order to place the subject in a historical context, a section is devoted to Icelandic historiography in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The chapter also takes into account the particular conditions most favourable to the reception of Grundtvig’s ideology, the period during which his influence was strongest and why this was so.

Grundtvig’s ideology and the folk high school movement In the 1830s, Grundtvig began to write about the need for a new type of school, one intended for the common people and quite different from the traditional Latin schools, of which he was very critical. He was among those who contributed to the founding of the first folk high school in Denmark, in Rødding, in 1844. In the course of the next twenty years, a number of folk high schools were founded, but the influence of Grundtvig on these schools was not particularly strong. The defeat of the Danes in the war with Prussia and Austria in 1864 had a great effect on Danish national consciousness. This created fertile soil for the nationalistic ideology of Grundtvig and was a turning point in the history of the Danish folk high school movement. The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology now became much stronger than before. At the folk high schools, a great deal of emphasis was now placed on the importance of feelings of nationality, the history of Denmark, the Danish language and Danish literature. The teaching methods were in accordance with Grundtvig’s emphasis on ‘the living word’ (det levende ord); the teaching was to a large extent conducted by means of lectures. The next few years saw a proliferation of folk high schools. More folk high schools were founded in the mid to late 1860s and the early 1870s than at any other time: between 1864 and 1872 as many as some sixty such schools were established. Simultaneously, nationalistic views in the spirit of Grundtvig became prevalent in most of the folk high schools; many of their headteachers and other teachers adopted Grundtvig’s views on history as he expressed them in his writings in the last decades of his life.2 The tradition of folk high schools in Denmark remains unbroken to the present day. It is well known that many Danish intellectuals of the nineteenth century had a positive attitude towards Icelanders, in no small part because of their regard for the Icelandic cultural heritage. The present author has



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not found evidence to the effect that the champions of the folk high school movement had a special position in that regard.

Icelandic historiography in the nineteenth and early twentieth century The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography should be examined within the context of the main features of Icelandic historiography in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Icelandic historiography has a long tradition, dating back to the Middle Ages.3 The influence of various international ideological currrents is evident in many historical works by Icelanders. It is naturally of importance when examining Icelandic culture during this period to note that the population was quite small, only about 78,000 at the turn of the twentieth century. The small size of the nation and consequently of the reading public placed limits on the number of books and periodicals that were published in Icelandic. Some of them were published in Copenhagen where a number of Icelandic scholars lived, as will be discussed below. A large proportion of the scholars who wrote about history were experts in medieval studies and can be classified as philologists; some of them specialized in editing medieval works. A number of them wrote essays on subjects that can be regarded as being within the field of history, although relatively few studies on the more contemporary history of Iceland were published. A major effort was made to publish sources on Icelandic history. Lovsamling for Island, a collection of legal codes relating to Iceland and material of a similar nature, published in twenty-one volumes in the years 1853–1889, and Diplomatarium Islandicum = Íslenzkt fornbréfasafn, the first volume of which was published in the years 1857–1876, can be mentioned as examples. Historical sources were published on a large scale in many countries, but Icelanders placed relatively more emphasis on this field of historical scholarship compared with more populous nations. Three societies that were active in this publishing activity should be noted: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag (The Icelandic Literary Society), founded in 1816, which operated in two departments, one in Reykjavík and the other in Copenhagen, until 1911, from which point it has been exclusively based in Reykjavík; Sögufélag (The History Society), founded in 1902; and Hið íslenzka fræðafélag í Kaupmannahöfn (The Icelandic Learned Society in Copenhagen), founded in 1912 after the dissolution of the Copenhagen branch of Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag. At the same time, there was, with certain exceptions referred to below, a paucity of survey works on the history of the country. In the last two

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thirds of the nineteenth century, there were two plans for writing a major work on the history of Iceland, but neither of these came to fruition.4 At the end of the nineteenth century, then, Icelanders still did not have access to a general history of their country in which nationalistic attitudes were strong and expressed in a rhetorical fashion. Many other nations, in contrast, had such survey works during this period. When examining the institutional background of Icelandic historiography in a Nordic context, it is worth noting how much later a university was founded in Iceland – in 1911 – compared with Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. This in part explains the difference in the development of historiography in Iceland with respect to these four other Nordic countries during this period. In view of the position of Iceland within the Danish state, it was natural that Icelanders should go to Denmark to study. It also matters here that Icelanders at the University of Copenhagen could until 1918 obtain a stipend for four years of study, which enabled them to live cheaply in Regensen, a house used for student lodgings. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, several Icelandic scholars who wrote about history were employed at the University of Copenhagen. This meant that, until 1918, almost all Icelandic students who went abroad to study went to the University of Copenhagen. The Danish folk high school movement, the importance of which is discussed elsewhere in this chapter, was a significant part of the institutional background, as were the above-mentioned societies run by Icelanders in Copenhagen. It is significant that no strong tradition of writing about the course of Icelandic history in a markedly nationalistic spirit existed when two scholars who had studied history at the University of Copenhagen and who had strong connections with the Danish folk high school movement came on the scene and struck a new chord in Icelandic historiography. These scholars were Bogi Th. Melsteð (1860–1929) and Jón J. Aðils (1869–1920). Those of their works that included strong rhetorical expressions of nationalism, very much in the vein of Grundtvig’s ideology, appeared in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The dearth of survey works on Icelandic history can at least partly be explained by the slow development of formal education in Iceland. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the history of Iceland had only been taught to a limited extent at primary schools and not on a large scale at other Icelandic educational institutions. A law regarding elementary education was passed in 1907 and took effect in the following year. Only then did the history of Iceland become a compulsory subject, a minor one at the outset.



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The first book to be used as a textbook on Icelandic history, Ágrip af sögu Íslands [A Brief Survey of the History of Iceland], by Þorkell Bjarnason (1839–1902), was published (first edition) in 1880. The book was used at a few primary schools and at the grammar school in Reykjavík. The ideology evident in this book as well as its mode of expression are in some ways typical of Icelandic historiography in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, and therefore the book can be used as a point of comparison when examining the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography. The influence of the Enlightenment and liberalism is quite strong in Ágrip af sögu Íslands. Progress is used as a yardstick by which the history of Iceland is measured. References to the national heritage of the Icelanders are not very emotional in tone. It is important in this respect that the influence of the Enlightenment and that of Romanticism merged and formed one main current in the ideology of many Icelanders, including their nationalistic views.5 Within the framework of the comparisons made here, attention should also be given to a work that was widely read and that without a doubt affected the impression of many Icelanders of their collective history, Íslands Árbækur í sögu-formi [The Annals of Iceland in Story Form], which covers the period 1262–1832 and was published in twelve volumes by Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag in the period 1821–1855. While the author, Jón Espólín (1769–1836), held some rather conservative opinions, he can be described as a champion of the Enlightenment, the heyday of which occurred later in Iceland than in many other countries. It is difficult to discern the influence of nationalism as an international ideological current in his works (Sigurðsson 1972). It can be said that Icelandic historians of the period were part of networks of intellectuals to the extent that all prominent Icelandic historians in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, most of whom lived either in Reykjavík or Copenhagen, were personally acquainted with certain other Icelandic historians. Some Icelandic historians had contacts with colleagues of other nationalities. A few examples can be noted. Jón Sigurðsson (1811–1879) cooperated closely with Gustav Storm (1845–1903), professor of history at the University of Christiania (as Oslo was called until 1924).6 As will be discussed further below, Jón J. Aðils was in close contact with the Danish historian A.D. Jørgensen (1840–1897), and Bogi Th. Melsteð and Páll Eggert Ólason (1883–1949) corresponded with Halvdan Koht (1873– 1965), professor of history at the University of Christiania/Oslo.7 It is noteworthy within the context of the relatively limited scope of Icelandic historiography in the nineteenth century and the absence of a strong tradition of historical writing characterized by nationalistic views that such attitudes were prominent in other fields such as in political debates and

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poetry. Issues relating to the position of Icelanders as a nation were often discussed in their political debates in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This is connected with the Icelanders’ struggle for increased selfgovernment within the Danish state and later for independence. It is worth emphasizing that the issue of Iceland becoming fully independent did not become very relevant until the beginning of the twentieth century. As a consequence, the issue of a nation-state became important to Icelanders relatively late and was not a key issue in Icelandic historiography, whereas Jón Sigurðsson and other political leaders of the Icelanders often used arguments based on references to history in their struggle. In 1874, a constitution for Iceland, proclaimed by the king of Denmark, came into effect, and home rule, with an Icelandic minister residing in Reykjavík, came into effect in 1904. After that it was hotly debated among Icelanders what policy they should pursue in negotiations with the Danes about the future position of Iceland. Norway achieved independence in 1905, which clearly had some effect on the attitudes of many Icelanders. In 1918, Iceland became an independent state in a personal union with Denmark. In the nineteenth century, a number of Icelandic poets, many of whom were under the influence of Romanticism, composed poems praising the medieval period of Icelandic history. Other strong nationalistic views are also evident. Therefore, the absence of such views in Icelandic historical works is striking.

The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelanders The influence of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelanders was not limited to historiography (Sigurðsson 2004). His influence was also of significance in education and in the formation of the Icelandic youth societies movement. In the field of religion, his influence was not as strong. A few folk high schools, inspired by such schools in Denmark and Norway, were founded in Iceland in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and first two decades of the twentieth century. Some of them were short-lived. Later, some influence of the ideology associated with Grundtvig can be seen in the so-called regional schools (héraðsskólar) in the countryside, which were somewhat related to the folk high schools and were intended for pupils in their teens and early twenties. A law was passed with respect to the regional schools in 1929 when Jónas Jónsson (1885–1968), whose historical works will be discussed below, was minister of justice and education. The same influence can also be seen in some farming schools and schools of domestic science. This influence was particularly strong in the



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farming schools in the period 1907–1920. It is, among other things, clearly evident in the emphasis placed on the Icelandic language as a subject of study and the fact that part of the teaching consisted of lectures.8 One example of the influence of the folk high schools on schools of domestic science is that Sigrún P. Blöndal (1883–1944), headmistress of the school at Hallomsstaður, in east Iceland, who had been a student in Askov, gave lectures on literature at her school in the 1930s (Hrafnsdóttir 1982: 30 and 33). The first youth societies in Iceland that were to become part of the youth societies movement were founded in 1906. The model for these societies was primarily sought in den frilynte ungdomsrørsla (the liberal youth societies movement)9 in Norway, which was inspired by Grundtvig’s ideology (Kløvstad 1995), while it should also be noted that some individuals who had a prominent role in the early days of the Icelandic youth societies movement had been students at folk high schools in Denmark and thus brought the influence of Grundtvig’s ideology directly from there. The youth societies movement soon became influential in Iceland. Many members of the societies were active in public debate.10 It is a commonplace that in a state consisting of several countries and nations, the cultural influence of the core area is often strong. The countries or territories making up the Danish state, outside Denmark itself, where the influence of Grundtvig’s ideology was most deeply felt, were Iceland and the Faroe Islands. It is significant in this respect that there is a parallel between Iceland and the Faroe Islands in that the inspiration of the Faroese youth societies movement, which came into being in 1895, was similar to that in Iceland (Dalsgarð 2000). It is also a sign of the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology in the Faroe Islands that a folk high school, inspired by those in Denmark and Norway, was founded there in 1899. In the field of religion, however, the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology was not so significant. Icelandic ecclesiastics did not write much about Grundtvig’s theology, even though it must be noted that a pamphlet about him by an Icelandic theologian was published in 1886 (Pétursson 1886). Grundtvig’s ideas about ‘jolly Christianity’ (den glade kristendom), characterized by optimism and praise of God through hymns, apparently did not have a strong appeal to Icelanders. It should be mentioned, nonetheless, that two hymns by Grundtvig, in Icelandic translation, were published in the official Icelandic hymnbook of the Lutheran Church of Iceland in 1871, and that continually since 1886 there have been hymns by him in such hymnbooks. There is no simple answer to the question of why Grundtvig’s ideas about religion made relatively little impact on Icelanders. It may be of some importance in this respect that for a few decades there were no strong doctrinal disputes within the Lutheran Church of Iceland, until the 1890s when a dispute began between adherents of the so-called liberal theology, or ‘new

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theology’ as it was sometimes called in Iceland, and those who adhered to more orthodox views on Christianity. The ideology of Grundtvig was not much referred to in this connection.11 The impact of Grundtvig´s ideology can be taken as an important example – one of many – of ideological currents being brought to Iceland from Denmark during the period when Iceland was a part of the DanishNorwegian state (1523–1814) and later the Danish state (1814–1918). With respect to Iceland, there are many parallels with the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology as a case of cultural transfer.12 The role of Denmark in this connection changed somewhat in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While impulses from Denmark remained very strong, ideas were now also introduced to Iceland on a considerable scale from other countries, including Norway, the United States and Canada (from the last two largely through connections with Icelandic emigrants).13

The main features of the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography Grundtvig’s historical works are voluminous. There are many sides to his views on history, and his emphasis in this field changed considerably during the course of his long life. The central features of his views on history that are particularly relevant when examining his impact on Icelandic historiography are those expressed in his writings in the last phase of his life, which greatly influenced the folk high school movement, particularly from 1864 (Vind 1999). It must be said, however, that not all of the important features of Grundtvig’s historical works had much influence on Icelanders. This applies especially to the connection between history and religion in his works and his emphasis on a common Nordic heritage. Icelandic historians influenced by Grundtvig did not seemingly use any particular work of his as a model. The impact of his ideology on Icelandic historiography materialized in other ways. Indeed, the studies analysed here do not refer to works by historians of later centuries as primary material. However, various studies summarize parts of Icelandic medieval works. Generally speaking, the works focused on in this chapter rarely discuss the value of individual sources. It seems clear that in addition to the historical works written by Danish scholars connected with the folk high schools, the style of lecturing practised at these schools influenced the historical works written by Icelanders. When a general assertion is made concerning the impact of a particular writer of history, as a whole, questions of proof inevitably arise. While certain sources of inspiration were indisputably significant, it is important



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to consider other possible sources as well. This applies to an examination of the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology. To a certain extent, the various aspects of his ideology that can be described as nationalistic were part of a wider European phenomenon, an international ideological current. The present author, however, has not come across any direct model impacting the nationalistic historical writing of Icelanders in the early twentieth century other than that of Grundtvig’s ideology. The main arguments for emphasizing the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on some of the historical works that are discussed here are as follows: the similarity in approach between the works in question and history as practised at the Danish folk high schools; the personal connections of these writers with the Danish folk high school movement; and the laudable references in their works to Grundtvig and the Danish folk high school movement. On the basis of this evidence, it is safe to draw a conclusion concerning the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography. The generalization can be put forward that among the most important characteristics of the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography are an emphasis on national heritage and national consciousness as well as the grandiose language that is used, as both oratorical and emotional modes of expression. Moreover, Grundtvig’s emphasis on transmitting knowledge of history and other subjects orally no doubt contributed considerably to this form of transmission, among other things in lectures, being important among Icelanders. As will be discussed below, the style of the lectures that Jón J. Aðils gave to the general public in Reykjavík in the first decade of the twentieth century had obviously been deeply influenced by the lecturing tradition he encountered at the Danish folk high schools. As stated earlier, the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology can especially be seen in works that were written for a wide audience. It is difficult to say anything with certainty about the impact of his ideology on works of history that employed a scholarly apparatus, including footnotes and a bibliography, which was common internationally at the time. This applies to some scholarly works by historians who wrote works for a wide audience, which are specifically dealt with below. Various works by Icelandic historians in which the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology is evident have certain features in common with respect to their basic interpretation of the course of Icelandic history. The estimates for the period of the Icelandic Commonwealth, i.e. from the founding of the Alþingi, the Icelandic parliament, in 930 to 1262, are positive, and a somewhat critical attitude is taken towards the rule of the Danes over Iceland. Likewise, the works focus strongly on the progress of the Icelanders in the last few generations, after the nation had been through several difficult centuries. Some of these works contain a concluding chapter that exhorts

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readers, with reference to history, to work towards the progress of the nation. All things considered, it can be argued that the Icelandic historians who wrote in the spirit of Grundtvig’s ideology, chiefly through the Danish folk school movement, filled a certain vacuum in Icelandic historiography. It is noteworthy that the works of a number of Icelanders on the history of the country – works that criticize the rule of the Danes and encourage Icelanders in their struggle for increased self-government – were to a certain extent inspired by a Danish scholar, who was writing in a nationalistic vein to further the cause of Danish interests. As a matter of comparison, it can be argued that German nationalistic historiography influenced Danish historiography after the defeat of the Danes in the war of 1864. It can be said that there is a certain similarity with the writings of Icelandic historians in this respect. As far as can be seen, Icelanders did not take much direct inspiration from Germany, Great Britain or France. Among the factors that contributed to the positive reception of historical works influenced by Grundtvig’s ideology, three in particular should be mentioned: first, the prevalence of the, often emotionally charged, debate on the position of Iceland vis-à-vis Denmark; second, marked economic progress in the country in the early twentieth century (until the First World War), which contributed to a spirit of optimism among the people of Iceland and which again stimulated nationalistic views; and third, the strength of the above-mentioned youth societies movement in the first few years of its existence (from 1906). The increased prominence of such nationalistic views is reflected quite strongly in the contents of an anthology for children that was published in 1907–1910, compared with the contents of an anthology intended for the people of Iceland that was published in 1874 (Guttormsson 1993: 16–19).

Bogi Th. Melsteð Bogi Th. Melsteð completed a master’s degree in history at the University of Copenhagen in 1890. He lived in Copenhagen for the rest of his life, working there as an archivist for ten years and as a scholar receiving research grants from Alþingi and another institution. His special field of research was Icelandic medieval history and Nordic medieval history in general. His attitude towards the folk high school movement is clearly evident in an article that he published in 1907, in which he praises the Danish folk high schools, among other things for their teaching methods and the emphasis placed on the crucial role of attachment to the nation, mentioning that he had visited four such schools and given lectures at the school in Askov. He presents the folk high schools as a model for Icelanders. He refers to Grundtvig as



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the father of the Danish folk high schools, which is an indication of how highly he regarded Grundtvig’s ideology (Melsteð 1907; the reference to Grundtvig is on p. 84). In 1904, Bogi Th. Melsteð published a textbook on Icelandic history (revised editions in 1907 and 1914), Stutt kenslubók í Íslendinga sögu handa byrjendum [A Short Textbook on the History of Iceland for Beginners], that was widely used in teaching until the mid 1910s. This book contains much grandiose language and many poignant expressions of the importance of national feeling, in the spirit of Grundtvig’s ideology. Bogi Th. Melsteð writes at the beginning of an introductory chapter in the book: ‘Iceland is therefore not only our fatherland and motherland, but it is also the land that has fostered us and the land of our family. It is our own country and we love it more dearly than any other country in the world. … [W]e love the Icelandic nation more than anything else …’ (Melsteð 1904/1907/1914 [1st ed.]: 1).14 The following quote provides a good example of the way in which Bogi Th. Melsteð wrote about the later centuries in Icelandic history: ‘After the middle of the eighteenth century the history of the country begins to become a little more beautiful. A few Icelanders who go to other countries notice that their countrymen are behind other nations. … With them the love of their country awakens together with the desire to drive the nation forward. They begin to fight for the progress of their country and try to awaken the nation from slumber. Gradually more people wake up’ (Melsteð 1904/1907/1914 [1st ed.]: 42).15 In the concluding chapter of the book, entitled ‘Framfarir og horfur’ [Progress and Prospects], Bogi Th. Melsteð puts forward an exhortation to Icelanders, with references to history and with strong moralistic overtones. He says that Icelanders had recently made considerable progress. In every field, he argues, there is enough work to be done for a long time to come. The country must be improved so that it will yield more than it does at present. To do this, Icelanders must improve their level of cleanliness and add to their knowledge (Melsteð 1904/1907/1914 [1st ed.]: 113f.). It is clear that this book was widely read. Bogi Th. Melsteð writes the following in the preface to the second edition: ‘Even though the number of copies printed was not small, the book is already out of print, which shows better than anything else how well it has been received by the inhabitants of the country and how important it is to them to teach their children the history of the nation’ (Melsteð 1904/1907/1914 [2nd ed.]: iii ).16 In the preface to the third edition of the book, he writes: ‘This book on history has been so well received that now it was necessary to print it for the third time. This shows how highly the nation values its history’ (Melsteð 1904/1907/1914 [3rd ed.]: iv).17 The book was superseded as a textbook by Jónas Jónsson’s book, which will be discussed below.

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Jón J. Aðils Jón J. Aðils (his original name was Jón Jónsson, but he adopted the family name Aðils in 1917 and began to write his name as Jón J. Aðils) went to Copenhagen in order to study at the university in 1889. He did not complete a degree in history, but during his years in the city he did much archival research, which was the basis for the works that he published on the history of Iceland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He worked for a short period at the National Archives of Denmark, the director of which was A.D. Jørgensen, a well-known historian and champion of the folk high school movement, with whom he became well acquainted. Jón J. Aðils established a friendship with Ernst Trier (1837–1893), headmaster of the folk high school in Vallekilde, one of the leading folk high schools in the country at the end of the nineteenth century. Jón J. Aðils taught for a short period of time twice, just before and after Trier’s death (in 1892– 1893 and again in 1895–1896), in Vallekilde. Nordic history was among the subjects that he lectured on. In 1901, after he had returned to live in Iceland, Jón J. Aðils published an article on the Danish folk high schools in a weekly that he edited, in which he refers to Grundtvig as the originator of the Danish folk high schools and describes his position in history in extremely positive terms (Aðils 1901, esp. 53f.). An article with the same title (1902) by Jón J. Aðils in Eimreiðin, a periodical with a wide circulation, published, in Icelandic, in Copenhagen, furnishes important evidence about his attitude regarding Grundtvig’s ideology and the Danish folk high school movement. The article contains a long chapter on Grundtvig, his life and ideology, and shorter chapters on two champions of the folk high school movement, Christen Kold (1816–1870) and Ernst Trier. The article demonstrates that Jón J. Aðils was impressed with Grundtvig’s views on history (Aðils 1902, esp. 16–20). He also wrote about the beneficial effects of the folk high schools on Danish society (Aðils 1902: 57–62). An autobiography by Lárus J. Rist (1879–1964), who was active in the Icelandic youth societies movement in its initial phase, claims that the article had significant influence in the country and contributed to the folk high school movement receiving more attention than had previously been the case (Rist 1947: 115). Jón J. Aðils received a research grant from Alþingi for the years 1898 and 1899 and again after his return to Iceland in 2001, with the latter on condition that he gave public lectures in Reykjavík on the history of Iceland. Subsequently, his research grant was extended until 1911. He also worked for five years as a librarian at the National Library of Iceland. In the same year that Háskóli Íslands, the University of Iceland, was founded in Reykjavík, he was appointed senior lecturer in Icelandic history; he held a post at the new



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university, later as professor, until his untimely death in 1920, at the age of fifty-one. Jón J. Aðils’ public lectures were very popular. As mentioned previously, the tradition of lecturing at the Danish folk high schools influenced him greatly. According to Jónas Jónsson, Jón J. Aðils’ books that were based on his popular lectures were influential among Icelanders (Jónsson 1948: xxf.). His contemporaries were well aware of the fact that he had been influenced by the folk high school movement (see, for instance, Ólason 1920: 232f., 243). Jónas Jónsson’s suggestion that his experience of lecturing at the Vallekilde folk high school stood him in good stead seems very plausible (Jónsson 1948: xix). In 1903–1910, Jón J. Aðils published three books, all of which were well received, on the basis of three series of public lectures. The first one was called Íslenzkt þjóðerni [Icelandic Nationality]. It seems certain that a book by A.D. Jørgensen, Fyrretyve Fortællinger af Fædrelandets Historie [Forty Tales on the History of the Fatherland], was to some extent a model for Íslenzkt þjóðerni.18 This work is representative of Danish historical writing in the spirit of the folk high school movement, and was very popular (in 1909, when the fifth edition of the book, which was first published in 1882, appeared, a total of 39,000 copies had been printed). Jørgensen wrote in the preface to the fifth edition that he was encouraged by Captain J.E. Jacobsen to write a history of the fatherland that would be appropriate reading for the general public, especially the Danish inhabitants of South Jutland, which was then a part of the German empire. Jørgensen also wrote in the preface that one of the subjects that he emphasized were the general characteristics of the Danish nation (Jørgensen 1907: iiff.). The second book of this type, Gullöld Íslendinga [The Golden Age of the Icelanders], deals with Icelandic culture in the so-called Age of the Sagas (c. 930–1030). The third book, Dagrenning [Break of Dawn], follows the careers of several prominent Icelanders in the second half of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century. It is significant that Jón J. Aðils dedicated this book to the Icelandic youth societies movement, which, as stated before, was inspired by Grundtvig’s ideology. The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology is evident in the books that were based on Jón J. Aðils’ public lectures. They emphasize the importance of national consciousness, and lofty language and oratorical expressions are prominent throughout the texts. References to history are used as a means of exhortation to contemporaries. A few examples can be mentioned. One of the main themes of Íslenzkt þjóðerni has to do with the significance of nationalistic feelings throughout history in general, and how important such feelings are in the history of Icelanders. The book repeatedly argues, with reference to the Sagas and other medieval Icelandic works, that Icelanders regarded themselves as a nation, distinct from Norwegians,

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as early as the Middle Ages. Jón J. Aðils maintained that the Icelandic nation had certain special qualities because of the mixture of Norwegian and Celtic elements in it (Aðils 1903: 49f.). In the final chapter of Íslenzkt þjóðerni, a kind of summary is put forward that takes a long-term view of the history of the Icelandic nation. He wrote, referring to what he regarded as the chequered history of the Icelandic nation in the preceding centuries: ‘What is it, then, that has given the Icelandic nation this energy to endure? Who is this holy being who has watched over it? It is the feeling of nationality’ (Aðils 1903: 245).19 In the final chapters of both Íslenzkt þjóðerni and Dagrenning, Jón J. Aðils encourages Icelanders to avoid disunity. The final chapter of Íslenzkt þjóðerni argues with reference to history that Icelanders should avoid internal division (Aðils 1903: 247). In Dagrenning, Jón J. Aðils says of the prominent Icelanders whose careers he deals with that they died and disappeared a long time ago, but, as he put it ‘… yet they still live and work among us. Their work has already prepared the soil for the spiritual vegetation of spring among the Icelandic nation. Everything has their countenance and traits of lineage. Their ideals, unselfishness and patriotism are still a living model for the nation’ (Aðils 1910: 145).20 It must be noted in this connection that there were definite limits to Jón J. Aðils’ admiration for the Middle Ages. He did not dream of re-establishing in any form the medieval Icelandic Commonwealth. In Íslenzkt þjóðerni, where he discusses a dispute among Icelanders in the early 1840s concerning the location of the newly re-established Alþingi, he argues that the choice of Reykjavík was a wise one, implying that those who wanted to have the Alþingi at Þingvellir, the site of the old parliament, were being unrealistic (Aðils 1903: 228f.). When the complete works of Jón J. Aðils in the field of history are examined, it is remarkable that his approach in the works based on his public lectures is markedly different from that taken in most of his other works, in which Grundtvig’s ideology is not as clear. His academic approach is more down to earth and the presentation less emotional. This is evident, for instance, in his work on the monopoly trade of the Danes in Iceland during the period 1602–1787, where he does not condemn the rule of the Danes strongly (Aðils 1919), and in the texts of the lectures that he gave in his role as teacher at the University of Iceland.21

Jónas Jónsson Jónas Jónsson is best known as one of Iceland’s most prominent politicians of the first half of the twentieth century. He was one of the leaders of



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Framsóknarflokkurinn (the Progressive Party), one of the country’s main parties, for a long period of time. He was particularly influential when he served as minister of justice and education, in 1927–1931 and again in 1931–1932. He did not go to university, but studied at educational institutions abroad, including the folk high school in Askov and Ruskin College in Oxford. After his homecoming, he became a teacher at the teacher training college in Reykjavík, and also served as editor of the periodical of the youth societies movement, Skinfaxi, for six years. After that, he served as headmaster of a college run by the cooperative movement for a total of thirty-two years. In 1915–1916, when Jónas Jónsson taught at the teacher training college, he published a textbook on Icelandic history for children. His interpretation of the history of the country is obviously heavily influenced by that of Jón J. Aðils in the book Íslenzkt þjóðerni. Like Jón J. Aðils, he makes much of the achievements of the Icelanders over the course of time. Admiration for Jón J. Aðils’ work as a scholar is clear in an introduction that he wrote for the second edition of Gullöld Íslendinga, which was published in 1948. In the introduction, Jónas Jónsson says that Jón J. Aðils dealt with those particular aspects of the country’s history that were most suitable for meeting the needs of a nation that had a glorious old age, subsequently having been placed under foreign domination. Jón J. Aðils’ public lectures, Jónas Jónsson argued, were not only education, they contributed to national awakening and had a great political impact (Jónsson 1948: xxf.). In 1909, he published an article about the folk high school in Askov, in which he, for the most part, praised the teaching methods used there (Jónsson 1909: 11f.). In this article, he referred in laudable terms to the influence of Grundtvig on the Danish folk high school movement after 1864 (Jónsson 1909: 8) There is also evidence that as a young man, before he went abroad, Jónas Jónsson had been impressed with Grundtvig’s ideology. In a letter that he wrote to a friend at the age of twenty-one, he described his dreams for the future. He wished to attend the folk high school in Askov for two years and after that study for a year at the teacher training college in Copenhagen. Then he would return to Iceland ‘filled with the spirit of Grundtvig’22 and try to establish a good school for the common people where the spirit of the Danish folk high school was to be adapted to fit Icelandic circumstances (Friðriksson 1991: 26). Jónas Jónsson’s approach in his textbook is characterized by his view that emphasis should not be placed on rote learning. The importance that he attached to straightforward presentation of history had a parallel in the writings of Grundtvig and certain champions of the folk high school movement. In the preface to the second volume of the textbook, he wrote that history told in fragments, both as personal history and cultural history,

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suited children well. The aim was ‘to awaken the desire to read and acquire knowledge and the will to pursue independent work and self-help’ (Jónsson 1916: iv).23 This particular work, he wrote, should be both a book for reading and a book of instruction in homes and schools. The emphasis placed on the Icelandic national heritage in the book is prominent, and the language is in places grandiose. He described Iceland at the time when the settlers from Norway arrived there in the following fashion: ‘When the settlers settled Iceland it was in some ways still more lovely than it is nowadays. The appearance of the country was, to be sure, the same, the mountains were then, as now, high and majestic, the glaciers were white, the waterfalls were imposing, the sea dark blue and the air clear and invigorating. But the vegetation was then much more extensive and there were more species of animals’ (Jónsson 1915: 11).24 As an example of Jónas Jónsson’s nationalistic interpretation of the history of Iceland, he claimed that many men who knew the subject well regarded the monopoly trade of the Danes in Iceland as the national misfortune that had enfeebled the Icelanders more than anything else (Jónsson 1916: 44). After Jónas Jónsson wrote his textbook, he did not publish a great deal on history except as part of his political writings.

Other writers Sigurður Þórólfsson (1869–1929) was a student in Askov in 1901–1902. In 1902 he published a pamphlet in which he asked for support for establishing a folk high school in Reykjavík, with reference to the benefits that had been gained from such schools in other Nordic countries (Þórólfsson 1902). Indeed, Sigurður Þórólfsson ran such a school in Reykjavík in 1902–1903. In 1905 he founded a similar school at Hvítárbakki, in west Iceland, which he ran until 1920 (the school ultimately closed down in 1931).25 Alþingi gave grants to the school. It is significant that the regulations regarding the school, which were officially confirmed in 1913, mentioned that the teaching methods should be the same as those that were practised at such schools in other Nordic countries (Björnsson 2013: 22). At the school the history of Iceland and the Icelandic language were among the subjects on which emphasis was placed. In 1909–1910, Sigurður Þórólfsson published a book in two volumes on the history of Iceland, Minningar feðra vorra [Our Fathers Remembered], based on his lectures. He intended the textbook to be used at the school and also to serve as useful reading for the general public. The connection with the lecturing tradition at the Danish folk high schools is obvious: his interpretation of the history of the country in the book is in a nationalistic vein and the book emphasizes



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how remarkable an institution Alþingi had been at one time (Þórólfsson 1910: 179). The monopoly trade of the Danes in Iceland during the period 1602–1787 is criticized strongly (Þórólfsson 1910: 68ff.). Grundtvig’s impact is also evident in a number of articles on historical subjects by authors who were not specialists in history. The articles were published in a number of periodicals, including many handwritten periodicals published by individual youth societies. Two examples of the impact of Grundtvig on Icelandic historiography at the grassroots level can be mentioned. In an article entitled ‘Hvað tengir oss Íslendinga í eina þjóð?’ [What Connects Us, the Icelanders, into One Nation?], the joint work of three authors, in a handwritten periodical, Huginn, published by a youth society in a country district in the south of Iceland in 1909, the authors referred to the Middle Ages. They claimed that most frequently wherever Icelanders came they were appreciated for various innate talents such as their poetic gifts and physical prowess. It was therefore not without reason that national ambition developed among them (Ögmundsson, Þórisson and Bjarnadóttir 1909: 8f.). In an article entitled ‘Ættjarðarást’ [Patriotism], in a handwritten periodical, Skinfaxi (the same title as that of the periodical of the youth societies movement), the mouthpiece of a youth society in Reykjavík, Snorri Einarsson (1886–1966), mentioned many times his love of his country. He referred to those Icelanders of the Middle Ages whom he regarded as heroes (Einarsson 1906–1908: 55), and he stated that the youth society benefitted the motherland (Einarsson 1906–1908: 100).

The impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography since the 1920s From the 1920s onwards, the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelandic historiography was not as strong as previously. The characteristics of historiography that can be traced to his ideology do not appear as frequently as was the case earlier. Indeed, views that may be regarded as nationalistic were still evident in certain Icelandic historical works. This applies, for instance, to the works of one of Iceland’s most prominent historians from c. 1920 to c. 1945, Páll Eggert Ólason, who served as professor of Icelandic history at the University of Iceland during the years 1921–1929. His main field of research was the history of the country from c. 1500 to c. 1750. Páll Eggert Ólason’s nationalistic attitudes can be seen, for instance, in his critical view of the rule of the Danes over Iceland and in his emphasis on Icelandic cultural traditions. It is, however, more difficult to link his works, like those of various historians active in this period, with Grundtvig’s ideology than certain works written by his predecessors that are discussed above.

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It is nevertheless also of importance in this connection that Grundtvig’s ideology as reflected in historiography continued to be relevant to new generations of Icelanders for many decades through Jónas Jónsson’s primary school textbook; it was republished several times, for the last time in 1968. A new textbook on Icelandic history intended for primary schools was published for the first time in 1966. It is noteworthy that the author, Þórleifur Bjarnason (1908–1981), approached the subject in a manner not dissimilar in certain respects to that of Jónas Jónsson (Bjarnason 1968–1969). After Iceland had become an independent state in a personal union with Denmark, issues relating to national identity and national heritage were not quite as much in focus as had been the case earlier. It must be borne in mind, however, that the commemoration of the one thousandth anniversary of the Alþingi in 1930, and fourteen years later the founding of the Republic of Iceland, brought issues of this kind to the forefront. As indicated above, from the 1920s onwards, the approach of Icelanders to the interpretation of their history was generally more down to earth than in previous decades. On the whole, the history of Iceland was dealt with in a less emotional way than previously, and rhetorical expressions were less used, while pride in the national heritage of the Icelanders and in the alleged progress of the nation since the early nineteenth century is evident in many historical works. It is important in this connection that the grandiloquent type of language used when the history of Iceland was dealt with in speeches on festive occasions, such as those in 1930 and 1944 referred to above, is not typical of the Icelanders’ estimates of their history during this period.26 Taken as a whole, Icelandic historians did not write about the Commonwealth period in Icelandic history in terms that were quite as laudatory as had been common among the preceding generations; and insofar as the rule of the Danes over Iceland in past centuries was criticized, the criticism was more low-key than often had been the case earlier. The works of two of Iceland’s most prominent historians in the 1940s and 1950s, Þorkell Jóhannesson (1895–1960) and Jón Jóhannesson (1909–1957), both of whom were professors of Icelandic history at the University of Iceland, throw light on the prevailing trends in Icelandic historical works near the mid twentieth century. Generally speaking, the period from c. 1920 to c. 1970 did not witness fundamental changes in Icelandic historiography, while the research topics of Icelandic historians gradually became more varied. A new chapter in Icelandic historiography was opened around 1970. Then, various Icelandic historians, under the influence of certain international trends, began doing research in fields that hitherto had not been given much attention.



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Conclusion Taken as a whole, the influence of Grundtvig’s ideology on Icelanders was considerable. Of particular note is his impact on Icelandic historiography. Other fields in which his influence was clearly felt included education and the Icelandic youth societies movement, which was inspired by a similar movement in Norway, which in turn was largely inspired by Grundtvig. The Danish folk high school movement was strongly influenced by Grundtvig after 1864. A number of Icelanders attended the Danish folk high schools or had other connections with them. These schools played a very important role in transmitting Grundtvig’s ideology to Icelanders, including Icelandic historians. At the beginning of the twentieth century when the first historical works in which the influence of his ideology appeared very clearly were published, there was no existing tradition among the Icelanders of writing works on the country’s history in a strongly nationalistic spirit. Not all important features of Grundtvig’s views on history are evident among Icelanders, and it cannot be said that any particular historical work by him served as a model for them. While nationalism as an international ideological current certainly influenced Grundtvig’s ideology, there are no obvious sources of inspiration in this respect other than his ideology as far as Icelandic historians are concerned. The impact of his ideology can particularly be seen in an emphasis on national identity and national consciousness and in a rhetorical and emotional mode of expression. It is specifically evident in works that were written for, and which reached, a wide audience: textbooks for children and lectures intended for the general public. Two historians, Bogi Th. Melsteð and Jón J. Aðils, who had studied history at the University of Copenhagen and who also had close connections with the folk high school movement, opened a new chapter in Icelandic historiography by writing in this manner. In addition to works by these particular historians, the impact of Grundtvig’s ideology is of special importance in a textbook for children on the history of Iceland written by Jónas Jónsson and published in 1915–1916. Jónas Jónsson also had close connections with the Danish folk high school movement and had been strongly influenced by Jón J. Aðils. After Iceland had become an independent state in a personal union with Denmark in 1918, the writing of history among the Icelanders in a strongly nationalistic manner was less prominent than it had been before. In particular, the impact of Grundtvig’s nationalist ideology was not as strong as it had been previously, although it must be borne in mind that Jónas Jónsson’s textbook on Icelandic history for children was used for decades after, and thus had an impact on many people growing up in the country.

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Ingi Sigurðsson obtained his Ph.D. in history at the University of Edinburgh in 1972. He served as professor of history at the University of Iceland in 1992–2016. His main fields of research have been intellectual history, including historiography, and cultural history. His publications include The Icelandic Enlightenment as an Extended Phenomenon in Scandinavian Journal of History (2010) and The Professionalization of Icelandic Historical Writing in Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century, edited by Frank Meyer and Jan Eivind Myhre (2000).

Notes 1.  The connections between Grundtvig and the folk high school movement are dealt with in detail by Korsgaard (1997: 171–204) and by Skovmand (1983). 2.  On the the nationalistic ideology of Grundtvig, see Lundgreen-Nielsen 1992. 3.  For a survey of Icelandic historiography, see Sigurðsson 2000 and 1986. 4.  The plans are dealt with in more detail by Guttormsson (2013). 5.  For the long-term influence of the Enlightenment in Iceland, see Sigurðsson 2010, esp. 378–81. 6.  Jón Sigurðsson: Letters to Gustav Storm, The National Library of Norway, NB, HS, bs. 86. 7.  Bogi Melsteð: Letters to Halvdan Koht, The National Library of Norway, NB, HS, bs. 386; Páll Eggert Ólason: Letters to Halvdan Koht, The National Library of Norway, NB, HS, bs. 386. 8.  For more on the influence of the Danish folk high school movement on Icelandic farming schools, see Jónasson 1999: 122–26. 9.  All translations into English in this chapter are by the author. 10.  For more on the ideology of the Icelandic youth societies movement, see Sigurðsson 2006: 192–216. 11. For more on the influence of Grundtvig’s religious views on Icelanders, see Sigurðsson 2004: 63f. 12.  For theories of cultural transfer, see Schmale 2016. 13.  On the transmission of international ideological currents to Icelanders in the period 1830–1918, see Sigurðsson 2006: 22f. 14.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘Ísland er því eigi að eins föðurland okkar og móðurland, heldur er það líka fósturland vort og ættland. Það er vort eigið land og okkur þykir vænna um það en nokkuð annað land á jörðunni. … okkur þykir vænst um íslensku þjóðina …’. 15.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘Eptir miðja 18. öld fer saga vor aptur ofurlítið að fríkka. Einstaka Íslendingar, sem koma til annara landa, taka eptir því að landar þeirra eru orðnir eptirbátar annara þjóða. … Hjá þeim vaknar ættjarðarást og sú hugsjón, að hrinda þjóðinni áfram. Þeir fara að berjast fyrir framförum landsins og reyna að vekja þjóðina af svefni. Smátt og smátt vakna fleiri’. 16.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘Þótt upplagið væri eigi lítið, er hún samt þegar útseld, og sýnir það best, hve vel landsmenn hafa tekið henni og hve umhugað þeim er að kenna börnum sínum sögu þjóðarinnar’. 17.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘Sögubók þessari hefur verið svo vel tekið, að nú varð að prenta hana í þriðja sinn. Sýnir það, hve miklar mætur þjóðin hefur á sögu sinni’.



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18.  The influence of A.D. Jørgensen on Jón J. Aðils’ historical works was pointed out in 1920 by Ólason (1920: 230). 19.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘Hvað er það þá, sem hefur gefið íslenzku þjóðinni þetta þrek til að þola? Hver er þessi helga vættur, sem hefur vakað yfir henni? … Það er þjóðernistilfinningin’. 20.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows ‘… en þó lifa þeir enn og starfa mitt á meðal vor. Upp af starfi þeirra hefir þegar sprottið andlegur vorgróður með íslenzku þjóðinni. Alt ber svip af þeim og ættarmót. Hugsjónir þeirra, ósérplægni og ættjarðarást eru enn lifandi fyrirmynd þjóðarinnar’. 21. J.J. Aðils: Lectures on the history of Iceland given at the University of Iceland, National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 2013–2025 4to. 22.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘fullur af anda Grundtvigs’. 23.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘að vekja lestrarlöngunina og fróðleiksfýsnina, löngun til sjálfstæðrar vinnu og sjálfhjálpar’. 24.  The original text of the quotation reads as follows: ‘Þegar landnámsmenn bygðu Ísland var það að sumu leyti ennþá yndislegra en nú. Landslagið var að vísu hið sama. Fjöllin voru þá, eins og nú, há og svipmikil, jöklarnir hvítir, fossarnir tignarlegir, sjórinn dökkblár og loftið tært og hressandi. En gróðurinn var þá ólíkt meiri og dýralífið fjölbreyttara’. 25.  For the history of the folk high school at Hvítárbakki, see Björnsson 2013: 15–54. 26.  The speeches and addresses given by Icelanders during the festivities at Þingvellir in 1930 are printed in Jónsson 1943: 154–72. The speeches and addresses given by Icelanders during the festivities at Þingvellir and in Reykjavík in 1944 are printed in Þjóðhátíðarnefnd 1945: 165–68, 171ff., 188–91, 204–11 and 251–81.

Bibliography Aðils, J.J. [Jón Jónsson]. 1901. ‘Alþýðuháskólar í Danmörku’, Elding 1: 53–54, 61–63, 65, 73–74, 81, 89–90. Aðils, J.J. [Jón Jónsson]. 1902. ‘Alþýðuháskólar í Danmörku’, Eimreiðin 8: 4–62. Aðils, J.J. [Jón Jónsson]. 1903. Íslenzkt þjóðerni: Alþýðufyrirlestrar. Reykjavík: S. Kristjánsson. Aðils, J.J. [Jón Jónsson]. 1906. Gullöld Íslendinga: Menning og lífshættir feðra vorra á söguöldinni: Alþýðufyrirlestrar. Reykjavík: S. Kristjánsson. Aðils, J.J. [Jón Jónsson]. 1910. Dagrenning: Fimm alþýðuerindi. Reykjavík: S. Kristjánsson. Aðils, J.J. 1919. Einokunarverzlun Dana á Íslandi 1602–1787. Reykjavík: Verzlunarráð Íslands. Aðils, J.J. [Jón Jónsson]. Lectures on the history of Iceland given at the University of Iceland. [Manuscripts kept in the National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 2013–2025 4to.] Bjarnason, Þ. [1839–1902] 1880. Ágrip af sögu Íslands. Reykjavík: Ísafoldarprentsmiðja. Bjarnason, Þ. [1908–1981] 1966. Íslandssaga. Reykjavík: Ríkisútgáfa námsbóka. Björnsson, L. 2013. Héraðsskólar Borgfirðinga: Hvítárbakki – Reykholt. Reykholt: Snorrastofa. Dalsgarð, J. 2000. ‘Ungmennafelagsrørslan í Føroyum – ein táttur í fólkaupplýsingini’, in M. Snædal and T. Sigurðardóttir (eds), Frændafundur 3: Fyrirlestrar frá íslensk-færeyskri ráðstefnu í Reykjavík 24.–25. júní 1998. Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, pp. 30–42. Einarsson, S. 1906–1908. ‘Ættjarðarást’, Skinfaxi 1: 53–56, 79–81, 100–04. Espólín, J. 1821–1855. Íslands Árbækur í sögu-formi. Vols. 1–12. Copenhagen: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag. Friðriksson, G. 1991. Saga Jónasar Jónssonar frá Hriflu. Vol. 1: Með sverðið í annarri hendi og plóginn í hinni. Reykjavík: Iðunn.

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Guttormsson, L. 1993. ‘Frá kristindómslestri til móðurmáls: Hugmyndafræðileg hvörf í lestrarefni skólabarna um síðustu aldamót’, Uppeldi og menntun 2: 9–23. Guttormsson, L. 2013. ‘Tómas Sæmundsson og Jón Sigurðsson í orði og verki: Fornbréfaútgáfa og Íslandssaga á 19. öld’, Saga 51(1): 142–57. Hrafnsdóttir, S. 1982. Húsmæðraskólinn á Hallormsstað 1930–1980: Afmælisrit. Reykjavík: Þjóðsaga. Jónasson, J.T. 1999. ‘Lýðháskólar á Íslandi í byrjun 20. aldar’, in H.S. Kjartansson et al. (eds), Steinar í vörðu: Til heiðurs Þuríði J. Kristjánsdóttur sjötugri. Reykjavík: Rannsóknarstofnun Kennaraháskóla Íslands, pp. 107–34. Jónsson, J. 1909. ‘Lýðskólinn í Askóv’, Eimreiðin 15: 1–14. Jónsson, J. 1915. Íslandssaga handa börnum, vol. 1. Reykjavík: [no publisher] Jónsson, J. 2016. Íslandssaga handa börnum, vol. 2: [no publisher] Jónsson, J. 1948. ‘Jón Jónsson Aðils’, in J.J. Aðils, Gullöld Íslendinga: Menning og lífshættir feðra vorra á söguöldinni: Alþýðufyrirlestrar með myndum. 2nd ed. Reykjavík: Þ. Gunnarsson, pp. xi–xxiii. Jónsson, M. 1943. Alþingishátíðin 1930. Reykjavík: Leiftur. Jørgensen, A.D. 1907. Fyrretyve Fortællinger af Fædrelandets Historie. 5th ed. Copenhagen: Gad. Kløvstad, J. (ed.). 1995. Ungdomslaget: Noregs ungdomslag 1896–1996. Oslo: Samlaget. Korsgaard, O. 1997. Kampen om lyset: Dansk voksenoplysning gennem 500 år. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Lundgreen-Nielsen, F. 1992. ‘Grundtvig og danskhed’, in O. Felbæk (ed.), Dansk identitetshistorie. Vol. 3, Folkets Danmark 1848–1914. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, pp. 9–187. Melsteð, B.Th. 1904/1907/1914. Stutt kenslubók í Íslendinga sögu handa byrjendum. Copenhagen/Reykjavík: [no publisher]. Melsteð, B.Th. 1907. ‘Um æskuárin og íslenskan lýðháskóla’, Andvari 32: 75–104. Melsteð, B.Th. Letters to Halvdan Koht. [Manuscripts kept in the National Library of Norway, NB, HS, bs. 386.] Ogmundsson, K., G. Þórisson and S. Bjarnadóttir. 1909. ‘Hvað tengir oss Íslendinga í eina þjóð?’, Huginn 1: 7–12. [Manuscript kept in the National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 2991 4to.] Ólason, P.E. 1920. ‘Jón Jónsson Aðils’, Skírnir 94: 225–48. Ólason, P.E. Letters to Halvdan Koht. [Manuscripts kept in the National Library of Norway, NB, HS, bs. 386.] Pétursson, H. 1886. Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig: Fyrirlestur. Reykjavík: K.Ó. Þorgrímsson. Rist, L.J. 1947. Synda eða sökkva: Endurminningar. Akureyri: S. Rist. Schmale, W. 2016. Cultural Transfer. Retrieved 10 December 2016 from http://www. ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/theories-and-methods/cultural-transfer. Sigurðsson, I. 1972. ‘The Historical Works of Jón Espólín and His Contemporaries: Aspects of Icelandic Historiography’, Ph.D. thesis. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Sigurðsson, I. 1986. Íslenzk sagnfræði frá miðri 19. öld til miðrar 20. aldar [Summary: Icelandic Historiography from the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Century]. Ritsafn Sagnfræðistofnunar 15. Reykjavík: Sagnfræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands. Sigurðsson, I. 2000. ‘Þróun íslenzkrar sagnfræði frá miðöldum til samtímans’, Saga 38: 9–32. Sigurðsson, I. 2004. ‘Áhrif hugmyndafræði Grundtvigs á Íslendinga’ [Summary: The Impact of the Ideology of Grundtvig on the Icelandic People], Ritmennt 9: 59–94. Sigurðsson, I. 2006. Erlendir straumar og íslenzk viðhorf: Áhrif fjölþjóðlegra hugmyndastefna á Íslendinga 1830–1918 [Summary: Foreign Trends and Icelandic Attitudes: The Influence of International Ideological Currents in Iceland 1830–1918]. Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan. Sigurðsson, I. 2010. ‘The Icelandic Enlightenment as an Extended Phenomenon’, Scandinavian Journal of History 35: 371–90.



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Sigurðsson, J. Letters to Gustav Storm. [Manuscripts kept in the National Library of Norway, NB, HS, bs. 86.] Skovmand, R. 1983. ‘Den grundtvigske folkehøjskole’, in C. Thodberg and A. Pontoppidan Thyssen (eds), Grundtvig og Grundtvigianismen i nyt lys: Hovedtanker og udviklingslinier fra de senere års Grundtvigforskning. Århus: Forlaget ANIS, pp. 314–34. Vind, O. 1999. Grundtvigs historiefilosofi. Skrifter udgivet af Grundtvig-Selskabet 32. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Þjóðhátíðarnefnd. 1945. Lýðveldishátíðin 1944. Reykjavík: Leiftur. Þórólfsson, S. 1902. Hinn fyrirhugaði lýðháskóli í Reykjavík. Reykjavík: Ísafoldarprentsmiðja. Þórólfsson, S. 1909. Minningar feðra vorra, vol. 1. Reykjavík: [no publisher] Þórólfsson, S. 1910. Minningar feðra vorra, vol. 2. Reykjavík: [no publisher]

CHAPTER

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Cultural aspects of the pan-Scandinavian movement The perspective of historians Kristín Bragadóttir

Introduction ‘The three brothers’, denoting Denmark, Norway and Sweden, was an expression used by and for the nineteenth-century pan-Scandinavian movement. Icelanders have tended to believe that their country was left largely untouched by such Scandinavism, especially as its political dimension, notably the war against Prussia in the south and Russia in the east, must have seemed largely irrelevant to them. Similarly, it has been thought that the Scandinavian student movement had little impact on the average Icelander, whose main sociopolitical priority was achieving independence from Denmark. Such Icelandic attitudes are only partly true, however, for in the middle of the nineteenth century several Icelandic students at the University of Copenhagen did become interested in the movement and attended student meetings in Denmark and Sweden. However, the panScandinavian ideology had difficulty achieving traction back in Iceland, where questions of national identity and political independence were regarded as far more important. This chapter will examine the attitudes of Danish historians towards the cultural aspects of Scandinavism in the middle of the nineteenth century, notably the student meetings and related activities, and assess the impact of Notes for this section begin on page 98.



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these Danish perspectives on Icelandic historians. The discussion focuses on authors whose works clearly reflect the historical process through which Iceland’s desire for nation-state status was being or would be realized. Articles in journals often reflect contemporary attitudes to such questions. Danish periodicals were widely read by Icelandic students in Copenhagen. Frederik Barfod (1811–1896) was one of the Danish Scandinavists who promoted educational reform and later became editor of Brage og Idun, a journal supportive of the Scandinavist cause that was published in Copenhagen in the years 1839–1842. Writings in other newspapers and periodicals were also important to the movement. Clausen notes the cultural influence of publications such as Brage og Idun and Fædrelandet (Clausen 1900: 43), each of which was widely read by Icelanders whose own writings were in turn greatly influenced by such journals. Personal correspondence from the period is also used as a source here. Collections of letters in the National and University Library of Iceland reveal the impact of Nordic historians on Icelandic writers. The holdings of the Royal Library of Denmark include correspondence between three authors who assisted each other in correcting their texts: Bogi Th. Melsteð (1860–1929), Jón Jónsson Aðils (1869–1920) and Þorleifur Bjarnason (1863–1935), all of whom were working on history textbooks for young people at this time.1 The work of Þorleifur Bjarnason will not be discussed here. The present chapter demonstrates how national histories are created and then revised in line with contemporary attitudes. The chapter will examine writings by important Icelandic historians who, influenced by Danish historians, explored the effects of Scandinavism. The movement’s political and economic elements have already received considerable attention from historians and will not be discussed here. The influence of Scandinavism as a literary movement is discernible at the end of the eighteenth century among artists and writers. It then became an important literary-cultural force during a complex political period in the middle of the nineteenth century. It drew attention to the example of older poets and their poetry, and it helped to promote issues of national identity and social cohesion during the 1850s. It then developed into a student movement, and, even after 1864, as the political element of the movement became less important, efforts were still made to promote pan-Scandinavian thought and identity. In the nineteenth century, the literary-cultural element in the Scandinavian movement originated among students and scholars in Nordic universities. As noted above, people referred to the ‘three brothers’, by which they meant the intellectual union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The belief was that these three countries shared a single collective

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heart while still remaining independent nations, with former enmities and rivalries now forgotten. Though the concept of Scandinavism changes over time and has been discussed in various other publications, no sustained examination of its cultural dimension has been attempted to date. A culture can be defined as distinct patterns of behaviour, acquired and passed on through symbols that represent the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts. The essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and, especially, the values attached to them. Cultural systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements for further action (International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 2008: 528). In the present chapter, culture is used in the sense of the development or improvement of the mind through education or training, as, for example, with languages, literature and history. Perception and behaviour are shaped and influenced by a symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes – and that system is first learned and then shared. Only a few significant works on Scandinavism were written by Nordic historians between 1900 and 1918, the time frame for the present essay. The initial date, 1900, is a key year because of the publication of Julius Clausen’s book Skandinavismen: historisk fremstillet; by this time historians had developed some perspective on nineteenth-century events, with the historiographical reaction to Scandinavism emerging several decades after 1864, when Denmark was forced to surrender the principality of Schleswig. As for 1918, the year was significant because it saw both the emergence of Iceland as an independent state under the Danish crown and also the end of the First World War, an event that inevitably introduced significant changes to people’s worldview.

Mid-nineteenth-century Scandinavism Scandinavism began as an ideological and political movement. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it had grown stronger and become a kind of trademark or brand. Scandinavism was an offshoot of the French Revolution and of those national movements that have since made their mark on European cultural history. The relevant prehistory is that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represented a golden age for the collection of Icelandic manuscripts. Written in Old Norse, they represented a rich source of knowledge concerning language, literature and thought in the Nordic countries. It is from these texts that the term ‘Nordic’ as an umbrella term for a common Scandinavian culture derives (Østergård 1997: 34). In a sense, therefore, there was nothing



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new in mid-nineteenth-century scholars exploring elements that had once served – and could again serve – to unify the Scandinavian nations. Scandinavism represented peaceful cooperation between the three mainland Nordic countries. It was meant to energize and inspire people as a potentially unifying spiritual, intellectual, economic and political focus of interest (Peschcke Køedt 1916: 5). The present chapter will concentrate on the movement’s intellectual dimensions in Denmark and Iceland, and on the impact of Danish historians on Icelandic thinkers at this time. While Denmark’s defeat by the Prussians at Schleswig was a heavy burden to bear, the really destructive element was the fact that neither Sweden nor Norway came to its aid. This political situation certainly impacted the cultural element of the Scandinavist movement. In particular, Scandinavism focused strongly on students. Danish historians made it clear that student meetings lay at the heart of the movement. During the years 1840–1850, Scandinavism, which had previously been confined largely to Denmark (as noted earlier), achieved a wider and more permanent influence. This could certainly be seen in its effect on groups of students and younger intellectuals in Sweden and Norway. Meetings devoted to Scandinavist issues became quite important, with the first of them taking place in Gothenburg 1839 and the one in Uppsala in 1843.

Danish historians at work At the end of the nineteenth century, the Danish historian and librarian Julius Clausen (1868–1951) wrote and lectured on literature and history. A versatile scholar with a wide variety of cultural interests, Clausen became a member of the Society of History, Literature and Art (Selskabet for historie, Litteratur og Kunst) in 1902. He was also a corresponding member of the Swedish Literary Society in Finland (Svenska Literatursällskapet i Finland) and a senior figure in the student union. He was a committee member in both the Society for Danish Theatrical History (Selskabet for dansk Teaterhistorie) and the Chamber Music Society (Kammermusikforeningen) (Dansk biografisk leksikon 1934: 307). He believed that the old Scandinavian movement had come to an end in 1864. In his key work, Skandinavismen: historisk fremstillet, Clausen drew attention to many issues and details that had never previously been discussed. Clausen wrote extensively and comprehensively on the cultural aspects of the movement, treating such elements as no less important than the political dimension. Indeed, culture was his principal interest; unlike later scholars, he was much less preoccupied with political developments. Clausen’s influence on the works of later historians in both Denmark and Iceland is

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clear. His monograph deals with the period up to 1870 and only with key literary and ideological issues, such as the student movement and studentled Scandinavism; it is less concerned with political and economic questions, as the author freely acknowledges. Clausen noted that it was by no means a foregone conclusion that a brotherhood would emerge, but claimed that in the light of history, it was certainly sensible to have sought to strengthen ties between the Nordic countries. The Danes and Swedes had been sworn enemies for a long time, and they remained wary of each other because of earlier military conflicts; the development of better relations had been a relatively recent phenomenon. Clausen emphasized that Danes wished to resolve all tensions between the two nations; they were capable of learning to love each other and live in unity and peace (Clausen 1900: 2–4). He stated that such a goal was well worth striving for. It is generally accepted that Denmark, Norway and Sweden had much in common, especially with respect to language and literature, and the situation is no different today. Clausen discussed Scandinavist activity in the middle of the nineteenth century. He reminded his readers that the Nordic nations had shared a common culture and history for at least a thousand years. He also noted that Scandinavism had a weaker profile in Norway than in Denmark and Sweden (Clausen 1900: 80). Nevertheless, the talk focused on the fraternity of all three nations. Clausen maintained that nineteenth-century Scandinavism was nationalist in nature. The premises for potential collaboration were clear. Wherever political structures emerged, culture tended to follow, though each nation could preserve and promote its own identity. The early Scandinavian mindset reflected a respect for equality. There was much discussion of how the individual languages could benefit from closer alignment. Danish and Swedish were said to be a single language currently divided into two dialects. By such means, a new type of Scandinavism could be created (Clausen 1900: 19–20). Clausen argued that the ground had been prepared for Scandinavism during the middle of the nineteenth century. Danes and Swedes were psychologically ready for the movement – the Norwegians less so, as their inclination was to develop as a free nation independent of any such alliances. For them, independence was a priority. In point of fact, however, Scandinavism was rooted in the robust development of each country, not least in their sense of individual nationhood (Clausen 1900: 28 and 79). From a historical perspective, we may note that during the second half of the eighteenth century, the Danish-Norwegian historian Peter Friedrich Suhm (1728–1798) published writings from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and he set out his theory that the Scandinavian nations ought to regard themselves as fraternally linked. He founded the Royal Norwegian



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Society of Sciences and Letters in 1760 and was for a time chairman of the Danish Academy of Sciences. He was in contact with scholars in Lund and often claimed that the three Nordic nations should regard each other as brothers. This, he argued, was the lesson of history. Suhm was active in publishing Old Icelandic literature and worked with the Arnamagnæan Commission in Copenhagen (Bruun 1898: 229–36). He was well disposed towards Icelanders and offered encouragement during the dark and difficult times when poverty was widespread.2 Suhm corresponded with several Icelandic historians,3 and his letters were influential and much valued. It should be noted, however, that other Danish historians tended to reject such ideas. It was also during this period that Norse mythology, common to the whole of Scandinavia, began to attract serious scholarly attention. Clausen paid close attention to literary texts and noted that their origins preceded those of politicized Scandinavism. He refers to the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850), who, at the first student meeting in Copenhagen in 1845, was lauded as the individual who had done the most to promote the idea of Scandinavism. His poetry had revived memories of the great common culture of times past, and it had roused the young people of the North, inspiring them to emulate such achievements. Oehlenschläger was much praised for his efforts to redefine and rekindle fraternal relations between the three countries (Clausen 1900: 29). Scandinavism achieved prominence through the celebrated coronation of Oehlenschläger by the Swedish poet Bishop Esaias Tegnér (1782–1846) in Lund Cathedral in 1829. Tegnér stated that the time for dissension had passed and ought never to return. While historians made much of this event, Clausen found their readings of the coronation somewhat overstated. At the 1845 student meeting in Copenhagen, as mentioned above, Oehlenschläger was called ‘the first and greatest hero of the future’, the individual who had ‘restored the ties of affection between nations’. Clausen believed that Oehlenschläger was for young people in Denmark what Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847) and Tegnér were for Swedish youth (Clausen 1900: 29). An insistent theme in Clausen’s book is that Denmark, Norway and Sweden had once been enemies but were now firm friends. He felt, however, that no sustainable outcome had emerged from the 1845 meeting (Clausen 1900: 101) – merely cheerful toasts and heady promises that were never honoured. Clausen drew attention to the fact that the Scandinavist movement progressed from the south of Scandinavia to the north, with Denmark as its original home and principal centre (Clausen 1900: 46). Those involved in aesthetics and the natural sciences began to develop transnational modes of cooperation. Clausen sensed the difference: ‘What a change between the first student trip to Uppsala, when every royal toast was

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omitted, and the last one in 1875, when the toast to the Nordic monarchies was the first to be drunk!’ (Clausen 1900: 63). Clausen’s work was followed in 1906 by that of the Danish historian Troels Frederik Troels-Lund (1840–1921), whose De tre nordiske Brødrefolk [The Three Nordic Brothers] was a lively study, almost lyrical in spirit, that would reappear in several editions over time. Fascinated by his subject, Troels-Lund had decided to write from the perspective of the average citizen of Denmark rather than as a university scholar. His intention was to examine the current state of Scandinavist affairs from a historical perspective. He felt that the brotherhood should be relevant to everyone in the Nordic countries (Troels-Lund 1906: 2). He cited history repeatedly in support of his recurrent theme, which was that all three nations would grow stronger and achieve more if they stood together. In his treatise, he emphasized the historical elements common to all Nordic countries and pointed to all that they might achieve if unity prevailed. He was much taken by the idea that these three sibling nations could live together in harmony. He nevertheless recognized that individual neutrality or independence was very important to each country (Troels-Lund 1906: 49 and 57), as Clausen had argued before him. National solidarity mattered to him both politically and culturally. The historian Andreas Peschcke Køedt (1845–1929) published his famous work Skandinavismen in 1916. The book reveals his strong engagement with contemporary social issues. He felt that Scandinavism could flourish in various ways, most notably via a common system of tolls. Køedt pointed out that young academics were the first to be influenced by this new way of thinking. Rather than merely dreaming of a romanticized past, Nordic students now raised a flag under the slogan of peace, freedom and effective cooperation between the three fraternal Nordic countries (Peschcke Køedt 1916: 13). It has been noted that people in the Nordic countries have never seen themselves as representatives of any single common (and special) social model (Østergård 1997: 30). Køedt adopted an international perspective, comparing the Nordic situation with the circumstances attending (for example) the birth of the United States of America, formed out of its many constituent nationalities, or the unification of Italy out of a number of small city states (Peschcke Køedt 1916: 11–12). He drew attention to the efforts of other countries as well, such as Germany, which had been united after a long period of struggle and division. The citizens of these countries were closely related and national unity had been acknowledged as a platform from which political structures could emerge. He noted that languages affect the image of a nation: the German language, both written and spoken, served to unite Germany, just as Italian did in Italy. In the United States, many different nationalities (among them Anglo-Saxons,



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French and Spanish) had learned to live side by side and gradually become English-speaking Americans (Peschcke Køedt 1916: 52–53). He also noted that political harmony had emerged, often with difficulty, out of conflict and violence. It was the avoidance of such strife that made the unification process so important. Scandinavism was the logical outcome of developments with which other countries were already familiar. Peace, freedom and effective collaboration were needed between the three Nordic nations. Such political cooperation went hand in hand with intellectual links. To some extent, the pan-Scandinavian movement was similar to the movements in Italy and Germany, albeit without the corresponding military support that the Italians and Germans had achieved (Østergård 1997: 39).

Student meetings Clausen expressed regret that while the Scandinavist movement appealed to university intellectuals, Danish society as a whole was less impressed and did not join in with its activities. However, the student meetings certainly attracted Icelandic students and influenced their writings. Thousands of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian students attended the meetings, which centred on the worship of fellowship and enjoyment of travel, feasting and simply being together (Hemstad 2008: 232). The meetings were significant enough for such student-led Scandinavism often to be regarded as a separate movement. Clausen argued that this form of Scandinavism had become a recognizable force by 1843 and had developed steadily after that (Clausen 1900: 55). He often emphasized in his work that the Scandinavian student meetings were characterized by impressive lectures, passionate rhetoric and strong feelings, while toasts and songs also contributed to an overall atmosphere of warmth and fellowship. Some songs from this time survive to the present day (Østergård 1997: 38). In short, these meetings were marked by a strong sense of Nordic cultural and political solidarity. Copenhagen, Lund and Christiania are quite close to each other geographically, and thus convenient as student meeting places. Yet, noting the prominence of Uppsala in such activities, Clausen also wondered why and how this had come about. He observed that student life in Uppsala was wholly unlike student life in Copenhagen, a city that had not been built around a university. Perhaps the reason for the success of Scandinavism in Uppsala was that it was able to flourish in a small and special community of ‘Glunten’ and ‘magistren’, i.e. students and teachers,4 in which everyday life centred first and foremost on academia and academics. Uppsala had retained many old traditions, such as the annual ‘Feast of Valborg’ on the last day of April. The ceremonies, lavish feasts and new movement promoted by the university were also

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sustained by communal singing and general good fellowship. Indeed, the students in Uppsala had succeeded in restoring the old Scandinavist customs and values (Clausen 1900: 61). We may note that the organizer of Norwegian student meetings in 1845 was Eilert Sundt (1817–1875), a theology student. He was known for his succinct and impressive mission statement: ‘Believe in the true and living Nordic spirit’. Together with other Norwegian students, Sundt participated in all the activities that took place during these lively gatherings and was spoken about quite often. He felt that the common people should not be underestimated or regarded as somehow less worthy than intellectuals. He is also credited with the following expression: ‘They have learned many things in the school of life and we should believe in the noble, true and healthy qualities that reside among the common people’ (Runeby 1995: 107). However, as Clausen noted, the enthusiasts and supporters of Scandinavism were nearly all students rather than ordinary citizens. He thought it striking that while the nations of Europe lined up behind their separate national flags, it was the union of three Nordic countries that headed the agenda within Scandinavia, and the importance of merging the flags of Denmark, Norway and Sweden was emphasized by Sundt. A photograph of three young soldiers united under a single flag was widely publicized at the time. This initiative divided opinion among Icelanders studying in Copenhagen. They knew that much could be learnt from the Nordic countries, especially Denmark, but at the same time they longed for national independence and their own flag. In the end, they went their separate ways, emphasizing Iceland’s unique literary legacy. In Clausen’s opinion, the student meetings grew less substantive over time, less touched by the spirit of Nordic consciousness than had once been the case (Clausen 1900: 230). He indicated that were Scandinavism to truly awaken from its slumber, it would need to rest on a more stable foundation (1900: 124). Icelandic students in Copenhagen received a special invitation to the student meeting in Christiania in 1851 (Studentertog til Christiania 1851 fra Lund og Kjöbenhavn: Beretning fra et udvalg af deltagerne 1853: ix–x). The letter of invitation referred to them as ‘honourable sons of old Iceland’, and the invitation was intended to strengthen ties between Iceland and the ‘three brothers’. Several Icelanders attended and enjoyed the meeting, relishing the opportunity to socialize with like-minded individuals. In 1852, the Norwegians warmly welcomed students from the other countries. Participants at the Christiania meeting emphasized the fraternal good will and unparalleled friendship and fellow feeling that were everywhere extended to the guests. The festivities concluded with a loud hurrah in honour of Norwegian women (Studenttåg till Christiania 1852 från Upsala:



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Berättelse af utsedde committerade 1854: 91–92). The 1856 meeting in Uppsala was regarded as unusually successful. Clausen describes the meeting as lavish and colourful, with women leaning out of windows and throwing flowers onto the streets in honour of the students. In historical terms, he believed that this gathering represented the high point of all such gatherings (Clausen 1900: 91–95). Only two student meetings were held after the GermanDanish war of 1864, when the Scandinavian movement was declared dead, one in Christiania in 1869 and the second in Uppsala in 1875 (Hemstad 2008: 234).

Influence on a young Icelandic poet In the minds of Icelanders, two important milestones were reached in the wake of the 1846 student meeting in Copenhagen. Firstly, the poet Grímur Thomsen (1820–1896) was the first Icelander to become a member of the Scandinavist movement. Against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to study law, he chose to study history, philosophy, aesthetics and contemporary European literature at the University of Copenhagen between the years 1837 and 1845. The holdings of the National and University Library of Iceland include letters sent to him from several Danish intellectuals eager to discuss aspects of Scandinavism. This confirms the fact that the movement’s activities were familiar to him from quite early on.5 Secondly, Grímur’s commitment to the cause was soon matched by that of Jón Sigurðsson, leader of the Icelandic independence movement. It can therefore be said that during this period, new ground was broken in the writing of Icelandic history. Danish newspapers called Thomsen ‘the first Icelandic Scandinavist’ (Sigmundsson 1947: 109). The fact that he joined the movement made a big impression on the younger generation of Icelanders.6 Jón Þorkelsson (1859–1924) resided in Copenhagen shortly after Thomsen. Well versed in Nordic studies, Þorkelsson defended his doctoral thesis on Icelandic literature at the University of Copenhagen in 1888.7 He was a poet and edited Sunnanfari [The one which comes from the South], a popular magazine in Icelandic. He wrote that Thomsen’s poetry reflected the influence of those particular national movements in and well beyond the Nordic countries that had flourished in his youth. The so-called ‘skandinavismus’, of which Thomsen was the first and, for a time, only Icelandic proponent, was based solely on national feeling and relations between nations. The media widely commented on the strong alliance forged between the three Scandinavian countries. Enthusiasts were much impressed by the beauty and power of Old Icelandic literature. Thomsen always emphasized pan-Scandinavian

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cooperation and a common cultural heritage. Yet, at the same time, he maintained that the old Nordic literary heritage was essentially Icelandic because the works had been written by Icelanders in Icelandic in Iceland at a time when the island was an independent state. This was, of course, quite a controversial notion and Thomsen was the first Icelander to promote it. However, because he was well respected by Icelanders both at home and in Copenhagen, his views were taken seriously. Jón Þorkelsson’s association with Scandinavism developed during its later years. He explained the movement in Icelandic newspapers and periodicals, and educated Icelanders paid due heed. He wrote about Thomsen and the student union. Thomsen moved in those particular Danish intellectual circles that favoured Scandinavism, and he took an enthusiastic part in the movement’s activities; Þorkelsson noted that he was ‘one of those at the forefront’. Thomsen had links with Fædrelandet, the liberators’ newspaper, which printed most of the material he submitted. Þorkelsson indicated that it was common knowledge that Thomsen was a leading figure in the movements that shook Copenhagen in 1848. We may assume that Thomsen understood and wrote more about Denmark’s Schleswig affairs than most other observers. His poetry was widely read both in Iceland and Denmark. He had the chance to travel extensively in Europe, and it was important for his poetry that during his younger years nationalistic movements were active in many countries. However, in Scandinavia the ‘Scandinavism’ that Thomsen favoured was based merely on a sense of nationality and on common ties between the nations. A significant result of his vision was the fact that ancient Icelandic literature had come to represent the primary literary achievement of all the Nordic countries (Þorkelsson 1898). The Scandinavian Union attracted both Icelandic and Danish students. Its main attraction was a shared sense of unity, and also the entertainment.8 Jón Sigurðsson, a key figure in the struggle for Icelandic independence, soon joined in the society’s activities, while another familiar Icelandic literary-cultural figure, Brynjólfur Pétursson, became a member as early as 9 January 1846. On the same day, Thomsen gave a lecture entitled ‘Om Islands Stilling til det övrige Skandinavien, fornemmelig i literær henseende’ [On Iceland’s Attitude to Other Scandinavian Countries, Mainly Concerning Its Literature] (Jónsson 2012: 190). He discussed Iceland’s situation with respect to that of other nations, focusing on its literature, and he encouraged literary scholars and authors among the Nordic nations to look for material and inspiration in their medieval Scandinavian heritage. They should seek out texts in Old Norse or Icelandic, ‘that language which is an exceptional mirror of their spirit’ (Thomsen 1975: 49; see also Þorkelsson 1898: 11). Here we can clearly see the unique position of the Icelanders, who believed that Old Icelandic storytelling and poetry could help to create new



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pan-Scandinavian links. Grímur Thomsen maintained that knowledge of Icelandic or Old Norse was quite important both for Icelanders and others in the North who were looking for national rebirth (Óskarsson 2008). In his lecture, he stressed the fact that Danes should learn Icelandic literature and language for its own sake, and that the cradle of Nordic culture was to be found in Iceland (Jónsson 2012: 170–72). This view represents the difference between Icelandic attitudes and those of the ‘three brothers’. It is clear from Thomsen’s article about Iceland’s position within the Nordic sphere that he considered it important to celebrate Iceland’s status and significance (Thomsen 1846). One of the more notable results of the meetings was a collection of books that passed between scholars in the other fraternal countries. They included many major publications relating to the movement and the period as well as classical literature in the original languages so as to train people to read and understand the various other languages.9 Another incident that followed Thomsen’s lecture, and one that heavily influenced Icelanders, was another lecture on ‘Skandinavisk Selskab’, delivered at Den Kongelige Skydebane in Copenhagen on 4 February 1846 by the Swedish poet Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793–1866), who lived for some months in the Danish capital (Almqvist 1994).10 He discussed the idea of how a true Scandinavian citizen might be created and encouraged people to work towards this ideal by organizing a unified programme of education. He was interested in the Nordic languages and stressed that people in Denmark, Sweden and Norway could understand each other, and also the Icelandic language, as easily as their individual mother tongues. He also stressed that Iceland ought to be a part of Scandinavia (Thomsen 1975: 10). After Almqvist moved back to Uppsala, he continued to give lectures on the movement and enjoyed a strong response from the students there. His views appealed to Icelanders of all classes. Clausen in his work highlighted just how effective and eloquent Almqvist’s lecture had been; his opinions on nurturing and educating children certainly played a part in this favourable reception. As their correspondence makes clear, Thomsen was a good friend of Carl Säve (1812–1876), a Nordic studies scholar in Uppsala, and of Niels Matthias Petersen (1791–1862), another Nordic scholar, this time from Denmark (Brevvexling mellem N. M. Petersen og Carl Säve: et bidrag til Skandinavismens og den nordiske filologis historie 1908, e.g. 107, 111, 139 and 140). Both were supporters of Scandinavism in their own countries and they tried to enlist Thomsen through their writings and lectures (Petersen [1845] 1991: 4).11 Carl Säve participated in the 1856 meeting in Uppsala and his interest in and enthusiasm for the movement found full expression in his letters to

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Petersen (Brevvexling mellem N. M. Petersen og Carl Säve: et bidrag til skandinavismens og den nordiske filologis historie 1908: 87, 89, 91 and 98). He gave a speech in honour of Iceland, to which Thomsen responded by giving another powerful address (Björnsson 1988: 5–15). Icelandic historians wrote about this event in several periodicals. Thomsen was quite enthusiastic about the educational ideas, and he supported the creation of a centre for Old Icelandic culture that would facilitate access to its literary treasures for people in Scandinavia. He expressed no view on questions of economic or political unity between these countries. This was also the case with Icelandic historians of the period, such as Bogi Th. Melsteð.

Icelandic historians influenced by Danish historians Ideas and moods from mainland Scandinavia tended to be late in arriving to the shores of Iceland, but thereafter they often lasted longer than they did abroad. This is because most Icelandic intellectuals studied in Copenhagen and it took time for them to bring their views back home. Icelandic students in Copenhagen were exposed to many striking new ideas during the course of their studies, though whether they pursued them after returning to Iceland is another matter. Scandinavism was a case in point, for the movement received more attention among Icelanders in Denmark than it did in Iceland. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were not many educated historians in Iceland. Few young men, even those from the wealthier families, enjoyed the opportunity to study in Copenhagen, which at that time was still the capital of Iceland. It goes without saying that the fortunate few were much influenced by student life there and adopted some of the ideologies promoted by the Danish students, not least of them Scandinavism. Icelanders were engaged in a prolonged fight for independence at this time, and their writings reflect this fact. Historians writing at the beginning of the twentieth century were influenced by Danish historians and Danish current affairs. The first half of the century saw a new dawn in literary creativity, a kind of cultural renaissance. Examples of this renaissance include works by the historian Jón Jónsson Aðils, whose books were both popular and scholarly, notably works such as Íslenzkt þjóðerni [Icelandic Nationality] (1903), Gullöld Íslendinga [The Golden Age of Iceland] (1906) and Dagrenning [Dawn] (1910) (Óskarsson 2001: 103–50). The idea of Scandinavism also finds passing expression in Icelandic literary-historical publications. These works emphasize two elements: Icelandic unity against foreign powers, and the uniqueness of Iceland as a nation. Since Iceland was a Danish colony, Icelanders in Copenhagen could enjoy Scandinavism in



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much the same way as did other students in Denmark. ‘Skandinavistafélagið’ (The Scandinavism Society) developed in the wake of increasing contacts with other Nordic people after the July 1848 revolution. Throughout the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, nationalism and national romanticism were particularly influential in Icelandic historical writing. The uniqueness of Icelandic historians in terms of their social status and education played a vital role in Icelandic historical writing, but so also did the fact that Iceland was a Danish colony. All research work, whether it concerned manuscript archives or printed books, had to be pursued in Copenhagen because for most of the nineteenth century no such facilities were available in Iceland. Accordingly, many Icelandic historians chose to remain in Denmark in order to pursue their scholarly projects. Many of these projects involved studies of the Icelandic literary or linguistic legacy; they were written in Icelandic and directed towards Icelandic readers. As the century drew to a close, nationalism grew stronger in Iceland. The fight to revise the constitution, which began in 1874, played its part in this development, as did the growing influence of a flourishing bourgeoisie. It was at this time that a few Icelandic historians began to write about Scandinavism. They presented their views in newspapers and periodicals both in Iceland and Copenhagen as well as in textbooks and public lectures, a common medium in Iceland (as elsewhere) at the turn of the century. Almqvist’s stimulating 1846 address appealed to Icelandic historians. Nobody could deny the importance of children and adolescents having access to appropriate reading materials that offered a broad range of views. Around the turn of the century, measures were taken to address the glaring shortage of such materials. On 22 November 1907, laws were passed concerning the education of children in Iceland. It became compulsory for every fourteen-year-old child to develop some knowledge about the great figures and important events of Icelandic history. History textbooks are a powerful discursive medium in that, more than in most other forms of writing, they can mould the historical identity of a nation. They also reflect the state of historical knowledge and opinion at the time they are written. Rather than serving as pioneering studies within a particular field, they tend rather to dispense accepted ideas and ideologies. Clausen echoed Almqvist’s views on the need for linguistic barriers to be challenged and on the unsatisfactory nature of translations between languages as closely related as Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Bogi Th. Melsteð studied history at the University of Copenhagen, where he later spent his entire working life. He was certainly influenced by the Scandinavism movement, repeatedly mentioning it in his writings for Icelandic newspapers and periodicals as well as in private letters,12 and he was interested in promoting his own views on the subject. He placed a high

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priority on improving education in his home country, pointing out how the Danes had gone about developing their folk universities and explaining the vision behind them. He wanted Icelanders to use the Danish experience as a model, and he wrote favourably about Danish schools and their curriculum. He wanted young Icelanders to have the possibility to receive an education and thereafter be inspired to great deeds, as had been the case, and was still the case, in Denmark. Melsteð regarded this desire as both a noble idea and a profitable national investment (Melsteð 1907a: 100). Citations from Danish historians and other Danish influences had a prominent place in Melsteð’s writings – he often cited Frederik Barfod, for example. He was a supporter of the first school for girls in Iceland in 1874, based as it was on a Danish model. Melsteð also highlighted the importance of Scandinavism in education, maintaining that all girls should be educated; the future of the country depended on it (Melsteð 1910: 99–103). He wrote extensively about the new school and its importance (Melsteð 1967). Icelandic historians did not always agree on the virtues of Scandinavism. Its cause was not helped by Orla Lehman (1810–1870), a politician and one of the two founders of the Scandinavist movement (the other one was Carl Ploug [1813–1894]). Lehman was ill disposed towards Icelanders and spoke out in public against them. The Danish government had, for instance, considered whether to separate the finances of Denmark from those of Iceland. Melsteð reported that when this so-called financial decoupling was discussed in the national congress, Lehman had made clear his uncompromising view on Iceland’s place and rights within the Danish state, and he sternly accused the government of being too lenient towards the Icelanders (Melsteð 1907b: 118). Unsurprisingly, this made him extremely unpopular among Icelanders. Melsteð was distressed by the paucity of good history textbooks for Icelandic children. He indicated that all educated nations taught their children the main points of their national history and that appropriate textbooks were sorely needed in Iceland. To address this need, he produced Stutt kenslubók í Íslendinga sögu handa byrjendum [A Short Textbook on Icelandic History for Beginners] (Melsteð 1904: v), in which he presented a positive image of the Scandinavist movement. He included various pieces of information about Denmark, not least that the celebrated poet Oehlenschläger had found inspiration in Iceland’s early sagas. Icelanders began to explore and reassess the origins of their nation, its life, history and literature, and also to nurture their mother tongue, the age-old language of their forefathers. In the course of such investigations, people’s knowledge of Iceland’s language and its early literature developed and intensified (Melsteð 1904: 89). Through his historical writings, Melsteð wished to educate his readers and also to help them to mature as citizens and develop a sense of pride in



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their national heritage. Bogi Th. Melsteð wrote other textbooks in which Scandinavism finds passing expression, such as Sögukver handa börnum [A Short History for Children] published in 1910 (Melsteð 1910). In this work, the author spoke favourably about the many Icelanders in Copenhagen at the middle of the nineteenth century. He reminded his readers that Icelanders were primarily concerned with two things – the position of their own nation and the condition of other nations, so that they could learn from them. Denmark was the ideal foreign national model in that it was most familiar to Icelanders, and it was therefore essential to be familiar with all aspects of its national life. Yet there was also much to learn from other Nordic countries, which were also closely related to Iceland despite the fact that they had previously seemed more geographically remote. He hoped that Iceland’s literary culture might help promote the development of useful jobs and a concern for the future. He also mentioned developing people’s knowledge of international affairs as much as possible, the importance of which had been shown by experience in both Iceland and elsewhere (Melsteð 1910: 71–72). He spoke at this point of a common Nordic nation policy. Melsteð was always preoccupied with Iceland’s educational affairs, as is apparent in this and many other publications. He was also much interested in folk universities, arguing that they had played a leading role in raising educational levels among the Danish people. History is used mainly to invigorate and promote virtue among citizens. No subject is better suited for this task than the study of the past, for it is from such perspectives that we can develop knowledge about the lives and experiences of nations (Melsteð 1903: vi–vii). He wrote about the 1848 European liberation movements and the changes that followed, as a result of which Denmark and many other nations were able to secure legal freedoms or parliamentary government and monarchs were compelled to abandon their dictatorial ways (Melsteð 1910: 73). It has been noted that one distinctive feature of Icelandic history textbooks published at the beginning of the twentieth century is the strong element of authorial bias. The Danes certainly felt unfairly treated in accounts of their commercial dealings with Icelanders.13 Nationalism featured prominently in those textbooks. In all such volumes, we find the authors lost in admiration for the Icelandic medieval commonwealth, even though that admiration was sometimes directed at its different individual features. Everywhere we sense the importance assigned to the eighteenthand nineteenth-century national awakening and to celebrations of national freedom. Melsteð’s writing falls short of a full endorsement of Scandinavism, for the differences between the northern nations were too great. He wrote about how Orla Lehman had drawn Iceland’s claim for independence into parliamentary discussions and sternly reprimanded the Danish government

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for its excessive leniency towards Icelanders. This had sabotaged Iceland’s cause (Melsteð 1910: 77–78). In some respects, Icelandic historians followed the lead of their Norwegian colleagues. In his Íslendinga saga [The Story of Icelanders], for instance, Melsteð mentioned the historian J.E. Sars’ remarkable account of the Icelandic commonwealth in his fine outline of Nordic history, Udsigt over den norske historie (Melsteð 1903: x–xi). In this textbook, Melsteð presented a positive view of the Scandinavian movement and the benefits that Icelandic students could derive from it. Melsteð wrote in newspapers and periodicals in both Denmark and Iceland. In an article in Berlingske Tidende on 2 February 1907, he expressed regret that Icelandic papers were less mindful of their dignity than those in Denmark, by which he meant that they presented only one side of a debate and were too eager to take sides (Melsteð 1907b: 19). Melsteð was certain that Copenhagen’s intellectuals were Iceland’s best allies (1907b: 21). He was a firm believer in folk universities based on the Danish model and wished that Icelandic young people could have access to such an education. No schools, he claimed, had been more useful for the public. He himself was familiar with them and indeed had given lectures at several of them (Melsteð 1907a: 76). Melsteð also argued that the history of Iceland should be taught alongside that of its Scandinavian neighbours. There was much to be gained from such perspectives. He wished to select the most noteworthy aspects from the history of other countries as well as from the history of mankind in general. He believed that history, along with great music and literary fiction, could serve as a catalyst for developing the supreme feelings that help to make individuals into better people (Melsteð 1907a: 80–83). Jón J. Aðils, an important and respected historian, was also much influenced by liberal thought from abroad. Two significant figures should be mentioned in this context. The first was A.D. Jørgensen (1840–1897), director of the Danish state archives, where Aðils spent long hours copying documents and other materials. The second figure was Ernst Trier (1837– 1893), leader of the Danish folk university movement. Bogi Th. Melsteð and Jón J. Aðils were contemporaries and particularly prolific as authors around the turn of the century. Questions regarding the education of young Icelanders were particularly pressing at this time, for most teaching had hitherto taken place at home. Both of these Icelandic scholars were sympathetic to the folk university movement, having been educated in Denmark, the home of that movement and the place where Grundtvig’s influence could still be felt (see also Sigurðsson’s chapter in this volume). Aðils’ main goal was to write for the general public as well as for students of higher education. His text was therefore not intended for children; his approach was highly subjective and frequently rather partisan.



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As was customary at the time, Aðils gave lectures that were open to the public, in which he often spoke about spiritual matters. He was preoccupied with the nationalist movement, viewing it as a crucial force driving sociopolitical change. Iceland’s glorious past had been lost, its people were subject to a foreign power, the nation’s freedom was no more and its ancient rights had been eroded (Aðils 1903: 216). He emphasized that national histories were the ‘sum’ of each nation’s experiences: ‘To know that history fully is to know life. Life is what everyone must know in order be able to heed their calling, as thinking persons worthy of themselves must do’ (Aðils 1903: 237). Nonetheless, running like a thread throughout his work is the idea that every nation must feel an absolute loyalty to itself and its truest nature. Its future existence depends on it. Icelanders must build their future life and culture on the foundations of national history, literature and language, which are the pillars upon which any society stands. At the same time, he urged the nation not to ignore influences from the rest of the world or to stop looking in other directions. Aðils noted that much could be learnt from following the history of other nations, and their best ideas and innovations should be imitated. Aðils believed that the origins of the most important force in the life of modern Scandinavians, the folk universities, could be traced to ancient Norse literature (Aðils 1903: 254–55). In this context, we may also mention Þorsteinn Gíslason (1867–1938), a scholar of Nordic studies, a cosmopolitan figure, educated in Copenhagen, and a popular writer, who wrote about a wide variety of topics, including Scandinavism. His writings in newspapers and periodicals were much influenced by Danish historians in Copenhagen (Gíslason 1904: 73–75). He noted that it had been half a century ago that the idea had first emerged that the Nordic nations should unite under one rule to become a single state. Since then, the same notion had periodically resurfaced – unsurprisingly, he claims, in view of just how sensible the idea was. Understandably, there were writings about Scandinavism in Icelandic periodicals published in Copenhagen,14 notably in Skírnir, the oldest of all Icelandic journals, first published in Copenhagen in 1827 by the Icelandic Literary Society. After 1905, its publication continued in Reykjavík, where it is still widely read today. It was published four times a year until 1918; there are now just two annual volumes. It has always included essays by different writers. Until 1915, there were also regular sections summarizing foreign news, which enabled Icelandic readers to follow events in neighbouring countries, notably in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Articles about Scandinavism appeared in the journal on numerous occasions from the mid nineteenth century until well after the 1864 Danish defeat in Schleswig. News from Denmark, Sweden and Norway was a regular feature and helped update Icelanders on what was happening in the neighbouring countries. There

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were reports about the student meetings in Uppsala, including references to the warmth of Swedish hospitality towards the Danes. Readers learned that the mood of the meetings was upbeat, with talks about brotherhood and solidarity interspersed with drinking. The first occasion upon which students from Finland took part in such meetings is reported as an event of considerable significance. The articles confirm the extent of Danish influence over Icelandic historians at this time. However, doubts were raised as to whether their ideas would ever come to fruition now that the student meetings were increasingly devoted to light entertainment and to carousing rather than to promoting serious ideas about convergence and unity between the northern nations. However, a sense of fraternity and unity of spirit remained at the heart of all meetings, qualities certainly strengthened by the meetings as well. The spiritual relationship between Scandinavians in relation to language also found expression in the periodical.15 Skírnir was one of the main printed sources through which people in Iceland could obtain news from their mainland Scandinavian neighbours. Public lectures were quite common in Reykjavík at the turn of the twentieth century, some of which were later published. In them, the influence of Scandinavism is quite clear. Jón J. Aðils, for example, was preoccupied with arousing nationalist feelings, promoting education policy and advocating social progress. He felt that education in Iceland was inadequate and wrote in favour of reinforcing the role and activities of schools. If Icelanders were to participate in ruling the country and passing their own legislation, they needed education more than anything else. He emphasized the solidarity among Nordic nations and that much could be learned from the other countries. The Scandinavists’ idea of harmonizing the languages found favour among young Icelandic intellectuals (Aðils 1910). Aðils wrote five essays in which he tried to distil his characteristic intellectual optimism, publishing them in a book whose very title, Dagrenning [Dawn], underscores the author’s positive vision. He did not doubt that regardless of how other countries were governed, it paid off to take due notice of their activities rather than to retreat into one’s own national world and only mind one’s own business. Aðils’ periodical articles treated Scandinavism in much the same way as his predecessor had done and helped to increase awareness of the potential for Nordic collaboration (Aðils 1902).

Conclusions In his book Skandinavismen: historisk fremstillet, Clausen’s stance is quite even-handed. He wrote mostly about culture, about ‘Det Skandinaviske Litteratur-Selskab’ and about the student meetings. Songs, toasts and



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speeches were the main elements of the movement, and Clausen’s view was that there was too much talk and too little action. In spite of his chroniclelike style and obvious lack of methodology, his work is still valuable in presenting a coherent picture of the situation at the time. Clausen believed that there were cultural benefits to be gained from the movement and maintained that Scandinavism had had an impact on culture and social affairs alike; it had led to changes for the better with respect to the Nordic currency, postal services, literature and other issues that had proved resistant to reform by other means (Clausen 1900: 232). Køedt believed that even though the political side of Scandinavism was doomed, its cultural elements had certainly left a legacy for later generations. It had bequeathed experiences that were well worth embracing. He concluded by noting that if Scandinavism was to flourish in real life, materialism would need to be resisted and idealism strengthened. As a movement, it was able to generate respect and admiration. In his work, Køedt repeated the words of the Norwegian author Björnstjene Björnson: ‘I have never viewed Scandinavism as anything other than a union of independent nations’. This is in fact the main theme of his work (Peschcke Køedt 1916: 19). He favoured the intellectual side of the movement and believed that the disappearance of its more material side would not constitute a loss. Those were his final words and his ultimate conclusion (Peschcke Køedt 1916: 70). Køedt felt that while the politics of Scandinavism had no future, its underlying notions of fraternity could survive. At the end of his book, he stressed that such ideas and ideology were worthwhile and had helped to draw the nations closer together. The views of Danish scholars were also influential in Iceland, though they were subject to the speed with which they reached its island shores. Icelandic intellectuals were influenced by those writers who argued for national freedom. Some links between liberalism and nationalism can be identified in nineteenth-century Iceland, even though the movement’s focus altered as it dissolved and re-emerged in different forms. Romantic features in Icelandic historical writing are most noticeable around the year 1900 and thereafter. At that time, the struggle for independence was at its height and Icelanders sought to break free from Denmark, as ideas about a strong independent nation and a correspondingly proud self-image proved irresistible. Those Icelanders who wrote in Icelandic had been educated in Denmark, and they were thus much influenced by Danish historians. It might perhaps be said that Icelanders had no other choice than to accept the educational materials prepared by the University of Copenhagen. As for the impact of the historians, they believed that the Scandinavian movement had been an intellectual success but a political failure. Historians

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believed that the cultural part of Scandinavism had not altered society in any significant way. However, Icelanders living in Iceland could at least gain access to a broader worldview through the writings of intellectuals who brought the ideas of the movement home with them. During the era of student meetings, the main focus had been on carpe diem and entertainment. Solidarity was certainly achieved among Scandinavian students, but it never had a significant impact within the broader public domain. It seems that the fine feasts and splendid phrases eventually lost their original meaning. The fact that Scandinavism failed to sustain its initial momentum may reflect the fact that it never established a really profound vision of life. Kristín Bragadóttir, Ph.D., was 1994–2010 Head of the National Collection, National Library of Iceland. She has compiled and edited publications on Icelandic sagas, several in cooperation with the Library of Cornell University. She has published several articles in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Icelandic Writers, ed. Patrick J. Stevens (Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2004).

Notes 1.  Det kongelige bibliotek. Tilg. 141. Bogi Th. Melsted, Efterladte papirer: Breve og dagbøger. Letter from Jón J. Aðils to Bogi Th. Melsteð dated 24 March 1896, from Þorleifur Bjarnason to Melsteð dated 16 October 1909 and 18 November 1909. In Melsteð’s collection, there are also letters from the Danish historian Aage Friis, who also wrote about the Scandinavian movement. As his writings fall outside the period under discussion, they are not referred to here. 2.  The reference is to the eighteenth century. 3.  The National and University Library of Iceland. Lbs. JS 98, fol. 4.  Student songs from Uppsala became famous in the Nordic countries. 5. The National and University Library of Iceland. Lbs. 1839 b, 4to. Letters from various Danish people, among others Adam Oehlenschläger to Grímur Thomsen. 6.  The National and University Library of Iceland. Lbs. 1839 b, 4to. Letter from Jón Þorkelsson to Grímur Thomsen dated 17 October 1890. 7. The title is ‘Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16. Århundrede’. Þorkelsson became the first national archivist in Iceland. 8. In 1844, two years earlier than Thomsen’s lecture, the Skandinavisk Selskab had more than a thousand members (Haarder 2010: 104). The association was founded in 1843 and discontinued in 1865, the year after Denmark lost Schleswig. 9.  Book lists from the Society can be found in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, under the heading ‘Udtaget småtryk 50-110-111’. 10.  It is noteworthy that in this talk, Almqvist tried to persuade the audience of the benefits of common customs laws, currency rules, postal services and passport regulations. He also argued for a common diplomatic service, joint military service, and a unified university run by and staffed with professors from all the Nordic countries. Students would receive a



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diploma upon graduation that would enable them to work in any of the countries. In recent years, the Nordic Council has sought to promote this vision. In 1994, its chairman, Per Syse, wrote in the preface to a new edition of Almqvist’s lecture that the Swede’s ideals had fully stood the test of time. Syse concludes: ‘As of August 1st, 1994 Almqvist’s idea finally became a reality in the Nordic Council’ (Almqvist 1994: 4). 11.  N.M. Petersen is famous for his Danish translations of Njals Saga. 12. Det kongelige bibliotek i København. NKS. 4598, 4to. Finnur Jónsson, NKS. 2031, fol. Gísli Brynjúlfsson. 13.  This can be noted in Þorkell Bjarnason’s (1839–1902) textbook (Bjarnason 1903: 15). 14.  For example, the periodicals Sunnanfari, Eimreiðin and Skírnir. 15.  [Jónsson, Eiríkur], ‘Útlendar fréttir: Danmark’, Skírnir 1876: 156.

Bibliography Aðils, J. 1902. ‘Alþýðuháskólar í Danmörku’, Eimreiðin 8: 4–63. Aðils, J. 1903. Íslenzkt þjóðerni: alþýðufyrirlestrar. Reykjavík: Sigurður Kristjánsson. Aðils, J. 1906. Gullöld Íslendinga. Reykjavík: Sigurður Kristjánsson. Aðils, J. 1910. Dagrenning: fimm alþýðuerindi. Reykjavík: Sigurður Kristjánsson. Almqvist, C.J.L. 1994. Om Skandivavismens utfförbarhet: föredrag. Stockholm: Nordiska rådet Presidiesekretariatet. Bjarnason, Þ. 1903. Ágrip af sögu Íslands. Reykjavík: Sigfús Eymundsson. Björnsson, A. 1988. ‘Grímur Thomsen og Uppsalamótið 1856’, Árbók Landsbókasafns Íslands: Nýr flokkur 14: 5–15. Brevvexling mellem N. M. Petersen og Carl Säve: et bidrag til Skandinavismens og den nordiske filologis historie. 1908, ed. Carl S. Petersen. Copenhagen: Det Schubotheske forlag. Bruun, Chr. 1898. Peter Frederik Suhm 18. oktober 1728 – 7. september 1798: en Levnetsbeskrivelse. Copenhagen: Gad. Clausen, J. 1900. Skandinavismen: historisk fremstillet. Copenhagen: Det Nordiske forlag. Dansk biografisk leksikon. 1934, ed. Povl Engelstoft in cooperation with Svend Dahl. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz forlag. Gíslason, Þ. 1904. ‘Frjettir frá útlöndum’ [News from abroad], in Skírnir: tíðindi Hins íslenzka bókmentafélags 1903. Reykjavík: Prentsmidju Reykjavikur: 52–89. Haarder Ekman, K. 2010. ‘Mitt hems gränser vidgades’: En studie i den kulturella skandinavismen under 1800-talet. Lund: Centrum för Danmarksstudier, Makadam förlag. Hemstad, R. 2008. Fra Indian Summer til nordisk vinter: Skandinavisk samarbeid, Skandinavisme og unionsoppløsningen. Oslo: Akademisk Publisering. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 3. 2008. New York: Macmillan Company and the Free Press. Jónsson, K.J. 2012. Heimsborgari og þjóðskáld: Um þversagnakennt hlutverk Gríms Thomsen í íslenskri menningu. Reykjavík: Hugvísindastofnun H.Í.K. Melsteð, B.Th. 1903. Íslendinga saga, Vol. 1. Kaupmannahöfn: S.L. Möller. Melsteð, B.Th. 1904. Stutt kenslubók í Íslendinga sögu handa byrjendum. Kaupmannahöfn: S.L. Möller. Melsteð, B.Th. 1907a. ‘Um æskuárin og íslenzkan lýðháskóla’, in Andvari: timarit hins íslenzka þjóðvinafjelags, p. 75–104. Melsteð, B.Th. 1907b. ‘Islandske Spørgsmaal’, in Bogi Th. Melsteð (ed.), Islands kulturelle Fremskridt i den nyeste Tid: Nogle Artikler, Copenhagen: Lehmann & Stage. Melsteð, B.Th.1910. Sögukver handa börnum ásamt nokkrum ættjarðarljóðum og kvæðum. Kaupmannahöfn: S.L. Möller.

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Melsteð, B.Th. 1967. ‘Þóra Th. Melsteð 1823 – 18. desember – 1923’, in Jón Guðnason (ed.), Merkir Íslendingar: nýr flokkur VI. Reykjavík: Bókfellsútgáfan, pp. 55–66. Óskarsson, Þ. 2001. ‘Så er det tross alt vår litteratur, Islandsk litteratur historieskrivning ca 1840–1940’, in Per Dahl and Torill Steinfeld (eds), Videnskab og national opdagelse: Studier i nordisk litteraturhistorieskrivning 1. Copenhagen: Nordisk Ministerråd, pp. 103–150. Óskarsson, Þ. 2008. ‘Nasjonale som de store nasjonene: islandsk litteratur og internasjonale forhold i det 19. Århundre’, in Annette Lassen (ed.), Det norröne og det nationale: Studier i brugen af Islands gamle litteratur i nationale sammenhænge i Norge, Sverige, Island, Storbritannien, Tyskland og Danmark. Reykjavík: Stofnun Vigdísar Finnbogadóttur í erlendum tungumálum, pp. 123–43. Østergård, U. 1997. ‘The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity. From Composite States to NationStates’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 25–71. Peschcke Køedt, A. 1916. Skandinavismen. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske boghandel. Petersen, N.M. [1845] 1991. Dansker i Norden, edited by H. Bekker-Nielsen and J. Højgaard Jørgensen. Odense: Odenske Universitesbibliotek. Runeby, N. 1995. Dygd och vetande: ur de bildades historia. Stockholm: Atlantis. Sigmundsson, F. (ed.) 1947. Sonur gullsmiðsins á Bessastöðum: Bréf til Gríms Thomsens og varðandi hann 1838–1858. Reykjavík: Hlaðbúð. Studentertog til Christiania 1851 fra Lund og Kjöbenhavn: Beretning fra et udvalg af deltagerne. 1853. Copenhagen: S. Trier. Studenttåg till Christiania 1852 från Upsala: Berättelse af utsedde committerade. 1854. Uppsala: Leffler. Thomsen, G. 1846. Islands stilling i det övrige Skandinavien, fornemmelig i litterær Henseende: Et Foredrag holdt i det Skandinaviske Selskab, den 9de januar 1846. Copenhagen: Reitzel. Thomsen, G. 1975. Íslenzkar bókmenntir og heimsskoðun. Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs. Troels-Lund, T.F. 1906. De tre nordiske brødrefolk. Copenhagen: Det Schubotheske forlag. Þorkelsson, J. 1898. ‘Grímur Thomsen’, in Andvari: tímarit hins íslenzka þjóðvinafjelags 23, pp.1–33.

CHAPTER

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National, international or transnational? Works and networks of the early Nordic historians of society Marja Jalava

Introduction It is a well-known fact that the professionalization and institutionalization of history as a modern academic discipline took place in an intimate relationship with nationalization. Simultaneously, the period from the 1870s to the interwar years was marked by the rapid development of global interlinkages and structures, boosted by the expansion of industrial capitalism and colonialism (e.g. Conrad 2010: 1–30, 74–76; Rosenberg 2012a: 815–22). This resulted in a strengthened trans- or international consciousness,1 which in the field of historiography was manifested in the form of world history, universal history and comparative history approaches. However, as a countermovement to increasing levels of interconnectedness, the years around 1900 also witnessed the ‘globalization of the national’, that is, a worldwide production of particularistic ideologies of ethno-nationalism and cultural essentialism (Rosenberg 2012b: 10–11). The tension between such localizing and universalizing tendencies has been a built-in feature of scholarly discourses since the so-called Scientific Revolution. Late seventeenth-century scholars, such as those involved with the ‘Republic of Letters’, promoted the ideal that the pursuit of true knowledge transcended national boundaries and loyalties. Concurrently, Notes for this section begin on page 119.

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similar to economic and military triumphs, achievements acclaimed by the international scholarly community contributed to the prestige of the scholars’ own nation. With the nationalization of historiography, it became the patriotic duty of historians to study history from the perspective of their own particular nation, whereas the idea of history as a ‘science’ resulted in claims of general validity. Thus, nationalism contributed to the increasing institutionalization of international scholarly communities, where scholars sought recognition for their particular models in the production and dissemination of knowledge (Forman 1973: 153–56; Iriye 2004: 213–14; Iggers 2006: 91; Kyllingstad 2008: 15–19; Somsen 2008: 363–66; Rosenberg 2012a: 920). An example of this process was the establishment of the International Historical Congresses in 1898, which clearly reflected the ambivalent tendencies of the time: on the one hand, they advocated a universalism or internationalism that depicted the historians’ community as the objective, egalitarian, peace-loving ‘Republic of Letters’, whereas, on the other hand, many scholars harboured nationalist or imperialist biases and merely used the international congresses and networks as a forum for particularistic and ideological self-promotion (Erdmann 2005: 3; Myhre 2012: 266–75). This chapter focuses on the multidimensional entanglement of the transnational, the international and the national in the works and professional networks2 of four early Nordic historians of society:3 two Norwegians, Halvdan Koht (1873–1965) and Edvard Bull Senior (1881–1932),4 and two Finns, Gunnar Suolahti (1876–1933; until 1906, Palander) and Väinö Voionmaa (1869–1947; until 1906, Wallin). These men belonged to the generation of historians who had become aware of the profound economic, social, political and cultural transformations of the era. As a result, they largely abandoned the idealistic and providential schemes of their predecessors and oriented themselves towards a materialist conception of history. In their view, historical research was not primarily done to understand the uniqueness of every historical event, but, instead, it needed to explain typical behaviour and mass phenomena and seek general regularities. For all this, they drew inspiration from the German Kulturgeschichte of Karl Lamprecht and his circle in Leipzig as well as from such historically oriented social scientists and economists as Karl Marx and Werner Sombart.5 In the Nordic context, interest in the history of society was particularly strong in Finland and Norway, where it served a similar purpose: because of the lack of a continuous state history, the historical continuity of the nation was founded on people (folk), society and culture.6 Temporally, this chapter is limited to the period before the Second World War. The reason for this is that Bull, Suolahti and Voionmaa died in 1932, 1933 and 1947, respectively, and so only Koht continued his career after the war.



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The topic is discussed by combining transnational and comparative history approaches. The focus on common transnational currents allows us, first, to consider the Nordic countries, or Norden, as a loosely defined historical region that partly overlaps with other spatial units, such as Northern Europe or the transatlantic space. Since academic historiography had to a large extent become a transnational affair that took place in an increasingly shared situation of globalizing industrial capitalism at around the year 1900, it would be misleading to study Finnish and Norwegian historiography from a predominantly internalist perspective. Before the First World War in particular, many European and American historians had close ties with one another, and the historiographical developments in Helsinki and Oslo were an integral, albeit asymmetrical, part of these criss-crossing networks (Chickering 1993: 344–45; Schöttler 2004: 117–25). Second, by focusing on historians’ connections, we can go beyond the vague notion of ‘influence’ that has been typical of traditional discussions regarding the history of ideas.7 Instead of the agentless diffusion of historiographical currents, we meet here concrete men of flesh and blood, scholars who had their own interests, intentions and emotional investments that impacted the ways in which certain ‘packages’ of historiographical insights interacted with local understandings and conditions. Simultaneously, it is useful to compare the Finnish and Norwegian cases. Despite the universalizing tendencies of the era, significant differences among localities should not be flattened out or dismissed (Hill 2008: 275–80). Factors such as geopolitical conditions, the leeway allowed by particular domestic policies and differences in local academic cultures greatly impacted the career opportunities and strategic alliances of historians. While Norway remained a neutral country during the First World War, in Finland a devastating civil war broke out in 1918 after the collapse of Imperial Russia, with the bourgeois White Army emerging victorious over the Red Army. The anti-socialist climate strongly limited the spread of any leftist ideas in the Finnish academic world compared to that of Norway, where even the radical left found some support at the university (Danielsen et al. 1995: 308–13; Jalava 2012: 82). Moreover, the Finnish civil war strengthened the Germanophile orientation of Finland, whereas in Norway, thanks to its neutrality, scholars could more easily shuttle between the Central Powers and the Allied countries. The comparative approach is of interest also because of the fact that although Finland and Norway have belonged for centuries to the same historical region, at the beginning of the twentieth century there was very little historiographical interaction between them. In general, Finnish historians followed the work of their Norwegian colleagues a bit more closely. For instance, the Finnish historical journal Historiallinen Aikakauskirja sporadically published reviews of Norwegian historical studies (e.g. Palmén 1917; Korhonen 1921: 270; 1926; Sarva 1925), and Edvard Bull and Halvdan Koht were even

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mentioned in passing.8 On the individual level, Väinö Voionmaa was familiar with Bull’s study on the leidang system (the ancient Scandinavian institution of naval levy), and in an article on a similar system along the south-western coast of Finland, he praised Bull’s insights (Bull 1920b; Voionmaa 1925: 2). For their part, Norwegian historians largely ignored the work of their Finnish counterparts. The Norwegian historical journal Historisk Tidsskrift barely mentioned any Finnish historians in general, and Koht and Bull in particular rarely acknowledged the work of Finnish scholars.9 A notable exception was Bull’s highly positive review of Gunnar Suolahti’s comprehensive study on the clergy of Finland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which appeared after the book had been translated into Swedish in the late 1920s (Bull 1927–1929; Suolahti 1919, 1927). However, these connections were so few and far between that in no sense can it be said that Norwegian and Finnish historians of society benefitted significantly from each other’s work. Finally, comparisons allow us to discuss the similarities and differences in scholarship that crossed state borders. For instance, Bull, Koht and Voionmaa were all closely involved in the socialist labour movement, whereas Suolahti was sympathetic to the conservative Finnish Party (the Old Finns; from 1918 onwards, the National Coalition Party). This was reflected in the ways in which they tried to solve the dilemma of social conflicts and national integration. In some other respects, however, Koht and Suolahti were closer to each other in perspective. Being inspired by the social psychological ideas first elaborated upon by Lamprecht and Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig, they both wrote, among other things, extensive biographies of the nineteenth-century ‘great national heroes’ of their respective countries. Koht focused in particular on the Liberal Party (Venstre) leader Johan Sverdrup, with the aim of demonstrating through one person’s life ‘the unity between national and democratic thoughts about progress’10(Koht 1922: 111). The same could be said about the leading idea in Suolahti’s study of the leader of the Old Finns, Yrjö Koskinen ( Suolahti 1933: 7–16). Voionmaa, in contrast, was more interested in Friedrich Ratzel’s ideas about human geography than in social psychology,11 which brought him closer to Koht’s Marxist student Bull, whereas Koht, similar to Suolahti, paid little attention to the influence of geographical forces or climatic factors on historical development (Bull 1912a, 1933: 9–16; Dahl 1952: 39–40).

Nordic historians between localizing and universalizing tendencies Recently, it has been claimed that the besetting sin of modern historiography is methodological nationalism. This refers to the tendency to



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define national societies or nation-states with their contemporary borders as ‘natural’ units of analysis without taking into account flows, linkages or identifications that cross or supersede other spatial units or the phenomena and dynamics within them. This tendency is further strengthened by the national data sets and archival systems that structure knowledge into national compartments (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002: 301–8; Kocka 2003: 42–43; Werner and Zimmermann 2006: 33–43; Levitt and Khagram 2008: 6; Conrad 2010: 74–75; Amelina et al. 2012: 2–3). At first glance, this criticism seems to be adequate also in the case of the four Nordic historians of society. Although there is no straightforward relation between a national space as a geographical framework for research and the adherence to nationalist ideologies,12 their studies were largely restricted to the history of their native countries. This was a deliberate choice, for it was, of course, fully possible to apply an emerging social history approach to a non-national topic.13 Moreover, they tended to study the past within the borders of the present-day nation-states even when they dealt with the medieval or early modern period when Norway and Finland did not exist as separate, clear-cut entities (Bull 1912b; Voionmaa 1915/1969; Suolahti 1919; Koht 1926). The national(ist) commitment becomes even more evident if we broaden our scope beyond academic historiography. The most glaring case is that of Suolahti, who in his popular texts proclaimed the urgent need for the cultural and linguistic Finnicization of Finland.14 In doing so, he echoed the ideological father figure of the Finnish nationalist movement, the philosopher Johan Vilhelm Snellman, who had perceived cosmopolitanism and unbounded individualism as empty abstractions. In this mixture of Herder and Hegel, the real agents in world history were nations, which meant that membership in a certain nation and being socialized into its particular national culture were indispensable prerequisites before an individual could attain any noteworthy achievements (Palander 1906; Suolahti 1907a, 1907b; cf. Snellman 1844/1994a: 4–5; 1844/1994b: 183). Although Koht represented a more liberal and leftist version of nationalism, he emphasized in a very similar way the importance of a common Norwegian national culture and idiom, crystallized in his slogan ‘one nation with one language’ (Svendsen 2013: 157–58, 168–69). On closer examination, however, the issue of methodological nationalism is more complex. Namely, we can claim that even if historians choose to study the past based on present-day national borders, they may still advocate an international heuristic approach or a transnational ontology that is based on the assumption that historical phenomena and dynamics take place across transnational fields. From this perspective, the decisive issue is not what region one is studying, but how one studies it, since even research

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focusing on the micro-territorial local units may contribute to the elucidation of inter- or transnational phenomena and dynamics.15 Indeed, despite the primacy of the national space, the Nordic historians of society explicitly detached themselves from the assumption of national uniqueness with respect to the past, thus diverging from their more nationalist predecessors and contemporaries. Although they agreed that historical research could not overlook the specificity of local conditions, they insisted that the national framework had to be accompanied by an expanded view that included Nordic, European and ultimately global historical perspectives (Voiomaa 1913: 14–15; Bull 1919: 20; Koht 1921: 123).16 As Bull envisioned the ideal research strategy, local history with its rich varieties was essential for understanding the national history of Norway, which, in turn, contributed to general European history and the common history of humankind – and vice versa (Bull 1919: 8, 20; 1933: 17–18). Similarly, Voionmaa suggested in 1913, to the annoyance of his ultra-nationalist colleagues such as Jalmari Jaakkola, that the main reason to study medieval history in Finland was the fact that so many general European research questions still remained unanswered (Voiomaa 1913: 14–15; cf. Jaakkola 1913: 429). Methodologically, the four Nordic historians mostly leant on historical comparisons and, in particular, asymmetrical ones, in which other countries were studied in order to understand their national histories. In doing so, they complied with an emerging European trend. In early twentiethcentury historical research, the comparative method, promoted by figures like Henri Berr, Henri Pirenne and Marc Bloch, was regarded as the most important means for relativizing or challenging nationalist particularism and establishing general explanatory models instead of local ‘pseudo-explanations’.17 Bloch even participated in Bull’s research programme of ‘the comparative studies on the cultural conditions of the peasant societies’, and his classic study on French rural history was based on lectures given in Oslo in 1929 (Burke 1990: 22–23; Dahl 1990: 272). In practice, the Nordic historians compared their hypotheses and conclusions, based as they were on Norwegian or Finnish archival sources, with international research literature, which allowed them to identify new problems and distance themselves from a narrowly nationalist perspective. For instance, the conviction that the conditions of medieval or early modern societies in Northern Europe had been relatively similar encouraged them to trace comparable processes in their own countries, which led them to new findings.18 Ultimately, however, modern nation-states were always lurking in the background. Similar to their more famous contemporaries, the Nordic historians assumed that the units of such comparisons could be clearly separated from each other, which is why they were much more attuned to



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inquiring into similarities and differences than tracing linkages and the processes of mutual influence. In other words, their research was, above all, international rather than translocal because the ‘national’ component constituted the crucial building block for the ‘international’ realm (Rosenberg 2012a: 824; see also Kocka 2003: 40–42; Cohen 2004: 58–59; Kocka and Haupt 2009). They were also prone to a certain ‘politics of comparison’, in which Western countries were favoured instead of comparisons with Eastern Europe.19 An extreme example of the process of combining methodological nationalism and claims of universal validity is that of Karl Lamprecht, the forerunner of the history of society. By submerging himself in German national history, he argued in an almost proto-Spenglerian way that he had found a whole series of universally valid cultural stages, on the basis of which a ‘scientific Weltgeschichte [world history] can then be written’ (Lamprecht 1905: 25, 209–22, citation on 219). His Nordic sympathizers were inspired to simultaneously criticize these high-flown constructions, suggesting a more empirical version of the principle: the histories of Norway, Finland and all other nation-states should have been studied first as separate cases; then, general regularities, if not the laws of historical and social development, could be derived from these comparisons (Palander 1904: 105; Bull 1915: 6–7). The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, established in 1922 in Oslo, together with its comparative project on peasant societies, which was largely invented by Bull, was based on this idea. Lamprecht’s Institut für Universalgeschichte in Leipzig was actually used as its model (Bull 1929b; Kyllingstad 2008: 497–500). Nation-centred comparisons were also in line with the practical turn of Scandinavism or Nordism after the events of the 1860s. Although the idea of a common Nordic identity was cherished, it was seen to best manifest itself through the separate nation-states (Østergård 1997: 42–46). This said, the tendency to prefer asymmetrical comparisons did not prevent the early Nordic historians of society from recognizing processes that we would today label as ‘transnational’. In the case of Voionmaa, the discussion on global and colonial entanglements mostly took place in his textbooks on economic geography (Voionmaa 1912, 1918–1928). Among Koht’s historiographical works, a 1913 article on the relationship between grain prices and peasant uprisings in early modern Europe manifested a clear understanding of the significance of global economic flows (Koht 1913). The transnational perspective was strengthened in his research after the Second World War, apparently as a result of the four years he spent as a political refugee in the United States, which pushed him away from his national ‘comfort zone’ (Koht 1948/1982, 1949; Svendsen 2013: 366–68). For Bull, in light of his Marxist conception of history, the very concepts

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of ‘national’ and ‘nation-state’ were questionable, for he merely saw them as reflections of the class-specific interests of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie (Bull 1929a, 1930). Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, even conservative, nationalist-minded Gunnar Suolahti tried to go beyond methodological nationalism.20 This is a good reminder that a historian’s academic conceptions do not always go hand in hand with his/her political and ideological convictions, so we should avoid making this relationship too straightforward.21 In fact, Suolahti applied several times for a grant for an ambitious plan to study cultural interconnections across Northern Europe in the Age of Enlightenment (above all, France, Germany and Scandinavia). Lamprecht’s influence was visible in the way in which Suolahti emphasized the need to pay attention to the ‘totality’ of economic, social and cultural factors and to construct general typologies that were valid across state borders.22 However, these plans fell through due to a lack of financing. In all fairness, the failure partly resulted from his difficulties in outlining his research questions precisely enough, but, similar to many other researchers of the era, he ended up being a pawn in the game between the Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking board members of the Faculty of Philosophy.23 When later on in his career he primarily conducted research within the framework of Finland, this was a choice partly imposed on him by senior academics.24

The trouble with class struggle An urgent challenge stemming from the simultaneous processes of globalizing industrial capitalism and nationalization was the question of how to incorporate ‘class’ and ‘class struggle’ into historical master narratives based on the ideals of national unity and loyalty (Deneckere and Welskopp 2008; Rosenberg 2012a: 856–59). As Marx and Engels had stated in their Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), ‘The working men have no fatherland’. This had given them reason to suggest that ‘united action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat’ (Marx and Engels 1848/1969: ch. II; Bull 1918: 63).25 However, it was another question how this paragraph should have been interpreted amidst the turmoil of the First World War. This was a key issue, for instance, within the Norwegian Labour Party. For the radical faction, which was politically led by Martin Tranmæl and ideologically by Edvard Bull, the 1917 Bolshevist Revolution in Russia was a source of inspiration that called all workers to engage in a worldwide revolution based on a transnational class identity and solidarity. The more reformist faction, that to which Halvdan Koht belonged, rather approached the ‘social question’



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as a national problem. In their case, national solidarity was emphasized and the strategic alliance was based on the national cooperation of ‘all working people’ (above all, the workers and the peasants) instead of the ‘working class’. As Koht put it in 1923, the fact that the workers did not have a fatherland at the moment did not mean that they could not have one in the future. ‘One fatherland, a home for everybody’ was his objective (Koht 1923: 366).26 In Finland, a similar tension had already manifested itself slightly earlier, after the Social Democrats had taken 40 per cent of the votes cast in the first democratic parliamentary elections in 1907, which had intensified the ideological struggle within the party (e.g. Kirby 2006: 150–61). Although the political developments in Norway and Finland proceeded differently, in both countries the issues of national independence and the democratization of society had become entangled in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the case of Koht, Suolahti and Voionmaa, we can trace a rather similar trajectory. They all had a small-town, middle class background – their fathers were schoolmasters at institutions of secondary education – and cultural nationalism had been strongly present in their childhood homes, for instance in the form of the language conflict.27 During their youth, nationalist cultural radicalism started to gain a more definite social overtone, further boosted by the adoption of socialist programmes by the Norwegian and Finnish labour parties around the year 1900. As a result, Koht and Voionmaa became socialists and ultimately full-time labour politicians during the interwar period. Despite his participation in the socialradical Raataja [Drudge] group of the Finnish Party, Suolahti in fact moved in a conservative direction at this point (Svendsen 2013: 16–20, 164–66; Halila 1969: 18–23, 50–59; Suolahti 1947: 21–28, 224–45). Bull had a different background. Unlike the others, he came from a well-to-do, highly cultured and influential family living in the capital city of Norway, and an emotionally laden folkelighet [‘closeness to the people’] sentiment was relatively foreign to his childhood environment. Being the youngest of the four historians, he entered academic life in the early 1900s when socialism had already gained a foothold in the Norwegian student community. Therefore, he skipped over the phase of nationalist cultural radicalism, landing directly in a more class-conscious, intellectually oriented type of socialism.28 In general, he shunned all kinds of agrarian-populist and nationalist nostalgia and wanted to build the new progressive culture of the lower classes based on the experiences of the urban industrial proletariat (Bull 1929a, 1933: 47–54, 60). The nationalist mindset during the early years of the twentieth century left its mark on the socialist thought of Koht and Voionmaa, who both also tried to reconcile nationalism with class struggle in their academic research. Indeed, according to Koht, the most important idea that he had

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introduced to the study of history was that class struggle was fundamental to nation-building: with every new class – aristocracy, bourgeoisie, peasantry, workers – that fought to gain a share of political power and full membership in the nation, the national community was growing stronger and broader (Koht 1951: 152–54; see also, e.g., Dahl 1952: 71–78; 1990: 262–64; Nordby 1995: 187–88; Fulsås 2000: 250; Svendsen 2013: 163–64). As he later recalled, this idea had first appeared to him in 1910 like a ‘vision which felt as if a ray of light had gone through me’, establishing itself as the basis for all of his future research (Koht 1951: 153; Skard 1982: 81–82). His journey across the United States in 1908–1909 also made a lasting impact on him. There, he had become convinced of the importance of the economic forces in history, but he was also puzzled by the strong sense of individualism and lack of solidarity among American workers (Koht 1951: 123–24, 131, 148–52). While American society was threatened by samfunnskrig [‘war of society’], in the Norwegian case nationalism and national solidarity could turn klassestriden [class struggle] into a positive, culturally constructive force (Koht 1910: 98–104; Svendsen 2013: 131–32). In his main historiographical works on the relationship between class struggle and nation-building, he mostly studied conflicting class interests and the emancipation of the lower classes within the context of Norwegian society, explaining the historical development primarily based on internal parameters.29 References to a wider context had only a marginal role in his works written before the Second World War (Koht 1910/1970: 198; 1926: 43–47).30 While simultaneously trying to push the nationalization of capitalism into the Labour Party’s programme (Slagstad 2001: 231–37; Svendsen 2013: 132), he also aimed at nationalizing the global history of capitalism in his research. For Voionmaa, the entanglement of the national and the transnational was more complex. Similar to Koht, and in line with reformist social democracy, Voionmaa’s vision was ultimately evolutionist and integrative: progress in Finnish history equated with the number of people who had gained full access to political power and the full rights of citizenship. However, in Voionmaa’s multi-volume study on the history of the city of Tampere (1907–1910), the first modern industrial town in Finland, the impetus to history was not given by ‘class struggle as nation-building’. Instead, the main historical agent was the capitalist mode of production. In Voionmaa’s eyes, nation-building could also be anti-democratic; in other words, there was no immediate continuum from nationalization to democratization. As an example, he referred to the nineteenth-century Finnish nationalist leaders who had wanted to replace the Swedish-speaking upper class with a Finnish-speaking one, not give power to the common people. In this situation, it was ultimately the capitalist mode of production that contributed



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to democratization precisely because it shattered the old patriarchal society and gave birth to the working class as a self-conscious sociopolitical force. This, in turn, was the prerequisite for the true emancipation of the workers as well as for their role as a counterbalance to the ‘dangerous and destructive economic nationalism’ which, according to Voionmaa’s continuation volume to the history of Tampere in 1935, had been the main reason for the First World War.31 Bull discussed this theme chiefly in his works addressed to a more general public. As a radical socialist, he perceived ‘bourgeois nationalism’ as being utterly incompatible with revolutionary internationalism. He also emphasized the entanglement of capitalism and the bourgeois state machinery, which made him suspicious of parliamentarism and the prevailing legislation based on bourgeois class interests. Indeed, he even considered the dictatorship of the proletariat an option in Norway, at least during the transitional period from capitalism to a classless socialist society.32 This radical stand was reflected in Bull’s historical research. In accordance with the Marxist conception of history, he tended to see the development of the relations of production and the resulting class struggle as the driving forces in history. Consequently, he aimed at interpreting the history of Norway from this perspective, seeing, for instance, the social conflicts related to the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in medieval Norway as a ‘real class struggle between the clergy and the nobility’ for the ownership of land (Bull 1912b: 49; see also Bull 1925/1938: 48–55, 65–69). Unlike Koht, he did not underline continuity in Norwegian history, but rather described the emergence of modern industrial capitalism as a rupture that gave birth to the modern socialist working class with an international class consciousness and also gave a new historical meaning to the very concept of ‘class struggle’. To sum up, his main objective was not to demonstrate how class struggle had contributed to the centuries-long nation-building effort in Norway, but to examine Norway as part of the emerging capitalist system and, above all, the socialist struggle against that particular system (Bull 1917; 1921: 27–29; 1925–1938: 97–100; cf. Koht 1926: 1–6). As already mentioned, Suolahti stood on the conservative side of the political spectrum. He perceived growing global interconnectedness, ‘worldwide Bildung’ [in Finnish: yleismaailmallinen sivistys] and class-based political movements predominantly as threats to national unity and culture, constantly stressing the importance of the national ‘common good’ above sectional interests (Suolahti 1907a). Although he expressed sympathy for the proletariat [köyhälistö, the poor] and considered class struggle ‘in certain conditions and within certain limits unavoidable’, his alternative to socialism was a form of cooperativism that ‘demolishes class antagonism and class boundaries’ (Suolahti 1908: 32 and 31, respectively). To some extent, it

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even seems that his Lamprechtian quest for the ‘totality’ of economic, social and cultural factors in history ultimately stemmed from his concern over the fragmentation of modern society and his emotional longing for an allembracing national community.33 Nevertheless, he remained sensitive to social conflicts in his research. For instance, in his study of the clergy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he keenly analysed their social stratification, socio-economic relations and conflicting interests with each other as well as other estates of the realm (Suolahti 1919). In fact, both Koht’s and Bull’s ‘proletariat hypothesis’ arguably made them less sensitive to intra-class conflicts in history (Pryser 1993: 175). On the other hand, Suolahti ethnicized social conflicts to a much stronger degree. While he considered the divisions between the ‘Swedish upper class’ and the ‘Finnish underclass’ to be an essential parameter in Finnish history, Koht in particular emphasized that the centuries-long class struggle in Norway between the bourgeoisie and the peasants was based on colliding economic interests, not on the fact that some merchants were of Danish or German descent (Koht 1910/1970: 209–11; cf. Suolahti 1933: 8–15; 1907b: 831). However, common to all four historians of society was the binary opposition between the repressive ‘upper class’ and the oppressed ‘underclass’. In this scheme of things, their own class position remained undefined. Obviously, they did not belong to the ranks of the uneducated common people, but neither did they identify with the ruling elites or nouveaux riches. As Bull saw the situation, the small group of intellectuals that consisted chiefly of academics and artists was above immediate class interests, so they could freely choose which side they were on (Bull 1933: 53). Here, we may perhaps see a hint of a ‘mandarin ideology’, in which the scholars installed themselves above social conflicts and acted as the nonpartisan representatives of the genuine interests of the nation or society (Ringer 1969: 1–13; Forman 1973: 170–71; Smith 1991: 196–98). From this point of view, we may even ask whether Bull, Koht and Voionmaa were drawn to labour politics because it appeared to them as an objective fact rather than a political stand in the prevailing situation (see also Halila 1969: 163–69; Svendsen 2013: 119–24).

Networks: personal, institutional and virtual When we move from works to networks, one thing becomes clear at the outset: Halvdan Koht, the president of the Bureau of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (CISH) from 1926 to 1933 and its regular counsellor-member until the mid 1950s, was in a class of his own.34 While different personal qualities certainly played an important role here,35 a



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combination of (geo)political and cultural factors arguably also worked in favour of Koht. In this section, the four Nordic historians are compared to show how the complex interplay of national, transnational and international aspects impacted their professional lives. To begin with, young historians obviously need mentors and supporters in order to obtain scholarships, posts and other positions of trust that qualify them academically. In principle, at the beginning of the twentieth century the basic demarcation lines within the community of academic historians were rather similar in most European countries. First, there were tensions between liberals and conservatives; second, there were controversies over the spheres of history that were considered most essential; and third, there were disputes between nomothetic and idiographic approaches, manifested either in a preference for broader syntheses or a meticulous reflection on archival sources. In Finland, this general setting was further complicated by the ardent language struggle between the Swedish-speaking minority and the Finnish-speaking majority. Thus, while in Norway the political leftists Koht and Bull could receive support from older faculty members who were conservative but appreciated their detailed studies on medieval history, in Finland the linguistic barrier was very hard to surpass, regardless of a historian’s thematic, methodological or political preferences. Moreover, as already mentioned in the introduction, the Norwegian political climate was more tolerant of leftist currents (Svendsen 2013: 117–18; Klinge 1974, 2010: 498–527). Though history was a popular subject in both countries (Tommila 1989: 207; Langholm 1995: 85–86), in Finland there were more people applying for professorships and the competition was naturally harder. When Koht successfully applied for a professorship in 1910 and Bull in 1917, they both had only one competitor (Svendsen 2013: 118).36 When Suolahti and Voionmaa had their first chance to apply in 1913, there were six other candidates and they also had to compete with each other for the support of the very same faculty members, as they both represented the synthesizing Kulturgeschichte trend of the Finnish-speaking camp. Although they each received extraordinary professorships in 1918, the positions were of a lower rank than full professorship (Klinge 1974). Voionmaa soon became a fulltime politician, whereas Suolahti finally managed to get a full professorship in Finnish and Scandinavian History in 1929. Unfortunately, however, he died only four years later. To sum up, Koht managed to establish a leading position in the Norwegian historical community approximately ten years earlier than Suolahti and Voionmaa in Finland, which gave him significant advantages in further network-building. As a full professor, he could also help his students, such as Bull, gain a firm position at the university soon after their doctoral dissertation (Svendsen 2013: 137–40).

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The language struggle further hampered the Finnish-speaking historians’ possibilities to establish a Nordic network, which for Koht was an important pillar in his international network-building efforts.37 As already mentioned, Koht, Suolahti and Voionmaa were all active in language politics, claiming that the scholarly use of the vernacular idiom of their homeland would significantly contribute to democratization and national integration.38 For Suolahti and Voionmaa, this arguably became a much more limiting factor because the use of Finnish made their works incomprehensible to their Scandinavian colleagues. Although both men were bilingual in Finnish and Swedish, in the tense atmosphere of early twentieth-century Finland they considered it their overriding patriotic duty to ‘bring the thoughts of our researchers to the knowledge of the broad Finnish-speaking audience of our country’.39 In other words, the national community was clearly prioritized at the expense of the academic ‘Republic of Letters’. Koht did not have to make a similar decision between his national and transnational loyalties. Although he sometimes used in his works nynorsk (landsmål), the language form based on the Norwegian vernacular, this did not seriously limit his work from being understood by Danish and Swedish colleagues. He could thus simultaneously address his words to the Scandinavian academic community and the Norwegian common people.40 The Finnish-speaking historians became seriously concerned over the poor accessibility of their works in neighbouring countries in the late 1920s at the time when they began to more actively participate in the Congresses of Nordic Historians.41 This resulted in a translation project, including the publication of Suolahti’s above-mentioned main study on the clergy of Finland in Swedish in 1927, almost ten years after the work had originally been published in Finnish (Suolahti 1919; 1927). The translation was favourably received in the other Nordic countries; for instance, Bull was excited about the possibilities to compare Suolahti’s results with those for Norway (Bull 1927–1929: 411–12).42 However, at that time Koht was already busy having his books translated into major international languages outside of the Nordic countries: his main work on Norwegian peasant uprisings was published in French in 1929, soon followed by his biography on Henrik Ibsen in English in 1931. These publications further contributed to his status in the international community of historians (Svendsen 2013: 202–3). Voionmaa’s footnotes to his main work on the history of the Karelian people of Finland demonstrate his strong engagement with scholarly research from other countries. In fact, he constantly made references in his work to the latest European research to a much larger degree than Koht did in Norsk bondereising (Voionmaa 1915/1969; cf. Koht 1926). Ironically, however, none of his foreign colleagues apparently became aware of this fact because his studies were mostly available only in Finnish.



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In addition to cultural factors, foreign policy had a significant influence on Nordic historians’ institutional network-building opportunities. In Norway, the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905 caused the most serious conflict from the viewpoint of academic cooperation. As a protest against Swedish conservative power politics, the Norwegian historians refused to participate in the First Congress of Nordic Historians that was arranged by their Swedish colleagues in Lund in 1905 (Torbacke 2005: 52–53; Zander 2007: 31–33). However, Koht was personally convinced that this was the wrong strategy. In line with his general political programme, he instead chose to follow a pragmatic line that emphasized the neutrality and cooperativeness of Norway. Particularly after the First World War, he effectively utilized Norway’s neutrality to overcome the academic exclusion of the former Central Powers. In doing this, he had a double objective: to advance world peace and, simultaneously, to reinforce the position of Scandinavia in general and Norway in particular as a core region in the international ‘Republic of Letters’. The symbolic fulfilment of this particular mission was the Sixth International Historical Congress in 1928, held in Oslo with Koht as the dominant figure. Later on, he even described it as ‘the greatest moment of my life’.43 The Finnish-speaking historians stayed at home in 1905, too. This can be interpreted as a general anti-Swedish protest, because its targets were both the Swedish-speaking academic minority in Finland and the ‘Swedes of Sweden’ (rikssvenskar) who were loyal to them.44 In general, the Finnishspeaking historians aired a certain amount of bitterness towards their Scandinavian colleagues who, from their point of view, were biased against the legitimate rights of the Finnish speakers in Finland.45 After the independence of Finland in 1917, foreign affairs became further complicated by the controversy over the Åland Islands with Sweden and the Finnish expansion into the Arctic Ocean region, which Norway considered a threat to its Finnmark area (Kaukiainen 1984: 204–6). Consequently, when the Second Congress of Nordic Historians was arranged in Oslo in 1920, Finland was once again represented by a group of mostly Swedish-speaking historians.46 The relations between the Finnish-speaking historians and their Scandinavian colleagues became more neutral during the 1920s, so we can consider the Fourth Nordic Congress in Copenhagen and Sorø in 1926 the first one in which the Finnish-speaking Finns participated en masse.47 To some extent, the sticky integration of the Finns into the Nordic community was also related to the simultaneous ‘border states policy’ of Poland and the Baltic states, which enjoyed some support in Finland. Estonia in particular enjoyed a special position because of the closely kindred languages.48 This south-eastern orientation of Finland was manifested, for instance, in the participation by Finnish historians in the Historical Congress of the

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East European and Slavic Countries, held in Warsaw in 1929 (Mansikka 1927), and in the establishment of the Estonian-Finnish Historical Meetings (Eestin–Suomen historiapäivät) in 1933 (Winter 1933; Oja 1936). Although both Suolahti and Voionmaa preferred a Nordic orientation to a south-eastern orientation,49 the Nordic orientation in official Finnish foreign policy made its true breakthrough only in the late 1930s, when the weakness of the League of Nations had become obvious and the idea of a Nordic defence union therefore began to receive more support (Kaukiainen 1984: 216). The attitude of the Finnish historians towards the International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences can best be described as positive but formal. Finland had become a member of the Committee in 1927, and from that point the regular Finnish CISH representative Per Olof von Törne, a multilingual aristocratic cosmopolitan and professor of history at the Swedish-language Åbo Akademi University since 1918, dutifully reported on the activities of the CISH in Historiallinen Aikakauskirja.50 However, on many occasions he seems to have been more excited about the conference dinners and sightseeing tours than the more scholarly part of the programme.51 In Norway, Koht’s trump card in his international network-building was the fact that he had distanced himself from the highly Eurocentric orientation of the Nordic and European historians’ communities from early on. In 1908, he had travelled to the United States regardless of the opinion of his senior colleagues, who did not understand why a historian should journey to a country that barely had any history at all (Koht 1951: 123, 134–35).52 This trip marked the beginning of his extensive American networks, which benefitted him crucially after the First World War. Indeed, we may even claim that it was the American historian Waldo G. Leland, financially backed by such major American foundations as the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Institution, who truly opened the way for Koht to the CISH organization.53 Comparatively, the first Finnish historian who acquainted himself with the United States was a student of Suolahti and Voionmaa, Heikki Waris, who made a study trip to the country only in the beginning of the 1930s, that is, almost thirty years later than Koht (Alapuro and Alestalo 1973: 117). Koht’s double agenda has already been outlined above: to simultaneously promote world peace and the position of Norway. The first factor, world peace, has also been identified as the leading motive in the efforts of Leland and other American historians to foster interwar international cooperation (Erdmann 2005: 102–9). However, the American historian J.F. Jameson’s report from the International Historical Congress in Oslo in 1928 suggests an additional motive for their actions. In his report, Jameson was struck by the fact that so few European historians were interested



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in American history, although ‘the United States of America is the most formidable political, economic, and social power in the modern world’ (Jameson 1929: 270). Thus, the generous funding provided to the CISH organization by the Rockefeller Foundation was obviously partly meant to manifest American national greatness, for which international organizations such as the CISH were being used to help obtain such recognition.54 In this entanglement of transnational, international and national agendas, the historians of small, peripheral Norway and the emerging American superpower happily managed to find each other, which resulted in Koht’s rise to the top of the international scholarly community of historians. However, it should be emphasized that participation in international networks was not always a choice made by an individual him/herself. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, the national and international arenas of history were complementary to each other, such that the national organs decided who was able to present a conference paper abroad. In other words, a young historian’s participation in an international conference was a sign that he55 had been approved by the national gatekeepers. In principle, only full professors were qualified for the international top positions of trust. This ruled out scholars such as Voionmaa, who did not have such status in his native country – if this was ever, in the first place, something that he desired. Namely, although Bull had a full professorship and could also benefit from Koht’s support, excellent Scandinavian networks and the neutrality of Norway, he tended to underrate ‘bourgeois’ cooperation and, instead, gave top priority to socialist internationalism.56 In general, it is worth remembering that it is a rather novel situation in the discipline of history that international merits and publications are more appreciated than thick monographs in national languages about national history. National historiographies were the chief arenas for the power struggles among historians, and a career abroad was often related to a marginal position at home. Retrospectively, it seems that even Koht’s international career was partly achieved at the cost of long-lasting scholarly influence in Norway. The students tended to consider him distant and authoritarian, and rather approached Bull whose door was always open to them (Svendsen 2013: 220). Similar to Bull, Suolahti and Voionmaa were very popular with the students. In the end, it was not the flamboyant career abroad but the ability to make disciples at home that made a professor unforgettable. With the rise of modern social science history in the 1970s, Suolahti’s and Voionmaa’s major works gained in Finland the status of classics (Haatanen 1973: 151–67), whereas the roughly 46,000 pages written by Koht were largely forgotten in Norway, and he is nowadays chiefly remembered as the minister of foreign affairs before the German occupation of Norway in 1940 (Svendsen 2013: 405).

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Conclusions From the perspective of the multidimensional entanglement of the national, the transnational and the international, it is not surprising that the national component turned out to be the most profound one in the works and networks of the early Nordic historians of society. To begin with, they all grew up during the period when Norway and Finland went through an intense nation-building process, and the nationalist undercurrent – or, in Bull’s case, a passionate dislike of it – remained firmly a part of their mental construction. Democratization and social equality were crucial for them, and the writing of the history of their native country in the language that was most accessible to a broad local audience became a moral imperative. This localizing tendency was strengthened by a type of methodological nationalism that pre-structured knowledge about the world in a way that encouraged historians to observe and interpret their research subjects within the confines of the nation-state, even if they would have liked to supersede such boundaries or deliberately aim at a transnational framework. While all four historians were well aware of the rapid developments with respect to global interlinkages and structures, they mostly adopted a comparative approach, which allowed them to study contemporary nation-states as parallel cases and find general regularities on the basis of these separate national cases. As Suolahti’s failed funding applications to study the transnational cultural interconnections during the Age of Enlightenment made clear, this was also the orientation towards which the senior faculty members most actively pushed them. National factors, such as a person’s established position in the national community of historians, were also crucial for institutional network-building abroad because interwar international cooperation was quite literally international. National organs nominated their representatives for international committees and congresses, and without such national backing, an international career was not very likely, to say the least. Moreover, the geopolitical situation had a significant influence on networking opportunities. In the early twentieth century, the Finnish-speaking historians of Finland were excluded – or excluded themselves – for some time from the Nordic community of historians because of the alleged expansionist undertakings of Finland, regardless of whether the historians personally supported such undertakings or not. On the other hand, the convergence of Norwegian and American political interests and the strategic alliance between Koht and his American colleagues gave an enormous boost to Koht’s international career, which would have been impossible by Norwegian or Nordic efforts alone.



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However, the transnational dimension was not insignificant, and the interwar period witnessed some serious efforts to go beyond the nationstate and methodological nationalism in historical research. Such phenomena as the strong emphasis on comparative history and the founding of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture in Oslo in 1922 reflected an acknowledgement of the insufficiency of the national(ist) framework in history, even if in hindsight we may consider these efforts to have remained incomplete. Moreover, the implicit networks alluded to in the form of references and footnotes were intense, although they remained asymmetrical. Similar to the present-day situation, the ‘Republic of Letters’ was a highly unequal arena, and the ability to gain access to cultural, social and financial capital ultimately determined the course of a historian’s professional life. Marja Jalava obtained her Ph.D. in Finnish and Nordic history at the University of Helsinki in 2005. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Political History at the University of Helsinki. Her recent publications on the history of historiography include a co-edited anthology Kirjoitettu kansakunta [The Written Nation] (SKS, 2013); ‘“Kulturgeschichte” as a Political Tool: The Finnish Case’, in Historein 11/2011; and ‘Nordic Countries as a Historical and Historiographical Region: Towards a Critical Writing of Translocal History’, in História da Historiografia 11/2013. Her ongoing research focuses on academic historiography, emotional habitus and political regimes in postwar Europe. She is working on a collective volume, European Intellectual Space: A View from Its Margins, dealing with the hierarchical dimensions of intra-European intellectual encounters.

Notes 1.  The word ‘international’ includes ‘national’ as its building block, whereas the word ‘transnational’ refers to phenomena that go beyond and across state borders. In practice, these realms have often been mutually constitutive (Iriye 2004; Rosenberg 2012a: 824, 885). 2.  In addition to personal and institutional webs of communication, virtual networks are also of interest, that is, references to other scholars and their works. 3.  The notion ‘historians of society’ is used to separate this early current from the postSecond World War modern social science history. 4.  This chapter focuses entirely on Edvard Bull, Sr, not to be confused with his son, Edvard Bull, Jr (1914–1986), who is considered one of the founders of Norwegian social science history. 5. See, for example, Koht 1899; Palander 1904; Bull 1920a: 94 fn 1; on a general level, Iggers 2005: 469–70; Haapala 2007: 56; Aronsson et al. 2008: 269–72; for more on Lamprecht and German cultural sciences, see Smith 1991; Chickering 1993.

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6.  Norway as a state had disappeared during the ‘Danish period’ of rule from 1536 until 1814, whereas Finland had no previous state history before 1809, when it became an autonomous grand duchy incorporated into the Russian Empire. Norway and Finland became independent in 1905 and 1917, respectively. With respect to the history of historiography, see Kjeldstadli 1995: 53–54; Aronsson et al. 2008: 266. 7. For a criticism of the ‘influence’ model, see Schöttler 2004: 115; Middell and Naumann 2013: 427; Shore 2014: 195–98. 8.  Bull and Koht were chiefly mentioned in the reports of the Nordic and International Historians’ Congresses, e.g. Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1927 (4): 322–25 and 1931 (3): 228–33. Koht also acted in 1933 as an expert reviewer in the application process for the Professorship in General History at the University of Helsinki; see the short notice in Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1933 (2): 208. 9. This conclusion is based on the footnotes and bibliographies in both Koht’s and Bull’s main historiographical works as well as on the interwar volumes and register of Historisk Tidsskrift (Norway), as discussed in Jansen 1937. 10.  All translations from Norwegian and Finnish to English are by the author if not otherwise stated. 11.  For Voionmaa’s interest in Ratzel, see, e.g., the geopolitical discussion in Voionmaa 1919; Tiitta 1994: 332–36; Vares 2010: 49–50; Lähteenmäki 2014: 100–105. 12.  This was particularly the case with Bull (e.g. Bull 1929a); see also Møller Jørgensen 2012: 70–71. 13.  An example is the Finnish historian Herman Gummerus, who shared similar theoretical interests with Suolahti, but chose to focus on the social history of the Roman Empire (Väisänen 2000). 14.  Finland had been for centuries an integral part of the Swedish Realm, so Swedish was the mother tongue of the upper classes and used for administrative, scholarly and literary purposes until 1883. Finnish was the language of the common people, who comprised approximately 85 per cent of the population in 1900. Therefore, linguistic nationalism in Finland became closely interwoven with the ‘social question’ and the process of democratization in society. 15.  On a general level, see Levitt and Khagram 2008: 3–4, 8–9. 16.  See also Suolahti’s notes for a lecture series on the history of historiography, academic year 1926–27, File 30; Gunnar Suolahti’s scholarly notes, Finnish Historical Society VII: 27, National Archives of Finland. 17.  The most well-known example of the emerging comparative approach is, perhaps, the French historian Marc Bloch’s programmatic article ‘Toward a Comparative History of European Societies’, published in 1928 (see Bloch 1953; Sewell 1967; Saunier 2013: 4–5). 18.  See, e.g., Voionmaa’s (1913: 30–32) discussion of the early medieval ‘royal estates period’ (kruununkartanokausi) in Finland, which was based on research on other Nordic countries; see also Bull 1920b: 9; Dahl 1990: 250. 19.  In Norway, the avoidable ‘East’ often included Finland (Sørensen 2001: 222–23), whereas the Finns were more favourable to making comparisons between Norway and Finland (e.g. Danielson[-Kalmari] 1883: 78–79; Palmén 1917). 20.  See, e.g., Suolahti’s doctoral thesis on the history writing of H.G. Porthan, professor of rhetoric and poetry at the Royal Academy of Turku. In this thesis, Suolahti treated the subject from the perspective of cultural transfers and the transnational circulation of ideas (Palander 1901: 3–48, 150–54; Suolahti 1947: 100–102; Ahtiainen 1991: 99–100). 21.  Cf. Engman (1994: 54), who characterizes Suolahti as a representative of the ‘second generation of Finnish nationalist historians for whom the Finnish national programme was something self-evident’. 22.  This is already evident in Suolahti’s doctoral thesis (Palander 1901: III, 188).



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23.  Suolahti’s applications and the negative decisions by the Faculty of Philosophy are cited at length in Suolahti 1947: 160–61, 169–72, 177–89; Ahtiainen 1991: 100–103, 116–23. 24.  On the basis of Suolahti’s correspondence, it seems that the failure to receive funding heightened both his nationalist conviction and methodological nationalism around the 1910s. See, e.g., Gunnar Suolahti to E.E.W. Suolahti, 15 February 1909, Case 32, Suolahti Family Archives, National Archives of Finland. 25.  In Bull 1929a, this citation is used as a starting point for reflecting on the relationship between the national and transnational loyalties of the proletariat. 26. On the ideological discussion of the Norwegian Labour Party, see Dahl 1969; Danielsen et al. 1995: 334–37; Slagstad 2001: 231–37; Svendsen 2013: 123–24, 138–39. 27.  The language conflict was fought in Norway between Danish-influenced bokmål and vernacular nynorsk (landmål), and in Finland between Swedish and Finnish speakers. The situations are not fully comparable because both versions of Norwegian are mutually understandable, whereas Swedish and Finnish are different languages. Nonetheless, the ideological and sociopolitical aspects of the conflict resembled each other. 28.  See Bull’s interview in Anker 1921; see also Edv Bull 2009 (13 February). 29.  Above all, see Koht 1910/1970 and 1926; Dahl 1952: 63. A more international perspective can be found in Koht 1928/1953 and 1929. However, there he focused on the idea of class struggle in modern European history, not on class struggle as an empirical phenomenon. 30.  As an exception, however, see Koht 1913. 31.  See Voionmaa 1907–1910: 2–7, 297–98; 1911: 352–53; cf. with the second, revised edition of the study, in which the role of the capitalist mode of production is even more explicitly stated (Voionmaa 1929: 52–54; 1932: 10–12, 662–65; citation in 1935: 10). See also Haapala 1986: 266–67. 32.  See, e.g., the detailed discussion in Bull 1921 and 1933: 62–68, 163–64. 33.  He actually stated this rather explicitly in Suolahti 1907b: 846. 34. See the member list of the Bureau of the ICHS, published in Erdmann 2005: 362–64. 35.  Koht and Suolahti, in particular, seemed to be each other’s opposites. For Koht, it was easy to establish contacts and strategic alliances with foreign colleagues, whereas Suolahti was a timid, reserved and quiet person who felt most at home in solitude (Svendsen 2013: 22–31, 111; Suolahti 1947: 30–35). 36.  See also Edvard Bull to Halvdan Koht, 19 March 1917, Brevs nr. 386, Edvard Bull’s Archives, National Library of Norway, Oslo. 37.  Above all, the Danish historian Aage Friis was Koht’s lifelong ‘companion in arms’ (Svendsen 2013: 63, 86–87). 38.  In accordance with his anti-nationalist stand, Bull distanced himself from the language issue (Bull 1933: 84–86). 39.  See the editorial preface to the sample edition of Historiallinen Aikakauskirja in 1903, citation on pp. 1–2. The preface was apparently written by Suolahti, the first editor-in-chief of the journal. 40.  For more on the idea of multiple loyalties, see Schoeder-Gudehus 1973: 114–17. 41.  See, e.g., the records of the Historical Society of Finland, 27 September 1926, § 6 (published in Historiallinen Arkisto XXXVI) and the report of the activities of the Historical Society, published in Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1927 (4): 315. 42. See also Edvard Bull to Gunnar Suolahti, 8 September 1927, Suolahti Family Archives, National Archives of Finland; Kornerup 1929: 335; Blomstedt 1934: 4–7. 43. Halvdan Koht, ‘The Origins and Beginnings of the International Committee of Historical Sciences’, Personal Memories of Halvdan Koht, 1960, pp. 2–4, citation in p. 20, Ms. 4° 2364: 5, Halvdan Koht’s Archive, National Library, Oslo; see also Svendsen 2013: 85–86, 196–200; Erdmann 2005: 122–35.

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44. The Swedish-speaking historian Alma Söderhjelm’s report on the Congress was, nevertheless, translated into Finnish and published in Historiallinen Aikakauskirja (see Söderhjelm 1905). 45.  See, e.g., Gunnar Suolahti to Edvard W. Palander, 8 September 1900, Case 32, Suolahti Family Archives, National Archives of Finland; Palmén 1917. 46.  See Bull’s report and the list of participants for the 1920 Congress in Bull 1924. According to Jarl Torbacke (2005: 53), no Finnish historians received an invitation to the Congress, which was actually not the case. 47.  See the participant list of the Third Congress (Gothenburg, 1923) in Wimarson 1924: 86–87; cf. J.E. Roos’ report on the Fourth Congress (Copenhagen and Sorø, 1926) in Roos 1927. 48. In 1919, Voionmaa even envisioned the dual republic of Finland and Estonia (Voionmaa 1919: 462–64; see also Kaukiainen 1984: 205). 49.  See, e.g., the records of the Historical Society of Finland, 25 October 1926, § 6 (published in Historiallinen Arkisto XXXVI). 50.  Suolahti was another Finnish CISH representative but, in practice, Törne did the actual work (Engman 1991: 55). 51.  See Törne’s report of the CISH committee meeting in Venice in 1929 in Törne 1929. We can hardly blame Törne for this attitude. For instance, see the critical report of the American historian J.F. Jameson (1929: 268), in which he complains about the overly specialized topics, unclear speaking and the far too lengthy presentations by his fellow historians. 52.  Koht’s interest in the United States was inspired by such figures as Werner Sombart and Karl Lamprecht, who had visited the USA in 1904 and considered it a sort of ‘historical laboratory’ (Töttö 1991: 30–31; Chickering 1993: 347–50). 53. Halvdan Koht, ‘The Origins and Beginnings of the International Committee of Historical Sciences’, Personal Memories of Halvdan Koht, 1960, pp. 1–7, Ms. 4° 2364: 5, Halvdan Koht’s Archive, National Library, Oslo; see also Erdmann 2005: 72–84; Svendsen 2013: 111, 198–99. 54.  On a general level, see, e.g., Somsen 2008: 366–67. 55.  It was almost without exception ‘he’; see Mervi Kaarninen’s chapter in this volume about female historians. 56.  See, e.g., the interview of Bull in Arbeiderbladet, 21 September 1929, entitled ‘Den nasjonalistiske agitasjon i historieundervisningen’.

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Haapala, P. 1986. ‘Muotia vai ei? Suomalaisen sosiaalihistorian muuttuvat näkökulmat’, in K. Kiuasmaa (ed.), Yksilö ja yhteiskunnan muutos. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis, Ser. A, vol. 202. Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, pp. 263–76. Haapala, P. 2007. ‘Kulturgeschichte i den finländska historieskrivningen’, in H. Gustafsson et al. (eds), Den dubbla blicken: Historia i de nordiska samhällena. Lund: Sekel, pp. 51–61. Haatanen, P. 1973. ‘Sosiaalihistoria’, in R. Alapuro, M. Alestalo and E. Haavio-Mannila (eds), Suomalaisen sosiologian juuret. Porvoo/Helsinki: WSOY, pp. 148–93. Halila, A. 1969. Väinö Voionmaa. Helsinki: Tammi. Hill, C.L. 2008. National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in Japan, France, and the United States. Durham, NC/London: Duke University Press. Iggers, G.G. 2005. ‘Historiography in the Twentieth Century’, History and Theory 44 (October): 469–76. Iggers, G.G. 2006. ‘Modern Historiography from an Intercultural Global Perspective’, in G. Budde, S. Conrad and O. Janz (eds), Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 83–93. Iriye, A. 2004. ‘Transnational History’, Contemporary European History 13(2): 211–22. Jalava, M. 2012. The University in the Making of the Welfare State. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Kaukiainen, L. 1984. ‘From Reluctancy to Activity: Finland’s Way to the Nordic Family during 1920s and 1930s’, Scandinavian Journal of History 9(3): 201–19. Kirby, D. 2006. A Concise History of Finland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kjeldstadli, K. 1995. ‘History as Science’, in W.H. Hubbard et al. (eds), Making a Historical Culture: Historiography in Norway. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 52–81. Klinge, M. 1974. ‘Suomen ja Skandinavian historian professorinviran täyttäminen v. 1911– 1915’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 2: 126–38. Klinge, M. 2010. A European University: The University of Helsinki 1640–2010. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Kocka, J. 2003. ‘Comparison and Beyond’, History and Theory 42 (February): 39–44. Kocka, J., and H.-G. Haupt. 2009. ‘Comparison and Beyond: Traditions, Scope, and Perspectives of Comparative History’, in H.-G. Haupt and J. Kocka (eds), Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–30. Kyllingstad, J.R. 2008. ‘Menneskeåndens universalitet’. Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning 1917–1940: Ideene, institusjonen og forskningen. Acta humaniora nr. 371. Oslo: University of Oslo. Lähteenmäki, M. 2014. Väinö Voionmaa: Puolue- ja geopoliitikko. Historiallisia Tutkimuksia 264. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Langholm, S. 1995. ‘The Infrastructure of History’, in W.H. Hubbard et al. (eds), Making a Historical Culture: Historiography in Norway. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 82–107. Levitt, P., and S. Khagram. 2008. ‘Constructing Transnational Studies’, in S. Khagram and P. Levitt (eds), The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections & Innovations. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–18. Middell, M., and K. Naumann. 2013. ‘A New Challenge to the Writing of History in Europe at the End of the Twentieth Century?’, in M. Middell and L. Roura (eds), Transnational Challenges to National History Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 423–43. Møller Jørgensen, C. 2012. ‘Scholarly Communication with a Political Impetus: National Historical Journals’, in I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 70–88.



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Myhre, J.E. 2012. ‘Wider Connections: International Networks among European Historians’, in I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 266–87. Nordby, T. 1995. ‘State- and Nation-Building’, in W.H. Hubbard et al. (eds), Making a Historical Culture: Historiography in Norway. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 181–209. Østergård, U. 1997. ‘The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity: From Composite States to NationStates’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 25–71. Pryser, T. 1993. ‘The Thranite Movement in Norway 1849–1851’, Scandinavian Journal of History 18: 169–82. Ringer, F.K. 1969. The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community 1890–1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rosenberg, E.S. 2012a. ‘Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World’, in E.S. Rosenberg (ed.), A World Connecting. Cambridge, MA/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 813–996. Rosenberg, E.S. 2012b. ‘Introduction’, in E.S. Rosenberg (ed.), A World Connecting. Cambridge, MA/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 3–25. Saunier, P.-Y. 2013. Transnational History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schoeder-Gudehus, B. 1973. ‘Challenge to Transnational Loyalties: International Scientific Organizations after the First World War’, Science Studies 3(2): 93–118. Schöttler, P. 2004. ‘French and German Historians’ Networks: The Case of the Early Annales’, in C. Charle, J. Schriewer and P. Wagner (eds), Transnational Intellectual Networks: Forms of Academic Knowledge and the Search for Cultural Identities. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, pp. 115–33. Sewell, W.H. Jr. 1967. ‘Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History’, History and Theory 6(2): 208–18. Shore, M. 2014. ‘Can We See Ideas? On Evocation, Experience, and Empathy’, in D.M. McMahon and S. Moyn (eds), Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 193–211. Skard, S. 1982. Mennesket Halvdan Koht. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. Slagstad, R. 2001. De nasjonale strateger. Oslo: Pax Forlag. Smith, W.D. 1991. Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany 1840–1920. New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press. Somsen, G.J. 2008. ‘A History of Universalism: Conceptions of the Internationality of Science from the Enlightenment to the Cold War’, Minerva 46: 361–79. Sørensen, Ø. 2001. Kampen om Norges sjel: Norsk idéhistorie, bind III. Oslo: Aschehoug. Suolahti, E.E. 1947. Gunnar Suolahti: Ihminen ja tutkija. Porvoo/Helsinki: WSOY. Svendsen, Å. 2013. Halvdan Koht: Veien mot framtiden. En Biografi. Oslo: Cappelen Damm. Tiitta, A. 1994. Harmaakiven maa: Zacharias Topelius ja Suomen maantiede. Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands natur och folk 147. Helsinki: Suomen Tiedeseura. Tommila, P. 1989. Suomen historiankirjoitus: Tutkimuksen historia. Helsinki: WSOY. Torbacke, J. 2005. ‘Hundra år av vetenskaplig gemenskap. 25 nordiska historikermöten’, Nordisk Tidskrift 1: 52–59. Töttö, P. 1991. Werner Sombart ja kiista kapitalismin hengestä. Tampere: Vastapaino. Väisänen, M. 2000. ‘Gummerus, Herman (1877–1948)’, in Kansallisbiografia, web edition. Retrieved 28 November 2014 from http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/ artikkeli/3204/. Vares, M. 2010. ‘Luonnollinen Suomi – käsityksiä Suomen “sijainnista ja suuruudesta” 1917– 44’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1: 47–59. Vertovec, S. 2009. Transnationalism. London/New York: Routledge.

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Werner, M., and B. Zimmermann. 2006. ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflectivity’, History and Theory 45 (February): 30–50. Wimmer, A., and N. Glick Schiller. 2002. ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: NationState Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’, Global Networks 2(4): 301–34. Zander, U. 2007. ‘I skuggan av unionsupplösningen: Skandinavism, nationalism och historikermöten i Lund 1905’, in H. Gustafsson et al. (eds), Den dubbla blicken: Historia i de nordiska samhällena. Lund: Sekel, pp. 27–36.

CHAPTER

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Scientific historiography and its discontents Danish and Swedish ‘aristocratic empiricism’ Simon Larsson

Introduction A certain contrast between the Swedish and Danish professional historical cultures on the one side, and their Finnish and Norwegian counterparts on the other, has to do with the different emphasis placed on the links between historiography and politics at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Finland, for example, the linguistic division between Finnish-speaking social historians and Swedish-speaking historians of diplomacy made a certain overlap between methodology and political inclination evident in the historical profession (Haapala 2007: 55). In Norway, the expression of an integrative political identity was considered a relevant task of professional historians to an extent that clearly discerns Norway from Sweden and Denmark (Fulsås 2007: 48). Comparatively, Swedish and Danish professional historical cultures at this point fostered a self-image of objectivism and empiricism. This is not to say, though, that Swedish and Danish historiography has been more factual or seemingly objective than, for example, Norwegian historiography. A methodological self-image is not necessarily equivalent to a practised method, and the purpose of this chapter is not to investigate any actual differences in the empirical practices between the Nordic countries, which in Notes for this section begin on page 148.

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any case probably would prove negligible. The focus is, instead, on the social context and origins of the Danish-Swedish methodological self-image and its relation to politics. What were the origins and social content of objectivism and empiricism? Was historiography actually autonomous from politics? Why have Swedish and Danish historical communities constructed their identities around conflicts and antagonism, although there hardly seems to have been any political justification for doing so? Even after the objectivist methodology lost its standing in the 1960s, a certain lingering avoidance of the subjective traits of historiography has been discernible: choices of perspectives and values, the individual historian’s ‘view of history’ and so forth have all been acknowledged as theoretical possibilities rather than existing empirical features of historiography. In this respect, there is a certain contrast in particular between Sweden and Norway, as Cecilia Trenter has shown (Trenter 1999). One way to circumscribe the particularities of Swedish and Danish empiricism at the beginning of the twentieth century is to place both traditions within the context of imperial nostalgia. At the close of the nineteenth century, the national framework presented itself as an emancipatory quest for Norway and Finland. Historians such as Sars and Koht in Norway and the proponents of Kulturgeschichte in Finland saw history and politics as being interrelated. Historiography took on the meaning of national self-expression as one nation among other nations. This expressive peer aspect was to a large extent lacking among Swedish and Danish historians. When they toured the archives of Europe to secure the traces of their past, they thought of it as an imperial past (Björk 2010: 478–83; 2007). For them, the international significance of an empire was perceived as a given; it did not require heightened expression in terms of constructed historical identities. This tendency to dwell in the seemingly beneficial shadow of ancient empires promoted a methodological self-image of piecemeal reconstruction instead of constructivist initiatives. The imperial past can thus be said to have furthered the selfimage of an apolitical and scientifically ‘pure’ historiography. In the wording of Ragnar Björk, national history was never ‘conquered by the bourgeois’ in Sweden (Björk 1994: 84–85).1 This truism had a tangible material foundation that should not be ignored. The archives of the ancient states contained vast amounts of sources, and sorting through, evaluating and publishing these sources was the primary quest of Swedish and Danish historians. The sheer amount of unsorted sources at the beginning of the twentieth century was in itself a justification for the anti-speculative and anti-narrative empiricist ethos. To some extent, this also meant entrapment in the ‘ivory tower’ of scholarship, as it is sometimes said that the gap between professional historians and the reading public has been exceptionally wide, particularly in Sweden (see especially Aronsson et al. 2009; Meyer 2000).



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If historiography could do well without subjective traits, then the social content of empiricism would be that of equality. What is evident from Swedish and Danish historiography at the beginning of the twentieth century is that empiricism, as the sole accepted methodological self-image, was infused with tension, which in social terms led to a great deal of hierarchization, not only between professional and popular historical culture, but also within the historical profession itself. On a theoretical level, one way to deal with subjectivity was by distinguishing between empirical research and the actual writing of history. Consequently, the influential Copenhagen professor Kristian Erslev treated historical research and historical writing in separate volumes and concluded that only the former was a matter of concern for professional historians (Erslev 1911a, 1911b).2 From this most comfortable and credulous position, subjectivity was something like a decoration that could be added to an already prepared dish. In terms of actual historiography, subjectivity could not so easily be discarded, and this approach tended to force historians into battle with perspectivity itself; this was done either by presenting the actual interpretations as mere sketches or essays distinguished from proper empirical research,3 or by that most tiresome of historical genres, where the historian, in an attempt to eliminate subjectivity, tries to depict history from a multitude of perspectives, favouring none and thus ending up retracting each.4 One of the leading scholars of historical epistemology, Lorraine Daston, calls this approach to subjectivity ‘mechanical objectivity’. By this she means that subjectivity is acknowledged as a problem and objectivity is strived for by way of ‘suppressing the universal human propensity to judge, interpret, and aestheticize’ (Daston 1995: 21). During the nineteenth century, ‘mechanical objectivity’ was replaced by ‘aperspectival objectivity’ in the natural sciences, according to Daston. Aperspectival objectivity, then, is the idea of a ‘view from nowhere’; the idea that the very process of establishing the basic facts forces a certain interpretation. According to Daston, this represents a shift of focus from the observing individual to the community of scholars eliminating individual error by conducting the same experiments over and over again. This shift had to do with the collective organization of science, a perceived historical discontinuity among scientists where individuality was associated with art and collectivity with science.5 However far from experimental natural science the interpretation of historical documents might seem, the ideal of aperspectival objectivity manifested itself in historical scholarship as well (Novick 1988: 37–39). The seminar was, however, a very remote analogy to the experimental laboratory. The social pattern on the other hand, i.e. the increasing professionalization and the growth of international collaboration, was the true point at which the historical profession resembled the natural sciences. The ‘mechanical objectivity’ of the

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imperial historians fostered a certain tendency to enshrine subjectivity and address it as something to revere with respect to the great personalities of the past. When applied to the living, subjectivity was saturated with tension. When Norwegian professor Halvdan Koht served as an expert reviewer of the applicants for a chair in history at Lund University, he used criteria that departed from empiricism and objectivity to distinguish between the applicants. For instance, he said that one of the applicants had done his work in an inspired and passionate way (which Koht endorsed), while another had been too dispassionate; Koht even used the term ‘mechanical’ to disparage the work of the second applicant. Koht had a positive attitude regarding the subjective traits of historiography, which contrasted sharply with that of the Swedish historians (Handlingar rörande tillsättandet av det lediga professorsämbetet i historia i Lund 1922–1925: 1925, 105–10). The fact that Swedish and Danish empiricism was connected to the hierarchization of research personalities, or ‘scientific’ personas, attests to the constructedness of all historiography. This was the result of the strong social, if not necessarily external tensions infused in empiricism and objectivity. The fierce competition for academic posts fostered a certain cult of superior ‘research personalities’: purified personifications of the scientific endeavour (Larsson 2010). The zenith of hierarchical or aristocratic empiricism was reached a few decades into the twentieth century, when a small network of Danish and Swedish medievalists claimed that they represented a new stage in historical scholarship, a stage where methodical rigour made the problematics of subjectivity obsolete. They envisioned a new superior type of historian who was nondescript in all areas save for his intellectual faculties, which, in contrast, carried a mark of superiority. The ‘mechanical objectivity’ of the imperial historians was challenged by the ‘aperspectival objectivity’ of the medievalists. This is what I call ‘aristocratic empiricism’. It will be argued in this chapter that the anti-constructivist epistemology was an important discourse of self-expression, and that the relevant expressions of social identity among Swedish and Danish historians in the first half of the twentieth century were not to be found on the level of actual historiography, but rather via personal networks and purely academic ‘emotional communities’ (Rosenwein 2010) that extended well into the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1960s and 1970s, the practice of engaging with the history of historiography was established in Denmark and Sweden. It was in large part an attempt to stabilize or ‘reinvent’ a professional identity for historians, and it entailed a certain evaluation of one’s own national tradition. For a generation eager to establish links between professional historiography and areas of political and social relevance, the fact that all the tensions and conflicts from the interwar years seemed to add up to nothing of the sort was indeed a problem. The scholar Inga Floto, whose work has inspired my



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approach, terms this process a ‘trauma’ (Floto 1978: 474), although I think that this psychoanalytical term might be misleading in certain ways, for instance by comparing the history of the discipline with the life of an individual, and thus assuming more continuity between different time periods than is warranted. Long before this point in time, the two main protagonists of Scandinavian aristocratic empiricism, Dane Erik Arup (1876–1951) and Swede Lauritz Weibull (1873–1960), had already established what we might call an intimate personal network at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Two outsiders and their epistemology Neither of the two main proponents of Danish-Swedish aristocratic empiricism started out as medievalists. Erik Arup began his career as an internationally oriented historian specializing in trade. In his early career, he did his archival research in London and Hamburg, and his massive 1907 dissertation (Arup 1907) dealt with how the different historical contexts of Germany and England were reflected in differing rule systems for trade. It was a work rich in detail and largely descriptive in nature. In the Danish context, Arup was not so much a pioneer in choosing to devote his attention to economic factors, but prior to Arup the study of economic factors had all been dealt with within the framework of the Danish nation. Arup had trouble gaining the acceptance of Danish historians with a topic that did not concern Denmark, and the comparative approach inherent in his dissertation was something Arup never tried to promote as a methodological feature. In an autobiographic sketch written late in life, Arup stated that he had aimed for an international career but that the First World War put an end to his aspirations (Svenstrup 1995: 210–11). This, however, was not completely convincing. Arup had made an early attempt to establish a network with international expertise in the field of economic history, but his publishing strategy was always exclusively national and his dissertation was written in the Danish vernacular. Though Arup received some acclaim from Danish historians for his general capacity as a scholar, his topic was not considered relevant by the Danish historical community. Highly embittered by this, Arup temporarily suspended his academic career – even though he had funding – to work in the political administration, first as the chief archivist in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then as a permanent under-secretary to Prime Minister C. Th. Zahle, 1913–1916. Arup’s political affiliation was with the radikale venstre (liberal left) party, and contrary to what one might think, his posts in the political administration entailed possibilities for him to pursue his scholarly interests (Svenstrup 2006: 193). This he

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did, and in 1913 he applied for one of the three professorships in history at Copenhagen University. He came in second, after Aage Friis (1870–1949), six years his senior. Until then, Arup and Friis had been friends. They both belonged to the radikale venstre party and Friis had actually helped Arup acquire his political position, but Arup clearly thought of Friis as an inferior historian and his arrogance poisoned their relationship for the rest of their lives. Arup would persistently regard the Danish historical community as an establishment of mediocre scholars jealous of him and eager to prevent his progress. In his opinion, the historical community was ‘conservative’ in such a way that many scholars deliberately conflated methodology with political viewpoints, thereby creating a stereotypical portrait of the Danish historian as a nationalist villain, and from the 1930s even with a tendency towards Nazism. He would contrast his own identity to this stereotype, thus positioning himself within more of a ‘critical’ tradition. After his own inauguration as professor of history in Copenhagen in 1916, Arup devoted much of his energy to Danish medieval history, and he began writing a large synthesis of national history, Danmarks historie, the first part of which was published in 1925, the second in 1932 and the third in 1955, that is, after Arup’s demise. Weibull’s early career took on a pattern quite similar to that of Arup’s. His 1898 dissertation received very little attention in Sweden and he went on to take a position at an archive, from which he could pursue his scholarly interests and prepare for an academic ‘comeback’. Weibull had written his dissertation on the diplomatic negotiations between Sweden and France in the seventeenth century. While by no means a peripheral topic, the dissertation must be regarded as a failure from the standpoint of a person aspiring to be a professor. As with Arup’s own dissertation, it was devoid of any organizing principle other than the archival sources themselves. It was thus highly descriptive and, at the same time, difficult to read. As a matter of fact, and completely apart from Arup, Weibull only had a slight interest in the topic of his dissertation and it is quite likely that he wrote it simply to complete tasks that his father, Martin Weibull, professor of history in Lund, was devoted to. Due to his kinship with the examining professor, young Weibull had to present his dissertation not in Lund but at the other Swedish state university, Uppsala. It was barely accepted and Weibull suffered some scorn by the Uppsala historians. He would not forget this treatment, and neither would they let him. Similar to Arup, he would develop the view that the community of Swedish historians were mediocre, driven by jealousy and narrow-minded perfidy. Arup and Weibull met in a German archive in 1906 and quickly established a close friendship. Arup was much more expressive and visibly emotional than the restrained Weibull, and it is reasonable to assume that



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Weibull was affected in a liberating way by Arup’s pathos and self-confidence, while the latter perceived Weibull as a stabilizing force (Floto 1995: 247). While they discuss historical problems concerning medieval history in their later correspondence, the politics of their respective historical communities comprised the main overarching theme. They both established an identity as superior outsiders and their letters are full of excessive scorn for their colleagues. In social terms, they both shared an experience of déclassé after completing their dissertations. Weibull, as the son of a professor, and Arup, whose father was a physician and who came from a line of international businessmen, were both considerably above many of their colleagues on the social scale. They both belonged to and socialized with the nobility and the high bourgeoisie. This is an important factor in explaining why they adopted such an outsider attitude. Their early careers were not overly problematic from an objective standpoint, but subjectively they both felt they had been surpassed by lesser men. The Nietzschean distinction between lesser and superior men was also quite prevalent in fin-de-siècle culture (Ahlström 1947: 461). Both Arup and Weibull had been severely stricken by the ‘aristocratic radicalism’ prophesied by the iconic literary critic Georg Brandes. Twenty-three-year-old Arup, for example, expressed the following view regarding human happiness: The essential part of human happiness is the feeling of superiority … This feeling is at its most potent when it is recognised superiority; the one that breaks the resistance of a girl, that brings my friend under my protective wing and makes my work astounding. (Cited in Svenstrup 2006: 119)6

This then forms an important part of the social and cultural background for the epistemology launched by the two friends when they re-entered the academic world. Arup was appointed professor at Copenhagen University in 1916. While in exile from the academic world, Weibull developed considerable expertise in analysing the scarce amount of source material from the early Middle Ages and he published widely in this field during the 1910s, rapidly accumulating enough merits to apply for a professorship in Lund in 1916. His method was based on a somewhat rhetorical use of the distinction between artefacts and narrative sources. He usually discussed the latter while basing his interpretations on the former. After a complicated and highly infected dispute, which lasted for two years, the winner of the competition, Sven Tunberg, was awarded a newly established professorship in Stockholm, whereas Lauritz Weibull, who came in second, was thus inaugurated in Lund in 1918. Arup had been by his side all along, sending both formal and informal letters to the university establishment. In his argumentation,

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he defined historians as consisting of two types. The first type is inferior, termed ‘the descriptive historian’. The majority of Swedish and Danish historians belonged to this type. The other type Arup termed ‘the problemsolving historian’. Naturally, Arup himself, the Weibull brothers and their most talented students were all distinctly superior ‘problem solvers’. The superior type of historian would develop more naturally among medievalists, Arup claimed, because the scarce amount of source materials fostered intellectual prowess. In a strict methodological sense, Arup and Weibull barely went beyond Erslev or Bernheim in their empiricism and the problems inherent in it, but for personal reasons and polemical purposes Erslev would not suffice as a role model.7 Instead, the two outsiders, especially Arup, drew heavy inspiration from Langlois and Seignobos’s book on methodology. Arup’s distinction between the inferior and superior historian is derived from Langlois and Seignobos. For them, the distinction served as satirical versions of national characteristics. They argued, for instance, that the German historian is typically a narrow specialist bound to passive source description. Should the German historian think and interpret, or rather try to think and interpret, his patriotic passions would inevitably cloud his judgement. French historians, on the other hand, are able to produce crystal-clear interpretations based on the traditional clarity of the French intellect (Langlois and Seignobos 1966: 128–29, 312–14). The problem inherent in a historian being bound to the values and concepts of his own age would be insignificant, they said, since French society had already entered into the scientific stage.8 Evident in Langlois and Seignobos’s work, then, is a rather odd mix of historicism, positivism and nationalism. Lauritz Weibull’s inaugural lecture in 1919 echoes this geopolitical epistemology, heightened further by the First World War. Weibull declared himself the first representative on Swedish soil to actively adopt the French view of history, which at the same time happened to be the universal view, and he declared that all professors who had preceded him had been pro-German and ‘constrained in the neoRankean straitjacket’.9 To sum up, the ‘aristocratic empiricism’ of Arup and Weibull grew out of shared experiences. It mirrored their own formative experience as ‘semifailed’ descriptive historians, it compensated for a sense of social déclassé and it helped link epistemology to the iconoclastic propaganda of the First World War. Far from being an international or universal methodology, it was rather an identity with transnational underpinnings, reflecting the need for identity within the national framework. Though traditional narrative historiography has been severely criticized and ‘deconstructed’ over the years, the methodological genre as such has had a tendency to slip below the radar, at least when it comes to



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contextualization. What was the purpose of the methodological genre at the end of the nineteenth century within a general intellectual context? In part, the books by Bernheim, Langlois and Seignobos, and Erslev are taxonomies of existing methods being employed by historians. In part, they are also attempts at philosophical foundationalism. But most importantly, it was a relational genre that arose at a time when history was brought into competition with social science for the first time. Ringer’s study on French academic culture makes this abundantly clear (Ringer 1992). In a general intellectual context, the various methodologies served more as ‘boundary work’, to use Thomas Gieryn’s term: their role was to safeguard the community of historians’ privileged view of the past against any would-be challengers (Gieryn 1999). While scholars certainly read the methodologies, a study of how they were read would be very useful. They are not very practical; the reasoning is at once very abstract and very technical. It is doubtful whether anyone actually learned how to conduct historical research from them. It is likely, however, that reading them made young scholars feel like professional historians, objective and technically skilled. One thing that can be learned from them is to never admit the use of constructive imagination. By admitting to using constructive imagination, historians risked portraying themselves as unprofessional amateurs, or perhaps worse, as mere philosophers of history. On the other hand, by denying the use of any constructive faculty, historians ran the risk of portraying themselves as unoriginal, unable to provide historical accounts with any societal relevance. This was of course less of a problem when historians already worked at more wellestablished institutions.

Regionalism and the development of a new synthesis in Scandinavian medieval history There is a certain amount of ‘toing and froing’ concerning the role of interpretation and constructive imagination in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historical methodology. In the most in-depth analysis of Charles Seignobos’s epistemology, Fritz Ringer writes that Charles Seignobos frequently ‘wrote as if the facts would add up on their own accord’, and that Seignobos was unable to integrate this rather blunt epistemology into his overall theory of history. In short, Seignobos simply lacked an elaborate theory of interpretation (Ringer 1992: 265–82, quote on 275). The ambiguity concerning interpretation is evident in the circle of historians that began to form around Arup and Weibull. ‘Aristocratic empiricism’ was not an elaborate theory of interpretation, but rather a way to

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wield constructive imagination and creativity without acknowledgement of this practice to the outside world, and thus it seemingly provided a means for scholars to draw on the abstract international standard of objectivity. It has been said that what distinguished the Weibull group from their contemporaries was a unique adherence to facts and pure ‘logical’ empiricism (Torstendahl 1964). This interpretation draws upon the group’s polemical self-image in public situations, but it cannot explain the role the group attributed to interpretative originality, talent and personality when serving as expert reviewers, or the fact that they often disagreed in private concerning fundamental interpretations, but never in public (Larsson 2010: 293, 313f.; 2013: 154–55, 159). While Arup would sometimes admit that interpretation played a role, he would at other times deny it. Weibull would never admit to the general public that interpretation played any role whatsoever. Whereas he was in fact highly capable of synthetic interpretation, he always presented it in a categorical style. The social side of this attitude was an authoritarian outlook from the ivory tower. This suited the Weibull brothers quite well. Arup, however, had strong inclinations to express his subjectivity to the public. He adapted to the reclusive categorical deadpan with fervour, but also quite unconvincingly, and in his personal letters to Weibull he referred to the idea that historians could attain objectivity as outmoded and ludicrous. In 1914, for example, Arup suggested to Weibull that they should make one of their disagreements public. Weibull declined this offer, claiming ‘complete indifference to what the mob may think or say’ (Floto 1995: 246, 255, 260). Arup, Lauritz Weibull and Lauritz’s younger brother Curt Weibull (1886–1998) were genuinely creative historians rather than simply the objective technicians they claimed to be. They developed an interpretative framework, a synthesis of medieval history. The group constructed their interpretative authority via a certain kind of inductivist rhetoric, in which a synthesis was written in tandem with a more technical study and presented as a popularization of the results, results that were supposedly clearly evident in the technical work. They made explicit reference to the role of standard textbooks in the natural sciences (Arup 1955: 257). This had a collaborative aspect through which the circle strengthened its mutual ties and authority by writing the corresponding syntheses to each other’s technical work, almost like a money laundering operation: Arup’s Danmarks historie from 1925 and 1932 provided the synthesis corresponding to Curt Weibull’s critical refutation of Gesta Danorum, by Saxo Grammaticus, in 1915 (Weibull 1915). Lauritz Weibull also wrote a masterful synthesis in 1928 that corresponded to his brother’s dissertation (Weibull 1928), and Curt Weibull in turn published the corresponding synthesis to Lauritz Weibull’s Kritiska undersökningar from 1911 (Weibull 1921).



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These new, collaborative syntheses, written between 1910 and 1930 and dealing with the early medieval history of Scandinavia, roughly 900– 1200, served as more of a polemical reinterpretation from a Danish perspective. Much of the critical effort consisted of checking the evidence for Saxo Grammaticus and more or less discarding him as a useful source for political history. Largely because of Saxo’s enormous status in classic historical literature, early medieval history traditionally had been a much more important field in Danish historiography than in Swedish historiography. The Danish nobility had dominated the Baltic Sea area in the early medieval period, while Swedish nobility, residing in the midsection of the country, was much more isolated. Developed, learned culture was thus first established in the south of Sweden, in Lund, and the reason for this was of course that Lund belonged to the Danish sphere of influence. This was a fact touched upon quite briefly in nineteenth-century Swedish historiography, which tended to concentrate on the centuries during which the Stockholm region had played a more prominent role in Swedish power politics, mainly 1500–1800. There was also a lingering antagonism between the universities of Lund and Uppsala, where Uppsala, being closer to Stockholm, gained certain advantages concerning media participation, political connections and swift access to the state archives. Lund, geographically the underdog, tried to compensate via an identity that fluctuated between a fear of regional isolation and grand conceptions of being a Scandinavian, even a continental nexus. The father of Lauritz Weibull, historian Martin Weibull (1835–1902), had been a leading proponent of Scandinavism, a Romantic movement aiming at a political union between Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Martin Weibull saw the southernmost region of Sweden, Scania (Skåne), as the natural centre in this endeavour, so a certain local patriotism was combined with Scandinavism. In the hands of his sons Lauritz and Curt, this local patriotism was channelled into their historical research. One might say that both sons sublimated the historical regionalism of their father into a historiographical regionalism of their own. They wanted to counter the historiographical regionalism of the historians in the Stockholm/Uppsala region. As Lauritz Weibull transformed himself into the leading scholar of medieval Scandinavia, his publications from the 1910s and 1920s promoted this historiographical region as a field worthy of serious research. A historiographical regionalism focused on Skåne was, however, of little concern to Swedish historians from the Stockholm/Uppsala area. The Weibull brothers’ polemical studies were therefore directed more towards a Danish and partly Norwegian historiographical context rather than a Swedish one. Curt Weibull published a pamphlet entitled Ancient History of Denmark and Sweden (1922), which claimed in a straightforward manner that Sweden

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had been populated from the south and that civilization had crept up along the west coast. The interaction between western and eastern Sweden had for centuries been rather scarce, Weibull claimed, since vast impenetrable forests separated the two areas and helped ensure that the Stockholm region remained a backwater for a long time. Even this effort was largely ignored by established Swedish historians, who disparaged it as speculative archaeology. Beginning in 1902, Lauritz Weibull had edited a small journal devoted to the history of Scania (Skåne). In 1928, however, the Weibull brothers, with Arup’s blessing, managed to find financial support to expand this journal. This meant a change of name from the Historical Journal of Scania to Scandia. An anecdotal local journal was thus transformed as a means to lay claim to the Geschichtsregion of Scandinavia.10 During the 1930s, the Weibull brothers tackled problems in Swedish history from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. Their skill and confrontational attitude energized research in general and helped trigger fruitful debates (Björk 2012: 92). After the 1930s, the Weibull group gained a hegemonic status in Swedish historiography, and their aristocratic empiricism, unfit to handle conflicting interpretations outside the group, had a stifling effect with respect to the small university institutions, dominated as they were by only a few professors. After the Second World War, Swedish historiography was dominated by a younger generation of Weibullian medievalists, who competed with the fields of social science and economic history by trying to apply their refined methods to modern history. The discipline inevitably fell behind. The ambiguity of regionalism, so crucial for the Weibull brothers in their relation to the national community of historians, was rather unessential to Arup. Denmark’s second university in Aarhus was not founded until 1928, and it was supplementary to rather than antagonistic to Copenhagen University. When Arup became professor in Copenhagen in 1916, he was at the very centre of the national community. Still, this was not enough. As if deliberately trying to renounce his former status as an outsider, Arup channelled his energies into the traditionally central topics of Danish historiography. Apart from reinterpreting medieval history and challenging the tradition surrounding Saxo Grammaticus and his work, this also meant dealing with the conflicts between Denmark and Germany over the Schleswig-Holstein regions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the main field of interest of Aage Friis, the man against whom Arup had lost during his first attempt to secure a professorship. As has already been touched upon, Arup’s relationship with Friis was complicated, to say the least. Officially, Arup justified his venture into this field by portraying the source-critical expertise developed among medievalists as superior to other methods, and thus all other fields were in need of ‘critical’ modernization.



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Unofficially, Arup was obsessed with acquiring dominion over the flagship of the Danish community of historians, Dansk historisk tidsskrift. This he in fact did. The source-critical methods of Arup and the Weibull brothers became somewhat parodical when applied to modern history, however. Essentially, the methods consisted of reducing the importance of narrative sources, while, at the same time, relying heavily upon artefacts. This type of reductionism with respect to possible evidence did of course allow critical precision, but it also produced a greater strain on constructive imagination in order to render the field knowable at all. When applied to modern history’s richer source material, this method clearly risked degenerating into the a priori notion that somewhere in the sources there was one single document that disqualified all others, and once this document was found, the interpretation would unfold by itself. Both Arup and Weibull would, often quoting Hippolyte Taine and Ernest Renan, compare their methods to those employed by scholars in the natural sciences, but their praxis rather resembled Collingwood’s detective-historian, aiming for the one perfect inference, with supreme confidence in ‘the little grey cells’ (Collingwood 1946: 281). Arup’s source-critical seminar at Copenhagen University was staged as something of a detective mystery, unfolding gradually by hints and clues delivered by the supervising Arup. Needless to say, it was immensely popular with the students, although several of them felt unduly manipulated and commented upon Arup and the general atmosphere as being more authoritarian than critical (Svenstrup 2006: 561–63). Arup’s examinations of the correspondence of Danish diplomats in the nineteenth century are peculiarly hair-splitting. Although Arup never would have admitted the use of any theory, these studies are bound to a theory of conscious agency as the determining factor in history. And, much in the manner of a detective novel, fully conscious agency is only attributed to one agent, whose ‘plan’ the detective-historian diligently unravels. Arup would defend his approach by calling on eternal forms of political life in a neo-Machiavellian tone.11 This view of history is evident also in studies conducted by the Weibull brothers. A neo-Machiavellian theory of history was evident among some of the most prominent historical thinkers of the early twentieth century, but no ‘virtual network’ in the form of references to Weber or Pareto is traceable among Swedish and Danish historians. A neo-Machiavellian theory of history was most likely ‘naturalized’ and regarded as common sense. The other path by which Arup wanted to move into the centre of the Danish community of historians was via the conception and publication of his synthesis of the Danish nation. Arup’s Danmarks historie12 is his most famous book, and together with Erslev’s books on methodology, it is the most debated classic in Danish historiography.13 Arup’s book deals

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with the somewhat mythical topic of the origins of the Danish nation. The book emphasizes peaceful, long-term evolution and the importance of geographical, economic and cultural factors; further, it postulates that agriculture lay at the a priori ‘core’ of Danish history. But Arup does not let go of political history. In a manner similar to Braudel, his general concept was to relativize political history, but he ended up magnifying it. Political history works almost like a lens through which the other categories are observed. As stated previously, the book consists of three parts, the first published in 1925, the second in 1932 and the third uncompleted in his lifetime, and the attempts to avoid political details become more futile throughout each part. Arup devoted enormous polemical energy to narrow political details that were rather insignificant with respect to his general emphasis on peaceful, long-term evolution. Arup began his career from a position uniquely autonomous from methodological nationalism and then devoted his energy to a complete reversal of this starting point. There is no simple answer as to why this was the case. One important factor here is Arup’s consciousness of tradition, the canon Arup situated himself within. It was distinctly national, stretching from Saxo’s Gesta Danorum to Hvitfeldt’s Danmarks riges krönika and Ludvig Holberg’s Danmarks riges historia. Arup wanted to refute these books, basically by portraying the political elite as international villains rather than heroes. At the same time, his book is tied to this genre by its antithetical form. Even if the political elite of society is ‘de-nationalized’, the closed container of methodological nationalism is reinforced by being moved to the anonymous and abstract Danish nation. Let us look at a quote from Arup’s review of the Swedish historian Henrik Schück’s popular synthesis History of the Swedish People: The Middle Ages from 1914. Arup criticized Schück for treating his topic in a Nordic context, as opposed to a national context: ‘No matter how natural and self-evident this might seem, I still believe that in the narrative of a single nation, this should be avoided. It is in our time not only scientifically, but also politically more correct and fruitful to focus on the unique features of the historical evolution of one of the Nordic peoples than to regard them as one’ (Arup 1977a: 128–29). Arup clearly did not think that Schück’s ‘Nordic’ framework was a veiled Swedish claim to features that were rightfully Danish. Rather, he connected the Nordic framework to internationalism and rejected it because of a lack of national specificity. Arup clearly believed that historical syntheses should not only be directed at the general public, but should also be about the people and the nation. Schück’s ‘Nordic’ framework did not correspond to this democratic nationalism, since it was, in reality, a representation of a transnational warrior elite.



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Arup’s democratic nationalistic pathos had no real equivalent in the views of the Weibull brothers and it did not fit well into his own scientific persona, based as it was on aristocratic empiricism. Had Arup ignored the details of political history, Danmarks historie would have been a more coherent book. But a book dealing simply with cultural and economic factors would in its time have been regarded as complementary rather than central, and his outsider status might not have, at least in his own paranoid view, been transcended. So methodological nationalism was not conveyed unto him by his environment. It was rather a deliberate choice propelled by his yearning for recognition from the Danish community of historians. This yearning was practically limitless and could, in the end, only render him disappointed. Aage Friis was of the opinion that Arup suffered from persecution mania (Svenstrup 2006: 429).14 Arup’s heated emotions and lack of self-understanding have, indeed, circulated throughout the Danish historical community, and in the process they have been invested with demands for higher meaning and thus turned into myth. The myth of Arup as hero/victim has been important for the construction of a progressive identity among Danish historians. The central aspect of the myth is that Arup was attacked severely after publication of the first part of Danmarks historie in 1925, and that this attack originated from the allegedly ‘conservative’ community of historians. The myth communicates the fact that Arup made a great sacrifice for the benefit of future generations of historians. Accordingly, he is both a victim and a hero. Since heroes personify pure ethical principles, they are often somehow assumed to suffer much more from the various obstacles and disappointments of life. There were indeed some harsh reviews by literary critics of a conservative bent, such as Henning Kehler (1891–1979) and Harald Nielsen (1879– 1957), but the reviews by historians and other scholars were, in general, quite mild. Kristian Erslev himself, the authority on ‘scientific’ historiography, and the man whom Arup had succeeded as professor at the University of Copenhagen, published one of the first reviews that was decidedly positive.15 By saying that Arup’s work met critical standards and that it corresponded with modern scholarship, Erslev actually served as the gatekeeper consecrating Danmarks historie. Scandia served to some extent as the arena where Arup could express his paranoia unbound, most notably in the 1937 article ‘Historie ved Københavns Universitet 1537–1937’. After his demise, his feelings were embalmed in the obituaries,16 and ultimately became magnified and achieved scientific status when the history of historiography as a branch of study became established in the 1970s. Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts in science provided the theoretical interpretive framework for the a priori notion that there was something in Arup’s writing that set him

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apart from the national community of historians and that Danmarks historie represents a fundamental discontinuity. Essential to this mythical narrative is the incorrect notion that Arup was attacked massively and unjustly. This myth has three components. The first suggests that Arup’s cultural and economic perspective on national history ultimately caused the attack on him. Hence, his work threatened his critics’ view of history. The second component suggests that Arup supposedly presented a more sophisticated empirical method than his contemporaries. Hence, his work also threatened his critics’ view of science. The third component suggests that his critics were supposedly driven by political motives. In other words, politics, disguised as scholarship, was being threatened by pure and scientific scholarship. When combined, these three themes inform us about how historiography contributes to the modernization of society by disassociating itself from politics via a heroic sacrifice. It is the story of Arup as a hero of both political modernization and rising scientific standards, and his disappointment with the historical community is caused by his contemporaries’ failure to meet these standards. The relation between political and professional standards is strong in this narrative.17 Yet, rather than becoming entangled or overlapping, the standards correspond to one another throughout the narrative. They are in a way drifting apart but, at the same time, evidence of the same fundamental process. Arup’s opponents are the losers in the narrative both politically and scientifically. The major strand of this narrative is discontinuity. The second generation of scholars replaced the discontinuity between German and French criticism, which Arup himself professed, with Kuhn’s paradigm theory, according to which science does not develop cumulatively, but through harsh shifts between ‘paradigms’ without common measure. Discontinuity is necessary to distinguish between winners and losers and endow the fight with meaning. As stated previously, the reactions to Arup’s book were not so harsh with respect to the historical community, so the relevance of the myth cannot be explained by its factual content alone. The myth’s relevance needs to be sought in the challenged identity of the community of historians during the postwar era. It was essential for looking at the development of the discipline as discontinuous, and thus it provided a model for the discipline’s regeneration.18 Arup and his book on the Danish history of historiography also received a realistic assessment from 1976 onwards (Kristiansen and Rasmussen 1976; Tiemroth 1978; Floto 1981; Larsen 2007). This tradition emphasizes continuity and slow change in the norms of the discipline, and it does not endow the conflicts with any rational content or higher meaning other than as examples of a sluggish power struggle, pride and vanity.



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From the standpoint of his ‘aristocratic empiricism’, it was not possible for Arup to admit to subjective imagination or the use of constructive hypotheses. The same was true for the Weibull brothers. When reviewers touched upon their hypotheses, constructive ambitions or even generally positive character traits, such as creativity and talent, the brothers reacted by hurling insults at their detractors. Was this a façade? Were the claims to superior and absolute historical knowledge a consciously adopted strategy, a type of ‘power language’ to use in polemical situations, but not actually believed? Such distinctions do seldom apply to real-life persons. The lack of self-reflexivity and common sense in these highly intelligent individuals can probably be explained by the narrowness of their social context, which was quite small and elitist. Any researcher not holding one of the few professorships was totally at the mercy of those who did. There were many more highly merited historians than professorships, and this contributed to the tensions (Larsson 2010; Gunneriusson 2002). The epistemology of the Weibull-Arup circle was based on the inductivist idea that facts preceded perspective. According to this approach, source criticism resulted in objective facts, and it was only after the objective facts had been established that actual interpretation began. The opposite view, basically that there are no facts without perspective, was never presented as a general doctrine, even though two of the reviews of Arup’s book – one by the museum manager Poul Nørlund and the other by the philologist Lis Jacobsen – ventured quite far into this area of discussion (Nørlund 1926; Jacobsen 1926). It is decisive that both of them were of the same political orientation as Arup, i.e. both of them were scholars, but neither of them belonged to the community of historians, which they expressed quite clearly in the reviews. Jacobsen’s first review was, for example, referred to as ‘the perspective of a layperson’. Jacobsen in particular cannot easily be discarded by the Arup myth, since she insisted on strict empirical methods and was a political radical and was against Arup. Usually, however, her critique is ignored (Möller Jørgensen 2000: 121). Svenstrup, an author immersed in the Arup myth, associates Jacobsen with the conservatives by claiming that her critique gave them ‘a taste for blood’ (Svenstrup 1995: 232). Since Nørlund and Jacobsen could not be discarded as conservative, inferior historians, how then did Weibull and Arup react to their critiques? Arup’s initial attitude was that both of them had good intentions but lacked intelligence. He dismissed as naïve the notion that his historiography was dependent on an a priori perspective. Perhaps because of Arup’s rather condescending tone in his first reply to Jacobsen, ‘a brief reply to a learned lady’, she produced empirical evidence supporting her view that Arup misinterpreted important sources because he was completely immersed in his own synthetic perspective. She then later published these critiques as a

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separate booklet called Apriorisk historieskrivning [A Priori Historiography] in 1926. This often-overlooked little booklet is perhaps one of the central documents concerning the tensions in Danish historiography. Weibull objected to Arup’s initial wanton dismissal of Jacobsen. ‘She is the dangerous one’, Weibull wrote, because ‘she is intelligent’.19 For Weibull, ‘intelligence’ distinguished Jacobsen from the community of historians, as if she, too, belonged to the group of superior outsiders. This did not mean, however, that she should be allowed to participate in scholarly dialogue. Weibull’s advice was that Arup should attack her with greater force and with methodological argumentation as a weapon. Subsequently, Arup actually began to take more heed of Jacobsen’s criticism. In the early 1930s, he mentioned in a letter that should the first part of Danmarks historie be republished, he would revise it according to her critical remarks. This rush of humbleness was only a momentary lapse, however, and later on he developed a rather vibrant fury towards Jacobsen, making nightly phone calls filled with scorn, which she dutifully transcribed and placed in her personal archive. Arup’s synthesis is often referred to as a classic of Danish historiography, but in some respects it was also a failure. The democratic nationalism that formed the framework of his synthetic perspective was completely incompatible with the ideal of aristocratic empiricism that he and the Weibull brothers had cultivated in their journal. Synthesis was thus present, but never integrated into the methodological self-understanding of the discipline. Instead, the publication of Danmarks historie marked the dissolution of the genre of synthesis itself. In countries where there has been an established genre, countries such as Norway and the United States up until the 1970s, the genre served to designate arenas where a certain agonistic principle could exist at large. It is something similar to the role of classics in disciplines like philosophy and sociology, books you return to in order both to surpass and celebrate. Arup had a clear awareness of this genre. He wanted to ‘throw his hat into the ring’ with the great narrators of ancient Danish historiography: Saxo Grammaticus, Hvitfeld, Holberg and Allen. But he did not communicate this ambition when he published his work. Instead, he sealed it off with references to a ‘scientific method’ and claims to absolute ‘scientific’ truth, which severely hampered the potential of historiography as a contributor to cultural modernization. The archival material pertaining to Erik Arup contains a sketch entitled Redegørelse for min Danmarkshistorie [My History of Denmark Explained]. It offers a fascinating backstage view of Arup the historian. Here, he admits the use of an a priori perspective, but he unabashedly claims that his a priori standpoint (that agriculture lies at the core of Danish history) is objectively valid, although no empirical research exists to back this claim up. ‘Am I



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one-dimensional? Yes, probably, but no more than the Danish people is and always has been.’ In the next passage, he claims that his book should serve as a handbook in the same way that handbooks serve the natural sciences, ‘summarising the results of research hitherto conducted, but by no means being the final word’. These two standpoints are in violent contradiction with each other. To resolve this contradiction, Arup once again appeals to the resemblance between history and natural science: One has to admit that history has not yet like medicine or the natural sciences reached the point of public veneration when only a few, whose competence is acknowledged by all, are allowed to speak. Of history, and of perspective or view of history, every man feels entitled to speak. Would anyone who has never conducted a medical examination feel obliged to criticize a doctor? No. But all those who have never conducted a historical examination believe themselves entitled to criticize a historian. On historiography, it seems that everyone has to have a say. They do not understand that history nowadays has become a science, that they who have studied it are the only ones who should speak of it, and that all others are obliged to listen. (Arup 1955: 256–59, quote on 258)

As is evident from this last quote, the aristocratic empiricism of the WeibullArup circle was in social terms elitist, even authoritarian. There is no clear connection to politics in this statement, however, and neither was there when members of the circle felt themselves to be outsiders, which in large part must be discarded as irrational. For subsequent generations, it has been tempting – too tempting – to rationalize, or rather over-rationalize their feelings of being outsiders and assume that there had to be some deeper meaning to scientific modernization or political progress that informed their doings and attitudes. The lesson to be learned, however, is not that if we abandon the simplified ideas of progress in historiography, we must resign ourselves to and accept irrationalism. It is rather a plea for a sceptical attitude to the quick fixes, academic trends and paradigm shifts and turns that promise to purify history from the prejudice and irrationality of preceding historians. The abstract discourse of methodological progress still needs to be situated within social, regional and even national contexts. Otherwise, its allure is too easily exploited as a rhetorical tool. There is a deep continuity in the various complex dilemmas involved in the historian’s craft. As it was in the past, so it is also in the present. Simon Larsson, Ph.D., is a researcher in the Department for the History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, Sweden. He is currently heading the project ‘An Example for All Seasons? The Theory of History in Contemporary Economic Thought’, funded by the Bank of Sweden tercentenary foundation. His recent publications in the field of historiography include ‘A Circling of the Wagons: The ‘Historical Method’

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and Disciplinary Boundaries’ in J.-E. Myhre (ed.), Boundaries of History (Scandinavian Academic Press, 2015) and Historieskrivningen och nationen [Historical Writing and the Nation] i , Temp. Tidsskrift for historie 12/2016.

Notes 1.  As for the voluntary entrapment in a national framework, Middell and Roura (2013: 22) suggest that this has to do with secure growth in resources and facilities. 2. In this, he opposed other contemporary methodologies, such as that of Ernst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (1889) and Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos’s Introduction aux études historiques (1898), which held the opinion that the writing of history must change its features in order to adapt to the development of research methods. 3.  This dilemma is typically represented in the figure of Harald Hjärne (1848–1922), the pivotal historian in Sweden at the beginning of the twentieth century. 4.  A good example of this is Carlsson 1946. 5. Psychologist Claude Bernard famously distinguished between art and science in social terms in 1865: ‘L’art c’est moi, la science c’est nous’ [Art is me, science is us]. Quote from Introduction à l’étude medicine expérimentale, p. 96. 6.  My own translation from Danish. All translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated. 7.  Weibull frequently polemicized against Erslev, but in private actually held him in high esteem. Arup had a very complicated relationship with Erslev, as investigated by Floto (2006). 8.  For a comparison of the French and German historical communities in this respect, see Raphael 1990. 9.  Inaugural lecture reprinted in Dagens Nyheter, 11 July 1919. 10.  One of their most prominent followers, Erik Lönnroth (1910–2002), gives a distinctive account of the idea of a Scandinavian Geschichtsregion in the journal Götheborgske spionen (Lönnroth 1936). It is facing west, uniting Gothenburg, Lund, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Oslo and Bergen. Lönnroth characteristically claims: ‘We have our backs turned to official Sweden’. 11.  They have been gathered together in Arup 1977a and 1977b. For more on his neoMachiavellian theory of history, see p. 162. 12.  The book consisted of three parts, published in 1925, 1932, and posthumously in 1955. 13. A similar point of reference in the Swedish history of historiography would be Lauritz Weibull’s Critical Examinations (1911), although this book has never been read by more than a few people and therefore is far from being a classic. 14.  As Floto (2006) has demonstrated in her discussion of Svenstrup’s book, Friis was right. Floto interprets Arup’s behaviour in terms of a father–son conflict, where Arup’s struggle for recognition was a sort of repressed love for Erslev, highly thwarted by Erslev’s support for Friis in 1913. This is, indeed, a far-reaching psychological interpretation and the details are of course hard to prove, although Floto argues her case quite well. There is substantial empirical evidence that Arup was a paranoiac. 15.  Politiken, 15 September 1925. 16.  This was carried to an extreme in Lauritz Weibull’s obituary (Weibull 1951). 17.  For stories on the heroic discontinuity brought about by Arup, see first the obituaries by Aksel E. Christensen, Astrid Friis, Albert Olsen and Lauritz Weibull, and then Manniche 1975, 1981; Larsen 1976; Petersen 1978; Svenstrup 1995, 2006. 18.  A similar myth concerning Lauritz Weibull has played a certain role in the Swedish history of historiography. Odén (1975) claims that Weibull’s Kritiska undersökningar was



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violently rejected by the community of historians. The review by Sven Tunberg (1911) in Historisk tidskrift proves otherwise. For several reasons (Weibull’s narrow topics, quite nuanced obituaries by his scholarly successors, very few people contributing to the history of historiography), the Weibull myth has probably been less central to the discipline’s own selfunderstanding in Sweden than the Arup myth in Denmark. 19.  Weibull to Arup, 9 February 1926, Arup’s letters, Royal Library of Copenhagen.

Bibliography Ahlström, G. 1947. Det moderna genombrottet i nordens litteratur. Stockholm: KF:s bokförlag. Aronsson, P., et al. 2009. ‘Nordic National Histories’, in S. Berger and C. Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 277–82. Arup, E. 1907. Studier i engelsk og tysk handels historie: En undersøgelse av kommissionshandelens praksis og theori i engelsk og tysk handelsliv 1350–1850. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Arup, E. 1925. Danmarks historie I. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz forlag. Arup, E. 1932. Danmarks historie II. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz forlag. Arup, E. 1938. Historie ved Københavns Universitet 1537–1937. Scandia 11, 1–15. Arup, E. 1955. Danmarks historie III. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz forlag. Arup, E. 1977a. Udvalgte afhandlinger og anmeldelser I. Copenhagen: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie. Arup, E. 1977b. Udvalgte afhandlinger og anmeldelser II. Copenhagen: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie. Bernard, C. 1865, Introduction à l’étude médicine expérimentale, Paris: Baillière et fills. Bernheim, E. 1889. Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Björk, R. 1994. ‘Historiker i eget land’, Historisk tidskrift 114: 83–97. Björk, R. 2007. ‘The Swedish Baltic Empire in Modern Swedish Historiography’, in F. Hadler and M. Mesenhöller (eds), Vergangene Grösse und Ohnmacht in Ostmitteleuropa: Repräsentationen imperialer Erfahrung in der Historiographie seit 1918. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, pp. 35–62. Björk, R. 2010. ‘Att integrera nivåer: Nya krav på en internationaliserande historieskrivning’, Historisk tidskrift 130: 467–83. Björk, R. 2012. ‘Hjärne-traditionen’, in G. Artéus and K. Åmark (eds), Historieskrivningen i Sverige. Stockholm: Studentlitteratur, pp. 59–106. Carlsson, S. 1946. Karl IV Gustaf: en biografi. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Collingwood, R.C. 1946. The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daston, L. 1995. ‘The Moral Economy of Science’. Osiris 10: 2–24. Erslev, K. 1911a. Historisk teknik: den historiske undersøgelse fremstillet i sine grundlinier. Copenhagen: Den danske historiske Forening. Erslev, K. 1911b. Historieskrivning: grundlinier til nogle kapitler af historiens theori. Copenhagen: Den danske historiske Forening. Floto, I. 1978. ‘Erik Arup og hans kritikere’, Historisk tidsskrift 13(5): 474–98. Floto, I. 1981. ‘De seneste års danske historiografiske debat’, Scandia 47(2): 245–54. Floto, I. 1995. ‘Venskab: Korrespondancen mellem Erik Arup og Lauritz Weibull’, Historisk tidsskrift 95(2): 242–97. Floto, I. 2006. ‘Myten om Erik Arup – I anledning af en disputans’, Historisk tidsskrift 106(2): 521–50. Fulsås, N. 2007. ‘1905 og stabiliseringa av norsk historie’, in H. Gustafsson et al. (eds), Den dubbla blicken: Historia i de nordiska samhällena. Lund: Sekel: 37–50.

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Gieryn, T. 1999. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gunneriusson, H. 2002. Det historiska fältet: Svensk historievetenskap från 1920-tal til 1957. Studia Historica Upsaliensia 204. Uppsala:Upsala University. Haapala, P. 2007. ‘Kulturgeschichte i den finländska historieskrivningen’, in H. Gustafsson et al. (eds), Den dubbla blicken: Historia i de nordiska samhällena. Lund: Sekel, pp. 51–61. Handlingar rörande tillsättandet av det lediga professorsämbetet i historia i Lund 1922–1925. 1925. Lund: Lund University. Jacobsen, L. 1926. Apriorisk historieskrivning: Randnoter till Erik Arups Danmarkshistorie. Copenhagen: Särtr. ur: Politikens kronik. Kristiansen, K.K., and J.R. Rasmussen. 1976. ‘Brud eller kontinuitet i dansk historievidenskab’, Fortid og nutid 26: 516–34. Langlois, V., and C. Seignobos 1898. Introduction aux études historiques. Paris: Libraire Hachette. Langlois, V., and C.Seignobos. 1966. Introduction to the Study of History (1898). New York: H. Holt. Larsen, H.K. 1976. Erik Arup: en historiografisk undersøgelse av Arups videnskabs- og historiesyn 1903–1916. Odense: Universitetsforlag. Larsen, P.O. 2007. ‘Halve sandheder om historikeren som helt – bemærkninger i anledning af tre historikerbiografier’, 1066 37(1): 21–34. Larsson, S. 2010. Intelligensaristokrater och arkivmartyrer: Normerna för vetenskaplig skicklighet i svensk historieforskning 1900–1945. Hedemora: Gidlunds. Larsson, S. 2013. ‘Från ung rabulist till humanioras starke man: Ideal och legetimitetsstrategier hos den unge Erik Lönnroth’, Historisk tidskrift 133: 145–73. Lönnroth, E. 1936. [no title] Götheborgske spionen 1: 10–15. Manniche, J.C. 1975. ‘Tysk-kritisk skole og fransk-kritisk skole: Et bidrag til studiet af historieteoretiske synspunkter i Danmark’, Historisk tidsskrift 13(2): 40–59. Manniche, J.C. 1981. Den radikale historikergeneration: studier i dansk historievidenskabs forudsætninger og normer. Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget. Meyer, F. 2000. ‘Social Structure, State Building and the Fields of History in Scandinavia: A Personal and Comparative View’, in F. Meyer and J.-E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 28–49. Middell, M., and L. Roura. 2013. ‘The Various Forms of Transcending the Horizon of National History Writing’, in M. Middell and L. Roura (eds), Transnational Challenges to National History Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–36. Möller Jørgensen, K. 2000. ‘Patterns of Professionalization and Institutionalization in Denmark from 1948 to the Present’, in F. Meyer and J.-E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 114–48. Novick, P. 1988. That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nørlund, P. 1926. Review of Danmarks historie. Tilskueren XLIII: 116–127. Odén, B. 1975. Lauritz Weibull och forskarsamhället. Lund: Bibliotheca historica Lundensis. Petersen, E.L. 1978. ‘Omkring Erik Arup: struktur og grænser i moderne dansk historieforskning (1885–1955)’, Historisk tidsskrift 15(5): 138–182. Raphael, L. 1990. ‘Historikerkontroversen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Berufshabitus, Fächerkonkurrenz und sozialen Deutungsmustern: Lamprecht-Streit und französischer Methodenstreit der Jahrhundertwende in vergleichender Perspektive’, Historische Zeitschrift 251: 325–63. Ringer, F. 1992. Fields of Knowledge: French Academic Culture in Comparative Perspective 1890– 1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenwein, B.H. 2010. ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’, Passions in Context 1(1): 2–32.



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Schück, H. Svenska folkets historia. Forntiden och medeltiden. Lund Svenstrup, T. 1995. ‘Modtagelsen af Erik Arups Danmarkshistorie’, Fund og forskning 34: 209–38. Svenstrup, T. 2006. Arup: En biografi om den radikale historiker Erik Arup, hans tid og miljø. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums forlag. Tiemroth, J.C. 1978. Erslev – Arup – Christiansen: Et forsøg på strukturering af en tradition i dansk historieskrivning i det 20. Århundrede. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel. Torstendahl, R. 1964. Källkritik och vetenskapssyn i svensk historisk forskning 1820–1920. Stockholm: Norstedts. Trenter, C. 1999. Granskningens retorik och historisk vetenskap: Kognitiv identitet i recensioner i dansk, svensk och norsk historiskt tidsskrift 1965–1990. Uppsala: Studia Historica Upsaliensia. Tunberg, S. 1911. Review of L.Weibull’s Kritiska undersökningar. Historisk tidskrift. 22, 96–97. Weibull, C. 1915. Saxo: Kritiska undersökningar i Danmarks historia från Sven Estridesens död till Knut IV. Lund: Gleerup. Weibull, C. 1921. Sverige och dess nordiska grannmakter under den tidigare medeltiden. Lund: Gleerup. Weibull, C. 1922. Sveriges och Danmarks äldsta historia. Lund: Gleerup. Weibull, L. 1911. Kritiska undersökningar. Lund: Gleerup Weibull, L. 1928. Nekrologierna från Lund, Roskildekrönikan och Saxo: Grunddrag i Danmarks historia under 12 århundradet. Lund: Gleerup. Weibull, L. 1951. ‘Erik Arup’, Scandia 2(21): 229–38.

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Nationalist internationalism Danish and Norwegian historical research in the aftermath of the First World War Jon Røyne Kyllingstad

Introduction The decades prior to the First World War saw a remarkable growth in institutionalized international scholarly cooperation. Sixty-five international academic organizations were founded between 1870 and 1890. During the next two decades, their numbers increased by another 368. An important step was the establishment of the International Association of Academies (IAA) at the turn of the century, which coordinated collaboration between national academies and societies of science and letters (Alter 1980). The IAA and other international organizations were often characterized by an internationalist ideology, according to which research was an inherently peace-promoting activity. The international world of science and scholarship was framed as a politically uncontaminated arena for peaceful contact between national elites, where scholars engaged in peaceful competition and contributed to the progress of human civilization by producing universal and objective knowledge (Forman 1973: 153ff.; Somsen 2008; Alter 1980: 245, 251). There was, however, a tension between this internationalist ideology and the increasing national significance of science. The sciences were becoming increasingly important for the technological and economic development of nation-states as well as for the arms race. Notes for this section begin on page 181.



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This tension was brought to a head during the First World War, when international scientific cooperation broke down and science was mobilized for the war efforts. The animosity continued into the postwar years, when scholars in the victorious nations launched a boycott of German and Austrian academia (Somsen 2008: 364f.). This schism posed a challenge to academics in the neutral states, as it threatened to destroy their multilateral international networks, but at the same time it also opened up a window of opportunity for them. By acting as international mediators, they could simultaneously promote the reestablishment of academic internationalism, strengthen their own position in the international scholarly world and brand their own nations as peaceloving and scientifically advanced. This meant that research policy became strongly related to foreign policy and peace policy. As demonstrated in a series of recent studies, this situation had a significant impact on the development of natural sciences in Scandinavia (Widmalm 2012; Friedman 2012; Knudsen and Nielsen 2012; Enebakk 2012; Friedman 2001: 112ff.; Knudsen 2003: 59ff.; Knudsen 2006). This article deals with Danish and Norwegian humanities scholars, historians in particular, and demonstrates that the postwar breakdown of academic internationalism had a strong impact on these disciplines as well. The historical disciplines were significant to the nation-state as a source of national identity, pride and legitimacy. Territorial claims and demands for national autonomy or minority rights were often underpinned by historical arguments, and tensions between nations were often intertwined with controversies about interpretations of the past. In this context, organized international academic arenas for historical debate were perceived as constituting a neutral sphere where politicized historical quarrels could be transformed into rational, scholarly debates. In the same vein, comparative history was promoted as a peace-promoting counterweight to nationcentred interpretations of history. Both the ideal of comparative history as well as the ideal of more rigorous source-critical methodologies for the establishment of basic historical facts were framed as particularly ‘vitenskapelige’ approaches to history. The Scandinavian and German term vitenskap/Wissenschaft does not necessarily correspond to the English term science, since it includes both the natural sciences and the humanities. However, the use of the term ‘vitenskap’ in these debates often alluded to inspiration from the natural sciences: by adopting more ‘scientific’ methods for establishing basic historical facts, and by using comparative methods to explore the general driving forces in human history, the historical disciplines would be able to produce more rigorous, precise, objective and universal knowledge, and thus to transcend the national(istic) limitations of traditional historical scholarship and turn history into a tool for international

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conciliation. In this way, specific ideas about ‘scientific’ historiography became strongly intertwined with the ideal of international reconciliation through academic internationalism. I argue that these ideals had a significant impact on the historical disciplines in Denmark and Norway. Danish and Norwegian scholars took a number of initiatives to help restore academic internationalism. These attempts were backed by leading politicians, who considered the promotion of academic internationalism to be in line with national interests and with a foreign policy centred on neutrality and the promotion of peace and international law. This had a notable effect on the historical disciplines’ societal role and legitimacy as well as on their organization and funding, and most importantly, it even affected the scope and content of these disciplines.

Neutrality and peace policy Scandinavia was a stronghold of the international peace movement. The peace movement’s main objectives – such as disarmament, international free trade and the settling of conflict through international law and arbitration – were commonly held to be in line with the self-interest of the Scandinavian nations. The foremost peace organization, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, had strong support among Scandinavian parliamentarians, and Norwegian historian Christian Lous Lange served as secretary general. During the First World War, the union’s headquarters were moved to Oslo, and the Nordic branch of the union became an important arena for intra-Scandinavian debates on how to cope with the international situation (Skjoldager and Tønnesson 2008: 303f.). All three Scandinavian states were neutral during the war, and so they abstained from any peace initiatives that might jeopardize their neutrality. However, a number of Scandinavian scholars and politicians were involved in unofficial international initiatives aimed at establishing a peaceful world order after the war. At a meeting of the Nordic section of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1917, the Norwegian conservative politician and professor of law Fredrik Stang put forward an initiative that would have a huge impact on research policy in Scandinavia after the war. Stang proposed establishing a set of internationally staffed ‘world academies’ in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. These academies would serve as a neutral meeting place for members of the academic elites from countries that fought against each other during the war and thus contribute to international reconciliation, while at the same time helping to enhance the quality of Scandinavian scholarship and increase the international academic prestige of the Scandinavian countries (Stang 1918 a and b.).



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The proposal was embraced by leading Scandinavian politicians and academics, and it became a crucial point of reference for a number of intertwined debates on science policy and foreign policy in the following years. Academic internationalism became a crucial element in a foreign policy that aimed to secure the future survival of the nation by helping to restore peaceful relations between Scandinavia’s powerful neighbour states and establish a positive image of the Scandinavian countries as peace-loving and highly civilized. Stang’s proposal was followed up in all three Scandinavian countries, but it only had lasting results in Norway and Denmark. The following sections will take Stang’s proposal as a starting point for exploring how humanities scholars in the two countries responded to the breakdown of academic internationalism.

Danish foreign policy and academia Danish foreign policy was marked by the country’s vulnerable relationship with Germany, caused by Denmark’s strategic geographic location and an unsolved border conflict in Southern Jutland. The Danish loss of Schleswig-Holstein in the war of 1864 had definitely transformed the once glorious, powerful and multinational Danish kingdom into a small state. As a result, Danish nationalism was predominantly anti-German. Danish foreign policy around the First World War was, however, not guided by conservative nationalism, but rather by Det Radikale Venstre (the Radical Liberal Left), a social liberal party that accepted Denmark’s small state identity and promoted a foreign policy based on neutrality, internationalism, free trade, international law and the resolution of international conflicts through arbitration (Skjoldager and Tønnesson 2008: 310). An important feature of this policy was the notion of ‘cultural defence’: Denmark would never be able to repel a German invasion, and so its defence should be based on diplomacy and culture policy. By promoting an image of a peaceful, modern and cultured nation, Denmark would gain international respect and reduce the risk of an invasion; furthermore, by nurturing a strong national culture based on liberal and democratic ideals, the nation would be able to survive as a cultural entity even in the case of a German invasion. The idea of turning Scandinavia into a neutral meeting ground for international scholarship fit well with this foreign political doctrine, and, according to historians Henrik Knudsen and Henry Nielsen, this paved the way for a new social contract for Danish academia. Science and scholarship became tools for a foreign policy aimed at stabilizing Denmark’s geopolitical surroundings through mediation and internationalism and at branding Denmark as a

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peace-loving and highly civilized nation (Knudsen and Nielsen 2012: 122). The chief architect behind this polity was the current defence minister (1913–1920) and future foreign minister (1929–1940), Peter Munch, and he was the one who took up the task of implementing Fredrik Stang’s idea in Denmark. After the inter-parliamentary meeting in 1917, he put together a committee,1 which assessed Stang’s proposal and suggested the establishment of two state-funded, international ‘academies’, the Ørsted Institute for physics and the Rask-Madvig Institute for philology and linguistics.2 The proposal caused a huge public debate. Opponents claimed that the plan might have unwanted foreign political consequences. They argued that it would be difficult to attract foreigners to the institutes, and if they only got employees from one side – most likely from a crisis-ridden Germany – this would hamper reconciliation and jeopardize Denmark’s neutrality.3 They also protested against tying a huge long-term appropriation to a short-term political goal, and they likewise feared that the new institutions would drain resources from existing institutions, the university and the polytechnic and agricultural colleges. The discussion on research policy and foreign policy was intertwined with a struggle over research funding. While the proposed Ørsted Institute was backed by a group of professors under the leadership of physicist Martin Knudsen, who probably envisaged himself as head of the new autonomous institute, a competing proposal was put forward by his young colleague Niels Bohr, who wanted to build a new university institute for theoretical physics. Bohr’s campaign was partly based on the same internationalist arguments as the Stang initiative and the proposed Ørsted Institute. Bohr was a rising international star in physics, and it was argued that a new university institute under his leadership could help re-establish scientific internationalism by attracting leading international scientists. The campaign proved successful, and while the Ørsted Institute never saw the light of day, Bohr’s institute was inaugurated in 1921 (Knudsen and Nielsen 2012: 116–23). The controversy caused the government to abandon the institute plans and propose instead to allocate five million Danish kroner to the new ‘Rask-Ørsted Fund’ (RØF), the aim of which was to promote Danish involvement in international academic activities.4 The proposal won support across the political spectrum in parliament, and the majority of those who voiced their opinion about the issue seem to have agreed that the RØF would serve the same function as Stang’s proposed world academy: to enhance the prestige of Danish scholarship, help restore academic internationalism and promote world peace.5



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The activities of the Rask-Ørsted Fund The Rask-Ørsted Fund (RØF) was from the beginning, in 1919, characterized by a dual political and academic objective. Half the board represented the academic institutions, while the other half was appointed by the government and parliament. Almost all of the politically appointed board members were both politicians and academics, with most of them being historians or philologists. The board included, for instance, prime minister and historian Niels Neergaard, defence minister and historian Peter Munch, as well as Denmark’s most influential historian, Kristian Erslev, head of the national archives and director of the Carlsberg Foundation, who belonged to the same political camp as Munch and Neergaard.6 Many of the board members had been engaged in the process of setting up the fund. Thus, a set of actors, mostly academics and politicians with liberal or social democratic leanings, were involved in both initiating the fund and in shaping its policy. A most important figure was the first (government-appointed) head of the board, classical philologist Johan L. Heiberg. In 1917, he had belonged to a dissenting minority in the governmental committee that had assessed Stang’s proposal. While supporting Stang’s general idea, he dismissed the proposed Rask and Ørsted institutes and took on a leading role in the ensuing public debate. In this way, he played a key role both in helping set up the fund and in developing its policy. In line with its statutes, most of the allocations from the fund went to Danish participation in international organizations and congresses and international research cooperation, as well as to the international publication of Danish research. Niels Bohr’s physics institute was the main beneficiary,7 and took on a role that resembled the planned Ørsted Institute. It had an international staff, it gained international fame as a world-leading research centre and international reconciliation was high on the agenda. In many ways, the institute resembled a ‘world academy’ of the type that Stang had proposed. Most of the RØF’s allocations within the humanities went to comparative linguistics, ancient history and classical philology and archaeology, even if many board members were historians and politicians engaged with contemporary history.8 One likely explanation for this seeming paradox is the fact that Danish historians in general worked on Danish history, and that history to some extent was seen as a nationally delimited discipline. In contrast, classical philology and archaeology as well as comparative linguistics and the study of ancient languages were highly specialized, transnational disciplines, characterized by cooperation across national borders, publishing the results in international journals, involvement in transnational debates and the study of research topics that were not nationally

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delimited. Many of these disciplines were comparative by their very nature and engaged in the mapping, collecting and classifying of empirical material from large geographical areas not limited by local or national boundaries. Due to the breakdown of international cooperation, a number of international philological projects had come to a halt and, according to Heiberg, the RØF had an important task in ensuring that such projects were resumed (Heiberg 1919). It is likely that these disciplines to a much greater extent than the discipline of history was more widely perceived as pure science of pure research, with few implications for national ideology and international political questions. This may have been particularly true for comparative linguistics, considered by many to be the most ‘scientific’ (that is, nomothetic) of the humanities disciplines and by some as a model for the development of all humanities disciplines. It is probably no coincidence that the fund was named after Rasmus Rask, who was considered among the founders of comparative linguistics.

Danish humanities scholars and the Union Academique International The tendency to link internationalism with disciplines such as comparative linguistics, philology, archaeology and the study of ancient history becomes even more evident when we turn to another key example of Danish humanities scholars’ response to the breakdown of academic internationalism. In 1918, the French and British academies/societies of science decided to abandon the international academic umbrella organization International Association of Academies and instead establish two new organizations, the International Research Council (IRC) for the natural sciences and the Union Academique International (UAI) for the humanities (SchroederGudehus 1973). The aim of this manoeuvre was to isolate German and Austrian academia, a policy that was considered to be in line with the Versailles Treaty. Similar to the Scandinavian governments that opposed excluding Germany from the League of Nations, the Scandinavian academies of science opposed the academic boycott. The Swedish, Danish and Norwegian academies decided, reluctantly, to join the International Research Council, where they, in alliance with other neutral countries, worked to open up the organization for German membership. The Scandinavian reactions to the establishment of the Union Academique International were less unanimous. The Swedish Vitterhetsakademien dismissed the new organization on principle, whereas the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters joined the Union but did not send delegates to the first meetings.9 For its part, the Royal



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Danish Academy of Science and Letters took a leading role in the new organization from the very start. The Danish engagement with the UAI was related to the RØF. The two Danish delegates to the UAI were also members of the RØF board. One of them was J.L. Heiberg, the head of the RØF board who in 1924 also became second vice president of the UAI. The RØF paid the expenses for Denmark’s participation in the UAI, and this probably contributed greatly to the UAI’s activities. To an even greater degree than the RØF, the UAI’s activities were concentrated on classical philology, ancient history and classical archaeology, even if its working field in principle encompassed all of the humanities and social sciences. The UAI’s first major undertakings were two comprehensive cataloguing and publication projects aimed to facilitate international access to source material: a catalogue of ancient alchemist manuscripts and a Corpus vasorum antiquorum, with depictions and descriptions of approximately 100,000 decorated antique clay pots owned by museums all over the world. While Johan L. Heiberg was strongly involved in the first project, the latter was spearheaded by the Danish National Museum along with the Louvre Museum in Paris; both projects received substantial funding from the RØF (Bidez et al. 1924; Jespersen and Pedersen 1926; Lomholt 1942). Since German museums and libraries owned many relevant vases and manuscripts, it is obvious that these projects would not be complete without German participation. One of the main reasons that Denmark had joined the organization was to be able to work towards lifting the ban on German membership. This, however, turned out to be a lengthy and troublesome undertaking that only succeeded in 1936. Even if no ‘world academies’ were ever established, it can still be claimed that the general ideas put forward by Stang were implemented in Denmark. Both the Danish academic community and the Danish state tried to establish themselves as mediators in the international academic world, and this had an impact on science policy, funding and the institutional organization of academic research. Within the humanities, this objective had a particularly strong impact on ancient history and philology, historical linguistics and classical archaeology. However, as we have seen, it initially did not have a strong effect on the discipline of history, even if historians were among the leading architects behind this policy of reconciliation. A most likely explanation for this is the fact that, compared to the other disciplines mentioned above, history was a nation-centred discipline focused principally on Danish history, and it did not have a strong tradition of international cooperation. Thus, history as a discipline may have seemed a bad tool for re-establishing international relations. Furthermore, many of those involved in the project saw the discipline as part of the problem and not as

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part of the solution to international animosity. Fredrik Stang, for instance, held historical scholarship partly responsible for the war, since historians, by immersing themselves in the singular history of the nation, had helped stimulate a narrow-minded nationalism that had laid the groundwork for war (Stang 1918a: 14–15). Such a line of reasoning meant that if history was to be turned into a tool for reconciliation, the historical discipline itself had to be transformed.

The Oslo Congress of Historical Sciences and the establishment of the CISH Fredrik Stang’s critical view of the discipline of history was not exceptional. He was probably inspired by ideas already circulating within the international academic community and that, since the turn of the century, had been discussed at the International Congresses of Historical Sciences, to which we will now turn (Erdmann 2005: 9). According to historian Karl Dietrich Erdmann, these conferences aimed to bring about an ‘examination of historical events which is as objective and impartial as possible’ (2005: 9). A precursor to these congresses, held in The Hague in 1898, was dedicated to the study of diplomatic history and international conflicts. The first general international conference of historians, held in Paris in 1900, was dedicated to comparative history, and this was framed both as a way to overcome international tensions and as a pathway towards a more ‘scientific’ style of conducting historical research. This ideal was interconnected with a critique of traditional nation-centred historicism oriented towards the state, singular actors and events. It was argued that the historian should shift their attention away from politics, diplomacy and the nation-state and towards society and its cultural, economic and social structures in order to understand the basic driving forces of human history (Erdmann 2005: 12–21). The First World War disrupted the tradition of international historical congresses, which was not resumed until 1923, ten years after the previous congress. The 1923 congress was held in Brussels, a symbol-laden venue. The brutal and unlawful German attack on neutral Belgium in order to invade France had turned the Belgians into the main victims of German war crimes, and the final rupture of international academic relations took place when leading German academics and intellectuals signed an infamous declaration of loyalty to the German army and dismissed accusations of war crimes. The choice of Henry Pirenne as the leader for the conference was no less laden with symbolism. He was the leading Belgian historian and internationally famous for having suffered a lengthy wartime imprisonment



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due to his opposition to German violations of the autonomy of his university (Erdmann 2005: 78–85). German and Austrian historians were not invited to the conference. Similar to many historians in other neutral countries and the US, Scandinavian historians opposed the exclusion of Germany and Austria, but chose different strategies to voice such opinions. Swedish and Danish historians demonstrated their objections by staying at home. Norwegian historians sent a man to Brussels with the task of working for the opening up of the next congress.10 The Norwegian strategy was initiated by the historian, Labour Party politician and peace activist Halvdan Koht, who went to Brussels with authorization from the academy, the university and the Norwegian government to suggest that the next congress be held in Oslo on the condition that it would be open to all nations, including Germany and Austria. The Norwegian invitation cleared the ground for an American plan for reconciliation. The American delegates in Brussels gained acceptance for the idea of establishing a new, permanent international committee of historians that could work out plans for future conferences. After the conference, an interim committee was established under Pirenne’s leadership and with Koht and the Austrian historian Alfons Dopsch as members. In 1926, a constitutive meeting was assembled in Geneva. The meeting included representatives from various historical organizations and institutions located in the former Central Powers. This time all of the Scandinavian nations also sent representatives: Halvdan Koht and Edvard Bull from Norway, Carl Hallendorf from Sweden, and Aage Friis and Axel Linvald from Denmark. The Scandinavian delegates rallied behind a joint strategy for holding the next congress in Oslo. The main contenders were the Polish historians, who wanted to hold the congress in Warsaw but who also had no intention of inviting any German historians. During the Geneva meeting, however, Poland fell victim to the coup d’état of Józef Pilsudski. Oslo stood out as the only realistic alternative, and it was thus chosen as the venue of the next conference. The Geneva meeting also led to the establishment of an international committee of historical sciences (CISH), to which Halvdan Koht was elected president and Henry Pirenne and Alfons Dopsch vice presidents. The CISH was loosely related to the UAI. Pirenne was president of the UAI, while Koht became its vice president in 1927. The UAI encompassed all the disciplines represented at the International Congresses of Historical Sciences, which included a broad scope of disciplines in addition to history in a narrow sense, such as archaeology, the history of religions and the history of law.11

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There was, however, also a significant difference between the two organizations. Compared to the UAI, with its focus on ancient archaeology and philology, the CISH was more oriented towards modern history and research topics with more direct political implications. When reporting home from the Geneva meeting, the Danish participant, Aage Friis, underscored the fact that historians are more politically inclined than any other type of scholar and that many of them had been strongly engaged in the ideological struggles during the war. It was, therefore, particularly important that the historians, by attending the meeting, had demonstrated their support for ideals of mutual ‘understanding and objectivity’. If the historians managed to cooperate, then other branches of academia should be able to do the same (Friis 1926: 120). From the beginning, the new organization launched projects aimed at breaking down the barriers between national disciplinary communities and establishing an international arena where politically contentious historical issues could be subjected to objective and empirically grounded academic debate. Among the committee’s numerous initiatives was a campaign to obtain open access to state archives and develop a complete catalogue on diplomats from all nations from 1648 until the present. The first and largest project was the launching of the International Yearbook of Historical Bibliography, which was to be thematically – not geographically and nationally – organized and focus on international and comparative history.12 The CISH also passed an initiative to ensure that school textbooks in history promote international understanding and be in line with updated historical science. This problem had, since the end of the war, been discussed by the international peace organizations, the ecumenical movement, teachers’ organizations and the League of Nations. In Scandinavia, the question had been raised in 1919 by Christian L. Lange, the secretary general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and by the Norden associations, which had been established after the First World War to strengthen the relations between the Nordic countries and which in the early 1920s conducted a survey on Nordic history textbooks to identify prejudices against neighbouring countries (Vigander 1961). In the late 1920s, the question of objectivity in textbooks was raised again by the CISH and Scandinavian teachers’ organizations, both of which argued that history teaching should promote peace. Textbooks should downplay issues such as foreign policy and warfare and instead draw attention to ‘the inner history of the peoples’, peaceful cultural growth, the civilizing forces in human history and the postwar measures to organize lasting peace. Nordic cooperation and community should be emphasized in textbooks and descriptions of the history of neighbouring Nordic countries that might create bad feelings should be avoided. The initiatives from the CISH



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and the teachers’ organizations impelled the Norden associations to launch a new schoolbook survey, and between the years 1932 and 1936 Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Icelandic committees were all engaged in studying the school textbooks of the neighbouring Nordic countries in order to identify prejudiced and chauvinistic misrepresentations of their country’s history (Nordens Läroböcker i Historia 1937: 18f.). The textbook debate addressed a type of historical question that was relevant to political relations between the Nordic nations. In the 1920s, historical arguments were presented, for example, in a Danish-Norwegian conflict over the political control of Greenland and the ownership of historical archives from the period of Danish-Norwegian union. Sweden and Norway quarrelled about the historical interpretation of the dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union. For their part, Icelandic historians disagreed with Norwegians about the symbolic ownership of the Norse/ Icelandic Saga literature. Such questions were, however, even more acutely relevant with respect to the relationships between the Great Powers. The outbreak of the war was linked to quarrels about the historical right to territories, quarrels that had still not been resolved; adding to this tension was the question of who was to blame for the outbreak of war, and the issue of national stereotypes and misrepresentations of other nations’ histories. Thus, the demands for textbook revisions addressed particularly relevant historical issues, which were related to the CISH’s general aim of promoting a rational international debate on politically contentious historical questions. This became a key issue for Koht and the CISH, which in the late 1920s established an international committee to deal with the question (Nygren 2001; Vigander 1961, 1946). These questions were particularly urgent for Denmark due to its troubled relationship with Germany and the unresolved conflict over Southern Jutland. As we will see in the next section, this issue was most likely a key driving force behind Denmark’s engagement with the CISH and the international cooperation of historians.

The CISH, Danish historical research and the Schleswig question According to its statutes, the CISH consisted of delegates from the historical organizations and institutions in the participating countries. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, this led to the establishment of national committees for international historical cooperation, which consisted of delegates from relevant professional organizations and institutions who coordinated the historians’ participation in international activities and elected representatives to

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international organizations. In this way, the ‘foreign policy’ of the national community of historians became a more formalized and organized activity. The activities of the Danish National Committee were funded by the RØF and led by the committee leader, Aage Friis, and by the secretary, Axel Linvald. They represented Denmark in the CISH as well and participated in extensive activities in the international academic community from 1926 onwards.13 In contrast to the RØF and the Danish involvement in the UAI, Friis’s and Linvald’s international engagement was not characterized by any attempt to avoid politically contentious issues. Instead, it is reasonable to assume that they took it as their task to contribute to the establishment of a neutral international arena for objective, academic debate about politically charged historical issues. This was conceived as an idealistic undertaking that aimed to pave the way for peaceful international relations and, at the same time, contribute to a general thrust at turning history into a more ‘scientific’ undertaking. These objectives were, however, strongly linked to foreign political considerations and to the pursuit of what Linvald and Friis considered to be the best interests of the Danish nation (see, e.g., Friis 1915, 1918). These interests had to do with a key issue in Danish foreign policy, namely the unresolved border conflict with Germany, the Schleswig question; this was a question to which both Linvald and Friis had dedicated much of their professional careers and political engagement. For a number of years, Axel Linvald had acted as the newspaper Politiken’s expert on the Schleswig question, and between 1912 and 1923 he worked in the National Archives, where he mainly dealt with the archival holdings on Schleswig. He published historical works on the topic, and from 1934 he was head of the National Archives, where he promoted openness and access to the archives and organized a Danish-German exchange of archives related to Schleswig and Holstein (Dansk Biografisk Leksikon: Axel Lindval). Open access to national archives was one of the main issues of the CISH, as this was seen as a way to avoid misunderstandings, enhance international understanding and facilitate historical scholarship. Linvald’s policy of openness was in line with this internationalist ideology, but he probably also saw it as being in line with the interest of the nation, which was to establish a Danish-German consensus about the historical facts regarding the Schleswig question. The Schleswig question was even more important to Friis than to Linvald. It was the topic that informed most of his historical research, and at the same time he was a key player in the political struggles over Schleswig. Like Linvald, he was an influential member of Det Radikale Venstre. He was a close friend of Peter Munch and played a key role in designing the party’s Schleswig policy. Friis advocated a policy of flexibility and openness



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towards Germany in hopes of both improving Germany’s policy towards its Danish minority and preparing the ground for a long-term solution of the border question, one that both the Germans and Danes could accept. From 1907 until he became professor in 1913, Friis worked as the Foreign Ministry’s consultant on the Schleswig question. He was also a main player in the events that led to adjusting the Danish-German border in 1920. After the German capitulation in 1918, Friis went to Berlin on a secret mission for the Danish government and managed to convince the new German government to issue a written statement calling for a referendum on the border question. This prepared the ground for the border agreement in 1920 (Murai 2006). After the border adjustment, it was important to work for a mutual Danish-German understanding of the historical facts that would help legitimate the established status quo. In the 1920s, Friis, funded by the Foreign Ministry, took up a project that became his main field of endeavour during the next thirty years: providing an account of the North Schleswig question from 1864 onwards. He intended the work to provide the definitive and authoritative account of the issue, and it was based on a large amount of source material from archives in Denmark, Germany and elsewhere (Det Nordslesvigske Spørgsmaal 1921–1948). Thus, the CISH’s campaign for open access to national archives was directly relevant to Friis’s combined political and scholarly project. The border changes in 1920 were criticized by both German and Danish nationalists, and the main aim of Friis’s research seems to have been to establish what he saw as an objective, fair and balanced account of the historical events leading from 1864 to 1920 in order to counteract both Danish and German nationalist-chauvinist interpretations of the past. Friis believed that he was able to establish such an objective account by critically assessing all of the relevant sources and giving an exhaustive description of the events. Thus, his political and academic project was based on the ideal of ‘vitenskapelig’ source criticism, i.e. that it is the task of historians to reveal the truth about past historical events through exhaustive, systematic and ‘scientific’ scrutiny of primary sources. Friis believed that such ideals of rigorous source criticism enjoyed particularly strong support among Danish historians, and he proposed that this was due to the loss of Schleswig in the 1864 war, which had created a national trauma that had affected both the identity of the nation and the professional identity of Danish historians. The defeat had led to deep and ongoing national self-criticism, a critical re-evaluation of national history and the rise of a generation of historians who wanted to ‘see the past as it was’. Under the leadership of Kristian Erslev, they had forcefully applied the technique of modern historical science to examine the relationship between

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the Danes and the Germans, thereby ensuring that a more critical account of the nation’s past replaced unsound romantic fantasies of historical glory, which had been typical of the former generation (Friis 1923). According to Friis, his own generation’s impartial and objective rewriting of Danish history had been crucial to the ‘national education’ of the Danes, which meant that the political elite now had a more critical and factual view of history. Friis contrasted this to Germany, where the great victories of 1864, 1866 and 1870 had prepared the ground for a ‘German historical school’ that saw ‘the unfolding of the great State and State power’ as history’s goal and purpose. This school of thought had been ‘extremely harmful to Germany and had contributed to the catastrophe that had struck the German people’ (Friis 1923: 31).14 Friis’s and Linvald’s engagement with international historical cooperation should be seen as operating in parallel to the activities of the RaskØrsted Fund and to the internationalist aspect of Niels Bohr’s institute. All of these undertakings involved a dimension of foreign policy that aimed to re-establish peaceful international relations, thereby stabilizing Denmark’s geopolitical surroundings and branding it as a particularly peaceful and civilized country. But the societal function of historical research was different from that of the natural sciences and from the philological and historical studies of ancient cultures and languages. Therefore, there was also an additional dimension to Friis’s combined academic and political activism. If Friis wanted to achieve his political goal of facilitating German-Danish agreement on the Schleswig question, he had to first establish a consensus about how the past should be interpreted, and he believed that this consensus should rest on an objective, impartial and exhaustive investigation of the relevant sources. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to remove the politically relevant historical questions from the political sphere and submit them to international scholarly debate, one in which his German colleagues could participate and where the best arguments (which Friis thought he possessed) could win the battle. Finally, his strategy required that the objective facts established within the academic sphere be disseminated to and accepted by the general public and within the political spheres of both Denmark and Germany. Seen against this background, it is natural that Friis combined his political and academic activities with a strong engagement in both German and Danish public debates about the Schleswig question, and that it was Friis, along with Linvald, who took up the task of representing Danish historians in the international disciplinary community. The problems that the CISH and the Oslo congress had meant to resolve were highly relevant to the academic and political goals of Friis. He needed an international arena for scholarly debate on politically controversial questions. He needed access to



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the national archives of other countries in order to complete his research on the Schleswig question. Additionally, the textbook revisions provided him with an opportunity to market his objective and factually correct account of the question to neighbouring countries. It is obvious that Friis was an idealist who believed in internationalism and reconciliation, and it is clear that he believed in the ideal of ‘scientific’ source criticism as a guarantee of objectivity in historical research, but there is no contradiction between this facet of his work and the fact that his engagement with international historical cooperation also aimed to maintain what he considered to be national interests.

The Norwegian reception of Stang’s proposal Both the Norwegian and the Danish responses to the breakdown and revival of internationalism in the historical disciplines were facilitated by existing historiographical traditions and the specific way in which the particular disciplines were related to politics, society and culture in general. Like their Danish colleagues, Norwegian academics reluctantly chose to enter the new inter-allied arenas, with the intention of counteracting the ban on German academia and establishing themselves as mediators in the international academic world. In Norway, like in Denmark, research policy became closely linked with foreign policy. However, the effect that this had on historical scholarship was significantly different in the two countries. We have seen that Friis’s and Linvald’s engagement with scholarly internationalism was mainly related to two elements in the internationalist ideology of the CISH, namely the idea of creating a neutral international space for the scholarly assessment of contentious historical questions and the ideal of clarifying such questions with the help of ‘scientific’ source criticism and open access to relevant historical sources. In Norway, on the other hand, the ideal of internationalism was first and foremost interlinked with the breakthrough of another element in the internationalist ideology of the CISH, namely the ideal of comparative history. In the aftermath of his speech at the meeting of the Nordic branch of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1917, Stang proposed to establish a Nobel academy in Norway dedicated to comparative research on human history and the study of issues related to international law. This included modern history and economic history as well as comparative law, comparative religion and comparative linguistics.15 The plan was based on two ideas that were already being discussed by Norwegian academics: the idea of a national academy dedicated to pure research and that of a Nobel institute for international law and related disciplines. The latter idea had been discussed

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in Norway ever since Alfred Nobel gave Norway the task of awarding the peace prizes (Falnes 1938: 147–56; Kyllingstad 2008: 29ff). Just like in Denmark, Stang’s proposal led to a heated debate and a protracted political process that included two government-appointed committees and an extensive round of hearings in the various academic institutions. The first to criticize Stang’s proposal was Francis Hagerup, a leading expert on international law who claimed that the proposed research field of the new institute was already taken care of by The Hague Academy of International Law. He also pointed out that the Nobel Committee (of which he was a member) did not have the necessary economic resources to fund the project.16 Stang’s proposed humanities academy also met with resistance from a competing natural scientific project, namely the proposed expansion of the newly established Geophysical Institute in Bergen, which aspired to be an internationally leading centre of physical oceanography and meteorology. The idea’s proponents argued that Norway’s geography offered excellent natural advantages for such research, that international cooperation was a necessity within this field of science and that Norwegian scientists were already at the international scientific forefront and could therefore play a key role in re-establishing international scientific cooperation.17 The Norwegian discussion resembled the Danish controversy regarding the Rask and Ørsted Institutes in the sense that struggles over research funding, institutional resources and the prestige of particular institutions, disciplines and cities were intertwined with foreign policy considerations and principled debates on research policy. Scientists outside the capital were opposed to establishing a new academic institution in the capital, natural scientists were opposed to allocating significant resources to the humanities and, just like in Denmark, opponents claimed that the plan might end up being politically counterproductive because a Norwegian institute might not manage to attract scholars from both sides of the previous frontline.18 Stang’s most influential opponent was the politician and geologist Waldemar Christopher Brøgger, who at that time was Norway’s foremost scientific institution builder. He claimed that the plan was based on naive foreign political ideas and might harm the neutrality policy. The project should therefore only be assessed based on its potential impact on Norwegian scholarship, and, according to this criterion, the money should be put into a general research fund and allocated to the best researchers instead of being earmarked for only one research field. He even argued that Norway lacked the necessary preconditions for making its mark in cultural research. Compared to the great European metropolises, Norway did not have the necessary cultural-historical museum collections, libraries and archives.19



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The controversy resulted in Norway’s leading humanities scholars rallying behind Stang’s institute proposal, which, in response to the criticisms, was re-envisioned as an institute for comparative cultural research rather than an academy for research related to international law. The institute was still construed as a peace-promoting undertaking, not because it was relevant to attempts at imposing legal order on the international community, but because it would help establish the cultural and psychological foundations for peaceful relations between nations. Countering the challenge from the geophysicists in Bergen, Stang and his supporters also argued that, in spite of lacking libraries and museums, Norway had natural advantages with respect to comparative cultural research. Norwegian scholars had a strong international position within the fields of comparative linguistics, religion and folklore and Norwegian culture was a particularly well-suited object of research. Due to a lack of huge migrations, invasions and upheavals, there was strong continuity in the cultural history of the Norwegians, which meant that the ‘inner history of the people’ was particularly ‘accessible for observation’, and due to the late industrialization of Norway, it was possible to use oral sources in the study of pre-industrial rural culture. Proponents of the institute also claimed that the Norwegian people possessed a particularly strong interest in history, which could be mobilized to the benefit of academic historical research. In addition, they highlighted the presence of the Sámi population in Norway as a comparative advantage, since the study of their cultural history could produce general insights about the nomadic stage in the cultural evolution of humankind (Kyllingstad 2008: 39–44, 47–54, 58–59). Fredrik Stang was the leading architect of the campaign for the new institute. A recurrent theme in his campaign was that the Great War heralded the end of nationalism and the beginning of an era of humanism and universalism. He claimed that this shift implied the abandonment of traditional nation-oriented historical research and a turn towards comparative history. All humans share the same human nature, he argued. Comparative cultural studies would promote a recognition of the relativity of human culture and the universality of human nature by shedding light on the universal driving forces of cultural evolution and demonstrate that cultural differences are nothing but the product of a universal human nature responding to the challenges from different natural and social environments. By facilitating such research, and at the same time functioning as an international meeting place for cultural elites, the institute would help spread these insights throughout the world and thus help reduce international tensions (Stang 1918b). However, in spite of his dismissal of narrow-minded nationalism, Stang did not dismiss research on the history of the nation. Instead, he argued that

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comparative cultural research heralded a new approach to national history by shifting attention away from the shallow political history of the state and towards the deep cultural history of the ‘people’. In line with this thinking, the institute’s goal was to compare the cultural development of various peoples and look for general patterns and causalities. According to Stang, this was a particularly ‘scientific’ style of historical research. By searching for the underlying ‘laws’ or patterns in the history of humankind, comparative cultural research was closer to a natural scientific and social scientific idea of science than traditional humanities scholarship. Thus, Stang framed comparative cultural research as being more scientific and morally superior to traditional humanities scholarship, and he claimed that this was a field where Norway had specific national advantages. Due to the assumed strong continuity in the cultural history of Norway, the country appeared to be the perfect case for the comparative study of cultural evolution (Stang 1918a).

The political breakthrough of the Institutet for Comparative Cultural Research We have seen that the critique from the natural scientists spurred a rhetorical response from humanities scholars who supported Stang’s plan. They responded by highlighting Norway’s comparative advantages in cultural research and by supplementing arguments about internationalism and peace policy with arguments about national utility. This became even more significant when the academic institutions had submitted their statements and the proposal was subjected to political negotiations in the government and parliament. The idea of turning Norwegian cultural history into an object of international comparative research was elaborated upon to form an argument whereby the activities of the new institute would help draw international scholarly attention to the history and culture of the Norwegians and thus help increase Norway’s prestige as a cultured nation with an ancient history. This was of great importance for Norway, which just recently had left the union with Sweden and for the first time had become an autonomous member of the international community. In spite of the increased reliance on national arguments, Stang continued to invoke the ideal of international mediation, and it is highly likely that the combination of a national and peace-promoting agenda was an important prerequisite for the political success of the proposal. Both support for and opposition to the proposal transcended party boundaries. The plan was backed by leading foreign politicians in all parties, most likely for two primary reasons: the institute was seen as a sensible contribution to a policy of postwar reconciliation and it fit into a strategy for disseminating an image



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of Norway as a peace-loving and highly civilized nation. Both motives were considered important for Norwegian policy on national security, neutrality and peace. The Norwegian foreign policy debate was strongly influenced by peace activism and by ideas from the international peace movement (Kyllingstad 2008: 60–80). The Nobel Peace Prize Committee along with its advisory body, the Nobel Institute, served as an important workshop for the development of foreign policy ideas (Steine 2012). The influential Labour Party ideologist and future foreign minister, Halvdan Koht, and Norway’s first foreign minister, the Social Liberal Party (Venstre) member Jørgen Løvland, were both members of the Nobel Committee and deeply involved in the international peace movement, and they were both instrumental in mobilizing political support for the planned Institute for Comparative Cultural Research.20 Jørgen Løvland was head of the Nobel Committee from 1901 to 1922, and as the minister of church and education from 1915 to 1920 he was the one who submitted the institute proposition to parliament. Løvland was a farmer’s son who belonged to a national-democratic, rural section of the Social Liberal Party (Venstre) and was strongly in favour of a countercultural national ideology that aimed to replace the Danish-derived written language with a ‘pure’ Norwegian language built on rural dialects, and to base a modern Norwegian national identity on rural cultural traditions. A key ingredient in this national ideology was the notion of a strong historical connection between the autonomous and powerful Norwegian medieval kingdom and the modern Norwegian nation, and that it was the culture and society of the peasants that represented this continuity (Hem 2005). The idea of turning the unbroken cultural growth of the rural Norwegian society into an object of international cultural research was well suited to the task of invoking support from Løvland and his political allies. Stang’s project was, however, also in line with Løvland’s foreign policy strategies. Being the first foreign minister in Norwegian history, Løvland was the foremost architect of Norwegian foreign policy strategy after 1905, which was centred on a British-friendly type of neutrality and strong support for the idea of securing peace with the help of international law. As a prominent member of both the peace movement and the national foreign political elite, Løvland wanted to show the world that national pride, democracy and a clearly articulated peace policy went hand in hand in Norway. This ideal was related to basic ideas within the international peace movement, namely the idea that democracy and peace were strongly related and that it was more fruitful to promote amicable relations between ‘peoples’ than between national governments. In line with this reasoning, the Inter-Parliamentary Union was conceived of as an alliance between

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democratically chosen parliamentarians, not between governments, and this was portrayed as a more democratic type of international dialogue than traditional diplomacy between governments.21 According to Halvard Leira, these ideas had a particularly strong impact in Norway. This was to some extent due to the fact that the joint SwedishNorwegian foreign political apparatus before 1905 had been dominated by Swedish diplomats often recruited from the royal court and the aristocracy. In this situation, the inter-parliamentary peace movement became a channel for Norwegian politicians to participate in international politics, and the combination of democracy and peace activism emerged as a national virtue in contrast to traditional, undemocratic state diplomacy. This helped create the idea of Norway as a ‘peace nation’, an idea that was strengthened when Alfred Nobel assigned the awarding of the Peace Prize to the Norwegian parliament (Leira 2004). The most influential advocate of the idea of Norway as a peace nation was probably Halvdan Koht, who was a personal friend of Løvland. Koht believed that peace and justice between nations was directly dependent upon democracy, social justice and peace within nations. He was a historical materialist who believed that historical development was driven by class struggle, which, according to him, was not a threat to, but rather a historical precondition for, national unity. Each time a new class seized a position for themselves in society, he argued, the whole nation became broader and richer. The main argument in one of his key works was that Norway during the nineteenth century saw the rise of a political movement that fought for the class interests of the peasants, but which was gradually transformed into a movement for general social progress. Koht argued that the Labour movement would and should develop in the same direction, and this was an important idea in the style of socialism that he advocated (Koht 1927, 1929/1930). In the book The Idea of Peace in Norwegian History/Fredstanken i Norgessogo (1906), he applied this historical development scheme to the issue of world peace and argued that there was a direct causal relationship between democracy and social justice within nations and justice and peace between nations, and that lasting world peace was only possible when all social groups had achieved full social and democratic rights within their own societies. Koht highlighted Norway as an example of an assumed universal evolutionary trajectory leading towards increasingly just and democratic relations between social classes. He even portrayed the Norwegians as a particularly peaceful and peace-loving people, and he argued that Norway had a particular responsibility for promoting international law and order both because this was in line with the interests of a small nation and because the idea of peace had particularly deep roots in Norway (Koht 1906).



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Comparative rural history and the nation In 1919, the Norwegian parliament and the municipality of Christiania (Oslo) decided to grant one million Norwegian kroner each to the establishment of an Institute for Comparative Cultural Research/Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning (ISKF). The money was put into funds and the return from these funds was earmarked for the institute, which was ultimately established in 1923. The new institution was informally linked to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. It held its meetings at the Nobel Committee’s premises, and for many years Fredrik Stang was the leader of both the Nobel Committee and the Institute for Comparative Cultural Research. Even if the ISKF’s finances were not adequate for implementing Stang’s grandiose vision of an internationally staffed institution, the political mission was high on the agenda from the start. A substantial share of the ISKF’s revenues was spent on a series of extensive and prestigious international conferences, which lasted for up to two months and included lectures by prominent scholars such as Marc Bloch, Marcel Mauss and Franz Boas. By including German and Austrian academics, these events helped counteract the boycott of German academia and aimed to bridge the gap between national academic elites. The conferences received substantial international attention and may even have helped strengthen Norway’s reputation as a cultured and scientifically advanced nation.22 The ISKF’s research activities were initially guided by its double political and academic agenda. As already mentioned, the ISKF’s funding was insufficient for employing a regular academic staff, but it is still reasonable to argue that it had a significant impact on the development of the humanities disciplines in Norway. Most of the leading Norwegian folklorists, archaeologists, philologists, ethnographers and historians had been involved in the campaign to establish the ISKF. Many now became board members of the new institution and launched a relatively coherent research programme, and in line with this programme substantial amounts of money were allocated to a number of interlinked projects undertaken by researchers at various existing institutions (Kyllingstad 2008: 81–118). The research programme initially consisted of three parts: the comparative study of folklore, Caucasian languages and Arctic cultures. The Arctic programme was the largest undertaking and consisted mainly of the study of the Sámi culture. However, in the late 1920s a new project was launched that soon accounted for most of the budget, namely the comparative study of the development of rural societies (Bondesamfunnets utviklingsformer). This project was initiated by the historian and socialist politician Edvard Bull, Sr, who, in addition to Koht, was the most influential historian

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of his generation. The idea was to study the rural history of Norway within an international comparative framework, with the aim of detecting general patterns in the historical development of the social organization of agricultural production and rural communities in pre-industrial Europe and to assess how this was related to the overall structure of society. A basic idea was that differences in social, legal, economic and cultural structures were related to regional variations in farming methods due to differences in environmental conditions.23 This approach was in line with Bull’s Marxist-inspired emphasis on historical materialism and with the general scientific programme of the ISKF. It was, however, also in line with a certain set of internationalist and universalist ideals that had characterized the first International Congresses of Historical Sciences, and which Pirenne had evoked in his introductory lecture at the Brussels Congress in 1923, entitled ‘The Comparative Method in History’ (Erdmann 2005: 85–86). This internationalist ideology was intertwined with a critique of traditional historiography, which tended to focus on states, politics, diplomacy and war, and with the promotion of a new style of historiography that included the history of society, the economy and culture. The programme adopted multidisciplinary approaches, introduced ideas from the social sciences and natural sciences into historical research, and – most importantly – promoted international comparative studies. The ISKF included a combination of disciplines that largely overlapped with the disciplines that were represented at the International Congresses of Historical Sciences. The programme on comparative rural history was designed to address research problems that were at the forefront of international historical debates and that in turn received a great deal of attention at the International Congress for Historical Sciences in Oslo in 1928, and it is no coincidence that it was on this occasion that Bull for the first time presented his new project in public (Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Historical Sciences 1929); he also used the opportunity to provide the project with an international network. After the conference, he visited potential collaborators around Europe. The following year he arranged an extensive conference on rural history, to which he invited two scholars who had attracted much attention at the Oslo congress – the Frenchman Marc Bloch and the Austrian Alfons Dopsch.24 Alfons Dopsch was an internationally renowned historian, who, as has already been noted, shared the vice presidency of the CISH with Henry Pirenne. According to Bull, Dopsch was an innovative historian in the way that he used studies of local social and cultural history to develop new perspectives on ‘world history’. Best known at the time was his argument that a strong continuity had existed in social and economic structures between



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Roman Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This idea was subjected to an intense exchange of opinions between Dopsch and Pirenne at the history congress in Oslo in 1928, which, according to many commentators, had been the intellectual highlight of the congress (Erdmann 2005: 126–27). In contrast to Dopsch, who belonged to the international academic elite, Marc Bloch was not yet such an internationally renowned historian at the time when he visited Oslo. However, at the Oslo Congress in 1928 he had – along with Lucien Febvre – launched the new journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, which was to become instrumental in establishing the influential Annales school of historical research. At the Oslo Congress, he also presented a very influential paper, one that has later been considered a classic historical work, and it is likely that it was this paper that caused Bull to invite him to the rural history conference in 1929. The paper’s title was ‘A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies’.25 It laid out a method for comparative social history strongly inspired by a series of lectures on comparative historical linguistics that the leading French linguist Antoine Meillet had given at the ISKF in 1924 (Hill and Boyd 1980). Bloch took some of Meillet’s insights about comparative methods used in the history of languages and applied them to the history of societies. He followed up on these ideas in a series of lectures on French rural history at the ISKF’s conference on rural history in 1929. The ISKF later published the lecture series and they contributed even further to Bloch’s growing international fame. French Rural History (Bloch 1966) was partly a synthesis of the social, technological and economic history of the French countryside and partly a programme for how such a history should be written. Bloch combined international comparison with regional comparison within the framework of the nation and used a retrospective method. By studying administrative sources from the period immediately before the French Revolution, he mapped regional differences in farming methods and socio-economic structures. He compared these geographical differences in order to understand how different geographical conditions had led to dissimilar social and economic structures in various French regions. He then studied the rise of these structures by exploring history backwards with the help of different types of written source material that became progressively thinner as he moved backwards in time (Bloch 1966: introduction). Bull saw Dopsch and Bloch as representatives of an international tradition for the writing of ‘agrarian history’. This was a multidisciplinary school of research, one that included history, comparative law, social anthropology, geography and archaeology, that had arisen in the nineteenth century and was characterized by a theory of unilinear evolutionism: the basic idea was that the development of all agrarian societies follows a common

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trajectory running through a specific set of evolutionary stages and defined by the technological, legal, economic and social organization of agricultural production. Bull’s programme for comparative rural history was strongly inspired by Dopsch and Bloch and by the school of agrarian history, and in a programmatic speech he argued that the history of Norwegian rural communities was of particularly great interest to the international comparative study of agrarian history. This claim echoed the arguments about national comparative advantages that had been put forward in the ISKF’s campaign a decade earlier. Unlike, for example, in France and the Alps, where migrations, invasions and upheavals had led to severe societal ruptures, Bull argued that an unbroken continuity in cultural and social history could be found in the Norwegian countryside and this made Norway well suited for a case study on the universal trajectories of social and economic growth. Furthermore, due to Norway’s late industrialization, pre-industrial society could be studied through the use of oral sources and comparative and retrospective methods. The social structure of pre-industrial rural communities could be mapped with the help of oral sources. Then, the history of this particular type of social structure could be written backwards – with the help of written sources and archaeological evidence – all the way back to the point in prehistory when agricultural settlements had first been established. According to Bull, the farm was the key social institution in pre-industrial Europe, and the rural history programme aimed to study the history of this social institution from the establishment of the first sedentary farms until the rise of industrialized agriculture.26

Comparative rural history and Norwegian national history The 1929 conference on rural history was followed up by another one in 1932, this time with lecturers invited from the neighbouring Nordic countries. Each of these events lasted for more than a month and, all in all, they gathered more than one hundred participants, who, besides attending the lectures, participated in seminars and colloquiums. Most of them were university-trained high school teachers, museum employees or students from the agricultural university colleges. Their participation was funded through stipends granted by the ISKF, and the goal was to educate and recruit local collaborators for the project from among amateur and ‘semi-professional’ local historians and other historically interested people from communities throughout Norway (Stang 1931: 42, 46, 47; 1935: 7, 8). This was clearly an attempt to give life to one of the ideas that had been launched as part of the ISKF campaign ten years earlier, namely to mobilize the supposedly



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strong interest in history within the Norwegian populace for the benefit of academic research. This in fact came to be a hallmark of the rural history project. During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, a huge number of local participants were involved in the project, mainly conducting interviews with older people living in rural areas in order to document the social structure of pre-industrial rural society before all of the informants had passed away (Kyllingstad 2008: 567, 602–7). At the 1929 conference, these potential future collaborators were – through Bloch’s and Dopsch’s lectures – introduced to the methods and theories that would serve as the leading principles for the undertaking: the retrospective method, comparative local history and a focus on the farm as the key object of study. It is, however, unlikely that these particular ideas were completely new to the participants at the conference. When Bloch and Dopsch gave their lectures, similar ideas were already circulating among Norwegian historians, and university-based historians had already for many years been cooperating closely with semi-professional local historians. In truth, Bull’s research programme was not only designed to address research questions that were at the forefront of international historical debates. It was also meant to address issues that had preoccupied Norwegian historians since the nineteenth century and to make use of existing national research traditions, skills and competences among Norwegian academics. This approach was designed to fit the combined national(ist) and international(ist) rhetorics that had characterized the political campaign behind the establishment of the ISKF. The rural history programme addressed issues that had long been central to Norwegian historical research and that had important implications for Norwegian national identity. Since the Norwegian state, due to four hundred years of Danish rule, did not have a continuous history, nineteenth-century historians and philologists in the search for a coherent national history turned their attention to the assumed continuity in the cultural history of the Norwegian peasant. Furthermore, a key issue among Norwegian historians was the question of why the once powerful medieval Norwegian state had lost its autonomy. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, a materialist explanation had been introduced into the debate on this question. Due to a lack of fertile soil, medieval Norway had few large estates, a weak aristocracy and a weak state apparatus that had not been able to survive the fall in agricultural production and tax revenues caused by the Black Death (Dahl 1990: 113–23, 139–40). In the 1920s, the historians Sigvald Hasund and Asgaut Steinnes followed up on this line of research. They developed new methods for using administrative sources to quantify the magnitude of the late medieval agrarian crisis and its effect upon the tax revenues of the Crown (Salvesen 1982:

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85–88). Their research efforts were part of a general turn towards historical materialism and economic and social history among Norwegian historians in the early decades of the twentieth century. Leading proponents of this line of research were Halvdan Koht and especially Edvard Bull (Bull 1924: 3–5; Bjørkvik 1995: 12–20). Along with this turn towards basic social structures, the interest in rural history was also stimulated by cultural movements at the intersection of academia and society. Museums of folk culture were built all over Norway. Folklore was collected and published, and, most important for our purposes, the early twentieth century saw the rise of an organized movement for the study of local history, which was strongly influenced by historical materialism. Local historians directed their attention towards farm names and settlement patterns, land ownership, the histories of individual farms and, in general, the natural and social conditions of agricultural production. Local history also served as a meeting point for university-affiliated historians in Oslo and amateur or semi-professional historians in local communities. While local historians were mainly interested in local history for its own sake, and as a vehicle for local identity building, the academic historians were mainly interested in using local history to illuminate national history by comparing local cases. One of the historians who engaged most strongly in the effort to organize, professionalize and utilize local history as an asset in the study of national history was Edvard Bull. The programme for the comparative study of rural communities can be seen as an extension of this engagement since it sought to connect the local and the national level of comparison to a cross-national, European level of comparison. The rural history programme was from the outset inspired by the ideas of international cooperation and comparative history that had been formulated as part of a policy of peace and reconciliation in the aftermath of the First World War. It is, however, also clear that the rural history programme gradually moved away from its original ideals. The programme continued for a number of decades (until 1972), and along the way the international comparative perspective was pushed into the background and the programme was transformed into a strictly nationally delineated project, which focused in particular on the collection of oral source material about Norwegian pre-industrial rural societies. This was often conceived of as a national-cultural rescue operation to salvage valuable knowledge about the national past before it was lost forever (Dahl 1974). The rural history project had a significant impact on the development of archaeology, ethnology and history. The most import result of the project was, however, that it contributed strongly to the establishment of a strong national school of agrarian history and, directly linked to this,



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a strong national tradition of local history as a professionalized historical sub-discipline. This national school of research focused primarily on the population decline and agrarian crisis following the Black Death. This research agenda was strongly linked to one of the most central issues in Norwegian history writing, namely the decline of the independent medieval Norwegian state. The leading figure of this school of research was Andreas Holmsen, who started his career as the leader of the rural history programme’s main project, the study of the social history of the pre-industrial farm. Holmsen’s approach to historiography was strongly influenced by the ISKF’s research programme and characterized by detailed local studies and geographical comparisons combined with the use of retrospective methods. It had a strong impact on Norwegian historiography, but it was not part of an international comparative enterprise like the one Edvard Bull had advocated.

Conclusions The war and the postwar situation led to the strengthening of internationalist values among Scandinavian scholars and to a questioning of the traditionally strong relationship between nationalism and historical scholarship. Historians, however, did not abandon their engagement with the nation. Instead, they made various attempts at reconciling internationalist idealism with national interests and nation-building efforts, and these attempts had a significant impact on the funding and organization of historical research, on public understandings of the social role of historical scholarship and on the choice of research topics, research questions and the appropriate theoretical and methodological approach. Danish and Norwegian humanities scholars’ response to the breakdown of academic internationalism was strongly influenced by three partly overlapping ideals with respect to internationalism. The first ideal was the general idea that international academic cooperation was a neutral meeting ground for members of national cultural elites and that the reopening of arenas for mutual cooperation and debate would help enhance international understanding and trust and promote peace. Another, related idea was that the establishment of international standards for historical research, along with mutual open access to important historical sources, would increase international consensus about politically relevant historical facts. Thus, by establishing an international arena for negotiating generally acceptable criteria and producing objective historical knowledge, the historical disciplines would become more ‘scientific’. This in turn would promote more rational and peaceful international relations. The third ideal

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was that of cross-national comparative history. This ideal was framed as a counterweight against the nationalist misuse of history, since the aim was not to study the singular history of a nation but rather the universal history of humankind. It was also framed as a particularly scientific type of historical inquiry that did not study unique historical events, but searched for regularities and basic driving forces in the development of human societies and cultures. In both Denmark and Norway, the attempts at counteracting the breakdown of international academic relations led to the forging of a close relationship between research policy and foreign policy and between the foreign policy of the state and the ‘foreign policy’ of the academic community. But even if politicians and academics in both countries tried to use scholarship and the promotion of academic internationalism as a tool for a peace policy and as a way to enhance their own nation’s international reputation, there was a significant difference in the effect that this had on the historical disciplines. Friis’s and Linvald’s efforts at helping to re-establish a neutral arena for rational scholarly debates about politically charged historical questions were directly linked to their efforts at resolving the Schleswig question in a way that was in line with their perceptions of Danish national interests. In Norway, the attempts at helping to restore academic internationalism led to the strengthening of the ideal of comparative history. This can, to a large extent, be explained by the fact that, even though comparative history was framed as a way to overcome nationalist interpretations of history, the ideal of turning scholarly attention away from events, diplomacy, kings and wars and towards the inner history of society fit quite well with the national identity of the Norwegians and with established Norwegian traditions for national history writing. Jon Røyne Kyllingstad, Ph.D., is a historian and, since November 2017, Associate Professor at the museum for universitets- og vitenskapshistorie at the University of Oslo. From 2011–2017 he was a Senior Curator at Norsk teknisk Museum (The Norwegian Museum of Science, Technology and Medicine). He has previously contributed to a multi-volume work on the history of the University of Oslo, and has written a dissertation on the history of The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. His research has been focused on the history of science, scholarship and academic institutions in Norway and Scandinavia, including the history of historiography and physical anthropology and population genetics, i.e. how scholarship is involved in the construction of notions of humankind, race, ethnicity and nationhood. He is author of Measuring the Master Race: Physical Anthropology in Norway, 1890–1945 (Open Book Publishers, 2014).



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Notes 1.  The committee consisted of National Archivist Dr Kristian Erslev, Ph.D. Professor Knud Faber, Ph.D. Professor J.L. Heiberg, Chief Engineer J.L.W.V. Jensen, Ph.D. Professor Otto Jespersen, Ph.D. Professor W. Johannsen, Professor Martin Knudsen, Chief Librarian H.O. Lange and Ph.D. Professor Munch-Pedersen. ISKF 24, 1917, 22.09.17, P. Munch to Stang and ‘Bilag til f.t.l om Opprettelse af “Rask-Ørsted Fonden”. Foreløpig betænkning’. ISKF refers to the Archive of the Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning (PA-424) at Riksarkivet (Norwegian National Archives, Oslo, Norway). 2.  ISKF 24, 11.02.18, ‘Genpart motivering av det paatænkte Rask-Madvig-Institut fra Kr. Erslev, Otto Jespersen og H.O. Lange’. 3.  Knudsen 2003: 59ff.; ISKF 24, folder 1918, 14.02.18, Copy of memo by J.L. Heiberg. 4.  ‘Forslag til Lov om Oprettelse af ‘Rask-Ørsted Fonden’. Presented to the parliament 14 January 1919 by Minister of Education Keiser-Nielsen. In Rigsdagstidende 1918–1919. Copenhagen: Rigsdagen. 5.  ‘Landstingets Forhandlinger 23.01.19. 1. Beh. Af F.T.L. om Opprettelse af ‘RaskØrsted Fonden’’. In Rigsdagstidende 1918–1919. Copenhagen: Rigsdagen: 1678, 2956, 2961. 6. The board included the famous ‘founding father’ of modern genetics, Wilhelm Johannsen, the social democrat and internationally renowned linguist Otto Jespersen, Professor of Law Munch-Petersen, who was the rector of the university in the mid 1920s, historian and prime minister for Venstre Niels Neergaard, the social democrat, rector and internationally engaged pedagogist Vilhelm Rasmussen and the historian, social democrat and future minister of education Nina Bang. The Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters was represented by Dr chem N.J. Bjerrum. Copenhagen University was represented by ThD Johannes Christian Jacobsen, Dr juris H. Munch-Petersen, Ph.D. F. Buhl, Ph.D. Wilhelm Johannsen and Dr med Johs Fibiger. Polyteknisk læreanstalt/The Technical College was represented by Peder Oluf Pedersen, Den kgl veterinær og Landbohøjskole/The Royal College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine by Dr med Professor C.O. Jensen, and Carlsbergfondet/The Carlsberg Foundation by Kr. Erslev. In addition to these individuals, we could mention Ivar Berendsen, a leading figure in the international activities of Det Radikale Venstre and a leading member of the Inter-Parlamentiary Union. The parliament (Rigsdagen) was represented by mathematician, rector, ‘Venstre’ politician and later interior minister Oluf Kragh. Bang and Rasmussen had been quite active political promoters for the establishment of the fund. The conservatives were represented by theology professor and church historian J. Oskar Andersen and by the engineer Alexander Foss, who was soon to be followed by the conservative professor of physics and director of the Royal College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine H.O.G. Ellinger (Rask-Ørsted fondet. Beretning,1919–20: 5–6). 7. Rask-Ørsted fondet. Beretning. 1925–1926, 1926–1927. In the mid 1920s, Bohr received approximately 10 per cent of the total allocations from the RØF. 8.  Rask-Ørsted fondet. Beretning. 1919–1920, 1920–1921, 1921–1922, 1922–1923, 1925–1925, 1926–1927. 9.  This account is based on Amundsen 1960: 191–95, 306–16; Koht 1923; Chamberlain 1920. 10. The following account is based on Koht 1962; Leland 1926; Friis 1926; and Svendsen 2013: 195ff. 11.  National archive of Denmark: Archive of ‘Den Danske Komité for Historikernes Internationale Samarbejde’, box 1, folder; ‘Den internationale Komité 1926–1930’ J.nr.79 ‘Møde i Rigsarkivet af den nationale komite…’, 12 September 1927, and VI Congrès International des Sciences Historiques: Résumés des communications Présentées au Congrés (Oslo, Le Comité organisateur du congrès 1928).

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12.  National archive of Denmark: Archive of ‘Den Danske Komité for Historikernes Internationale Samarbejde’, box 1, folder; ‘Den internationale Komité 1926–1930’ J.nr.79 ‘Møde i Rigsarkivet af den nationale komite…’, 12 September 1927.. 13.  National archive of Denmark: Archive of ‘Den Danske Komité for Historikernes Internationale Samarbejde’, box 1, folder; Den internationale Komité 1926–1930: Notat ‘Den danske Komité for historikernes internationale Samarbejde’, 1 September 1929, and Letter from the committee to ‘Bestyrelsen for Rask-Ørstedfondet’, 1 September 1929; ‘Vedtægter for “Den danske Komité for Historikernes internationale Samarbejde & J.nr.79” Møde i Rigsarkivet af den nationale komite…’, 12 September 1927. 14.  All quotations are translated into English by the author. 15.  ISKF 24, file 1917, undated letter from Stang to Munch and Hildebrand. 16. ISKF 25, 27.12.1917, Hagerup to Brøgger; ISKF 24, 29.12.1917, Hagerup to Løvland. 17. Proposition to the Norwegian parliament (Stortingsproposisjon) no. 181, 1919, appendix/bilag no. 2, supporting document/underbilag no. 2. Oslo: Stortinget. Available online at https://www.stortinget.no/no/Saker-og-publikasjoner/Stortingsforhandlinger/Lesevisn ing/?p=1919&paid=1&wid=b&psid=DIVL111&pgid=b_0031

18. Proposition to the Norwegian parliament (Stortingsproposisjon) no. 181 (1919), appendix/bilag 9, supporting document/underbilag no. 26, and appendix/bilag no. 10. Oslo: Stortinget. Article by G.H. Monrad-Krohn in Tidens Tegn, 16 February 1919. 19.  W.C. Brøgger, Institutet for kulturforskning, Aftenposten, 5 March 1919, 7 March 1919, 8 March 1919. 20.  Svendsen 2013; Halvdan Koht, ‘Aands-vitskap’, Dagbladet, 9 March 1919; Norsk milieu for kulturforskning, Aftenposten, 15 March 1919. 21.  H. Koht 1919. ‘J. Løvland. Etter ein tale på 70-årsdagen hans. 3. febr. 1918’. In Den frilyndte ungdomen. Vol. 3. Risør: forlagt av Erik Gunleikson; Hem 2005: 253. 22. Stang 1928; Fredrik Stang’s diary, unpublished manuscript, National Library of Norway 26 September 1924, 27 September 1924, 25 June 1925. 23.  ISKF 19, folder Bull, journal no. 31, 1927; Bull 1930. 24.  ISKF 19, folder Bull, journal no. 31, 1927, 16 September 1928, 20 February 1929. 25. English translation published in 1953 in F.C. Lane and J.C. Riemersma (ed.) Enterprise and secular change: Readings in Economic History. London: Allen & Unwin: 494-521. 26.  ISKF 19, folder Bull, journal no. 31, 1927; Bull 1930.

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Nordic networks at work Power struggles in the Scandinavian historical field, 1935–1942 Pelle Oliver Larsen

Introduction ‘No greetings allowed!’ said Albert Olsen, a newly appointed history professor in his mid-forties, when he and his family saw an elderly, short man with a pointed beard walking along the Copenhagen park path on a spring day in 1937 (Olsen 1998: 22). Indeed, no greetings were exchanged as Albert Olsen and his family passed by the elderly man a moment later. His name was Aage Friis, and until recently, he too had been a professor of history in Copenhagen. In fact, Albert Olsen was the one who had taken over his chair despite all of Aage Friis’s efforts to avoid that outcome, including the use of his transnational, social network. Scholarly struggles are not won or lost solely by the quality of the arguments. Social networks are a strategic resource of importance, which two book-length studies on the development of the Swedish historical field in the twentieth century have recently pointed out. Ylva Hasselberg has demonstrated how the internationally renowned economic historian Eli F. Heckscher used his network to promote economic history, whereas Håkan Gunneriusson has reinterpreted the struggle between the so-called ‘Hjärne school’ and ‘Weibull school’ as a struggle between two competing

Notes for this section begin on page 203.



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networks, thus replacing scholarly ideas with social factors (Hasselberg 2007; Gunneriusson 2002). Hasselberg and Gunneriusson draw on similar theoretical conceptions of a network and its overall purpose in a social context. Back in 1997, Hasselberg together with two colleagues argued for ‘a more frequent usage of a network perspective in historical studies’ and laid out a theoretical framework for such a usage. They defined networks as horizontal relations of a personal and reciprocal nature. Invoking Marcel Mauss, they pointed out that gifts are used to tie the giver and receiver together and thus serve to strengthen the ties within a social network. What is exchanged within a network is often of an immaterial nature, not least including information (while references or the conferring of honorary titles might be other examples worth mentioning with respect to a particular scholarly field). Further invoking Niklas Luhmann, they pointed to the importance of trust: a measure of trust must be present in order to participate in a network exchange. As long as the actors belong to the same network, and thus trust each other, they have no reason to doubt the information being exchanged between them. They concluded that ‘social networks constitute informal power structures’, structures in which formal decisions are in reality taken (Hasselberg, Müller and Stenlås 1997; see also Hasselberg, Müller and Stenlås 2002). In a particular scholarly field, the consequence may well be that the official work of an assessment committee for a professorship is little more than an empty show, whereas the appointment is in reality decided by such factors as friendships and other ties of loyalty. Gunneriusson’s analyses of Swedish appointment cases from 1940 until the 1950s certainly reflect such a harsh conclusion. Thus, we should not put too much emphasis on written assessments. The object of study should be the relations between the historians involved in the appointment process, and such relations are best accessed by studying the letters exchanged between these historians. By choosing to concretely employ this type of a network approach, both Hasselberg and Gunneriusson turn out to be methodological nationalists. However, national borders do not limit the boundaries of a network. Returning to the struggle for Aage Friis’s chair in Copenhagen, the significance of this rather banal observation is magnified by the fact that the committee, which had to decide on a candidate, had a transnational character, consisting as it did of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian historians. Theoretically speaking, the foreign historians could have been outsiders without any closer connections to their Danish peers. As it turns out, they were not. The struggle for the Copenhagen professorship was the first in a series of dramatic events in the Scandinavian historical field. When Albert Olsen

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vacated his professorship in Aarhus, a reshuffling of other positions at this smaller Danish university was needed as well. Additionally, a professorship at the Swedish Uppsala University became vacant in 1940. Each job opening in turn became the subject of public scandal, and likewise each of these professorial appointment cases is fairly well known to Scandinavian historians of historiography.1 What prior historical studies on these academic scandals have disregarded is the interconnections between the Danish and Swedish cases. Paying special attention to the first scandal, the struggle for the Copenhagen professorship, the present article offers an analysis of these cases. The aim is threefold. First, it will demonstrate that networks, and especially transnational networks, between Scandinavian historians were indeed an important resource in the scholarly power struggles. Thus, the network approach will shed new light on the conflicts. Second, the transnational ambition is not just to use cross-border networks to illuminate the Danish and Swedish national traditions, but to offer an integrated account of more general Scandinavian developments. Finally, the aim is to discuss whether the social network obligations always superseded other scholarly considerations, i.e. whether we should use network theory heuristically or ontologically.

The struggle for dominance in the historical field Before returning to the case studies, the background needs to be explained. The professionalization of historical scholarship in Scandinavia took place at the end of the nineteenth century. In Denmark and Sweden, the first seminars in historical studies were started at the universities of Copenhagen and Uppsala by Kristian Erslev (1852–1930, professor 1883–1916) and Harald Hjärne (1848–1922, professor 1889–1913), with both professors being forceful advocates of source criticism. Erslev even wrote some very influential textbooks on source criticism. However, Erslev and Hjärne were very different kinds of historians. Hjärne was a conservative historian preoccupied with the Swedish Empire (1611–1721), and he found his ideals in the German tradition of Historismus. Erslev, on the other hand, was a social liberal medievalist of a positivist bent, preoccupied with tearing down national myths. Erslev and Hjärne had many followers. The following generation of Copenhagen professors (1913–1948) were all disciples of Erslev, whereas in Uppsala all professors belonged to the so-called Hjärne school until 1942. However, in the southern Swedish province of Scania, a part of Denmark until the seventeenth century, things looked quite different. The Weibull



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family – Martin and his two sons, Lauritz (1873–1960) and Curt (1886– 1991) – opposed the cultural dominance of the Uppsala-Stockholm region and looked instead westward, to Denmark. Lauritz’s and Curt’s scholarly ideals were also closer to Erslev’s than they were to Hjärne’s, and they focused on the Middle Ages, and therefore also on Danish history, as southern Sweden was a part of Denmark at that time. The Weibull brothers belonged to a generation of Scandinavian historians who demanded a more radical source criticism and, at the same time, opposed historical hermeneutics. In Norway, Halvdan Koht and Edvard Bull questioned the saga tradition. In Denmark, Erslev’s successor, Erik Arup (1876–1951), wanted to modernize historical criticism. With both of them opposing nationalism, Arup and Lauritz Weibull became very close friends. They agreed on who to like and who not to like in the historical community. One of their peers whom they definitely did not like was Aage Friis (1870–1949). A social liberal like Arup, Friis was a hermeneutist with a less radical anti-nationalist attitude than Arup. To Arup, though, Friis’s biggest offence was arguably that he had been appointed professor instead of Arup back in 1913; Arup got his chair a few years later. Arup and Friis battled one another for many years, whereas their conservative colleague Knud Fabricius (1875–1967) for a long time acted as mediator. Tensions were initially less strong in Sweden. After a hard-fought struggle, Lauritz Weibull received a professorship in Lund in 1919, and Curt Weibull followed suit in Gothenburg in 1927. Endowed with academic power, Arup and the Weibull brothers started polarizing the historical field, and a continual battle was fought over source criticism. The Arup-Weibull circle did not make up a homogenous group of historians, and it even included a conservative and nationalist historian such as Sture Bolin. They agreed on opposing hermeneutically-orientated Historismus. They also shared some minimum demands for historical scholarship: radical source criticism and the rules for historical reconstruction. These minimum demands were not vastly different from the practice of the Hjärne school (Torstendahl 1981). As Ragnar Björk has pointed out, the rhetoric of historical criticism was a strong card to play in the struggle for dominance in the historical field. By employing this rhetoric, Arup’s and Weibull’s camp took the battle into territory where they could not lose. As both camps adhered to source criticism as a criterion of historical scholarship, it was almost impossible to win the argument by advocating less of it. Thus, by being more radical in this respect, Arup and the Weibull brothers held an advantage (Björk 1993: 65). In their rhetoric, Arup and the Weibull brothers made three interrelated distinctions in order to polarize the historical field. First, because

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of the scarcity of sources, they presented medieval history as being more difficult and thus more worthy of admiration than modern history (Arup 1919: 129–30; Handlingar rörande tillsättandet av lediga professorsämbetet i historia vid universitetet i Lund 1922–1925 1925: 92; Arup 1928: 120–22; Weibull 1925: 14–15). The traditional historians of modern times believed that the abundance of sources could tell the (hi)story by themselves, or so it was claimed – and sometimes the historians of modern times would even support such a claim themselves. Second, and in the same vein, problemoriented historical inquiry was preferred to descriptive historical inquiry (Handlingar rörande tillsättandet av lediga professorsämbetet i historia vid universitetet i Lund 1922–1925 1925: 93; Weibull 1925: 20). Finally, Lauritz Weibull and especially Arup juxtaposed the French and the German methodological traditions, criticizing the fact that the Danish and Swedish historical establishment adhered to German-inspired neo-Rankeanism. Instead, they preferred the French, allegedly more advanced tradition, as represented by the positivism of Langlois and Seignobos; the French tradition aimed to extract facts from the sources.2 As Arup’s own methodological principles are reflected in some of his earliest works, which date back to 1898, it is quite doubtful that Langlois and Seignobos had any real influence on him (Ladewig Petersen 1978: 140 fn 6). The birth of Scandia in 1928 marked the zenith of this polarizing strategy. Scandia was an inter-Scandinavian journal of Scandinavian history, edited by Lauritz Weibull with some assistance from his younger brother and Arup. It was launched as a journal with higher critical standards than the traditional national historical journals. By introducing a new journal, the Weibull brothers and especially Arup hoped to unify the camp of truly critical historians in Scandinavia (Odén 1975: 186–89). Arup’s contribution to the first issue essentially made the claim that Aage Friis was an uncritical historian. Lauritz Weibull, on the other hand, attacked Swedish historiography as well as the Danish conservative historian Vilhelm la Cour, whose theories he ridiculed in a review article (Torstendahl 1981: 122–24). The polarization was, of course, a double-edged sword. Whereas a feeling of belonging to a certain group of superior historians no doubt increased in the Arup-Weibull camp, the rhetoric also contributed to uniting their opponents. These opponents tried to maintain that no real scholarly difference existed between the Arup-Weibull camp and other historians. However, they did acknowledge another kind of difference. La Cour, who had been ridiculed by Lauritz Weibull, and who also had engaged in strong polemics against Arup after the birth of Scandia (Svenstrup 2006: 416–25, 571–78), put it this way in a 1936 lecture: ‘there is an interconnection between a historian’s scholarly and personal qualities’, meaning, in so many words, that Arup was a bad historian because of his bad character. Other



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historians, such as Friis, concurred (la Cour 1936: 424).3 La Cour stated his views when he was competing for a professorship in Copenhagen. As we shall see below, he came very close to winning the chair.

The Copenhagen competition In 1936, an infamous struggle took place for a chair in history in Copenhagen. Erik Arup wanted his favourite disciple, Albert Olsen (1890–1949), at that time a professor in Aarhus, to take over the chair from the retiring professor Aage Friis. Arup had supported Olsen for many years; major scholarships from the university as well as Olsen’s position in Aarhus were attributable to the work of Arup. Olsen had returned the favours by means of a series of public attacks on Friis. Arup’s choice was, of course, unacceptable to Friis, who disapproved of Olsen as a historian and not least as a person: the enmity between Olsen and Friis matched that of the enmity between Arup and Friis. As the professors could not agree on a candidate, the university held a so-called competition. In the summer of 1936, the six candidates had six weeks to complete a written assignment on the significance of the relations between the Danish and Norwegian nations in the eighteenth century. After a few months, the candidates gave three lectures each, two of them on a set topic. First prize for the best performance was the professorship. Normally, a committee would make a public assessment of the candidates. Thus, the members of the committee would be held responsible for their written assessments, and it would hurt their own scholarly prestige to be unfair. In principle, a competition made it much easier to allow social considerations to decide the vote, as the judges did not have to state the reasons for their voting. Judging the competition were seven scholars: the three professors of history – Erik Arup, the retiring Aage Friis and Knud Fabricius – as well as the dean of the faculty at the University of Copenhagen. The remaining three scholars were from the other Scandinavian countries, thus for the first time demonstrating an acceptance of foreign influence on the appointment of a professor of history in Denmark. The underlying idea was that foreigners, as outsiders, were impartial. However, this premise rested on the erroneous assumption that the feud between Arup and Friis was only a national conflict. Friis had in fact built up a very strong network of Scandinavian historians. One of these historians was the former University of Oslo professor Halvdan Koht. Koht and Friis had been friends from around 1900 when Friis, preparing a multivolume, illustrated world history, had invited Koht – among many other Scandinavian historians – to participate in the project. They had worked

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together on several occasions since that time, for instance in the International Committee of Historical Sciences and at the Nordic Historians’ Meetings. They had done each other favours on several occasions, and not only on scholarly matters. Accordingly, Koht had used Friis’s newspaper connections to promote the Norwegian cause at the brink of the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden, and Friis would several times ask Koht for help with the German refugees from Nazi Germany (Svendsen 2013: 88, 224). Friis had already tried to recruit Koht for an assessment committee in 1935, before realizing that a competition could not be avoided. The Norwegian historian had declined, probably feeling that it would have been difficult to reconcile with his new job as foreign minister of Norway. He was not an option as one of the judges. Friis, on the other hand, wrote to Koht that he did not want any of the Weibull brothers as members of the jury, no doubt because of their well-known relationship with Arup.4 In the end, Friis could not avoid including one of the Weibull brothers, namely Curt Weibull. Another Swedish professor, Nils Ahnlund of Stockholm, and University of Oslo professor Jacob Worm-Müller were also part of the committee. Fabricius would later claim that ‘the alliance between the Weibullian clan and Arup and his circle is so firm that nothing can break it down’.5 As a member of an assessment committee, Arup had supported Curt Weibull for a chair in 1925, and now the younger Weibull brother did indeed vote for Albert Olsen, that is to say, Arup’s candidate for the chair. On the other hand, Fabricius had a very strong friendship with Nils Ahnlund.6 They had known each other for some twenty years, yet they only became intimate friends at the Nordic Historians’ Meeting in Helsinki in 1931 – after some liquid gatherings. They were politically united as conservative, patriotic historians, both of them fearing – to quote Fabricius in a letter to Ahnlund – ‘a wave of materialistic historiography, promoted by a triumphant Social Democratic Party’.7 Albert Olsen was most emphatically one of those social democratic and economic historians. Lacking intimate knowledge of Danish historians, Ahnlund would ask Fabricius for reviews of the candidates for the chair. In this way, Ahnlund preferred the informal exchange of information in the network to the formal negotiations at the committee meetings. Fabricius answered that ‘a particular political view had left its stamp on Olsen’, resulting in propagandist historiography. Fabricius added that Olsen’s work was influenced by his class affiliation, as he had been a journeyman smith before taking up history as a profession.8 Friis was not as closely connected to Ahnlund as was Fabricius, but they were on good terms. When the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Arts invited Ahnlund to be one of the committee judges, Friis made it clear to



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him that the honour thus bestowed on him was attributable to the work of Friis and Fabricius at the faculty level.9 Ahnlund returned the favour and voted against Albert Olsen, instead supporting the previously mentioned conservative historian Vilhelm la Cour. Shortly afterwards, Ahnlund was admitted to membership in a renowned Danish historical society, of which Friis was the head. La Cour and another of the unsuccessful candidates were admitted to membership as well. Albert Olsen was not (Kornerup 1945: 116, 120). There is no proof that social networks decided the votes of Curt Weibull and Nils Ahnlund, but we can conclude that these two foreign historians at least acted just as they were supposed to according to our network-theoretical point of departure.

Deceiving the network: the case of Worm-Müller This was, however, not the case for Norwegian historian Jacob S. WormMüller, the third and final foreign member of the committee. His Danish network was strongly against Albert Olsen. Nevertheless, Worm-Müller ended up voting for Olsen, though it was no source of pleasure to him in this way to sadden his ‘old friend Friis’, as he later explained.10 WormMüller had befriended not only Friis but also several members of the Friisian network during several previous visits to Copenhagen. As was the case with Ahnlund, Friis made it clear to Worm-Müller that his nomination for the committee was the result of Friis and Fabricius’s promotional work within the faculty.11 Why, then, did Worm-Müller fail his own network? The obvious answer seems to be that Worm-Müller’s vote was decided by scholarly considerations. However, the losing side never considered this possibility. Instead, it was thought that Curt Weibull and Erik Arup swayed Worm-Müller by social means. Rumour had it that Arup invited WormMüller for either lunch or dinner and made use of this opportunity to persuade Worm-Müller to vote for Olsen.12 In one of his letters to Ahnlund shortly after the end of the competition, Fabricius similarly referred to some sort of alliance formed between Weibull and Worm-Müller just prior to the competition, turning the whole affair into a ‘pseudo-competition’ because the result had been prearranged.13 La Cour circulated similar rumours even before the end of the competition.14 While it is true that Weibull impressed Worm-Müller and that Arup captivated him in a manner of speaking,15 it is far from certain that this proved to be decisive. It is also true that Worm-Müller was under a great deal of social pressure, but that was in order to make him vote against Albert Olsen. During the competition, Aage Friis and others had several

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informal meetings with Worm-Müller. The latter wrote a letter to a friend complaining about Aage Friis and his continued attacks on Albert Olsen, all for the purpose of trying to manipulate him.16 Worm-Müller would repeat this complaint many years later, adding that he could not possibly have eaten dinner or lunch with Arup because he had fallen ill and therefore had remained at his hotel.17 Worm-Müller made these complaints to the Keeper of the Danish Public Records, Axel Linvald, who was also a member of Friis’s network and disliked Olsen. Worm-Müller sought Linvald’s advice during the competition,18 but the latter was smarter than Friis and made sure to discuss the competition and the candidates in a more sober way. Unknown to Worm-Müller, however, Linvald too used his network to influence the outcome. He discussed with Holger Andersen how they could best help Vilhelm la Cour win. Holger Andersen was a Danish conservative politician who was not only a friend of la Cour, but also a friend of Worm-Müller. Worm-Müller was also a politician, though a liberal one, and he probably knew Holger Andersen from the Nordic InterParliamentarian Union. Informed by Fabricius shortly before the end of the competition that he could be sure of Fabricius, Friis and Ahnlund’s votes, la Cour wanted Andersen to influence Worm-Müller. Holger Andersen and Linvald discussed what to do, and Andersen then invited Worm-Müller for dinner.19 There can be little doubt that Andersen’s aim was to promote la Cour’s cause. La Cour needed a fourth vote but he did not get it. Worm-Müller withstood the pressure and voted for Albert Olsen. Though the vote of the six expert members of the committee was therefore split, the dean chose to respect the majority of the foreign historians and cast his vote in favour of Olsen, who was consequently the winner of the competition. Of course, la Cour was disappointed. Commenting on a speech that Worm-Müller had delivered at a historical lecture society just prior to the outcome, la Cour complained that ‘it should be impossible to praise Sars for his liberalism and nationalism – only to saddle the University of Copenhagen with a regimented Marxist and internationalist a few days later’.20 This was rather bluntly put: Worm-Müller’s offence was an ideological one. In the same vein, Linvald – who was a social liberal and not a conservative historian – lamented the prospects of a new generation of historians, brought up with insipid Marxism: a man with Worm-Müller’s background should have known better.21 As a result of his voting, Worm-Müller lost all of his Danish friends: Aage Friis, Axel Linvald and Holger Andersen.22 He was not to be trusted precisely because he refused to succumb to informal pressure. A few days before the final vote of the committee, Linvald had delivered a speech to



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Worm-Müller and Ahnlund in which he emphasized the importance of foreign experts who could impartially examine the Danish feud and the question of a new professor.23 As it turned out, Linvald only considered an examination impartial if it concurred with his own views. Fabricius, who did not belong to Worm-Müller’s circle of acquaintances, communicated clearly in a letter to Ahnlund how the losing side interpreted WormMüller’s role: in short, he had ‘disgraced Norwegian scholarship’.24 The paradox is that Worm-Müller’s Danish friends on the one hand tried to pressure him into supporting Vilhelm la Cour, claiming this to be the only satisfactory result from a scholarly point of view. On the other hand, however, these same friends could only interpret Worm-Müller’s different scholarly opinion as the result of an imagined social pressure put on him by another network.

Heckscher enters the game Curt Weibull, Jacob Worm-Müller and Nils Ahnlund were not, however, the only foreigners involved in the competition. From the sidelines, Swedish economic historian Eli Heckscher played an important role. He was prevented from playing an official role because he was not nominated for the committee; Arup thought him to be ‘too closely allied’ with Friis.25 Friis and Heckscher were indeed very good friends; yet here Arup seems to have made a mistake. Both of them former students of Harald Hjärne, Heckscher and Ahnlund enjoyed good relations.26 Not an expert on economic history himself, Ahnlund asked Heckscher for help evaluating Albert Olsen’s assignment for the competition, which focused on the economic relations between Denmark and Norway. Heckscher replied in a letter that Olsen’s work was a ‘tour de force’, especially considering the fact that Olsen had prepared the assignment in a strictly limited amount of time. He also attended the first of three lectures held by the contestants and found Olsen’s to be the best. However, Heckscher did also criticize Olsen’s lack of understanding of economic-historical problems. This criticism was marked in red by Ahnlund: this was precisely the type of information that Ahnlund needed for the discussions in the committee. But exasperating Curt Weibull and Worm-Müller, this use of Heckscher as an outside authority probably did not help Ahnlund’s cause. Ahnlund did not pay much attention to what Heckscher next stated in his letter: despite his shortcomings, which were quite common in international, economic-historical research (for instance, such complaints also pertained to Worm-Müller), Olsen was qualified for a professorship in Heckscher’s opinion.27

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Indeed, Heckscher apparently thought that Olsen was not only qualified but was also the best candidate. Or at least that was what Heckscher told Worm-Müller afterwards – contrary to the impression given by Ahnlund during the committee meetings.28 Rather than consciously misleading the committee, Ahnlund was probably expecting Heckscher to be harsh in his judgement of Olsen’s historical writings, and he read Heckscher’s letter according to that preunderstanding. Ahnlund certainly seemed genuinely surprised upon hearing of Heckscher’s support for Olsen. And yet once again a social explanation was given as the reason why a historian had failed his own social network: without naming names, Heckscher’s attitude was explained by referring to his ‘Danish connections’.29 Which ‘Danish connections’ was Ahnlund referring to? Certainly not Aage Friis. Heckscher, however, had several other Danish friends. One of them was Johan Plesner, since 1934 a reader at the University of Aarhus and, in Heckscher’s opinion, the best-qualified candidate for the professorship in Copenhagen. Alas, Plesner did not apply for the chair. One of few historians on good terms with both Aage Friis and Erik Arup, Plesner held a special status in the Danish historical community. When Heckscher had been in Copenhagen as a visiting lecturer back in 1923, he had been impressed with Plesner, at that time a student.30 Visiting Aarhus as a guest lecturer just prior to the competition in Copenhagen, Heckscher had bonded with Plesner (and to a certain degree with Albert Olsen).31 Heckscher explained to Ahnlund that he wanted Olsen to win the chair in Copenhagen in order to increase Plesner’s chances of winning the next vacant chair. Heckscher reasoned that it would be impossible to exclude Olsen from a professorship in Copenhagen forever, and excluding him now would simply block Plesner’s road to a professorship at the most important Danish university.32 This is probably why Ahnlund a few weeks later referred to Heckscher’s ‘Danish connections’ in his letter to Fabricius. However, one should not forget what Ahnlund seemed to overlook: there was no discrepancy between Heckscher’s strategic considerations and his scholarly belief that Olsen was in fact the best-qualified candidate.

The Aarhus professorships Without encountering trouble of any kind, Plesner was appointed professor in 1937 at the University of Aarhus as successor to Albert Olsen. Plesner’s readership was now vacant, and he consulted with Heckscher about whom to choose as his successor. They both wanted to take a step previously unheard of in the Nordic countries: with history being considered first and



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foremost a national discipline (Larsen 2015), the plan was, nonetheless, to give the position to a young Norwegian historian, Johan Schreiner. To attain this end, the plan additionally included nominating Heckscher for the assessment committee.33 For unknown reasons, this plan failed. Schreiner did not apply for the position, nor was Heckscher nominated for the assessment committee. Instead, another of Heckscher’s friends applied for the readership: Aksel E. Christensen, a Danish historian who, like Plesner, got on reasonably well with both Erik Arup and Aage Friis. The latter, however, wanted a favourite disciple of his, C.O. Bøggild-Andersen, to take over the position. Initially, Bøggild-Andersen had also been Friis’s candidate for the professorship in Copenhagen, but he had ruined his own chances through a relatively bad performance (Svenstrup 2006: 597–99, 605).34 Knowing of Heckscher’s friendship with Christensen, and hearing rumours that Heckscher would be nominated for the assessment committee, Aage Friis tried to talk him out of accepting the nomination. In Friis’s words, it would be ‘outrageous’ to choose Christensen instead of Bøggild-Andersen.35 Friis contacted Plesner as well, reminding him of the debt of gratitude he owed Friis because Friis had helped him in different ways several years back. Now was the time to repay this debt. Claiming to be able to assess all eleven candidates ‘objectively’, Friis wrote that Bøggild-Andersen was ‘undoubtedly far superior to all of the other candidates’.36 Friis’s reference to the ‘obligation to repay’ (Mauss 1980: 60) makes it clear that the logic of the gift was at play. However, it should not be necessary in a well-functioning network to remind somebody that a service has to be reciprocated. Friis’s behaviour testifies to the fact that he had lost trust in Plesner. He suspected – not without reason – that Plesner had approached the Arup circle after having moved to Aarhus a few years earlier and become one of Albert Olsen’s colleagues.37 Plesner did not share Friis’s enthusiasm for Bøggild-Andersen,38 but before getting a chance to write a formal assessment of the candidates, he died tragically in September 1938, quite young of age. The ensuing events were dramatic. After much wavering, Vilhelm la Cour applied for the late Plesner’s professorship, only to withdraw his application when Arup was nominated for the assessment committee. As la Cour wrote in public, he could not accept once again being judged by Arup, who, according to la Cour, had made a fraudulent misrepresentation of his scholarly work prior to the competition in Copenhagen. La Cour’s defamatory remarks resulted in a lawsuit and, to the amusement of the press and to the embarrassment of the profession, the conflicts later had to be resolved at the Elsinore City Court. La Cour wrote about these incidents in his memoirs, also reprinting an important part of his correspondence from

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the time, which he quoted without any mistakes. He quoted a letter to an Aarhus professor who wanted la Cour to obtain the professorship: it was a precondition, la Cour wrote, that Arup not be involved, either directly or indirectly. No historian should serve on an assessment committee ‘only to represent him [that is, Arup] …’. The omission marks are la Cour’s own, and what he omits is a detailed critique of Swedish historian Sture Bolin, who was also about to be nominated for the assessment committee. La Cour held Bolin in the highest esteem as a historian, and though he realized that Arup had no relations with him, he thought that the latter was under the influence of Lauritz Weibull and would do ‘absolutely nothing that could thwart Weibull or his Copenhagen connections’. La Cour found that he was fighting against a network of Nordic historians, yet the storyline of his memoirs more or less makes Arup the sole and isolated villain (la Cour 1956: 234).39 Eventually, an assessment committee that included Bolin but not Arup recommended Bøggild-Andersen for the professorship and Adam Afzelius for the readership. The two of them assumed the positions in early 1939. It is, however, worth noting that Bolin made up a minority in both cases, supporting as he did the economic historians, i.e. Astrid Friis and Aksel E. Christensen, both of whom were disciples of Arup, and in Astrid Friis’s case, also a close ally.

The struggle for a professorship at Uppsala University In the struggle for a professorship at Uppsala University that took place between 1940 and 1942, it turned out that la Cour was not the only one to impugn Sture Bolin’s scholarly integrity. Bolin was proposed as a member of the assessment committee, but Uppsala was afraid to surrender too much influence to a member of the Weibullian network. Instead, Nils Ahnlund was talked into accepting the nomination for the committee in order to avoid appointing Bolin, and thereby also avoiding the need to seriously consider Erik Lönnroth for professor, as Torvald Höjer, the favourite candidate for the job, put it in a letter to Ahnlund.40 Lönnroth was a brilliant young historian with close relations to the Weibull brothers, and he had on several occasions attacked nationalist historiography, not least that of Ahnlund, whom he had unfairly accused of harbouring Nazi sympathies (Larsson 2013: 156–57). In Uppsala he was an outsider. As Denmark and Norway were occupied by Germany, it is no surprise that Uppsala University remained true to traditions by nominating an allSwedish assessment committee: Ahnlund was once again accompanied by Curt Weibull, whereas the third and final member of the committee was



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the Uppsala professor Erland Hjärne, son of Harald Hjärne and an old friend of Ahnlund’s. According to network logic, Torvald Höjer should have been nominated for the professorship. Sharing his scholarly and political views as well as belonging to the same circles (Gunneriusson 2002: 86, 94; Norman 2009: 540), Ahnlund did indeed support Höjer. For his part, Curt Weibull, as expected, supported Lönnroth, who happened to be his disciple from Gothenburg. Weibull once again resorted to making a distinction between descriptive historians, who never questioned their source material (Höjer), and historians like Lönnroth, who was ‘capable of setting and solving a scientific problem in a clear and energetic way’ (Weibull 1943: 184, 186, 188).41 However, to the surprise of everyone, including himself, Hjärne soon realized that Lönnroth was truly a genius; he wound up putting Lönnroth ahead of all of the other candidates, including Hugo Valentin, a good friend of his, and Höjer, one of his disciples. Håkan Gunneriusson, who has written extensively on this case from a network perspective, reasons that Hjärne failed his network because of some older intrigue (Gunneriusson 2002: 88–89). As demonstrated by Simon Larsson’s analysis of Hjärne’s official assessment of the candidates, it is, however, far more likely that Lönnroth simply impressed Hjärne (Larsson 2010: 303). It appears from the letters exchanged between Ahnlund and Aage Friis that they saw the course of events in Uppsala as a replay of the incidents in Copenhagen a few years back. The appointment cases were ‘affairs of the same kind’ (Friis), and there were ‘many parallels’ (Ahnlund).42 Due to the wartime censorship of letters, however, they could not elaborate further on the parallels. Their reasoning might very well have been along the following lines. Albert Olsen and Erik Lönnroth had been patronized by Erik Arup and the Weibull brothers, respectively. Though Olsen was ruder than Lönnroth, both of them had been insolent to their opponents, not least including Friis and Ahnlund. None of them were very good historians. Now they were being rewarded in spite of their behaviour and scholarly shortcomings. At the same time, Hjärne played more or less the same role as WormMüller had done in Copenhagen a few years earlier. He failed his own social network, and Ahnlund felt outmanoeuvred and betrayed. According to Ahnlund, Hjärne had influenced him to nominate Valentin as the secondbest candidate, yet Hjärne had not returned the favour, resulting in the loss of a close bond between Hjärne and Ahnlund. Gunneriusson even intimates that Curt Weibull influenced Hjärne at a dinner party, just as Arup allegedly had done in Copenhagen (Gunneriusson 2002: 87–88, 105, 116–17). Eli Heckscher, on the other hand, repeated his own role from Copenhagen and supported the winner. When Ahnlund’s network tried

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to put pressure on the minister of ecclesiastical affairs and public instruction, Heckscher urged the minister – a friend of his – not to overrule the majority opinion of the assessment committee (Hasselberg 2007: 56–71, 122–30). Ahnlund and his friends tried to talk some sense into Heckscher, but in vain.43 Contrary to their older correspondence regarding Albert Olsen, Heckscher this time communicated so clearly that Ahnlund could not misinterpret the message.44 Perhaps not knowing about Heckscher’s involvement in Copenhagen at the invitation of Ahnlund, Höjer was indignant at his involvement in Uppsala.45 However, Höjer’s indignation had not prevented him from talking Ahnlund into contacting another historian, the rector of Stockholm University, in order to make him intervene by using his contacts with the government.46 Ahnlund, Höjer and other historians from the network wanted the minister to nominate a fourth expert to assess the candidates in order to avoid the appointment of Lönnroth. Turning one of Arup’s and the Weibull brothers’ old arguments upside down, Höjer’s allies claimed that he, being a historian of modern times, had been put at a disadvantage: the committee’s only expert in modern history had voted for Höjer, whereas the two medievalists had supported Lönnroth. In part, this was a strategic argument put forward in order to avoid the nomination of the ‘Weibullian’ medievalist Bolin. On the other hand, the Danish historian of modern times Knud Fabricius was suggested several times, just as he had already been suggested when the committee was initially set up.47 Nobody suggested Albert Olsen, of course, though he was also a historian of modern times. Erik Lönnroth then wrote a booklet, among other things, in order to avoid the nomination of Fabricius. He interpreted the Uppsala struggle as part of a general scholarly power struggle within the Scandinavian historical field. He claimed that two historiographical movements existed in Scandinavia, namely an older one hanging on to outdated traditions, and a younger one demanding stricter source criticism and a more active way of presenting historical problems. As noted earlier, Arup and the Weibull brothers had been putting similar arguments forward for many years. Furthermore, Lönnroth drew on one of his former preconceptions, namely that the universities of Gothenburg and Lund belonged to a circle of western Scandinavian universities whose beliefs and practices were alien to those of the conservative north-eastern universities of Uppsala and Stockholm. Thus, he claimed that the younger movement had won the majority of the chairs at the universities in Denmark and Norway, but as Lönnroth put it, the movement still enjoyed less support in Sweden, of course hinting at Uppsala and Stockholm. Though the modernists had prevailed in Denmark, Fabricius belonged to the traditionalist camp because he had sided with Ahnlund during the competition in Copenhagen in 1936. Should he be



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nominated for the assessment committee in Uppsala, Fabricius, therefore, would not be impartial.48 Lönnroth was right in so far as Scandinavian historians belonged to different camps, but it is less certain that this was solely a question of source criticism. Ahnlund and Aage Friis once again denied the existence of two schools of thought, the latter by claiming that Lönnroth’s argument was the result of ‘the continual, unseemly agitation of the Arup-Weibullian clique’.49 Fabricius, however, would have agreed that Scandinavia was split into two intellectual camps; yet to him this was an ideological split rather than a scholarly one. A few months after the competition in Copenhagen had ended, Fabricius wrote to Ahnlund that the camp to which they both belonged – that is, the conservative, patriotic camp – was ‘obliged to remain vigilant in order to protect values that were of importance to far wider circles than just the historical community’.50 Both Albert Olsen and Erik Lönnroth belonged to the other camp: ‘The Social Democrats were victorious’, as Höjer put it, ignoring the fact that Lönnroth was a Liberal.51

Conclusions Previous research has dealt with the three professorial appointment cases from nationalistic perspectives only. It is, however, possible to see the three cases as part of the same story. Arup and the Weibull brothers had polarized the historical field in Denmark and Sweden, which strengthened their feeling of belonging to a certain camp of historians. The struggles in Copenhagen and Uppsala turned into trials of strength between two groups of historians, and these groups or networks had a transnational character. The case analyses show that the Nordic networks were indeed at work. Thus, transnational social networks played a key role in the struggle for scholarly positions and power in the Scandinavian historical field. Even though the wording was of course different, this was a fact acknowledged by the historians of that time, especially by the opponents of Arup and the Weibull brothers – though they only thought that it was the other side that abused its social connections. They were wrong. It is, however, important to make three concluding points. First, the networking was quite often unsuccessful. Erland Hjärne’s and especially Jacob Worm-Müller’s examples show that it was possible to withstand strong social pressure. As Kant once taught us, we are blind without concepts and theories. On the other hand, an overly narrow-minded use of theories might very well turn us into one-eyed historians. Kant also taught us that thoughts without content are empty; empirical research is called for in order to challenge our own theories. The network concept

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works as a heuristic tool, one that allows us to understand and see what has hitherto been hidden. However, it is more than just a metaphor insofar as networks existed and were a force to be reckoned with. Yet it is only in the kingdom of the blind empiricists that the one-eyed network theoretician is king. Social capital was an important resource in the Scandinavian historical field around 1940, but the case studies demonstrate that it was not the only resource. We might conclude more generally that academic ideals cannot be reduced to social power. But then again, it is also an empirical question whether or not this modest theoretical claim will always hold true. Second, it is worth remembering that the networks were made up of historians who in some important respects were alike. For example, Knud Fabricius, Vilhelm la Cour, Nils Ahnlund and Torvald Höjer (not to mention Erland Hjärne) were all conservative, patriotic historians, and they certainly interpreted the conflicts in national and ideological terms. In many cases, it will no doubt prove nearly impossible to prove that people act as they do because they are members of the same network, and not the other way around (one possible reason being that it is simply not true). This article has not demonstrated that the reason why Curt Weibull favoured Albert Olsen and Erik Lönnroth, whereas Nils Ahnlund favoured Vilhelm la Cour and Torvald Höjer, was that they belonged to the same networks. Third, whereas the case studies demonstrate that transnational social networks played an important role, there is no theoretical basis to claim that they will always do so in scholarly disputes. Indeed, it would be difficult to continue the storyline into the postwar years. The Scandinavian dimension of the power struggles lost importance. The relations between Norwegian historians were already quite good in the interwar years, and that did not change. The tensions between Danish historians remained strong for some years, but they were now of a much less principled nature. Only Swedish historians fought on well into the 1950s, by which point the Weibullian network had prevailed. Danish and Norwegian historians, however, were still occasionally drawn into this Swedish power struggle. The opposing Swedish networks knew very well the side with which the individual Danish and Norwegian historians were affiliated.52 Thus, the inclusion or exclusion of different Scandinavian historians for the assessment committees remained an issue. Pelle Oliver Larsen has a Ph.D. in history and is currently working as a research assistant at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has written several works on historiography and university history in Denmark and Scandinavia, including the well-received book Professoratet: Kampen om Det Filosofiske Fakultet 1870–1920 [The Professorship: Fighting over the Philosophical Faculty of Copenhagen, 1870–1920] (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2016).



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Notes 1.  A detailed work on the competition in Copenhagen is Svenstrup 2006: 578–610. The literature on Aarhus is sparser and relies almost solely on the memoirs of one of the candidates, Vilhelm la Cour (1956: 217–49). See also Christiansen and Møller Jørgensen 2004: 25–30. Two very different perspectives on the Uppsala professorship have been offered by Håkan Gunneriusson and Simon Larsson; their studies focus, respectively, on social networks and scholarly ideals (Gunneriusson 2002: 83–118; Larsson 2010: 278–307). 2.  On Lauritz Weibull, see the newspaper reports on his inaugural lecture in Lunds dagblad, 5 November 1919, and Dagens nyheter, 7 November 1919. On Arup, see Arup 1930: 47–48; 1933; 1955: 259. Manniche (1975) has analysed Arup’s distinction between German and French traditions of methodology from another perspective. 3.  See also la Cour to Friis, 5 May 1929; la Cour to Blatt and Blinkenberg, 13 September 1937 (copy in la Cour’s collection); Friis to la Cour, 18 September 1937. Cf. Linvald’s diary, 19 July 1951; Linvald to Koht, 25 September 1951. The letters quoted in this article are located in the addressees’ collections of letters, with the exception of Plesner’s correspondence. Plesner’s collection at the State Library in Aarhus does not include any correspondence, and thus I quote all the letters to him from the drafts or copies in the correspondents’ collections. The collections are listed in the bibliography of this chapter. All translations of the sources quoted in the present article are the author’s own. 4.  Aage Friis to Koht, 21 November 1935, 11 February 1936; Koht to Aage Friis, 8 December 1935. 5.  Fabricius to Ahnlund, 29 November 1936. 6.  Cf. Fabricius to Aage Friis, 2 August 1939. 7.  Fabricius to Ahnlund, 26 July 1931; Ahnlund to Fabricius, 6 August 1931. 8.  Ahnlund to Fabricius, 17 April 1936; Fabricius to Ahnlund, 17 May 1936. 9.  Aage Friis to Ahnlund, 25 February 1936. 10.  Worm-Müller to Ahnlund, 22 November 1936. 11.  Aage Friis to Worm-Müller, 25 February 1936. 12.  Aage Friis to Bøggild-Andersen, 24 September 1946; la Cour 1956: 213–14. 13.  Fabricius to Ahnlund, 29 November 1936. Cf. Fabricius to Hjelholt, 15 November 1936. 14.  La Cour to Steen, 12 September 1936. 15.  Linvald’s diary, 21 June 1936; Worm-Müller to Linvald, 30 October 1936. 16.  Worm-Müller to Linvald, 30 October 1936. 17.  Worm-Müller to Linvald, 15 October 1956; Worm-Müller to la Cour, 15 October 1956. 18.  Worm-Müller to Linvald, 15 October 1956. 19.  La Cour to Holger Andersen, 24 October 1936; with respect to this letter, Andersen noted ‘Received Monday, 26 October 1936. Telephoned Linvald the same day’. Holger Andersen to Worm-Müller, 27 October 1936. 20.  La Cour to Steen, 20 November 1936. Ernst Sars (1835–1917) was a very influential Norwegian historian. 21.  Linvald to Ahnlund, 5 January 1937. 22.  Both Aage Friis and Axel Linvald stopped corresponding with Worm-Müller after the competition. Linvald and Worm-Müller, however, resumed their friendship a few years later; cf. Linvald’s diary, 1 July 1939 and la Cour to Steen, 20 November 1936. 23.  Linvald’s speech, 5 November 1936, s.v. letters from Worm-Müller. 24.  Fabricius to Ahnlund, 29 November 1936. 25.  Arup to L. Weibull, 19 February 1936. L. Weibull agreed in his reply to Arup, 20 February 1936.

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26.  Ylva Hasselberg offers a more detailed account of the relationship between Heckscher and Ahnlund (Hasselberg 2007: 115–16). 27.  Heckscher to Ahnlund, 1 November 1936. For more on the exasperation felt at the time, see Lönnroth to A.E. Christensen, 1 October 1947. However, Heckscher did not attend Olsen’s second lecture, 2 November, on Swedish copper policy in the early seventeenth century. When it later appeared in Scandia (1937), it was strongly criticized by Heckscher, and the ensuing copper debate strained their relationship. Ylva Hasselberg misinterprets the correspondence between Ahnlund and Heckscher because she believes Olsen’s written assignment for the competition was identical to the topic that Heckscher had addressed in the Scandia article (Hasselberg 2007: 116–22). 28.  Worm-Müller to Linvald, 13 November 1936; Worm-Müller to Arup, 13 November 1936. 29.  Ahnlund to Fabricius, 6 December 1936. 30.  Heckscher to Aage Friis, 15 May 1923; Heckscher to Plesner, 16 May 1923. 31.  See, e.g., in Heckscher’s collection his notes in ‘Almanack för alla’, 2 March 1936, and compare them to his notes just after the end of the competition: 10, 13 and 17 November 1936. 32.  Heckscher to Ahnlund, 1 November 1936. 33.  Plesner to Heckscher, 13 December 1936; Heckscher to Plesner, 14 December 1936. 34.  Cf. Fabricius to la Cour, 20 September 1956; Aage Friis to Bøggild-Andersen, 24 September 1946. 35.  Aage Friis to Heckscher, 12 July 1938. 36.  Aage Friis to Plesner, 8 June 1938. 37.  Aage Friis to Bøggild-Andersen, 23 December 1947. 38.  Plesner to Aage Friis, 15 June 1938, 24 July 1938. 39.  See also la Cour to Andreas Blinkenberg, 19 September 1938 (in la Cour’s collection, s.v. letters to Blinkenberg); cf. la Cour’s remarks about Bolin in a letter to the Danish Ministry of Education, undated copy [3 November 1938] (in la Cour’s collection, C.3). 40.  Höjer to Ahnlund, 22 December 1940; Gunneriusson 2002: 85–86. 41.  Höjer agreed in a letter to the Uppsala Senate, 21 January 1942, claiming that the historian of modern times does not need hypotheses (Höjer’s collection includes a copy of the letter). 42.  Aage Friis to Ahnlund, 4 November 1942; Ahnlund to Aage Friis, 12 November 1942. 43.  Ahnlund to Boëthius, 29 June 1942. 44.  Heckscher to Ahnlund, 9 September 1942; Ahnlund to Höjer, 29 June 1942. 45.  Höjer to Ahnlund, 23 June 1942. 46.  Höjer to Ahnlund, 8 February 1942, 11 June 1942; Tunberg to Ahnlund, 16 June 1942. 47.  Erland Hjärne to Ahnlund, 7 January 1941; Gottfred Carlsson to Ahnlund, 1 February 1942; Valentin to Heckscher, 28 November 1942. Höjer refers to Bolin as ‘Weibullian’ in a letter to Ahnlund, 7 August 1942. 48.  Lönnroth to the Swedish king, 7 April 1942 (copy in Ahnlund’s collection, vol. 169). Lönnroth 1936: 4. 49.  Ahnlund in (Swedish) Historisk tidskrift 62, 1942, pp. 294–97; Aage Friis to Ahnlund, 12 October 1942. 50.  Fabricius to Ahnlund, 31 December 1936. 51.  Lönnroth to the Swedish king, 7 April 1942 (copy in Ahnlund’s collection, vol. 169). 52.  An example is offered by Larsen 2015: 194–95.



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Bibliography Publications Arup, E. 1919. ‘Kritiske studier i nyere dansk historie’, Historisk Tidsskrift 9th series, vol. I: 129–213. Arup, E. 1928. ‘David og Hall: Krisen i Danmarks historie 1863. Kritisk Studie’, Scandia. Tidskrift för historisk forskning 1: 119–79. Arup, E. 1930. ‘Danmarks krise 1863’, Scandia. Tidskrift för historisk forskning 3: 1–51. Arup, E. 1933. ‘Niels jydes regering’, Dagens Nyheder, 5 May. Arup, E. 1955. Danmarks historie III:  Stænderne i Kongevælde 1624–(1720). Copenhagen: Schultz. Björk, R. 1993. ‘Swedish Historical Research: Towards School Formation and Ambiguous Evolution at the Turn of the Century’, in R. Björk (ed.), Contemplating Evolution and Doing Politics: Historical Scholars and Students in Sweden and in Hungary Facing Historical Change 1840–1920. A Symposium in Sigtuna, June 1989. Stockholm: Kungliga vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, pp. 55–81. Christiansen, E., and C. Møller Jørgensen. 2004. Historiefaget på Aarhus Universitet i 75 År. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Dagens nyheter, 7 November 1919. Gunneriusson, H. 2002. Det historiska fältet: Svensk historievetenskap från 1920-tal till 1957. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Handlingar rörande tillsättandet av lediga professorsämbetet i historia vid universitetet i Lund 1922– 1925. 1925. Lund: University of Lund. Hasselberg, Y. 2007. Industrisamhällets förkunnare: Eli Heckscher, Arthur Montgomery, Bertil Böethius och svensk ekonomisk historia 1920–1950. Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag. Hasselberg, Y., L. Müller and N. Stenlås. 1997. History from a Network Perspective: Three Examples from Swedish Early Modern and Modern History c. 1700–1950. CTS Working Paper, no. 1. Borlänge: Centrum för transport- och samhällsforskning. [Centre for Transport Studies]. Hasselberg, Y., L. Müller and N. Stenlås. 2002. ‘Åter til historiens nätverk’, in H. Gunneriusson (ed.), Sociala nätverk och fält. Uppsala: The Department of History, pp. 7–31. Historisk tidskrift 62, 1942. Kornerup, B. 1945. Det kongelige danske Selskab for Fædrelandets Historie. 1745 – 8. Januar – 1945. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. La Cour, V. 1936. ‘Historieforskning og Historieforskere’, Dansk Udsyn XVI: 423–38. La Cour, V. 1956. Lukkede Døre: Træk fra min Manddoms Aar. Copenhagen: Haase. Ladewig Petersen, E. 1978. ‘Omkring Erik Arup: Struktur og grænser i moderne dansk historieforskning (ca. 1885–1955)’, Historisk Tidsskrift 78(1): 138–82. Larsen, P.O. 2015. ‘A Historiographical Region with National Boundaries: The Nordic Historians’ Community in the 20th Century’, in J.E. Myhre (ed.), Boundaries of History. Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press, pp. 183–216. Larsson, S. 2010. Intelligensaristokrater och arkivmartyrer: Normerna för vetenskaplig skicklighet i svensk historieforskning 1900–1945. Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag. Larsson, S. 2013. ‘Från ung rabulist till humanioras starke man: Ideal och legitimitetsstrategier hos den unge Erik Lönnroth’, Historisk tidskrift 133(2): 145–73. Lönnroth, E. 1936. ‘Göteborg som akademisk Stad’, Göteborgske spionen 1: 3–5. Lunds dagblad, 5 November 1919. Manniche, J.C. 1975. ‘Tysk-kritisk og fransk-kritisk skole: Et bidrag til studiet af historieteoretiske synspunkter i Danmark’, Historisk Tidsskrift 13th series, vol. II: 29–59.

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Mauss, M. 1980. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Repr. ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Norman, T. 2009. ‘Torvald T:Son Höjer (1906–1962). “Den siste sagokungens” levnadstecknare’, in R. Björk and A.W. Johansson (eds), Svenska historiker: Från medeltid till våra dagar. Stockholm: Norstedt, pp. 534–44. Odén, B. 1975. ‘Scandia – tidskrift för en annan uppfattning’, in Historia och samhälle: Studier tillägnade Jerker Rosén. Lund: Studentlitteratur, pp. 179–208. Olsen, E. 1998. Fra ælling til ugle: Erindringer. Copenhagen: Fremad. Svendsen, Å. 2013. Halvdan Koht: Veien mot framtiden. En biografi. Oslo: Cappelen Damm. Svenstrup, T. 2006. Arup: En biografi om den radikale historiker Erik Arup, hans tid og miljø. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Torstendahl, R. 1981. ‘Minimum Demands and Optimum Norms in Swedish Historical Research 1920–1960’, Scandinavian Journal of History 6: 117–41. Weibull, C. 1925. Historisk sakkunskap: Ett inlägg. Lund: Gleerupska universitetsbokhandel. Weibull, C. 1943. ‘Nutida svenska historiker’, Scandia. Tidskrift för historisk forskning 15(1): 158–94.

Letter collections Ahnlund, Nils. National Library of Sweden, L 69. Andersen, Holger. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 5031. Arup, Erik. The Royal Library, Copenhagen, NKS 2874, I.2, 2°. Boëthius, Bertil. Swedish National Archives, 720091/02: Bertil and Gerda Boëthius’ papers, box 27–42: Correspondence. Bøggild-Andersen, C.O. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 7812 and 9991. Christensen, Aksel E. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 8046, box 3–5: Correspondence in alphabetical order. Fabricius, Knud. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 7083. Friis, Aage. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 5424, I.1: Correspondence in alphabetical order. Heckscher, Eli F. National Library of Sweden, L 67. Hjelholt, Holger. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 6811, box 9, records concerning the competition for a professorship in history, 1936. Höjer, Torvald T:son. Swedish National Archives, 720872. Koht, Halvdan. National Library of Norway, Brevs. 386. La Cour, Vilhelm. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 6813. Linvald, Axel. Danish National Archives, private archive no. 8059: Correspondence in geographical order; diaries. Steen, Sverre. Norwegian National Archives, PA 423. Weibull, Lauritz. University Library of Lund. Worm-Müller, Jacob S. National Library of Norway, Brevs. 428.

CHAPTER

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The rhythm and implicit canon of Nordic history by Eli F. Heckscher and Eino Jutikkala Petteri Norring

Introduction Nordic historiography contains many examples of comprehensive national histories written by historians within academia (Aronsson et al. 2008). In this chapter, the focus is on the work of two Nordic historians of the twentieth century, Eli F. Heckscher of Sweden and Eino Jutikkala of Finland. The specific goal is to analyse these two historians and their use of periodization in relation to long-term histories and grand narratives. How did they define periodization and the use of it? What methodological and ideological1 aspects influenced their use of periodization? How did the grand narratives of national histories interact with their periodization? Heckscher (1879–1952) and Jutikkala (1907–2006) were not chosen at random for analysis. In retrospect, their strong, albeit short-lived, intellectual relationship resulted in an important connection through which historiographic concepts and ideas moved between Stockholm and Helsinki. Both are also known in their respective national historiographies for their powerful and prolific production, which took advantage of up-to-date methodology and shifted the historiographic focus from political to social and economic themes (Gerschenkron 1954; Hasselberg 2007; Henriksson 2006; Kulha 2006; Lundahl 2011; Magnusson 2009). Moreover, they were Notes for this section begin on page 227.

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both historians at a time when the societies in which they lived were modernizing quite rapidly. Finally, Sweden and Finland, which share a history extending from the Middle Ages until the dynamics of European power politics divided their paths in 1809, offer an interesting case for studying issues of periodization (Veit-Brause 2000).2 Periodization is a surprisingly understudied topic in historiography, and one that is usually connected to technical classifications of past events and the historian’s textual toolbox, or else to the differences between phenomenological time and ordinary or objective time.3 Usually, what comes to mind when one thinks of basic examples of periodization in historical writing are the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers or Marxist theories of historical stages and the Whig interpretation of Western progress.4 However, periodization is also an essential temporal component when writing a comprehensive history that encompasses longer time periods (Grönholm 2011; Klinge 2012: 12–13). Periodization provides a particular text with an outline and structure, while at the same time providing history with a certain pattern or flow. Most importantly, periods are far from natural or neutral; they are the results of historians’ intellectual efforts to establish a synthesis for the history of the nation-state and its turning points (Topolski 2000; Veit-Brause 2000: 3–7). Eriatar Zerubavel, for instance, has remarked that periodization results in ‘intraperiodic lumping and interperiodic splitting’ (Zerubavel 2003: 87). This kind of scholarly subjectivity when connected to particular historical epochs makes periodization a worthwhile historiographic theme. As Kathleen Davis writes, periodization means ‘not simply the drawing of an arbitrary line through time, but a complex process of conceptualizing categories, which are posited as homogeneous and retroactively validated by the designation of a period divide’ (Davis 2008: 3). In this chapter, I argue that an analysis of periodization can be used to study the historical character of methodological nationalism and the grand narratives connected to it. Scholars typically view methodological nationalism as a perspective that simplifies historical processes in order to highlight national community and its role throughout history. Methodological nationalism makes the nation-state an overly obvious and self-evident totality for historical research and often prevents a scholar from seeing the elusive, equivocal and ambivalent features of a nation-state and society. These are precisely the features that should be included in history writing, according to Daniel Chernilo, when observing the process of modernization. Methodological nationalism, as Chernilo has put it, ‘can be simply defined as the equation between the nation-state and society in social theory’ (Chernilo 2007: 9). Furthermore, Chernilo’s definition comprises an important historical dimension. For him, methodological nationalism is about grand narratives



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and the immutable character of the national unit. This means that if we want to locate methodological nationalism in historical texts, we have to look for grand narratives that are considered essential to the society in question. In this chapter, I assume that periodization is one of the channels that historians use to construct and highlight grand narratives and generate historical meaning in their community (Grönholm 2011; Megill 1995). Thus, periodization and methodological nationalism are strongly connected. With periodization, the strong conceptual link between the historical canon of Europe and the histories of smaller states becomes more visible. The critics of methodological nationalism have pointed out a tendency for historians from smaller and younger states to place their national histories within the same framework as those used for the larger states with much longer histories (Chernilo 2007: 10–14). Further, within the canon of European history a number of scholars have called attention to the extent to which the ‘implicit comparison of national self-representation’ shapes national histories in connection with the European meta-level narrative (Björk 2012: 70–71; Liakos 2013; Stuurman 2000). We will later observe that through periodization, Jutikkala and Heckscher were in fact linking Finnish and Swedish history at a conceptual level to European narratives of modernization in which the potential of individuals and social groups is tightly connected to the values of the industrial nation-state (Wagner 2001: 81; Dietze 2008: 76–78; Stråth 2012). Both Jutikkala and Heckscher connected the national history of their respective nation-states to the international context by emphasizing socio-economic factors rather than political ones. This certainly affected their ideas about national history.

Periodization as a methodological device: turning away from political history in favour of socio-economic history When looking at the periodization according to which Heckscher and Jutikkala operated, at first it appears that their periodization is mostly an educative and ‘artificial’ device by which to employ contemporary knowledge to construct and label past epochs. At the same time, however, their use of periodization allowed them to position themselves within certain research traditions and create new approaches that undermined other rival traditions. In addition to institutional questions, a study of periodization reveals historians’ relationships to various historical explanations. Periods and substantive historical categories – progress, development, before, after, discontinuities – are all temporal structures and tightly connected to causality. With a focus on different kinds of temporalities, it becomes evident that Jutikkala and Heckscher employed more than one kind of

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periodization and that the ensuing complexity led to ambivalences in their use of periodization.5 For them, historical research operated through multiple temporalities. In the 1930s, Jutikkala established his career as a professional historian by publishing his doctoral dissertation, writing local histories and editing the seminal work Suomen kulttuurihistoria [Culture History of Finland].6 Jutikkala’s conception of history and periodization can best be understood by keeping in mind the fact that Jutikkala was part of the school of culture history, formed around Gunnar Suolahti and Väinö Voionmaa. This intellectual group stepped back from the dominant political history approach and highlighted culture itself, from which politics was excluded, as a collective historical force. Suolahti and Voionmaa’s approach resulted in a new type of periodization based on culture and social matters that contested the traditional periodization based on political history. In addition, the other dimension in Jutikkala’s periodization was the importance of the present. Thus, for Jutikkala, the most significant epochal change in history was that between pre-modern and modern times. The epochal approach of cultural history and the modernist notion of the discontinuity between the old and the new are at the heart of Jutikkala’s periodization. Heckscher improved and restructured from a methodological standpoint the study of economic history in Sweden.7 This naturally influenced his periodization. Much as with Jutikkala’s periodization, Heckscher’s periodization can also be described as a system in which two different, yet intertwined aspects were important and constitutive. First, his economic approach resulted in him dividing the progress of history into smaller phases that followed the rhythm of economic modernization. The other epochal structure important to him was shaped by his firm belief that the essential turning point and division line in history was to be found between ancient and modern times. Moreover, Heckscher, being meticulously scholarly in his practices, understood the value of periodization and thus wrote explicitly about it in his studies. These texts reveal that the starting point for his periodization was based on political history, which readers at the time would have been quite familiar with (Heckscher 1935: 21; 1953: 207). Political history and the nation-state affected the historiographical approach taken by Jutikkala and Heckscher and served as a stepping stone for a socio-economic approach to history. In nineteenth-century Finland, the state and the people were the norms shaping the study of history, but at the turn of the century new approaches were introduced. In the first part of the twentieth century, the cultural history approach of Suolahti and Voionmaa aimed to achieve an exclusive synthesis of history, one that excluded the political dimension. Jutikkala was at home with this school of thought, and at the same time his ways of conceptualizing history reflected



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Heckscher’s ideas about economic history. In Stockholm, Heckscher tried to study economic history as Hans Forssell had done by criticizing the state-oriented research approach employed by Harald Hjärne and E.G. Geijer. However, Heckscher and his sometime role model Forssell were to an extent ignored in Swedish historiography because the mainstream historical scholarship, based on the Hjärnean and Weibullian traditions, focused more on political elements in history (Torstendahl 1988). In contrast to Heckscher, Jutikkala was not explicitly an economic historian. For example, Jutikkala set the standards for modern research on local Finnish history in his work on the Sääksmäki parish published in 1934 (Jutikkala 1934). In the introduction, Jutikkala contrasted the dominant periodization based on political history with his new type of periodization, which was to him much more suitable for studying local and cultural history (Jutikkala 1934: 10). Here Jutikkala’s periodization, which was based on cultural history, followed a three-phased approach. The first period, the early history of Sääksmäki, ends at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The second period continues up until the nineteenth century and is characterized by rudimentary agriculture. The last period begins in the nineteenth century and continues into the 1930s. This final period highlights industrial society and agrarian lifestyles. It is important to notice that Jutikkala clearly ordered his periodization based on a presentist point of view, and his epochs – when compared to more politically oriented epochs – do not reveal much about the period itself, but merely serve as chronologic guides pointing to the present. According to Jutikkala, this new periodization was not a result of synthesis, but was rather based on the methodological and didactic needs of taking the reader into account as well (Jutikkala 1934: 10).8 In Suomen talonpojan historia [The History of the Finnish Peasant], Jutikkala’s most popular work, past events and periods are named after significant events that had an important role in the history of the peasantry (Jutikkala 1942a). In this periodization, Finnish history and its building blocks are vividly present, and, simply by taking account of the periodization, the reader will understand the transformation of the peasantry into legally competent modern citizens and integral parts of the nation-state and society. With this periodization, Jutikkala went halfway back to political history and a traditional type of periodization in which the history of the peasantry and its gradual development over time are shaped by events of the past. Still, the labels he chose to use for the various periods were different and they suggested that traditional labels had obscured serious turning points of social history of Finland. For instance, Jutikkala highlighted the Union and Security Act, not the Gustavian Age, and he used the Great Reduction instead of the era of the Swedish Empire to highlight

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the socio-economic developments of those centuries. He did this because the History of the Finnish Peasant was about social history, not simply political history. Here, the research topic and methodology shaped the periodization. Heckscher’s magnum opus, Sveriges Ekonomiska Historia [The Economic History of Sweden], focuses on the long-term economic developments in Sweden from the early sixteenth century onwards. Yet Heckscher chose to begin with medieval economy, believing as he did that Gustav Vasa’s regime was the brightest example of medieval economy and society. The Swedish sixteenth century was for Heckscher a ‘controlled system that covered all the essential features of society that have existed in unorganized and unplanned forms since many centuries earlier’ (Heckscher 1935: 22).9 Heckscher saw the seventeenth century as primarily an era of economic expansion and of increased foreign influences in Sweden. He argued that the eighteenth century served as the foundation for modern Sweden. The major economic changes underpinning this foundation consisted of the dynamic mentality of the bourgeoisie, intensifying commercial capitalism, and agricultural reforms that gave strength to small agrarian owners and agrarian food production. The nineteenth century began, for Heckscher, in 1815 at a time when the conditions for the Swedish iron industry changed significantly. In general, this was quite a typical periodization for Swedish history, which complied well with political history. In his other general work about Swedish economic history, Svenskt arbete och liv [Swedish Labour and Life], Heckscher begins with a chapter about periodization. Here, his periodization follows the one he had used in Sveriges Ekonomiska Historia. However, in this particular text Heckscher chose to begin with Magnus Eriksson’s National Codes. He characterized this period as crucial for the making of the medieval order and a society without a proper distribution of work. In addition to Provincial Codes, town privileges and artisans were typical of the Middle Ages. The next period he chose to focus on was the sixteenth century and the lasting contribution of Gustav Vasa to Swedish history. In his periodization, Heckscher named this era after the organized medieval economy. He named the era between 1600 and 1720 after the foreign influences important economically for Sweden at that time. The eighteenth century after the Great Northern War contained, precisely as he had already stated in Sveriges Ekonomiska Historia, the foundations for modern Sweden. These economic foundations then gave rise to a new era called ‘the eve of great transformation’, 1815–1870. Heckscher chose to call the last era (1870– 1914) the mature nineteenth-century society (Heckscher 1941: 19–24).10 According to Heckscher, while this periodization more or less followed the tradition of political history, he still had redirected the era of the Swedish



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realm away from political conflict and towards affirmative economic interaction. Jutikkala criticized Heckscher’s periodization in Svenskt arbete och liv because, according to Jutikkala, it not only ignored the importance of the era of Sweden as a great power and expansive empire, but also precisely because it shifted focus away from political issues in favour of economic issues. Moreover, Heckscher, by highlighting the economic modernization of the eighteenth century, had attached too much importance to economic history in general and paid too much attention to the economic reforms of the eighteenth century in comparison with later changes in the nineteenth century. Here, Jutikkala seemed to think that Heckscher had played his historical cards too early when he gave the modernization process decisive momentum already in the eighteenth century (Jutikkala 1942b).

Modernity influences periodization The large stretch of time from the ancien régime to modern society presented an epochal challenge for Jutikkala and Heckscher, and they resolved the problem of periodization by using case-by-case tactics. After the Second World War, Jutikkala concentrated on drawing a picture of the development of Finnish society and infrastructure. In Suomen talous- ja sosiaalihistorian kehityslinjoja [Trends in Socio-economic History in Finland], we can see that gradual development and a decisive turning point between the old and new both influenced his periodization (Jutikkala 1968). For him, the 1789 Union and Security Act was a major turning point in Finnish history, signalling the gradual decline of the estate system and the rise of the modern class-based system. While the periods he uses in the study imply a clear shift between the old and new, the periods themselves are not yet present in the text; they are just labels and headings for the historical account. Part of the problem for Jutikkala was that since the old and modern were in constant interaction with each other, highlighting a turning point was actually paradoxical: ‘When the peasantry gained their own privileges in 1789, the estate-based society became, so to speak, complete. On the other hand, this procedure … reduced the differences between the different estates, which started to erode the estate system’ (Jutikkala 1968: 174).11 This idea best illustrated for Jutikkala why a simple linear periodization may simplify history too much by making teleological progress seem like a natural framework for history. For Jutikkala, the discontinuity between the old and modern times could also be found in state history. Taking the lead from Heckscher, he thought that nation-states had replaced medieval universal states already in the late Middle Ages.12 This implies methodological nationalism quite

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directly because the advanced birth of nation-states made Finland as a political unit an easy conceptual framework for early modern history. The same division between the old and new gave structure to Jutikkala’s demographic studies as well. In Kuolemalla on aina syynsä [Death Comes Always with an Explanation], the dichotomy can also be found in adapted form and serves again as a simplification (Jutikkala 1987).13 Jutikkala emphasized that it was impossible to reduce demographic history to a two-step process because the change was chronologically unsynchronized in different areas of society (technical, economic and intellectual realms). Jerzy Topolski has pointed out that this is precisely one of the main challenges a historian has to overcome when thinking about periodization. Historical change is never a simple process (Jutikkala 1987; Topolski 2000: 12). Jutikkala also wrote about Nordic societies and their historical roots. He believed that although minor differences exist between Nordic states, there might be some kind of common Nordic society. When addressing this theme, Jutikkala’s periodization was more ideological and conceptual than in his other fields of research (Jutikkala 1965).14 For him, it was precisely the absence of revolution and sudden ruptures that gave history its steady pace and rhythm. Nordic society had developed gradually, allowing local and cultural traditions and a common ideology to flourish (Jutikkala 1965: 214). The idea of the perfect and harmonious balance between tradition and invention formed one of the core ideas in Jutikkala’s conception of history, and it continues to serve as an interesting counterweight to modern notions of a decisive discontinuity between old and new. Jutikkala once referred to it as ‘dynamics of continuity’.15 This view is in contrast with his thought about the discontinuity between the ancien régime and modern times. Agrarian culture and society were so important to Jutikkala that they became general concepts that he employed in his studies of Finnish history. For him, Finnish history has been characterized by agrarian concepts, but he still left the door open for foreign influences that were both favourable (industrialization, democratization) and negative (feudalism or revolution). Jutikkala’s ‘dynamics of continuity’ are absent in Heckscher’s texts, because for Heckscher agrarian society was a static society. This is an interesting distinction with respect to time and temporality because dismissing agrarian society and the natural economy as fundamentally static carries with it the clear implication that temporality belongs only to the dynamic characteristics of modern society. While this may be true, Heckscher nonetheless attempted to neutralize this sense of discontinuity via remarks that commerce (a vital part of modern society) is always a part of human societies, including agrarian ones (Heckscher 1935: 182). Nevertheless, Jutikkala’s dynamics of continuity and Heckscher’s ambivalence about



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different levels of stasis and development highlight the multiple temporalities that these historians were working with. Heckscher’s Svenskt arbete och liv was translated into English, and in the introduction Heckscher emphasized that Swedish economic history should have just one epochal break. For Heckscher, the eras preceding the year 1870 all belonged to the old regime, and the different eras within this old regime were just sub-branches of the old system. Here, Heckscher had the idea of a major discontinuity in mind, and to his thinking a more detailed periodization would have been artificial and only arbitrarily carried out by historians trying to categorize and label history (Heckscher 1954: 14). Paradoxically, by giving these warnings Heckscher was trying to prevent certain aspects that belonged to a certain era of the past from being merely in the past. In the background was Heckscher’s belief that the past and the present were always connected. For him, the present moment and contemporary society were tied to past events, which was one of the main reasons that he preferred economic history over contemporary economics. The discontinuity between old and new was important for Heckscher because, with this rupture, he was able to delineate the beginning of modernization in Europe and Sweden. He identified the old times with a static natural economy, while he connected the advent of modernity to industrial and capitalistic actions. This kind of periodization supported his methodology, based as it was on fusing modern economics and history. Through his methodology, he attempted to demonstrate that modern economic thinking was present in the past, but hidden and in need of being unveiled (Heckscher 1935: 101, 181–82).16 With this approach, he was able to extend modernity back in time to the eighteenth-century reforms and legitimize liberal values as an integral part of the national grand narrative. Transnational ideological flows and the dynamics of international trade and domestic demand were exogenous factors that structured the foundation of economic development (Söderberg 2006). This led him to balance his efforts between emphasizing the national unit and international development. He tried to preserve the national unit, and at the same time he understood that such preservation calls for letting the transnational market economy expand into national territory and eventually weaken national boundaries. This conflict between the national and supranational formed one of Heckscher’s underlying themes, which he dealt with in his major works.17 Heckscher continued to emphasize this level of materialist focus in his later studies, although he clearly stated his loathing for a materialistic conception of history. For him, the conflicts and power relations between individuals and political parties did not comprise the inner core of economic history.18

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Although Heckscher cultivated the division between old and modern, his thoughts about it were ambivalent. His two-level periodization brushed aside the minor yet important changes that occurred during the ancien régime. On the one hand, Heckscher thought that both for didactic reasons and for the sake of history, it was necessary to draw attention to novel phenomena from earlier times as well. On the other hand, he felt it was the duty of a historian to recognize the turning points that mattered and make those turning points matter. For him, these were the changes that directed history onto the path of a liberalist economy and social order. Keeping these liberal changes in mind, Heckscher was able to identify different periods using labels that related to economic progress. For this reason, the present liberal society formed the basis for his periodization, and at the same time it was closely bound up with modernity in history. Modernity and the liberal society overlapped, for instance, when Heckscher drafted the theme for the Conference of Nordic Historians held in Uppsala in 1935. His ideas and concepts demonstrated similarities with the ones Jutikkala had about Nordic history.19 For Heckscher, therefore, historians use their power to communicate something essential to the reader, not for ideological or political reasons but for an educational cause: But it must be clear from the beginning that such a division into stages is a concession to human weakness: usually it is too difficult to conceive of a historical process as the indivisible entity it really is. Yet for this very reason, it is possible to resort to different divisions for different purposes. The problem is a heuristic one, not a theoretical one. (Heckscher 1954: 13)

By referring to the heuristic nature of periodization, Heckscher seems to be implying that periodization is a tool for historians to disseminate important facts to readers and help them to understand historical foundations. Although Heckscher criticized many theories regarding historical stages, highlighting discontinuity and the rupture between old and modern times allowed him to squeeze history into a form of progress built around economic development, which was only a substitute for the stage theories he criticized (Heckscher 1908; Magnusson 2009: 413). He disseminated ideas about dynamic change to his readers, with the motto sub specia future (Heckscher 1954: 3–8). As he put it, ‘When history equates development, change and dynamics – whatever one chooses to use – then the natural presentations’ rhythm is dictated by the things that have changed and not by those things that have been essentially static for centuries’ (Heckscher 1935: 21). Additionally, empirical data affected his periodization. As we have seen, Heckscher thought that if history was only about agriculture, then periodization would be quite simple. But Heckscher dedicated his



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focus to business life, which led to a more nuanced periodization. Another example of the relationship between empirical data and periodization is the conceptual overlap between the medieval household economy and the sixteenth-century state. Heckscher admitted that one reason for this was that not enough data existed on the Middle Ages, and thus he used Gustav Vasa’s regime as an example of that period.

European and intellectual history as inspiration for periodization Jutikkala did not write exclusively about Finnish history; his work also encompassed Nordic and European history. In his works on international topics, Jutikkala leaned on intellectual history and its role in historical change. In his study Uudenajan taloushistoria [The Economic History of Modern Times], he divided the outline, inspired strongly by Heckscher, into two periods, the first ‘Mercantilism’ and the second ‘Liberalism and Industrialism’ (Jutikkala 1953/1965).20 The Mercantilist era was a step away from the Middle Ages, but the repulsive medieval forces were still present: ‘The medieval tradition, which corrupted mercantilistic society, was mostly visible in the urban areas’ (Jutikkala 1953/1965: 204). Although he used the term ‘industrial revolution’ as a periodical label, the revolutionary elements are absent from Jutikkala’s understanding of the process itself. For him, favourable historical developments, such as industrialization, could only be achieved if a favourable ideology was also present. Otherwise, according to Jutikkala, development may well end up on the wrong track, as we can see in his essay on industrialism (Jutikkala 1969: 125).21 The issue of contrasting the static older historical times and the more dynamic modern times occurs once again. How could historical change and the industrial take-off be described without using the language of revolution, the rhetoric of sudden rupture? Here, the key for Jutikkala was that the path leading towards modern society was not necessarily of a violent and revolutionary nature. This is why Jutikkala highlighted intellectual development and the positive ideology connected to industrial development; and so, gradually, via accelerated evolution mercantilist paternalism gave way to a more liberal society (Jutikkala 1962; 1965: 204; 1969: 126). In addition, Jutikkala’s solution was to write about gradual progress beginning with the industrial developments that took place in the 1870s and 1880s. Finland became industrialized via a national project, and Jutikkala focused on the export economy in the primary areas of the industrial economy. The paradox between the sudden industrial take-off and gradual development

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still remained, however, and was a part of the historical complexity that Jutikkala accepted. Like Jutikkala, Heckscher also turned to European intellectual history to illustrate historical development in Europe. In his study on mercantilism, Heckscher left the temporal dimension out of his chapter headings and overall outline (Heckscher 1931). The work itself is a detailed study of the many sides of mercantilism and its relation to the Middle Ages and the era of laissez-faire economics. The relationships between different periods are present in the concluding section of the work, in which Heckscher offered some final remarks regarding mercantilism and its influence on later times and economic history. Heckscher criticized the traditional view that liberalism was the first ideology that had taken into account the national economy. He tried to contextualize mercantilist thinkers anew and judge them according to the conditions of their own time. Heckscher’s contemporary critics understood this objective, yet they still maintained that Heckscher’s effort was as ambitious as it was suggestive and subjective.22 Part of their confusion had to do with the intellectual approach that Heckscher had adopted in studying mercantilism as an economic phenomenon. In Industrialismen [Industrialism], Heckscher dealt with more traditional economic history, and here his historical chronology followed a more straightforward path from early modern times to the present (Heckscher 1944a).23 The book ends with a chapter about pre-war societies and their breakup, highlighting the golden age of free trade. This type of periodization is similar to that used by Heckscher in his histories of Swedish economic development. It is remarkable that both Heckscher and Jutikkala connected positive gains from industrialization with a liberalistic order and worldview. In this way, they could criticize the not-so-harmonious tendencies of the nineteenth century, for example imperialistic operations being driven by nationalistic greed and protectionist goals, and move these kinds of unfavourable features from the heart of their historical narrative (Jutikkala 1953/1965: 359, 369; Heckscher 1944a: 266–68).

A methodological and didactic basis for epochs Jutikkala suggested in 1963 that methodologically speaking, there are two kinds of periodizations in scholarly history. With absolute periodization, the course of history is fixed in advance and the periodization itself is an integral part of progress. According to him, this kind of periodization is typical of Marxist ideology and, for example, the medieval Church. Relative periodization, on the other hand, is used because it makes historical development



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easier to disseminate. In this second model, the periodization varies according to the focus of the study. For Jutikkala, such periodization depended on a structure based on old, middle and new ages (Jutikkala 1963). As we have seen, this relative approach was usually the starting point for Jutikkala’s periodization, but, as this methodological stance clearly demonstrates, he also wanted to point out that politically or ideologically biased absolute periodization does not fit with proper historical research. Still, it must be pointed out that relative periodization – with its old, middle and new dimensions – has the same implicit connotations of integral progress that Jutikkala was criticizing with respect to absolute periodization. Methodologically, Heckscher saw periodization as an artificial element that broke the unity of the past proper. Yet a historian should use periodization to point out the major turning points for his or her community. For Heckscher, the turning points were economic. Thus, Heckscher used periods, which highlighted the development and fulfilment of liberal society, to establish the relationship between a historian, his audience and the privileged social order. His attitude towards his readers was paternalistic enough to justify using the kind of periodization where he, as a historian, could decide what elements from the past were important enough from the present point of view to highlight as distinct periods. In regard to his conceptions of modern society, rationalistic economic action and the development of capital interested Heckscher most, not political autonomy and its development during modernization, at least not to the same extent as was the case with Jutikkala.24 Jutikkala’s conception of history has been described as spiral shaped, along the lines of Max Weber’s historical views (Jutikkala 1983; Kulha 2006: 328–30). For Jutikkala, history was an irrational process as a whole, but when divided into different components, it became clear that implicit laws regulated the development.25 With this kind of thinking, history and its direction formed a totality, for there is then only one society, one state and one direction in which history can move. In addition, his conception of Finnish culture and the nation-state rested heavily on the potential of a free peasantry. Jutikkala admitted to the anachronistic features of his ideas, but he still wanted to challenge the myth that the old property regime was governed by collective ownership. Although the truth might be somewhere in the middle when taking the complicated usufructs and tenure rights into account, one of Jutikkala’s main beliefs was that a relatively free peasantry and their freehold land was a central feature running throughout the history of Finland (Jutikkala 1939, 1943). Jutikkala’s idea was borne out in his texts covering Nordic history as well. He thought that the Nordic countries were not consistent with respect to property rights and a free peasantry. Traditionally, Denmark was considered a negative exception to the rule of

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free Nordic peasants, but Jutikkala suggested that Finland was the positive exception instead.26 Methodological issues and didactic attitudes mostly served as justifications for periodization; yet the examples presented in this chapter show that we nevertheless cannot understand periodization based strictly on its methodological or educational dimensions. Moreover, the fact that both Heckscher and Jutikkala wrote explicitly about their periodization implies that the various periods were of great relevance to them. One aspect of their ambivalent relationship with periodization has to do with their subjective input into history and periods, i.e. they had a chance to create meaning in history. Periodization offers a great operational tool with which to embed social meanings and ideological claims into the affirmative development that holds society and the nation-state together. The next section deals with this dimension.

Periodization, ideology and methodological nationalism Combining philosophical truth and historical change is a difficult task if the direction of history is not explicit and definite (Stuurman 2000: 152). With Heckscher and Jutikkala, the direction of history could be observed in two ways, as history was divided between old and modern times, and the history of both Sweden and Finland had to do with the process of becoming modern. This is where the connection between periodization and the ontological side of history lies; on the one hand, they wrote about modern society and its past, while on the other they constructed grand narratives to explain contemporary communities. This chapter discusses periodization with respect to these historians’ ideological points of view and grand European narratives about modernity. At the same time, it reflects on the relationship between Heckscher’s and Jutikkala’s periodization and their conceptions of periods with regard to the methodological nationalism discussed in this volume. According to Norman Davies and Dipesh Chakrabarty, in addition to a geographically defined Europe, there is also Europe as a conceptual entity (Chakrabarty 2000; Davies 1994). This conceptual Europe is the result of a process by which Europe as representing political modernity has been canonized. This makes Europe the model for modernity, and states that are not European have to conform to European-based modernization processes. Thus, the history of Europe has become the discrete, meta-level narrative for modernization and for a process of modernization rather than just a geographical space (Hobsbawm 1999: 297; Liakos 2013). The canon of European history as a history of political liberty and industrialization can be



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identified in the periodization and comprehensive histories that Heckscher and Jutikkala wrote. The periodization they used is a good example of using the European historical canon as a standard for the history of Nordic countries (Hunt 2000; Stuurman 2000: 148–50). The writings of Jutikkala and Heckscher pay particular attention to the history of England. Much of Heckscher’s work traced the history of Sweden and England side by side, following the mindset of Harald Hjärne’s historical approach.27 In addition, Heckscher often mentioned that one of his role models in economic history was John Clapham, who had written a study on the long-term economic history of modern Britain.28 Heckscher connected the two national histories with asymmetrical comparisons when he conceived of mercantilism and liberalism as ideological regimes and when he compared Swedish industrialism to earlier English developments.29 For Heckscher, the economic history of England set the standard for development, and this influenced his ideas about periodization. Because of the role of the English example, Heckscher paid particular attention to the historically recent affairs that directed Sweden’s attention to the West and kept the country in the rhythm of international development. Heckscher’s English leaning was not strictly historical. Heckscher’s intellectual father, Hjärne, also had expressed great sympathy for the English and a European identity (Björk 2009). Heckscher might be considered part of a long tradition in which Europe, progress and civilization are all part of the same conceptual framework.30 Furthermore, the English dimension was strengthened by contemporary political tensions in Europe. Throughout the 1930s, Heckscher and his close associate, Arthur Montgomery, discussed English–Swedish relations with respect to contemporary and historical issues in the Baltic region. Their aim was to keep English interests tightly focused on the Baltic region to prevent the growth of German influence. Hence, they suggested that Scandinavia and the rest of the Baltic Sea countries were an elemental part of Western Europe and that the English connection was very important to them.31 The correspondence between them supports the conclusion that the Baltic question, the domestic affairs of Finland and Sweden, and scholarly aspirations went hand in hand. Heckscher’s views on history and contemporary society overlapped. Jutikkala also tended to hitch Finnish history to international and, specifically, to Western and Nordic history. In the background was Jutikkala’s distrust of Eastern European societies, particularly his aversion to Russian society and its feudal history and to the contemporary revolutionary regime. Jutikkala focused on Western development. Modernization and the change from mercantilism to liberalism were the most painless and most natural changes in England (Jutikkala 1949b: 463). According to Jutikkala,

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the East had had a negative influence on Finland; for example, he viewed militancy as a cultural characteristic and a strictly Eastern vice, which made harmonious progress a Western virtue. In addition, during the heyday of industrial progress in Europe, nineteenth-century Russia had the lowest level of development.32 The conflict between the Russian Empire and Finland resulted in a cultural gap, with Finland remaining on the peaceful and progressive side and Russia having a conflicted and backward character. Within this framework, the Finnish industrial take-off point started as a painfully slow process compared to that of England, and according to Jutikkala, it started very late in the latter half of the nineteenth century.33 More than anything, this assessment reflected his belief that the history of Western Europe formed an implicit canon of and rhythm for economic development for the histories of European countries. This kind of implicit canon and the creation of a general direction for history call for processes of inclusion and exclusion within periodization. By using Europe as the conceptual reference point for modernization and England as the conceptual reference point for industrialization, Jutikkala and Heckscher included those particular elements in their periodization that supported positive historical development. Heckscher suggested that statistical and quantifiable data are not enough to support historical claims unless the historian himself has an understanding of what is essential in history.34 Hence, periods should be divided based on a specific logic instead of convenient chronological divisions (Heckscher 1953: 207). Heckscher highlighted the advance towards capitalism, and as a result, he excluded ‘medieval’ elements from his conception of history. This strengthens the image of Heckscher as a firm believer in the positive features of industrialism, as has been suggested by, for example, Lars Magnusson (1994: 12). Furthermore, Pauli Kettunen has noted that Jutikkala’s historical accounts show that it is possible to write about industrialism and modernization and, at the same time, defend nationalistic continuity (Kettunen 1994: 81–83). Jutikkala, not unlike Heckscher, believed in industrialism and it seems that it was this international dimension that caused the nationalistic and modern views to overlap in Jutikkala’s thinking. Culture as a transcending force is also connected to Jutikkala and Heckscher’s worldview. Their worldview rested partly on the conflict between cultural and social modernity, which also affected their periodization. This conflict has attracted some comment from scholars. Kettunen has suggested that the bourgeois historians – and both Heckscher and Jutikkala can be viewed as being a part of that camp – feared the radical experimental individualism of modernism in culture (Bell 1976: 18, 36–37; Kettunen 1994: 86). Then again, for Heckscher the age of mass society was a clear sign of the sunset of the golden age of liberal society. Liakos has also noted



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the dynamics between concurrent modern and traditional views of society, suggesting that the inner sphere contains the search for authenticity and a policy of preservation, while the outer sphere encompasses economics, technology and statecraft and deals with ideas of efficiency and compatibility (Liakos 2013: 334–35). Jutikkala and Heckscher both supported a social modernity that consisted of the improvement of socio-economic institutions and infrastructure. Then again, they were both also concerned about cultural change and modernization progressing too far. Heckscher valued the mature liberal society of the pre-war era and criticized the interwar era of revolution and the masses. For Jutikkala, the agrarian nature of Finnish society was so essential that he spoke strongly against cutting ties with agrarian traditions while modernizing society. For both of them, modernity itself was not only the temporal experience of the day but also a vital connection to the past. Perhaps this is what Reinhart Koselleck meant when he described the past as being not totally separate from the present (Jordheim 2012). The collective autonomy and development of Finland as a political unit was present for Jutikkala more than it was for Heckscher precisely because Jutikkala wrote more about national history in the traditional sense, whereas Heckscher focused more explicitly on economic questions. Apart from these differences, though, Jutikkala and Heckscher were quite similar in the essential way they arranged their periodization: they foregrounded the canon of the modern history of Europe, which consisted of processes of rationalization, autonomy (in a political and economic sense) and industrialization.35 As historians, they had a significant role in fitting the people of their own communities into the modern world order being established in the twentieth century. But such an endeavour was far from being a peaceful process. Finland, which had gained its independence in 1917, fought a brutal civil war in 1918 and then had been thrust into the Second World War, was quite arguably a deeply conflicted nation. Swedish history enjoyed a more peaceful process, but nonetheless for Heckscher the 1920s and 1930s were stressful times. Fascist and communist regimes were threatening his modern belief in progress. At the same time, nationalistic overtones affected European historiography and as a result the research environment changed and politicized and liberal ideals were criticized throughout societies (Bellamy 1992: 252; Raphel 2003: 81–85). This development certainly resonated with Heckscher, and the following quote describes well the universalist and progressive features of Heckscher’s thinking: The thing that depresses me most is the vanishing of that optimism that follows the belief that we are connected to development. But maybe, I just need to bite

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my lip and fight as hard as I can for something that is now in danger of being drowned by the recovered barbarism.36

Methodological nationalism and periodization According to Jutikkala, Heckscher taught that ‘economic history is not primarily about the political statutes concerning economic life, but also about the history of development, which can be measured with quantified methods. Within this development, we also have the population as producers and consumers’.37 The matter of methodological nationalism is tightly connected with the issue of periodization and social development within the course of history. Here, methodological nationalism has to do with equating the concepts of the nation-state and society and making them parallel within the same historically specific process. This process of making the nation-state and society equal to one another seems to be visible in the periodization of both historians. It is quite challenging to fit Jutikkala and Heckscher into the context of methodological nationalism. While certain elements do overlap with traditional critiques of methodological nationalism, Jutikkala and Heckscher were, within their respective institutional networks, more internationally minded than the average historian. As we have seen, Jutikkala treated the positive features of national history as endogenic and the negative features as external and provisional. Then again, modernization as an economic question connected Swedish and Finnish histories to those of Europe, thereby making external explanations also significant with respect to positive historical developments. When Jutikkala analysed the Finnish state, he tried to make sense of it as a Nordic state. In addition to this Nordic dimension, he described the essential characteristics of the Finnish nation-state and its society as durable and containing resistant features that could not be replaced by external and Eastern ideologies. Jutikkala searched for historical roots to justify the foundation of Finnish society, and this process perhaps shaped the conceptual framework of his work. Further, his body of work makes an interesting contribution in terms of society’s historical identity. With a focus on socio-economic development and the long-term history of shaping a modern middle class (Finnish peasantry), Jutikkala could connect two ostensibly contradictory historical identities – that of the European bourgeoisie with national identity rooted in locally shaped culture and actors. In a 1949 article on mercantilism and liberalism, Jutikkala took the roots of the nation-state back to the mercantilist era. Yet Jutikkala felt ambivalent about this periodization, as for him nationalism as an ideology was clearly a modern feature not belonging to the past. He solved



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this problem by focusing on the nation-state on an institutional level, which made it easier for him to trace the nation-state backwards further into the past and treat it as an instant successor to the universal medieval state (Jutikkala 1949a: 402–3). This implies methodological nationalism. Finland was for him a subject of study with strong historical, sociological and normative dimensions. Jutikkala and Heckscher connected the histories of Sweden and Finland to the modernization of Western Europe, and by doing so, they placed the idea of the nation-state at the core of modernization. As a result, they wrote national history with a slightly untraditional focus. Whether or not methodological nationalism and its connections to European modernization are possible at all without transnational approaches can be debated. I think that the international dimension is in some ways present in the histories produced with a focus on methodological nationalism because, as we have seen, modernization is for many countries a transnational affair, at least in long-term histories (see also Hill 2008). With respect to the modes of historical explanation, it is interesting to analyse the connection between counterfactual history and the modern periodization through which history is seen as a matter of progress leading up to the present. The connection lies within the structure of methodological nationalism itself because the equating of the nation-state with society is grounded in a counterfactual basis, with the present nation-state as the necessary fulfilment of the modernizing project.38 Periodization shaped by such labels as old, middle and new is also based on a counterfactual type of construction. The necessity of maintaining a linear trajectory creates an impression whereby the present is a final act of history, one that legitimizes present values and ideals. This legitimation process might lead swiftly to methodological nationalism. Jutikkala and Heckscher both criticized the nationalistic and overtly political overtones of scholarly history; thus, it is possible to say that they challenged methodological nationalism in their historical studies.39 Part of the critique against nationalism was a result of their scientific ideals. They thought that nationalistic and political overtones distracted historians from aiming at a critical and truthful study of the past. On one occasion, Jutikkala stated that he regarded nationalistic history as exactly opposite to the objective study of history. Heckscher was deeply sceptical about nationalist attitudes, and as an economic historian inevitably dealt with international views on history (Björk 2012: 86). Then again, their interests in long-term and comprehensive histories led to the conclusion that the nation-state should constitute an overarching subject from a thematic standpoint. Nonetheless, their work should not be interpreted simply within the context of methodological nationalism.

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The problems, threats and possibilities of contemporary society led both Heckscher and Jutikkala to legitimize their societies via their views on periodization and history. Furthermore, the ideological dimensions of historical study are evident in their periodization, which might well be viewed as a tool through which a certain sign system is presented as privileged and preferred (White 1987b: 192). The use of periodization thus enhances the cultural meaning of history, and the various periods used as headings in historical accounts serve as slogans for assigning meaning to history. Periodization contains major ontological and ideological features in and of itself.

Conclusions Jutikkala defined Heckscher’s work to one of his younger colleagues as constituting not so much an ideology as a set of methods for creating an image of history that was supposedly more truthful than previous ones.40 This implies that Heckscher and Jutikkala’s scholarly attitude circled around a notion of objective truth that aimed to do away with certain ‘false’ ideologies. With this idea, they were both able to write comprehensive histories that highlighted the liberal character of contemporary modernity. Industrialization, modernity and the autonomy of Finnish and Swedish society were emphasized in their periodization, where the basis of a synthesis could also be found. As stated in the introduction, periodization has an unquestionably significant role in shaping and giving rhythm to long-term historical synthesis, and therefore its alleged subjective dimension is a worthwhile research topic. Heckscher once remarked that ‘periods are simply convenient partitions’ (Heckscher 1953: 207). But, as this chapter demonstrates, the matter of convenience is just one side of the story. Besides disseminating historical understanding to readers and enhancing didactic tools, periods contain substantive features that transfer ideological representations from the historian to the reading subject. It is remarkable that the didactic features of periodization were ignored when Jutikkala and Heckscher wanted to set themselves apart from the previous or dominant way of distinguishing particular historical periods. When they criticized political periodization, they did not attack it for educational reasons. The issue for them was of a substantial nature, i.e. what should be included from a thematic standpoint in various types of periodization. For them, political periodization lacked the theme of modernization that was so dear to them. Instead of a periodization based on political history, they embedded socio-economic modernization into the master narratives of Swedish and Finnish national histories.



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The trajectories of Swedish and Finnish national histories were evident not so much in their political histories as in the development of modern industrial society in each nation. Through their works and periodization, both Heckscher and Jutikkala developed a collective understanding of this development.41 The analysis of Jutikkala and Heckscher’s periodization also demonstrates the complexity and multifaceted nature of the temporal dimension of history. On the one hand, they both stressed discontinuity between the old and new, between static and dynamic societies. On the other hand, there were linear or progressive features to their periodization, such as the idea of becoming modern or the gradual development of society. In addition, there were supra-historical elements that underpinned their historical views and ideas about periodization. For Heckscher, the economic concept might be viewed as such. In Jutikkala’s case, the permanent features of Finnish society formed the basis for his historical accounts. An analysis of periodization reveals the coexistence of multiple temporalities in scholarly history. Jutikkala and Heckscher both wrote about progress, but this did not make them firm believers in progress.42 As Ronald Aronson has remarked, when a scientist is highly interested in progress, the prevailing and dominant ideology is visible in his or her presentation (Aronson 2013). Similarly, I have been able to observe the ideological elements in Jutikkala’s and Heckscher’s work by analysing their periodization. Through the assigning of clear historical periods, they were able to give history a socio-economic rhythm and legitimize their own ideas about the present. Through various periods, history becomes structured and paced, and historical features that are no longer part of the narrative of progress become embedded in the past as integral parts of particular periods and epochs. Petteri Norring, MA, is doctoral student in the Department of History, University of Helsinki, Finland. His dissertation deals with Nordic historiography focusing on the works of Eino Jutikkala and Eli F. Heckscher, the most influential twentieth-century economic historians in Sweden and Finland.

Notes 1.  The term ideology is used here not as an indication of a false account of reality, but more as an indication of a practice whereby historians disseminate a certain system of signs and social order to their readers. See, for example, Hayden White’s take on ideology in Droysen’s historiography (White 1987a: 86–88).

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2. Veit-Brause calls for an analysis of periodization specifically using transcultural approaches. 3. See, for example ‘Periodization in History and Historiography: An Intercultural Comparison’, Storia della storiografia 37 (2000). Veit-Brause (2000) suggests that Ricoeur sees the periodization done by historians merely as an intellectual tool, as if they did not acknowledge its significance. To me, it remains unclear whether Ricoeur’s ‘connectors’ are the same as periods and periodization. See Ricoeur 1988: 104. 4.  For more on Scottish thinkers and their stage theories, see Eriksson 1988. 5.  For more on multiple temporalities and their role in Reinhart Koselleck’s thinking, see Jordheim 2012. 6.  For Jutikkala’s biographical facts, see Kulha 2006. For more on the school of culture history, see Haapala 2007. 7. For the biographical and historiographical background, see Hasselberg 2007 and Magnusson 2009. 8.  ‘And a man needs landmarks, he needs different dates along with the long presentation; he needs the general view which cannot be given of the past as a whole, but with relative success, can be given from a single period. Hence, the history of Sääksmäki, along with the Cultural History of Finland, will be divided in three separate periods. Also, what was said about the parallels between the events of Sääksmäki’s history and Finnish history results in the fact that those particular landmarks associated with the history of Sääksmäki are more observable than usual.’ All translations are by the author unless stated otherwise. 9.  ‘En ordnad och systematiserad bild av vad som på de viktigaste områdena hade existerat i oreda och planlöshet manga århudraden dessförrinnan.’ 10.  Swedish terms: ‘Det moderna Sveriges grundläggning’, ‘Det stora genombrottens förbredelse’, ‘1800-talets färdiga samhälle’. 11.  The chapter is titled ‘The Disintegration of the Estates System’. 12.  Undated presentation by Jutikkala, ‘Ett föredrag om Finlands ställning…’, National Archives of Finland, Helsinki: Jutikkala’s Archive, File 7; Heckscher 1932; Jutikkala 1953/1965: 11. 13.  The book has two parts: Man at the Mercy of Nature, and Man Aims to Be the Master of Nature. 14.  The chapter titles are as follows: ‘From Family to Kingdom’; ‘Altar and Throne’; ‘Feudalism in Scandinavia’; ‘The Powers Checking the King and Absolutism’; ‘The Harmonisation Politics of Sweden and Denmark’; ‘Nationalism in the Nordic Countries’; ‘The Union between Norway and Sweden and Finland as the Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire’; ‘Democracy Becomes Rooted in Governmental Life’; ‘The Estates and Their Decline’; ‘The Routes of Labour Movements’; and ‘Four Folkhem’. 15.  Jutikkala’s speech on the foundations of peasant culture in Finland from 14 May 1992, National Archives of Finland, Jutikkala’s Archive, File 5. ‘Like everything else, the history of the peasantry has been shaped by constant changes. There have been new tools, and yet the open field system resulted in collective farming routines, rotating crops and acquiring new routines and methods, and rye replaced barley. There has never been a total break, and the peasant culture, material and also spiritual, has had the two cardinal characteristics of culture, that of continuous tradition and adapting new innovations at the same time. In the peasant culture, we have what are called the dynamics of continuity present.’ 16.  For Heckscher, it was the static medieval social structure and feudal fragmentation that prevented economic development (Heckscher 1931: 16–18; 1955: 37). 17. Coincidentally, Eric Hobsbawm also highlighted this approach as essential for history (Hobsbawm 2010: 150). 18. Kungliga bibliotek, Stockholm: Heckscher’s archive L67, Heckscher to Astrid Friis, 27 July 1927; see also Heckscher 1944b.



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19. Kungliga bibliotek, Stockholm: Heckscher’s archive L67, 79: II, Heckscher to Stockholm Högskola, 5 September 1934. ‘I want to suggest that the formulation could be changed to The Modern History of the Nordic Countries to prevent the coverage from expanding to cover more than a millennium. I also mean that we need studies on the development of the status of the peasantry during the Reformation imposed by Gustav Vasa, the seventeenth century and the manorial secretion (godsavsöndringar), the Reduction by Carl XI, the eighteenth century and the “Skatteköp”, which freed up the option to split the farms and support crop rotation, and the great transformation of agricultural life in the nineteenth century.’ 20. Under the section on mercantilism, the chapters have the following titles: ‘Providence’s Harsh Attitude’; ‘City, Merchant, Village and Manor’. Under the section on liberalism and industrialism, the chapter titles include the following: ‘Industrial Revolution’; ‘Backward Continental’; ‘Free Trade’; ‘The Rivalry between the Great Nation-States’. See the same formulation in Heckscher 1932: 22: ‘Nature audited her accounts with a red pencil, in Sweden as in most, if not all, countries, before the Industrial Revolution’. 21.  ‘During a critical period, there is a need for an affirmative and supporting ideology.’ 22.  For a critique of Heckscher’s mercantilism within the context of the twentiethcentury studies on economic history, see Magnusson 1994; Stern and Wennerlind 2014. 23.  As the title [Industrialismen] reveals, the focus lies on England’s industrial take-off point in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The chapter covering the years 1830–1870 is named after the industrial breakthrough of mainland Europe. The next to last chapter is titled ‘The Mature Period of Industrialism in Europe and America’. 24.  The economic realm was a supra-historical dimension for Heckscher, because economic action can be found in every historical society. Moreover, the difference between natural and monetary economy had to do with the ways and structures by which people exchange commodities and services (Heckscher 1953: 209–10). 25.  Jutikkala’s speech at the publication of Suomen kulttuurihistoria in 1936, National Archives of Finland, Helsinki: Jutikkala’s Archive. ‘Our common culture history and its methods lead us to, even when different historians are studying the subject, common causes and effects and studying and observing the interaction between different kinds of phenomena. And so cultural history teaches us that all that is within [the scope of] human actions, from the mundane to the highly appreciated governmental actions, are tied together, that nothing in history is arbitrary, that development occurs according to its [own] inner laws. This teaches us to respect history with a submissive attitude, that history with its immovable forces uses men, individuals and masses as an instrument, and at the same time, [it teaches us to] respect society and the state, the result of millennia of development and the one to which we belong.’ 26.  Jutikkala’s presentation, no date (possibly Copenhagen 1965), National Archives of Finland, Helsinki: Jutikkala’s Archive, File 7. See also ‘Jutikkala’s Presentation for the Foundation of the Finnish Peasant Culture’, 14 May 1992; and Jutikkala 1943. 27.  For more on Europe as a family of nations, see Gerschenkron 1954: xxxiii–xxxiv. 28. Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm: Arthur Montgomery’s archive, Heckscher to Montgomery, 28 November 1934; Eli Heckscher’s archive L67, 71: I, Heckscher to Hannerberg, 21 May 1944. Clapham’s research is called An Economic History of Modern Britain, published in 1926–1938. Coincidentally, Clapham was, according to Theodore Koditschek, an anti-Marxist economic historian who aimed to ‘prove that the Industrial Revolution had benefited working people’ (Koditschek 2013, 436; see also Hayek 1954). 29.  For more on asymmetrical comparisons, see Kocka 1999. 30.  Stuart Woolf (2003) has written about this tradition. 31.  Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm: Eli Heckscher’s archive L67, 37: II, Montgomery to Heckscher, 31 October 1936 and 5 September 1938, Heckscher to Montgomery, 8

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October 1934 and 20 October 1934; Arthur Montgomery’s archive, Montgomery to Heckscher, 10 September 1936. See also Hasselberg 2007: 208–21; 2016. 32. Jutikkala’s Presentation during the Continuation War (1941–1944), National Archives of Finland, Helsinki: Jutikkala’s Archive, File 5. The Continuation War refers to the war between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1941–1944 when Finland allied with Germany. 33.  Jutikkala thought that late industrialization was actually positive for Finnish development because the industrial latecomers could take note of the negative effects that industrialization had had on English society (Jutikkala 1977). 34.  Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm: Eli Heckscher’s archive L67: 66, Heckscher to Aksel Christensen, 24 February 1939. ‘I have now lectured about the craftsman in the eighteenth century, and it is, as usual, filled with the statistical material that could be presented, although it is the interpretation [of the statistical material] that I’m not satisfied with. The thing is, how one can read the material according to the lines of a capitalistic tendency. The material itself has twofold indications. Then for me, this is about the call between an increased demand for capital and traditional monopolism (or oligopolism) according to medieval principles.’ 35. Heckscher saw the nation-state as a healthy and efficient economic unit. This meant that states should participate in international trade as well. In addition, domestic barriers to free trade should be avoided. See, for example, Heckscher 1955: 127. 36. Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm: Arthur Montgomery’s archive, Heckscher to Montgomery, 16 March 1933. 37.  Radio interview with Jutikkala in 1981, National Archives of Finland, Helsinki: Jutikkala’s Archive, File 5. 38.  Counterfactuals have a close relationship with historical explanation (Weinryb 2011). 39.  Heckscher 1944b: 30–42; Jutikkala 1983: 83; Jutikkala’s Presentation for radio in 1980, Mitä historia on? [What Is History?], National Archives of Finland, Helsinki: Jutikkala’s Archive, File 5; Jutikkala 1953. 40.  Jutikkala’s undated answer to a letter sent by Osmo Jussila to Jutikkala in 1972, National Archives of Finland, Helsinki: Jutikkala’s Archive, Letters. 41.  According to Dirks, developing consciousness of our historical depths and trajectories makes history modern (Dirks 1990. 42.  It is evident that the interwar period in Finland was an era when many people firmly believed in progress (Fewster 2011: 49).

Bibliography Works of Eli Heckscher and Eino Jutikkala Heckscher, E. 1908. Socialismens grundvalar: En diskussion. Stockholm: Wahlströms & Widstrands Förlag. Heckscher E. 1931. Merkantilismen: Ett led i den ekonomiska politikens historia. Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt och Söners förlag. Heckscher, E.F. 1932. ‘The Place of Sweden in Modern Economic History’, Economic History Review IV(1): 1–22. Heckscher, E.F. 1935. Sveriges Ekonomiska Historia. Från Gustav Vasa: Första delen, före frihetstiden. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag. Heckscher, E.F. 1936. ‘Den ekonomiska historiens aspekter’, in E.F. Heckscher (ed.), Ekonomisk-historiska studier. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, pp. 7–71.



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Heckscher, E.F. 1941. Svenskt arbete och liv: Från medeltiden till nutiden. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag. Heckscher E. 1944a. Industrialismen, 3rd edn. Stockholm: Kooperativa förbundets bokförlag. Heckscher, E.F. 1944b. ‘Materialistisk och annan historieuppfattning’, in E.F. Heckscher (ed.), Historieuppfattning: Materialistisk och annan. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, pp. 9–43. Heckscher, E.F. 1953. ‘Natural and Money Economy as Illustrated from Swedish History in the Sixteenth Century’, in F.C. Lane and J.C. Riemersma (eds), Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History. London: George Allen and Unwin, pp. 206–28. Heckscher, E.F. 1954. Economic History of Sweden, trans. G. Ohlin. Harvard Economic Studies 95. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heckscher, E.F. 1955. Mercantilism. Vol. 1, 2nd revised ed. London: Allen & Unwin. Jutikkala, E. 1934. Sääksmäen pitäjän historia. Jyväskylä: Gummerus. Jutikkala, E. 1939. ‘Kylänkeskisen yhteisötoiminnan historiaa’, in Historian Ystäväin Liitto (ed.), Yhteiskunnallisen järjestäytymisen historiaa. Historian Aitta XI. Jyväskylä: Gummerus, pp. 120–30. Jutikkala, E. 1942a. Suomen talonpojan historia: Sekä katsaus talonpoikien asemaan Euroopan muissa maissa. Porvoo: WSOY. Jutikkala, E. 1942b. ‘Ruotsin taloushistorian ääriviivat’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 1942(1): 33–39. Jutikkala, E. 1943. ‘Suomalaisen talonpoikaisvapauden historiallinen pohja’, Suomalainen Suomi 1943(1): 11–16. Jutikkala, E. 1949a. ‘Merkantilismi ja liberalismi I’, Suomalainen Suomi 1949(7): 402–8. Jutikkala, E. 1949b. ‘Merkantilismi ja liberalismi II’, Suomalainen Suomi 1949(8): 463–65. Jutikkala, E. 1953/1965. Uudenajan taloushistoria. Porvoo: WSOY. Jutikkala, E. 1953. ‘Tiede ja totuus’, Suomalainen Suomi 1953(9): 550–51. Jutikkala, E. 1962. ‘Industrial Take-Off in an Under-Developed Country: The Case of Finland’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 88: 52–67. Jutikkala, E. 1963. ‘Optimistinen historian aikakausien järjestelmä’, Suomalainen Suomi 1963(1): 38–40. Jutikkala, E. 1965. Pohjoismaisen yhteiskunnan historiallisia juuria. Porvoo: WSOY. Jutikkala, E. (ed.). 1968. Suomen talous- ja sosiaalihistorian kehityslinjoja. Porvoo: WSOY. Jutikkala, E. 1969. ‘Industrialistisen irtautumisen prosessi’, in V. Niitemaa (ed.), Länsimaiden talousjärjestelmät: Pyyntitaloudesta suunnitelmatalouteen. Porvoo: WSOY, pp. 123–36. Jutikkala, E. 1977. ‘Feodalismi Suomessa’, in Suomen historiallinen seura (ed.), Historiallinen Arkisto 72. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, pp. 40–48. Jutikkala, E. 1983. ‘Katsaus Suomen historiantutkimukseen ja -kirjoitukseen 1900-luvun ensi puoliskolla’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 81(1): 83–88. Jutikkala, E. 1987. Kuolemalla on aina syynsä. Porvoo: WSOY.

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Jordheim, H. 2012. ‘Against Periodization: Koselleck’s Theory of Multiple Temporalities’, History and Theory 2012(2): 151–71. Kettunen, P. 1994. ‘Historiallistaminen ja suunnitteleminen: Ajan hallinnan jännitteitä sodanaikaisessa ja sodanjälkeisessä Suomessa’, in P. Ahtiainen et al. (eds), Historia, sosiologia ja Suomi: Yhteiskuntatutkimus itseymmärryksen jäljillä. Helsinki: Hanki ja Jää, pp. 75–114. Klinge, M. 2012. Kadonnutta aikaa löytämässä: Muistelmia 1936–1960. Helsinki: Siltala. Kocka, J. 1999. ‘Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of German Sonderweg’, History and Theory 38(1): 40–50. Koditschek, T. 2013. ‘How to Change History’, History and Theory 52(3): 433–50. Kulha, K.K. 2006. Jutikkala: Tinkimätön akateemikko. Helsinki: Edita. Liakos, A. 2013. ‘The Canon of European History and the Conceptual Framework of National Historiographies’, in M. Middell and L. Roura (eds), Transnational Challenges to National History Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 315–42. Lundahl, M. 2011. ‘The Janus Face of Eli Heckscher: Theory, History and Method’, History of Economic Thought 18(2): 243–67. Magnusson, L. 1994. Eli Heckscher and Mercantilism: Introduction. Uppsala Papers in Economic History. Research Report No 35. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitetet. Magnusson, L. 2009. ‘Eli F. Heckscher’, in R. Björk and A.W. Johansson (eds), Svenska Historiker: Från medeltid till våra dagar. Stockholm: Norstedts, pp. 406–14. Megill, A. 1995. ‘“Grand Narrative” and the Discipline of History’, in F. Ankersmit and H. Kellner (eds), A New Philosophy of History. London: Reaktion Books, pp. 151–73. Raphel, L. 2003. Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeitalter der Extreme: Theorien, Methoden, Tendenzen von 1900 bis zur Gegenwart. Nördlingen: C.H. Beck. Ricoeur, P. 1988. Time and Narrative. Vol. 3, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Söderberg, J. 2006. ‘Eli F. Heckscher’s Vision of Economic Development’, in R. Findlay et al. (eds), Eli Heckscher, International Trade, and Economic History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 433–56. Stern, P.J., and C. Wennerlind (eds). 2014. Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire. New York: Oxford University Press. Stråth, B. 2012. ‘Nordic Modernity: Origins, Trajectories, Perspectives’, in J.P. Árnason and B. Wittrock (eds), Nordic Paths to Modernity. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 25–48. Stuurman, S. 2000. ‘The Canon of the History of Political Thought’, History and Theory 39(2): 147–66. Suolahti, G. 1933–36. Suomen kulttuurihistoria. Vol. 1–4. Jyväskylä: Gummerus. Topolski, J. 2000. ‘Periodization and the Creation of the Narrative Whole’, Storia della storiografia 37: 11–18. Torstendahl, R. 1988. ‘Stat och samhälle i svensk historievetenskap under 1800- och 1900talen’, in R. Torstendahl and T. Nybom (eds), Historievetenskap som teori, praktik och ideologi. Södertälje: Författarförlaget, pp. 110–17. Veit-Brause, I. 2000. ‘Marking Time: Topoi and Analogies in Historical Periodizations’, Storia della storiografia 37: 3–10. Wagner, P. 2001. Theorizing Modernity: Inescapability and Attainability in Social Theory. London: Sage Publications. Weinryb, E. 2011. ‘Historiographic Counterfactuals’, in A. Tucker (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 109–19. White, H. 1987a. ‘Droysen’s Historik: Historical Writing as a Bourgeois Science’, in H. White, The Content of the Form. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 83–103.

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White, H. 1987b. ‘The Context in the Text: Method and Ideology in Intellectual History’, in Hayden White, The Content of the Form. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 185–213. Woolf, S. 2003. ‘Europe and Its Historians’, Contemporary European History 12(3): 323–37. Zerubavel, E. 2003. Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER

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Negotiating Norden Nordic historians revising history textbooks, 1920–1970 Henrik Åström Elmersjö

Introduction In 1919, and with the Great War (1914–1918) still in recent memory, the Norden Associations were formed in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. These associations were meant to promote understanding, a sense of affinity and, ultimately, cooperation between the peoples of the Nordic states. The war had clearly shown the fragile position of small states on the world stage, and even if the Nordic countries had managed to stay out of the war, many of their citizens were well aware of the precarious situation they were in as small countries in a world where great powers waged war for domination. This was part of the rationale behind the formation of the Norden Associations (see, e.g., Janfelt 2005: 16–17).1 The war can also be considered to have contributed considerably to demands for the reformation of nationalistic sentiment conveyed in schools, especially as a part of history education (see, e.g., Nilsson 2015; Stöber 2013; Siegel 2004; Lauwerys 1953; see also Carlgren 1928; International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation [IIIC] 1933). During the 1920s, Norden Associations were also formed in Finland and Iceland, and even if there was some debate regarding the ‘Nordicness’ of these countries, the five states ultimately constituted the basis of the cultural construction of Norden (see Sørensen and Stråth 1997; Engman 1994: Notes for this section begin on page 252.

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62–63; Andersson 1994: 65; Wåhlin 1994: 42–43). There was a considerable nationalistic element in the formation of the associations; for one thing, there were five national associations instead of one overarching association. Especially in Denmark and Sweden, political, economic and cultural elites founded the associations, and it was not until the 1940s that these associations began to gain support from a wider range of people (Andersson 1994: 59; Janfelt 2005: 68–76; see also Stråth 1995: 38–39, 46–48). Because the Nordic countries had historically been integral parts of, or in union with, one another, and because the wars between them were vital parts of each nation’s mythical past and formed the basis upon which each built its respective national identity, it was not surprising that the teaching of history in the different countries would be considered a problem for Nordic cooperation and a deeper sense of Nordic belonging. The unflattering and perhaps bitter description of the dissolution of the Norwegian– Swedish union in 1905 in Swedish history textbooks was brought to the attention of the Norwegian Norden Association as early as the autumn of 1919 (Norden Association 1922; see also Refsdal 1919). In line with an incipient longing for international history in the wake of the war (Myhre 2012; Nilsson 2015), this led to the establishment of a Norwegian committee that investigated Norwegian history textbooks in order to find out if they depicted other Nordic countries in a dissatisfying manner. Some very prominent historians and educationalists were involved with this committee, including Halvdan Koht (1873–1965), Fredrik Paasche (1886–1943), Anna Rogstad (1854–1938) and Christian L. Lange (1869–1938). Their findings included both praise and criticism of Norwegian textbooks. The criticism did not include any requirement or suggestions to deviate from the national perspective, but it was clearly stated that the fact that historical events might be interpreted differently in other Nordic countries should be enunciated to a greater degree (Norden Association 1922). Later, in the 1930s, the revision of textbooks was organized on a mutual Nordic level and made permanent. This mutual revision of textbooks went on for forty years before it ended in the 1970s. The starting point for the revision process needs to be situated in the interwar context of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), the League of Nations and the intense focus on history education as part of the peace movement. The way history was taught at the time was seen as a major obstacle to the creation of peaceful sentiments in the years to come (Siegel 2004; Nygren 2011; Nilsson 2015). However, the revision process should probably also be situated in the Nordic context, where ‘Norden’ was considered not as an alternative to the nation-states but as lending a broader framework for them (Stråth 1995; Mishkova, Stråth and Trencsényi 2013: 260–61). The idea behind the textbook revision process was both



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inspired by, and an answer to, internationalist challenges to the nation-state. This chapter will assess the historiographical implications of this revision of school textbooks as well as its relation to methodological nationalism. The Norden Associations’ textbook revision process lends itself to a closer examination of the three different dimensions of historical cultures, as identified by German historian Jörn Rüsen. These dimensions are associated with every expression of historical culture and include a cognitive dimension concerning the validity of truth claims in portrayals of the past; an aesthetic dimension concerning the sensory portrayal and the ability to convey an interpretation of the past; and a political dimension concerning power relations within the historical culture and how history is portrayed with respect to certain political goals (Rüsen 2005). All three dimensions are present in any expression of historical culture. History – the discourse dealing with the past – is always political; it always needs some notion of truth associated with it; and it always has an aesthetic expression, be it in the form of a statue, a painting or a text. However, when distinguishing between the three dimensions as a part of analysing discussions on history, it is possible to establish the texture and logic of the discussions and how they have changed over time. A textbook revision, where historians and teachers try to ‘enhance’ textbooks to better fit a clearly political demand under conditions of scientific scholarship and pedagogical merit, is obviously a negotiation of the different dimensions of historical culture.

A national organization for transnational work The investigations in the 1920s conducted by the Norwegian committee were followed by investigations of Danish textbooks by Danish historian Aage Friis (1870–1949) and Swedish textbooks by Swedish historian and political scientist Nils Herlitz (1888–1978). In the wake of these investigations, the School Committee of the Danish Norden Association suggested that a textbook revision, which was intended to move history education in a ‘pan-Nordic’ direction, should be conducted mutually by investigating each other’s textbooks. The suggestion was received positively in Sweden, but, as with a lot of other suggestions on more far-reaching transnational – or even supranational – cooperation in the early years of the Norden Associations, this suggestion was met with resistance from Norway (Carlgren et al. 1937: 5). The definitions of what the cooperation effort would look like, on all levels, came to be more or less fixed with what the Norwegian association found acceptable or thought would be considered acceptable in the Norwegian community. In relation to the associations in Denmark and Sweden, the Norwegian association operated in a climate

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where cooperation with what were considered the former colonizer states of Denmark and Sweden was perceived with a certain amount of suspicion (Andersson 1994: 53–60; Janfelt 2005: 21–32). In the wake of other organizations (like the Carnegie Endowment and the League of Nations) engaging in textbook revisions in the 1920s (see IIIC 1933), a decision was made in 1932 to make the textbook revision effort collaborative in nature (Carlgren et al. 1937: 9–11; see also Elmersjö 2013: 84–95). This decision paved the way for the formation of an inter-Nordic committee, the Norden Associations’ Committee for History Education (Föreningarna Nordens kommitté för historieundervisningen). The committee consisted of Halvdan Koht, Aage Friis, Nils Herlitz, Wilhelm Carlgren (1879–1963), Sveinbjörn Sigúrjonsson (1899–1990) and Oskari Mantere (1874–1942). At their first meeting, they made the decision to create national commissions – elected by the national Norden Associations, possibly in collaboration with the national committees of Le comité international des sciences historiques (CISH) – that would not only review the textbooks of the other countries, but would also defend and protect the integrity of their own national history from the anticipated criticisms from the other commissions.2 This meant that through the construction of a counter-critique, the national context as the terminal unit of historical inquiry in general, and teaching in particular, was built into the very way in which the project was organized, making it a clear example of methodological nationalism (cf. Martins 1974; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). Prominent members of the so-called Commissions of Experts, who later came to perform much of the work, included, for example, Povl Bagge (1902–1991), C.O. Bøggild-Andersen (1898–1967) and Vagn SkovgaardPetersen (1931–2006) for the Danish commission; A.R. Cederberg (1885– 1948), Eino Jutikkala (1907–2006), Walter von Koskull (1922–1967) and Martti Ruutu (1910–2005) for the Finnish commission; Sverre Steen (1898– 1983), Arne Bergsgård (1886–1954) and Magne Skodvin (1915–2004) for the Norwegian commission; and Sven Grauers (1891–1977), Sven Tunberg (1882–1954) and Nils Ahnlund (1889–1957) for the Swedish commission. The Icelandic commission was not always fully functional, and due to the distance between Iceland and the other Nordic states, Icelandic delegates seldom attended the meetings. Cooperation with the national committees of CISH was only clearly established in Norway and Sweden, and such cooperation was abandoned completely by the end of the 1950s.3 When the task of reviewing the history textbooks – and trying to influence the way the textbooks described the other Nordic countries – became a matter for the national commissions, the inter-Nordic committee became an arena for discussion. It was expanded in 1933 to include not only the chairmen of each commission but also their secretaries. In



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the years following the Second World War, the inter-Nordic committee was abandoned in favour of ‘joint meetings’. These meetings had no specific task, there were no permanent members and the national commissions could send whomever they wanted to attend the meetings on their behalf. The joint meetings still functioned as an arena for discussion, but while the official committee of the 1930s actually functioned with a mandate and could make decisions that could be enforced, the joint meetings could only discuss various matters, and ultimately the national commissions were detached from any inter-Nordic body (Elmersjö 2015). This basically meant that the commissions reproduced themselves, and the new members who were recruited were often former students of the older members. Given the original members’ nationalistic and often conservative inclinations (Halvdan Koht being the most obvious exception), one could argue that the revision process was not actually an attempt at rewriting the various national histories, which it perhaps could have been with other historians at the helm. Instead, the revision process stands out as a defence of the national conception of history at a time when such a conception was being questioned (Elmersjö 2013: 109). This is especially evident in the ‘warning’ forwarded by the Norwegian teacher, principal and veteran commission member Haakon Vigander (1895–1981) in 1967: European and still more global points of view are insisted upon in modern history teaching. These trends now threaten to push Nordic – in fact even national – subject matter and Nordic cultural community into the background. (Vigander 1967: 61)

However, some of the historians who were involved with the commissions, especially Koht and Friis, were also known for their international inclinations when it came to how history should be studied – and especially how it should be synthesized and disseminated. They were also engaged in the international community of scholars. Koht, for example, was an internationalist, but his research was not international; he was a historian of Norwegian history. However, he wanted to reach out beyond the borders of Norway through his research on Norway. In that sense, he was an ideal representative of the Norden Associations’ efforts to bring national histories closer together without going beyond the national narrative (Myhre 2012: 267–75; Svendsen 2013: 201–4; Torstendahl 2015: 169–73). However, it is important to keep in mind that the Norden Associations’ endeavour was not about historical research into specific topics, where the perspective – whether local, regional, national, European, international or transnational – was an open question; it was about textbooks for use in national schools, and therefore about very general traits of official knowledge, the knowledge seen as being commonsensical and as truthful not solely on the grounds of

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scientific reasoning, but also through the exertion of power (Apple 2000). The official perspective regarding the subject of history was that it was supposed to be national, not least for political reasons. In all of the Nordic countries, the subject of history had – if not as its main objective, at least as one of its major objectives – to infuse national sentiment through examples of virtue and dignity taken from the nation’s history (see, e.g., Andersson 1979; Møller 1983; Lorentzen 2005; Nilsson 2015). In Nordic historiography, Norden – or Scandinavia – was not traditionally seen as an overarching entity with its own logic, and this is in line with how the notion of ‘Norden’ was conceptualized both culturally and politically. Norden was more or less considered a framework for the individual nations and the arena within which the nation-states acted. ‘Nordistically’ inclined historians more or less set the nations’ histories on a Nordic stage, but they were still national histories (see, e.g., Mishkova, Stråth and Trencsényi 2013: 260–61; Elmersjö 2013: 189–90). In some cases, the teachers and teacher trainers who were also engaged in the Norden Associations’ revision of textbooks complained about the lack of historical research with a truly Nordic perspective that went beyond this national framework. How were they supposed to construct a Nordic narrative without any research on Nordic matters to back up their efforts (see, e.g., Vigander 1950: 33)?

Disputed questions in Nordic history The day-to-day operation of reviewing textbooks was conducted primarily by teachers in upper secondary schools in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Historians oversaw the work and were engaged in writing a counter-critique in the 1930s. However, based on this counter-critique the joint committee became aware of a number of ‘disputed questions’ that needed to be discussed, clarified and ultimately resolved. These included the relationships between nations that had been in union with each other for a substantial period of time and the wars fought between the countries. Well-known historians were engaged in writing texts that would either come to an agreement across the various national borders or else would elaborate on what issues were debatable in order to clearly identify – for the benefit of history teachers – what the issues were, what different conclusions historians (of supposedly different nationalities) had come to and why they had come to these different conclusions. In this endeavour, the Norden Associations were ahead of their time. It would take decades before methods for socalled ‘textbook improvement’ would be developed that could present disputed historical events in ways that did not include writing a joint universal



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narrative, often with many of the disputable events left out (Pingel 2008: 183; see also Korostelina and Lässig 2013). The presupposed differences between historians of different nationalities made working on the disputed questions a matter of establishing the national narratives and comparing them to one another. For example, when the secretary of the Swedish Commission of Experts, Wilhelm Carlgren, tried to engage Nils Ahnlund to write about the concept of nation within the Finnish part of the Swedish realm in the Middle Ages and early modern period, he asked him to ‘take a stand for Sweden’ (Elmersjö 2013: 123, n. 318). This clearly meant that the expectation in this endeavour was that the issue would be argued along politically established national boundaries, and not, for example, scientifically established boundaries. Thus, a distinguished historian was not encouraged to take a stand for the historical profession, but for his country instead. This could be interpreted as part of the process of negotiating the different dimensions of historical culture. In the case of debating the disputed questions, the political dimension was definitely noticeable. The questions asked were, in effect, more political than about finding better ways of making truthful claims. The members of the commissions were more or less perplexed when they found it impossible to uphold national boundaries in the discussions. For example, in 1936 the Danish historian Povl Bagge had little problem in coming to terms with what Norwegian historian Sverre Steen had written about Danish–Norwegian relations between 1536 and 1814 (Bagge and Steen 1940). This could be considered a consequence of Steen’s conception of the Norwegian nation during the period depicted, which included scepticism about the liberal and romanticized interpretation of the Norwegian peasants’ struggle for national independence against foreign authorities. Steen’s scepticism on this issue differed from the conception that was forwarded in the textbooks. However, the view presented in the textbooks was backed by the chairman of the Norwegian commission, Halvdan Koht, as well as by other (later) members of the commission, like Arne Bergsgård (Dahl [1959] 1990: 282; Rian 1995: 134–36; Aronsson et al. 2008: 269–70). Still, this domestic dispute over how and when a perception of a shared Norwegian national identity became evident was not recognized because the efforts of the Norden Associations were instilled with the notion of prioritizing the disputes between nations, and hence there was no room in this specific discussion for the complexity of internal disputes over the very concept of nation. These disputes were evident in all of the Nordic countries, but they were often neglected due to both the assortment of historians included in the commissions as well as – such as in the Norwegian case – an intense focus on what could be discussed across borders, disregarding what could be discussed within them. This further

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underscores the primacy of the political dimension in the debates at the expense of the cognitive dimension. Even though most commissions enlisted historians with similar backgrounds and with similar conceptions of history, there were some differences of opinion within the different commissions and committees that the Norden Associations set up, as we have seen. Already in the 1920s, Fredrik Paasche and Halvdan Koht, who had their differences about the way in which Norwegian history should be conceived of and presented, especially regarding the political aspirations of the church and the interpretation of the Kings’ Sagas, cooperated on the revision of Norwegian textbooks without their differences in perspective being apparent when interpreting old Norwegian history (Paasche 1922; see also Svendsen 2013: 140–42). However, the dissembling of national consensus was mostly produced through the effective creation of homogeneous commissions. This particular way of discussing between nations, instead of beyond nations, clearly led to immense focus on the boundaries that were to be transcended (see Caruso 2014).

Transcending or fixating boundaries As noted previously, many of the discussions pertaining to the Norden Associations’ textbook revision process taking place at the inter-Nordic meetings as well as in published materials came to be about the conceptualization of the nation. These discussions tended to follow the logic of any nationalistic enterprise; the participants’ own nation was seen as perennial, while other nations were more or less seen as constructed in modern times as a consequential necessity of political and/or economic developments (see Anderson 1983). This was especially apparent in the discussions between representatives from Sweden and Finland and representatives from Iceland and Norway. Nationhood When it came to the Norwegian and Icelandic historians, the debate was about the ‘true’ nationality of the Icelanders. Due to organizational problems within the Icelandic commission, Barði Guðmundsson (1900–1957) represented the Icelandic commission in this debate during the 1930s (Vigander 1950: 31; see also Elmersjö 2013: 101). He had a very clear view of the nature of the Icelanders. They were a distinct nationality, different from the Norwegians, and therefore he was very critical of Norwegian textbooks that made everything Icelandic part of Norwegian heritage by



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associating Iceland with Norway and describing the Icelanders as descendants of Norwegians (Guðmundsson 1937: 103–4). The differences between the viewpoint of the Norwegian commission, led by Koht, and that of Guðmundsson were partly based on different conceptions of the nation, but mostly on the classical nationalist convention of conceptualizing one’s own specific nation as not only a nation in a universal sense but also as special and therefore different. The eagerness to tell a ‘Nordic story’, the story of a pan-Nordic people, met with opposition due to the lack of ‘non-national’ subject matter; if something in history could be used to tell a Nordic story of historical affinity between the Nordic nations, then it had probably already been spoken for and incorporated within at least one of the national narratives. The Norwegian commission argued its position – to tie the Icelanders to Norway, and therefore to a (Norwegian) Nordic heritage – by establishing the Norwegian connection to Iceland. However, Guðmundsson saw this perspective as neglecting an Icelandic nation and basically making Iceland a Norwegian enterprise. Hence, all of the endeavours and accomplishments that Icelanders considered to be a part of a heroic Icelandic history were made Norwegian, such as the colonization of Greenland and the voyages to Vinland by Leif Erikson, a native of Iceland. The Norwegian commission wrote the following in their response to these allegations: ‘Not all Norwegian textbooks remind [us] of the fact that Leif Erikson, the discoverer of Vinland, was born on Iceland, but the Icelandic textbooks seem to forget to mention that his father, Erik the Red, who discovered Greenland, was born in Norway’ (Koht, Boyesen and Vigander 1937: 140). However, in line with the idea of the permanency of their own nation in contrast to the modern and somewhat invented nations of others, Guðmundsson questioned the idea of a Norwegian nation during the Viking Age: ‘It is hard to draw the line between Norwegian, Danish and Swedish in the Viking Age, and certainly there was no sense of being Norwegian’. But, at the same time, he had no problem with making a different claim about Icelanders: ‘From 930 onwards, Icelanders had their own legislations and jurisdiction. … It is thereby perfectly clear that Icelanders never felt like a branch of the Norwegian people’ (Guðmundsson 1937: 104 [emphasis added]). To complicate matters, both Halvdan Koht of the Norwegian commission and Aage Friis of the Danish commission were engaged in a conflict over Greenland that had been dividing Norwegian and Danish opinion. This conflict was part of a larger conflict over the historical relationship between Norway and Denmark regarding basically all matters that allegedly prevented the ‘new’ Norway from being seamlessly bonded to the Norwegian kingdom of the Middle Ages (Svendsen 2013: 174–76). Koht was a moderate nationalist in that he did not want to follow the line of

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argument that had been forwarded with regards to what Norway was supposedly entitled to concerning Greenland. Friis could relate to this standpoint; he had been one of the moderate voices in the Danish discussions about Southern Jutland (Sønder-Jylland) (Svendsen 2013: 179). But even though both Friis and Koht could be considered moderate nationalists in the internal irredentist debates, they still took the nationalist stand when they were part of inter-Nordic negotiations, not only on matters of Greenland but also with respect to the Norden Associations’ overall efforts. The issue of the relationship between the Norwegian and Icelandic nations was not resolved during the forty years of continuous efforts at textbook revision. The writing and publication of a book on the Icelandic issue, as part of the book series Disputed Questions in Nordic History (Omstridda spörsmål i Nordens historia), was delayed several times. One of the articles – with a ‘Danish perspective’ – was supposed to be written in the 1930s by Professor Erik Arup (1876–1951), but (probably) due to the controversy between Arup and the chairman of the Danish commission, Aage Friis, following the controversial process by which Friis’s successor as professor at the University of Copenhagen was to be appointed in 1936 (see, e.g., Nielsen 2000: 313–14; Elmersjö 2013: 121), Arup never wrote the article. In the 1950s, the Norwegian scholar on the Icelandic language, Hallvard Magerøy (1916–1994), wrote an article that was supposed to be part of this book. After several failed attempts to invite other authors to present the ‘Icelandic’ and ‘Danish’ viewpoints, it was ultimately decided that the Norwegian article by Magerøy would be published as a separate monograph after being reviewed by Danish (Knud Kretzschmer, 1895–1967) and Icelandic (Þórhallur Vilmundarson, 1924–2013) scholars (see Vigander’s foreword and Magerøy’s foreword in Magerøy 1965). Magerøy’s book, entitled Norwegian-Icelandic Issues (Norsk-islandske problem), was an attempt at answering a question first asked thirty years earlier: was Iceland a ‘real’ nation, or was it a part of the Norwegian nation? However, given the changes within Nordic historical cultures, by 1965 the question itself was asked in terms of the geographical origin of the people who settled on Iceland without addressing the actual issue of nationhood. It is evident from this book that the question itself was, if not problematic, at least something that should be problematized. Magerøy tried to navigate this question in a scientific environment that had quite different connotations attached to ethnicity, race and nation in relation to how such concepts had been viewed in the 1930s. Therefore, it is difficult to see that Magerøy actually answered the question that he was supposed to answer; instead, he answered a question that was more in line with what would have been seen as a valid scientific question in the 1960s: where did the people who settled on Iceland come from geographically? The answer was not at all



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straightforward. His findings pointed to three basic facts: (1) most of the original settlers of Iceland came from what is now Norway; (2) there is not much support for a large number of people coming from what is now Sweden or Denmark; and (3) there are some genetic similarities between contemporary Icelanders and Celts, which suggests a partial genetic heritage that is not from Scandinavia (Magerøy 1965: 77). For Magerøy, it was not possible to know anything else, and perhaps he was not willing to acknowledge the validity of asking more far-reaching questions related to nationhood. Nation meant something else for him than it had meant for Barði Guðmundsson in the 1930s. Though the discussion had taken a turn away from the political dimension of historical culture, it was still based on political problems articulated in the 1930s. Arguably, the political and cognitive dimensions of the various historical cultures were immensely compressed during the discussions in the 1930s, but these dimensions became more separated in the 1960s, at least in Magerøy’s text. A few years later, in 1972, the Commissions of Experts published a booklet for history textbook authors that reversed the process of revision; instead of reviewing already written, and sometimes even published, textbooks, the commissions wrote instructions for authors of new textbooks on how to deal with the Nordic countries’ histories. Each commission wrote about how it wanted its own particular nation to be depicted in the textbooks. The Norwegian commission wrote that it must be made clear that Norwegians settled Iceland, and that it would also prefer that other Norwegian settlements, like Scotland, Ireland, Greenland and Vinland, be mentioned (Skovgaard-Petersen 1972: 34–35). In the same booklet, the Icelandic commission wrote that the settlements on Greenland must be considered Icelandic ventures, as well as the discovery of Vinland by Icelandic native Leif Erikson (Skovgaard-Petersen 1972: 30–31). After forty years of discussion, no change had been made in the conceptions of Norwegian and Icelandic nationhood and their respective national achievements. The book by Magerøy seems to have been avoided, or at least it did not prove helpful, in the fundamentally political debate. For similar reasons, an analogous dispute surfaced between the Swedish and Finnish commissions. During the revision efforts of the 1930s, it became evident that the history of Finland as a part of the Swedish realm was written in different ways in Finland and Sweden (Cederberg et al. 1937: 73–80; cf. Herlitz et al. 1937). In Finland, A.R. Cederberg had been recruited to the commission and made chairman in 1933. He and Jalmari Jaakkola (1885–1964) both wrote articles dealing with Finland’s history within the Swedish realm in 1937, and the articles were sent to the Swedish commission in 1938. The articles ended up in the higher seminar of the Department of History at Stockholm University College (Stockholms

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högskola), and a response was written by Nils Ahnlund and some of his colleagues. This response was very critical of how the Finnish nation was perceived in Cederberg’s and Jaakkola’s articles. Resembling the Icelandic– Norwegian debate, this dispute also focused on how people who had lived in what was now Finland regarded themselves between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries when the geographical area that made up the independent country of Finland in the 1930s had been an integral part of the Swedish realm. The differences between the historiographical environments in Sweden and Finland might also explain part of the problems in this discussion. The cultural radicalism and source-critical positivism that had made its way into Danish, Norwegian and Swedish historiography was perhaps not as distinguished in Finland at the time (Mishkova, Stråth and Trencsényi 2013: 271–72, 281; Meinander 2000: 220, 222; Ahtiainen and Tervonen 2000: 62, 64; Aronsson et al. 2008: 272). Even if the Swedish historians debating the issue on behalf of the Norden Associations were not the most eager supporters of this cultural radicalism, they were clearly more influenced by it than were the Finnish historians, at least when it came to Finnish history. Ahnlund consistently described the ‘nations’ of the Middle Ages and the early modern period as somewhat hazy and dubious, but he was evidently not opposed to describing the people of Sweden as part of a nation with a national consciousness as early as the fifteenth century (Ahnlund 1943: 251). He still had problems, however, accepting the veracity of a similar Finnish concept, and he used universal arguments about the nature of nations in general to get his point across. For one thing, he wrote (in a paper that was never published) that there was nothing that could be found that corroborated the argument that there was any Finnish national consciousness before the end of the eighteenth century and that this had to do with how states in the early modern period were organized and where the subjects’ loyalty came – not from nationality, but from a general feeling of reliability and devotion to the divine right of authority in general and the monarch in particular.4 This was, of course, far from the ideas put forward in the Finnish articles. Jaakkola maintained that long before the Swedes had arrived, there had been Finnish ties to the Catholic Church and that these ties constituted the embryo not only of a Finnish nation but also of a Finnish state (Jaakkola 1950: 25–34).5 Turning scholarly differences into national differences The Danish archivist Henry Bruun (1903–1970) wrote an article about the Nordic unions in the fifteenth century for the first volume of Disputed Questions in Nordic History, published in 1940, and this article was considered a success because the commentators, Gottfrid Carlsson (1887–1964) and



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Sverre Steen, basically agreed with Bruun’s conclusions (Bruun, Carlsson and Steen 1940). The article was mainly a review of the research available at the time, but Bruun found ways to portray the differences of opinion in the scholarly community along national lines, even though it would have been possible, and perhaps more accurate, to describe these differences in historiographical terms by relating them not to different nations but to different conceptions of history and historical methodology. However, the article made an effort to maintain two national conceptions of history, one Danish and one Swedish, even if Bruun also stated that the two extreme positions fell along a scale drawn up to describe the differences being promoted by the two Swedish professors of history at Lund University at the time: Gottfrid Carlsson and Lauritz Weibull (1873–1960) (Bruun, Carlsson and Steen 1940: 54–73). Weibull’s position ultimately became part of the Danish position, with Weibull himself being the most ‘Danish’ of all the scholars in this camp. At the same time, this was an ambiguous train of thought; the article also mentioned that the discussion was not national because not all historians on the ‘Danish’ side were Danes. It seems to have been impossible for the historians involved to see that the concept of nation could be discussed along lines other than merely national ones. The debate between Norwegian and Swedish scholars about the Norwegian–Swedish union (1814–1905) also had similar traits. This was the question from which the entire operation of revising textbooks had derived. It has also been stated that the union, and especially the dissolution of it in 1905, had – and still has – a larger significance in Norwegian historical culture in comparison to Swedish historical culture. While not constituting a living memory in Swedish history, the abandonment of the union might be one of the more important events for Norwegians in terms of understanding the history of the Norwegian nation (cf. Björk 2002; Eriksen 2005). The Swedish historian Sigfrid Andgren (1892–1978) and the Norwegian historian Arne Bergsgård wrote a lengthy article about the union and tried to unravel the discrepancies between ‘Norwegian’ and ‘Swedish’ versions of it by commenting on earlier research (Andgren and Bergsgård 1950). A tacit ‘Swedish’ narrative was apparent in both the text by Andgren and Bergsgård and in the discussions on the Swedish–Norwegian union after the Second World War. This narrative involved the paternal intentions of the Swedish state in relation to the unruly youngster, the Norwegian state. In this narrative, the Norwegian ‘child’ was released (i.e. allowed to become independent) when she was ready to stand on her own two feet (see Elmersjö 2013: 219–30). Much of Andgren and Bergsgård’s article followed a distinct ‘Norwegian’ narrative in relation to this distinct ‘Swedish’ narrative. The outcome of the text was the realization that there should be two different versions of the

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history of the union, but that each of these versions should acknowledge the existence of the other. Even if differences within the historical profession in each nation were mentioned, they were not elaborated upon (Andgren and Bergsgård 1950: 140). On the contrary, Sverre Steen’s notion of the Norwegian nation, which claimed a later advent of the Norwegian national consciousness, and therefore perhaps had a starting point more in line with the ‘Swedish’ narrative, was not mentioned. The national lines were upheld through the successful omission of research that did not follow the national line of argument. In some cases, the scholarly differences were pointed out as such. This was the case, for example, in the discussions regarding an article about the wars between the Nordic countries in the early modern period, especially in the seventeenth century. Already during the revision process for the textbooks in the 1930s, the Danish commission had pointed out that the Swedish textbooks relied heavily upon geopolitical interpretations of the actions of the Swedish state. When the Swedish military historian Olof Ribbing (1887–1964) wrote an article for the second volume of Disputed Questions in Nordic History, it was initially put on hold because of disputes regarding what was considered a problematic reliance upon geopolitical explanations, especially because this was considered apologetic with regard to actions by the Swedish state (Ribbing 1950). The first draft of the article met with harsh criticism, and Halvdan Koht, representing the Norwegian commission, condemned it in 1948 for not taking Swedish aggression seriously when it basically blamed all Nordic wars on the Danish state’s encirclement of Sweden (see Elmersjö 2013: 241–42 and the sources cited there). The Danish critique had a similar view and was not entirely focused on the article itself, but rather saw it as an ideal representative of Swedish research on the matter. C.O. Bøggild-Andersen’s review of the first draft clearly stated that the problem was more or less based on a Swedish fondness for geopolitical interpretations. However, he stated that Danish historians had also utilized this concept, which was just as bad, and that newer Swedish research on the matter of war in early modern times (Sven Ulric Palme and Ingvar Andersson’s work on Danish–Swedish relations) was better, but still not good enough (Palme 1942; Andersson 1943; Elmersjö 2013: 240–42, 397–98, n. 348).6 A static framing? The stagnation of the textbook revision process, especially during the 1960s, is unmistakable; the questions that were raised and debated during the very first mutual revision in the mid 1930s had set the tone for the entire revision process. The work was framed with respect to questions and disputes that were established in the 1930s, and the work never managed to follow the



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historiographical currents that followed after the Second World War. There was no way of taking the discussion beyond the very borders that were the centre of attention and that were the revision’s raison d’être in the first place. The stagnation and preoccupation with what was considered problematic in the 1930s is most clear based on an example from the concluding stages of the revision. In 1970, when the Norden Associations were putting together a fourth volume of the series Disputed Questions in Nordic History (ultimately published in 1973) (Norden Association 1973), they contacted Henry Bruun, the main author of the chapter on the Kalmar Union written in the 1930s and originally published in 1940, to ask if his paper could be published again ‘without any major revision’. He responded negatively: ‘My paper, written a generation ago, is so thoroughly outdated that neither the Norden Associations, nor myself, can have any use for it’ (see Elmersjö 2013: 129 and the sources cited there). Henry Bruun died later that year and his article was published again anyway. This stagnation of the historical debates might also be associated with a general trend among the commissions to engage fewer academic historians and more teachers and teacher trainers. The revision process became more of a pedagogical endeavour bound up with the expansion of upper secondary schools, the establishment of teacher colleges and the specialization of both teaching and historical research (see, e.g., Samuelsson 2008). The academic historians who were engaged were most often students of the older members of the national commissions, and this way of pumping ‘not so new’ blood into the commissions did not facilitate change. The fact that the Norden Associations had a very specific goal, that of revising history textbooks – to further the cause of affinity and cooperation between the Nordic nations – meant that history, especially historical scholarship, was a means and not the end. When the subject of history was questioned as a suitable subject for the fostering of democratic citizens, it also lost a lot of its merit in schools.7 The Norden Associations followed suit, and in the 1970s they started investigating textbooks in social science instead (Elmersjö 2013: 132, 374).

Conclusions The way in which the Norden Associations’ textbook revision process was organized made it difficult to address any issue of Nordic historiography from a vantage point beyond the conception of national history. Methodological nationalism permeated the project from the very beginning. But that is only part of the explanation as to why the revision process did not end in a new

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Nordic view on history. Another part of the explanation most likely has to do with the historians themselves. Some of the historians who were engaged in the Norden Associations’ history textbook revision process were eager to incorporate perspectives other than the narrowly national historical perspectives. However, it is also quite obvious that many other historians engaged with the project were quite eager to defend what they considered the natural primacy of national perspectives. And, more importantly, the Norden Associations’ textbook revision process showcased how methodological nationalism can take what might seem like a transnational effort and make it entirely about the nation, both by organizing the revision process with the help of nationalistic historians and by focusing primarily on the national aspects of the narratives. The national features of the disputes were sought out, leading to other parameters and discrepancies being missed, even when the disputes were supposed to be disputes between different perspectives. Particular national perspectives were therefore upheld, and articulated, even by historians who allegedly had an international agenda in their own professional careers. Would it have been possible to organize the revision process in any other way? And would that have made a difference? These questions are impossible to answer. Theoretically, the revision process could have been organized via an inter-Nordic committee that actually revised textbooks together, without ever forming national sub-committees, but would even that have made a difference? Methodological nationalism was not only built into the way in which the revision process was organized, it was embedded in the historians themselves, their training, their research and their knowledge of history. The negotiation of history for Nordic youth was in almost all possible ways imbued with national thought, national education systems, national historians, national subject matter and a national way of incorporating these biases into a national narrative and into the national cultural memory. It was also a political project to begin with, and the questions it sought to answer were in most cases political questions and not questions that emanated from the cognitive, truth-claiming dimension of historical culture, if such questions even exist. How can the Norden Associations’ history textbook revision process be understood, then, in terms of methodological nationalism, negotiation and historical culture? It can be considered an effort to go beyond the nation by presenting alternative national perspectives besides the singular national perspective and by actually engaging historians from other nations to criticize and ultimately ‘approve’ each other’s historical narratives. However, the revision process might also be considered a display of nationalist thinking at its peak. The national primacy could not be questioned, but different national conceptions could be held against each other in order to



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contextualize them. This could facilitate an understanding of how historical cultures are dependent on the very cultural context they are supposed to explain, and how the questions that are asked within a specific historical culture derive from the cultural needs of the historical culture itself. In this respect, the textbook revision process undertaken by the Norden Associations was ahead of its time. If the discussions among historians involved in the Norden Associations’ textbook revision process are considered to be national endeavours with the goal of ensuring that the national histories of each nation could be accepted by people from the other Nordic nations, then the discussions themselves can be considered successful. Even if many textbook authors did not follow their recommendations (as they were themselves part of an internal negotiation process over the contents of history education), the discussions themselves were successful in establishing what the problems were, what the different conceptions of the common history of the Nordic regions were and what these conceptions brought to the national sense-making of history. Furthermore, the Norden Associations were in some cases able to identify how much meaning was attached to different sense-making stories and how negotiable they were. Basically, the textbook revision process was a successful international effort because it facilitated discussion about national histories between different national contexts. If there was a serious idea of creating a more Nordic narrative, a narrative that could present the Nordic region as an entity held together by shared history as well as by present-day affinities beyond those of the individual nations – and some ideas in this direction were put forward – then the revision process must be considered a failure. Even if the national histories in the textbooks for schoolchildren and youth changed significantly during the period in which the Norden Associations revised the textbooks, there is nothing that really indicates that this change was mainly due to their specific efforts. It is also important to note that these were still national histories because it was utterly impossible to reach an agreement on what an alleged Nordic history would consist of. There was no neutral subject matter to build upon; it was all spoken for by at least one nation. And even if such subject matter had existed, there was no neutral vantage point from which to evaluate it as a Nordic subject matter. Instead, the Nordic perspective effectively strengthened the notion of history as a national subject in the end. In short, as a supranational project of history, it was a failure. Henrik Åström Elmersjö, Ph.D., is a researcher in the Department of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. He studies issues regarding educational history as well as historical culture. He is a member of the editorial team of the Nordic Journal of

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Educational History. His recent publications in the field include ‘Negotiating the Nation in History: The Swedish Approval Scheme for Textbooks and Teaching Aids between 1945 and 1983’, in the Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society (2016), and ‘Establishing an Ideologically Coherent History: Swedish Social-Democratic Historical Culture, 1881–1900’, in the Scandinavian Journal of History (2017).

Notes 1.  This chapter is based on findings published in my dissertation (Elmersjö 2013). 2.  For an elaboration on the organizational features of the revision, see Elmersjö 2015. 3.  Consider sources in Elmersjö 2013: 96–113. 4. The manuscript can be found in the Swedish Norden Association’s archive; see Elmersjö 2013: 160–62. 5. The article published in 1950 was identical to the paper presented in 1937; see Elmersjö 2013: 160–62. 6. For a discussion of Swedish geopolitical concepts, see also Mishkova, Stråth and Trencsényi 2013: 270–71. 7.  For the Swedish context, see Englund 1986; Zander 1997; Larsson 2001.

Bibliography Ahnlund, N. 1943. Svenskt och nordiskt från skilda tider. Stockholm: Norstedts. Ahtiainen, P., and J. Tervonen. 2000. ‘A Journey into Finnish Historiography from the End of the 19th Century to the Present Day’, in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 50–79. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Community: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Andersson, H. 1979. Kampen om det förflutna: Studier i historieundervisningens målfrågor i Finland 1843–1917. Turku: Åbo Akademi. Andersson, I. 1943. Sveriges historia. Stockholm: Natur & kultur. Andersson, J.A. 1994. Nordiskt samarbete: Aktörer, idéer och organisering 1919–1953. Lund: Lund University. Andgren, S., and A. Bergsgård. 1950. ‘Den svensk-norska unionen 1814–1905’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Omstridda spörsmål i Nordens historia II. [No location]: Föreningen Norden, pp. 125–220. Apple, M.W. 2000. Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Aronsson, P., et al. 2008. ‘Nordic National Histories’, in S. Berger and C. Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion, and Gender in National Histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 256–82. Bagge, P., and S. Steen. 1940. ‘Den dansk-norske forbindelse 1536–1814’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Omstridda spörsmål i Nordens historia I. [No location]: Föreningen Norden, pp. 115–34. Björk, R. 2002. ‘Det karga landskapet: Svensk historisk forskning om unionsupplösningen 1905’, Historie 2002(2): 32–71.



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Bruun, H., G. Carlsson and S. Steen. 1940. ‘De Nordiske Unioner 1380–1523’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Omstridda spörsmål i Nordens historia I. [No location]: Föreningen Norden, pp. 31–75. Carlgren, W. (ed.). 1928. Report on Nationalism in History Textbooks. Stockholm: Magn. Bergvall bokförlag. Carlgren, W., et al. (eds). 1937. Nordens läroböcker i historia: Ömsesidig granskning verkställd av föreningarna Nordens historiska facknämnder. Helsinki: Föreningarna Norden. Caruso, M. 2014. ‘Within, Between, Above, and Beyond: (Pre)positions for a History of the Internationalisation of Educational Practices and Knowledge’, Paedagogica Historica 50(1–2): 10–26. Cederberg, A.R., et al. 1937. ‘Promemoria av den finska facknämnden för granskning av svenska, norska och danska läroböcker’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Nordens läroböcker i historia: Ömsesidig granskning verkställd av föreningarna Nordens historiska facknämnder. Helsinki: Föreningarna Norden, pp. 67–83. Dahl, O. [1959] 1990. Norsk historieforskning i det 19. og 20. århundre. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Elmersjö, H.Å. 2013. Norden, nationen och historien: Perspektiv på föreningarna Nordens historieläroboksrevsision 1919–1972. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Elmersjö, H.Å. 2015. ‘The Norden Associations and International Efforts to Change History Education, 1919–1970: International Organisations, Education, and Hegemonic Nationalism’, Paedagogica Historica 51(6): 727–43. Englund, T. 1986. Curriculum as a Political Problem: Changing Educational Conceptions, with Special Reference to Citizenship Education. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Engman, M. 1994. ‘Är Finland ett nordiskt land?’, Den jyske Historiker 69–70: 62–78. Eriksen, A. 2005. ‘Den nationella hågkomsten: Minnen från 1905’, in T. Nilsson and Ø. Sørensen (eds), 1905 – unionsupplösningens år. Stockholm: Carlssons, pp. 31–56. Guðmundsson, B. 1937. ‘Det islandske fagnevns betænkning ang. de ikke-islandske læreböker’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Nordens läroböcker i historia: Ömsesidig granskning verkställd av föreningarna Nordens historiska facknämnder. Helsinki: Föreningarna Norden, pp. 103–12. Herlitz, N., et al. 1937. ‘Till Finlands facknämnd för granskning av historiska läroböcker’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Nordens läroböcker i historia: Ömsesidig granskning verkställd av föreningarna Nordens historiska facknämnder. Helsinki: Föreningarna Norden, pp. 220–30. International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC). 1933. School Text-Book Revision and International Understanding. Paris: League of Nations. Jaakkola, J. 1950. ‘Till frågan om Sverige och Finland under Medeltiden’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Omstridda spörsmål i Nordens historia II. [No location]: Föreningen Norden, pp. 23–36. Janfelt, M. 2005. Att leva i den bästa av världar: Föreningarna Nordens syn på Norden 1919–1933. Stockholm: Carlssons bokförlag. Koht, H., E. Boyesen and H. Vigander. 1937. ‘Merkander til kritikken mot dei norske lærebøkene av den islandske fagnemnda’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Nordens läroböcker i historia: Ömsesidig granskning verkställd av föreningarna Nordens historiska facknämnder. Helsinki: Föreningarna Norden, pp. 139–41. Korostelina, K.V., and S. Lässig (eds). 2013. History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Reconsidering Joint Textbook Projects. New York: Routledge. Larsson, H.-A. 2001. Barnet kastades ut med badvattnet: Historien om hur skolans historieundervisning närmast blev historia. Bromma: Aktuellt om historia. Lauwerys, J.A. 1953. History Textbooks and International Understanding. Paris: UNESCO. Lorentzen, S. 2005. Ja vi elsker… Skolebøkene som nasjonsbyggere 1814–2000. Oslo: Abstrakt forlag. Magerøy, H. 1965. Norsk-islandske problem: Omstridde spørsmål i Nordens historie III. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

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Martins, H. 1974. ‘Time and Theory in Sociology’, in J. Rex (ed.), Approaches to Sociology: An Introduction to Major Trends in British Sociology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 246–94. Meinander, H. 2000. ‘Sharp Trends, Soft Turnings: Remarks on Finnish Historical Research in the Twentieth Century’, in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 216–39. Mishkova, D., B. Stråth and B. Trencsényi. 2013. ‘Regional History as a “Challenge” to National Frameworks of Historiography: The Case of Central, Southeast, and Northern Europe’, in M. Middell and L. Roura (eds), Transnational Challenges to National History Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 257–342. Møller, J. 1983. Historieundervisning i gymnasiet gennem de sidste 100 år. Copenhagen: Gads forlag. Myhre, J.E. 2012. ‘Wider Connections: International Networks among European Historians’, in I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 266–87. Nielsen, C.T. 2000. ‘Between Art and Scholarship: Danish Scholarly and Popular History in the 19th and 20th Centuries’, in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 306–30. Nilsson, I. 2015. Nationalism i fredens tjänst: Svenska skolornas fredsförening, fredsfostran och historieundervisning. Umeå: Umeå universitet. Norden Association. 1922. ‘Det nordiske samarbeide og historieundervisningen: Meddelelse fra foreningen Norden’, Den høiere skole 1922(8): 307–16. Norden Association. 1973. Omstridte spørsmål i Nordens historie 4. [No location]: Föreningarna Nordens Förbund. Nygren, T. 2011. History in the Service of Mankind: International Guidelines and History Education in Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden 1927–2002. Umeå: Umeå University. Paasche, F. 1922. ‘Tendens og syn i kongesagen’, Edda: Nordisk tidsskrift for litteraturforskning 1922(17). Palme, S.U. 1942. Sverige och Danmark 1596–1611. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Pingel, F. 2008. ‘Can Truth Be Negotiated? History Textbook Revision as a Means to Reconciliation’, Annals of the American Society of Political and Social Sciences 617(1): 181–98. Refsdal, I.A. 1919. ‘Hvad svenske studenter skal vite om 1814 og 1905’, Den høiere skole 1919(8): 210–11. Rian, Ø. 1995. ‘Norway in Union with Denmark’, in W. Hubbard et al. (eds), Making a Historical Culture: Historiography in Norway. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 132–55. Ribbing, O. 1950. ‘De nordiska rikenas inbördes militära konflikter under tiden 1521–1814 I nutida framställningar’, in W. Carlgren et al. (eds), Omstridda spörsmål i Nordens historia II. [No location]: Föreningen Norden, pp. 7–22. Rüsen, J. 2005. History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation. New York: Berghahn Books. Samuelsson, J. 2008. ‘Ämnesprofessionalitet under omförhandling: Exemplet historielärarna kring 1940–1965’, Didaktikens forum 5(3): 59–71. Siegel, M. 2004. The Moral Disarmament of France: Education, Pacifism, and Patriotism, 1914– 1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simensen, J. 2000. ‘National and Transnational History: The National Determinant in Norwegian Historiography’, in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 90–112. Skovgaard-Petersen, V. (ed.). 1972. Nordens historie i skolen: Synspunkter og forslag til undervisningen i de andre nordiske landes historie. [No location]: Föreningarna Nordens Förbund. Sørensen, Ø., and B. Stråth (eds). 1997. The Cultural Construction of Norden. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.



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Loneliness Being a woman in the Nordic community of historians Mervi Kaarninen

Introduction From the 1980s onwards, many studies have shown that gender has been fundamental to the social construction of the historical profession, more so than in other related fields. In the nineteenth century, the professionalization of history marginalized women as amateur historians because it was rare for women to have university degrees. However, women had been accepted into universities by the first decades of the twentieth century in most European countries. Although women began to earn academic degrees, they faced severe obstacles and prejudice in the academic world and rarely obtained permanent posts as professors (Porciani and O’Dowd 2004: 3–5; Smith 2000). Mary O’Dowd and Ilaria Porciani collected data for the Atlas of European Historiography (2010) (Porciani and Raphael 2010), analysing the career development of female historians in European universities as part of the project. Their data confirm the masculine nature of the professional community. Prior to 1980, the presence of female faculty members in history departments at European universities was the exception rather than the norm, and many departments and research institutes did not employ academic women. Women who were appointed to academic positions often endured poorer employment conditions than their male colleagues, particularly in terms of wages and promotion prospects. Some Notes for this section begin on page 280.



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university campuses retained male-only spaces, such as dining rooms and staff residences, until at least the late 1970s (O’Dowd 2012: 351–55; see also Berg 1996; Watts 2007). It took several decades for female historians to gain access in significant numbers to full-time academic posts in the discipline of history. The career development of female historians in Europe reveals the exclusion and male dominance of the professional community of historians. My intention in this chapter is to explain the career development of Nordic female historians. I shall concentrate on analysing the gender structure of the historical profession in Nordic universities and in the other academic communities of Nordic historians from the late nineteenth century up until the 1960s. My objective is to discover the particular internal and external factors in the Nordic academic community of historians that have defined the position and career development of female historians.1 The main question is whether history as an academic discipline possesses a special characteristic that has led to the marginalization or exclusion of female historians. By internal factors, I refer to the mainstream of research at a given time, differences in the concept of history, networks within the community of historians as well as teaching methods and practices. I analyse the career development and studies of female historians via national, international and transnational concepts. The external factors are as follows: the legislation that restricted the career development of women in universities and in society in general; the attitude of the leading professors towards female students, supervisors and mentors; the political climate and atmosphere; and wartime and family relationships. I have adopted a comparative position in my text wherein I have searched for similarities and differences between the Nordic countries as well as between Nordic and European universities and academic communities. In the field of history, as in other disciplines and at universities and scientific associations, the most important journals are governed by scientific associations and congresses, both of which comprise central institutions through which the profession is built and defined.2 In this chapter, I study how visible or invisible female historians have been in these forums and the kinds of connections this facilitated in their career development (Myhre 2000). I have taken a biographical approach, using collected biographical data to analyse the lives, experiences and careers of Nordic female historians. This work is based on a study of two generations of Nordic female historians. In the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland), eight women had defended their doctoral theses in the discipline of history by the year 1909. I have defined the first generation of female historians as those women who began their university studies during the late nineteenth century. The first Scandinavian woman to obtain a doctoral degree in history was Ellen Fries, a Swede, in 1883. The youngest woman in this

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1900

1898

1896

1893

1883

Disputation

Source: Odén 1980; Kaarninen and Kinnunen 2004; Ohlander 1992; Cederschiöld 1915: 35–40.

Year of birth

Name

Table 10.1. Female doctors in history: Sweden, Denmark and Finland, 1883–1909

carpenter

chaplain

entrepreneur

procurator

vicar

civil servant

procurator

colonel

Father’s status

historian, librarian

attaché

teacher

professor, writer

teacher, writer

journalist, actuary, MP

archivist

teacher, historian

Occupation, career

258 Mervi Kaarninen



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group, Liisi Karttunen, a Finn, defended her thesis in November 1908 and her doctoral thesis was accepted in 1909. Ellen Jørgensen, a Dane, earned the title of D.Phil. in the same year as Liisi Karttunen. I have used the concept of ‘first generation’ even though the oldest and youngest women in this group had an age difference of approximately twenty years. I have assumed, however, that as female students they had similar kinds of experiences at university in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the field of history, all professors and most of the students were men, and the students’ organizations were male-dominated. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, female students were bound to strict middle class moral norms. Typical student life and culture were forbidden to female students. Loneliness was a common experience that defined the years that female students spent at university (Cederschiöld 1915: 35–40). The first women to obtain doctorates in history came from middle class and upper middle class families. Only one female receiving a doctorate had a working class background. It is impossible to draw any final conclusions as to what kind of significance family and parents had on the university studies and career development of these particular women. A daughter at the academy needed money, and thus the family had to be wealthy and grasp the importance of girls’ education. Female scholars who defended their theses and made their careers during the 1920s and 1930s belonged to the second generation of female historians. I shall conduct a deeper analysis with respect to a Dane, Astrid Friis (1893–1966), a Finn, Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg (1909–2003), and a Norwegian, Ingrid Semmingsen (1910–1995), who all belonged to this second generation. These three women represent the first generation of Nordic female professors in the field of history.

Women in the room of men A university was for the most part a community of men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There were no female academic instructors in the Scandinavian universities who could act as supervisors for younger women and who could embody female intellectualism. The situation was different in the United States and the United Kingdom, where professionally educated female historians found work at women’s colleges. Women’s colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, for instance, hired female historians (Smith 2000: 188; see also Palmieri 1995; Berg 1996: 27–38). In 1928, forty women were employed in academic posts in London and the Oxbridge colleges (O’Dowd 2012: 352). In Sweden, women gained the

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right to take part in the matriculation exam in 1870 and the right to study at university three years later. When Ellen Fries took her matriculation exam in 1874, she was among the first women to do so. The number of female students was low when Ellen Fries began her studies in 1877. During the years 1870 to 1879, twelve young women began their studies at Uppsala University. By the time Lydia Wahlström began her studies there in 1888, the number of female students had increased noticeably (Strömholm 1992). In Finland, the first woman took part in a matriculation exam in 1870. Women became interested in university studies more generally after the mid 1880s. By 1895, about 15 per cent of new university students were women, and five years later the proportion of women had increased to 20 per cent. Until 1901, women had to apply for special permission3 from the vice chancellor of a university to gain the right to take part in the matriculation exam and university studies. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the additional permission request had become a formality, and in 1901 women obtained the same rights to university studies as men. The first generation of Finnish female students came from Swedish-speaking, urban, upper middle class and middle class families. Female students had their own association, De Kvinnliga. Due to the fact that female students were not allowed to participate in the meetings and parties organized by the students’ associations, women had to create their own. For instance, in Uppsala Lydia Wahlström was active in organizing the association of female students and acted as its first chair. Ellen Fries has analysed how she felt both in the lecture halls and in the students’ organizations. She wrote in her diary in 1878: ‘… but I feel lonely, however, like a sheep among goats, like a duck among geese’.(Cederschiöld 1915: 39) The loneliness of Ellen Fries symbolizes all those contradictions that female students encountered at the university. She wrote that the most difficult task at Uppsala was to find professors and docents for a discussion in places that were appropriate for a young woman. She felt that she was too proper a woman to live in Uppsala.The female students had difficulties in organizing appointments with their professors and supervisors. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a professor did not have offices at the university. Office hours did not belong to the study culture. For male students, it was self-evident that they could meet their supervisors at restaurants, at bars in town as well as at the student organization bars. Gender caused different kinds of difficulties and restrictions for female students in an organization that was designed for men. Alma Söderhjelm has described her feelings after her matriculation exam. She was disappointed because she understood that the solidarity that she had had with men before the exam had disappeared. Academic life and the student community were different for male and female students: ‘… I



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was only a girl, a family girl with a formal upbringing. It was out of the question for me to participate in student parties with boys drinking alcohol, singing student songs and becoming drunk. … I understood that I had chosen a path which would be very lonely’ (Söderhjelm 1929: 372–74). Ellen Fries was the first woman to participate in the meetings of the Uppsala Historical Society. As a doctoral student, she was invited to these seminars. At first, she was afraid to discuss and comment on the presentations when all the other participants were men. She experienced the speciality of history as an academic discipline and wondered why it was much easier for female students in mathematics to participate in the meetings of the Mathematical Society (Cederschiöld 1915: 39).

Supervisors and mentors Models and mentors were of special importance for women, who were newcomers to the academic milieu. Professors who appreciated and understood female students were highly necessary for female researchers. A family member might have acted as a supporter and a mentor at an earlier stage of development, as was the case for Ellen Fries, whose first important supporter was her father. Ellen Fries was an only child. Her father was a colonel and secretary of the Academy of Military Sciences who was very interested in history and passed on his interest to his daughter. Fries’ father encouraged his daughter’s studies in Uppsala, but at the same time set great challenges for her. He even controlled her studies, her research work and her leisure activities. He gave advice on what kinds of lectures and lecturers she should listen to. A conflict even broke out between Ellen Fries and her father when he forbade her to participate in seminars given by one specific docent. Ellen Fries’ father’s interpretation was that those seminars were not respectable for a female student (Cederschiöld 1915: 39; see also Ohlander 1992). Alma Söderhjelm, a Finn, has described how much the support of her brother, Professor Werner Söderhjelm, meant during different stages of her career. When Alma began her studies at the University of Helsinki, her brother was a docent and soon gained tenure as a professor. Her brother gave her important advice when she was a student and a postgraduate student. Alma’s sister, Sanny Söderhjelm, also studied at the university. Alma Söderhjelm had an additional supervisor as well. It was very important for her that the professor of general history, J.R. Danielson-Kalmari, was interested in her studies and provided support for her. Alma Söderhjelm writes in her memoirs that Professor Danielson-Kalmari was an inspiring and intelligent person. She said of him that ‘Danielson-Kalmari became my

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special professor’ (‘Danielson-Kalmari var det som blev min specielle professor’; Söderhjelm 1930: 226). The role of her supervisor was especially important for Danish student Anna Hude. Her private life had been full of drama caused by love affairs. She defended her thesis in 1893 and was the first Danish woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree (Hude 1893). When Anna Hude began her studies, Kristian Erslev was a young professor. Erslev’s influence on the Danish academic community of historians was significant. He modernized traditional teaching and research methods in history and took to using German seminar practices. Anna Hude was Erslev’s research assistant and worked as an editor on Erslev’s large publication projects. Hude was Erslev’s first student to receive a doctoral degree (Manniche 1994).4 Harald Hjärne was Lydia Wahlström’s supervisor, and he had several female students. Lydia Wahlström admired Hjärne and felt that his lectures and seminars were extremely inspiring. Hjärne had revised teaching methods and organized a seminar where the idea was to teach the principles of scientific work to young researchers. Another forum for showcasing Hjärne’s new methods was the Historical Society of Uppsala. He invited his doctoral students to join the society and gave lectures there. The atmosphere had changed within the Historical Society and female participants were not as rare as in Ellen Fries’ time. Lydia Wahlström enjoyed these meetings, and on one occasion she even introduced Anna Hude’s doctoral thesis to the other members (Wahlström 1949: 104). She described her relationship with Hjärne in the following words: ‘In my novel Her Father’s Daughter, I included all my sentiments about my father-daughter relationship with Hjärne, because my father was the man who was the closest to me’ (Wahlström 1949: 123).5 A close relationship between a supervisor and a female scholar could end in catastrophe. The young Finnish MA student Liisi Karttunen wrote her thesis abroad in Rome, working there as a researcher between 1907 and 1919. Together with her supervisor and lover, Henry Biaudet, she tried to locate new source material in the Vatican Archives. Biaudet and Karttunen studied the early modern diplomatic history of the Catholic Church. Their objective was to challenge the prevailing Protestant interpretation of the Swedish Counter-Reformation by assessing the events from a Catholic point of view. After the death of Henry Biaudet in 1919, Karttunen was unable to continue their common research work. Henry Biaudet’s family sequestered the research material that Liisi Karttunen and her supervisor had collected. However, she stayed in Rome for several decades and worked there as a secretary at the Finnish embassy. She dreamed for a long time of returning to research work and to the world of libraries and archives in Rome, but she never managed to do so (Garritzen 2011).



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Law and order The Swedish academic community of historians in Uppsala was critical of female historians. The reasons for this were both external and internal to the community of historians. The Swedish constitution made discrimination easily possible, because females were not allowed to enter public posts until 1909. University posts and professorships belonged in this category. In Sweden, women were excluded from full political citizenship for a longer time than in neighbouring Finland and Norway. Swedish women received universal suffrage only in 1919. Within the academic community, it was difficult to understand how women could have a university career or become professors and enter a profession created only for men. From this point of view, female doctors and historians at the university were treated as amateurs who did not have an academic future (Smith 2000: 187). In their theses, Ellen Fries, Lydia Wahlström and Aleksandra Skoglund concentrated on political history, which was a characteristic area of study of the period (Fries 1883; Wahlström 1898; Skoglund 1903). The first generation of female historians studied the same themes as their male colleagues, mainly national history. The subject of their work did not marginalize them. They were only awarded low grades for their theses, however, and Wahlström and Skoglund were therefore excluded from becoming docents. It was a great disappointment for Wahlström when she finally came to realize that an academic career was an unattainable goal because she was a woman. In principle, Hjärne was encouraging towards his female doctoral students, but the formal structure of the scientific community still posed obstacles. According to Birgitta Odén, when Lydia Wahlström had finished her licentiate dissertation it was Hjärne himself who informed her that she did not have a future at the university due to her gender. A university career had been her aim. Nevertheless, Wahlström decided to print a copy of her licentiate dissertation and defend it as a doctoral thesis. Usually, it took a year or more to make corrections to the manuscript for the licentiate dissertation and to defend it as a doctoral thesis. Wahlström understood that there was no sense in trying to get a higher grade for her doctoral thesis, because even a higher grade would not open up the possibility for an academic career (Odén 2000). Circumstances outside the university as well as government legislation caused obstacles and disappointments for the Finn Alma Söderhjelm, but nonetheless, among the members of this first generation of Nordic female historians her career was exceptional. In spite of many disappointments and hardships, she managed to have a university career and acquire a permanent post as a professor. How did she manage to do this? For her, the whole academic milieu was easier to conquer because one of her mentors and

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supporters was her brother, Professor Werner Söderhjelm. The family was wealthy and she could afford to stay abroad. Among the first generation of female historians, Alma Söderhjelm was the most international scholar from the beginning of her career. She gathered source material in Paris for her doctoral thesis on the French Revolution and was among the first Finnish historians to have done so (Engman 2005b). Paris was the place that attracted the majority of European historians at the beginning of the twentieth century (Middel and Naumann 2013: 87). In the subject of her thesis, Söderhjelm differed from her fellow Finnish historians, who were primarily concentrating on national themes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Finnishspeaking and Swedish-speaking historians had different interpretations of Finnish history and this caused conflicts within the community of Finnish historians. In Paris, Alma Söderhjelm had as a French supervisor Professor Alphonse Aulard, the first professional historian to deal with the French Revolution. Söderhjelm defended her thesis in 1900 (Engman 1996: 61–66; Söderhjelm 1900). Her book was widely read and she received several positive reviews in French, English and German journals. The most important review was that of Professor Aulard. She desired a university career and therefore continued her research work immediately after receiving her degree. During the following year, Söderhjelm published the second part of her study on the French Revolution and the role of the press (Söderhjelm 1901). Professor Danielson-Kalmari felt that Alma Söderhjelm was at that point competent enough to become a docent. In his opinion, the character of Söderhjelm was suitable for a university lecturer. In this case, external circumstances outside the academy were decisive. The political situation in Finland was difficult because of the February Manifesto in 1899, and Söderhjelm’s application was thus rejected in St Petersburg. This rejection had several causes. The political actions of Söderhjelm’s father and brother had attracted negative attention in St Petersburg, and although Alma Söderhjelm was not herself active in politics, she fell victim to the prejudices towards her family. The minister-secretary of state for Finland, von Plehwe, informed Danielson-Kalmari of this rejection and said that it was too dangerous to nominate a woman to be a university teacher in Finland because soon women would then claim the same rights in Russia. The political situation changed after 1905, however, and Alma Söderhjelm then became the first woman in Finland to become a docent (1906), the only female docent in the whole of the Russian Empire. When Lydia Wahlström congratulated her colleague, Söderhjelm said that she had become a docent too late (Wahlström 1949: 258).



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One of the most important stages in the career of a scholar is the competition for a permanent post and the application process for a professorship. In these processes, scientific authorities make a statement in which they evaluate the competence of the applicants. Alma Söderhjelm had qualified for a professorship by publishing several works. After the retirement of Danielson-Kalmari, she planned to apply for his post as professor of general history. Söderhjelm was advised to make an inquiry to the consistory of the University of Helsinki before beginning the final application process in order to learn whether her gender would be an obstacle. She later said that this was the most unwise thing she had ever done. The consistory decided after a vote that due to her being a woman, she was unqualified for a permanent professorship and could not apply. The situation was delicate because she had twice received an exemption because of her gender, first in 1889 when she passed her matriculation exam and began her university studies, and second in 1906 when she received the nomination to be a docent.

Man or woman – the third sex? Politics, the language question and circumstances outside the scientific community all conspired to shut doors in the face of Alma Söderhjelm in Finland. Legislation concerning a woman’s right to civil service offices, which included permanent posts at universities, was a tool for keeping women, especially the Swedish-speaking female historians, outside the universities. This was cruel politics. In the middle of the 1910s, women had both political rights and full citizenship in Finland. The new Parliament Act of 1906 had introduced universal suffrage. The minimum age for voting and standing for election was set at twenty-four. When parliamentary elections were held in the spring of 1907, Finnish women became the first in the world to exercise their full political rights, including the right to stand for election. In the first elections, in 1907, nineteen members of parliament were women (Sulkunen, Nevala and Markkola 2009). At the same time that Alma Söderhjelm failed to obtain permission from the consistory to apply for a university position, her colleague Tekla Hultin, who in 1896 was the first woman to defend her doctoral thesis in history, became a member of parliament and participated in the legislative work.6 Alma Söderhjelm wrote in her memoirs thirty years later that the question that remained was whether she was a man or a woman (Engman 1996: 61–66; Söderhjelm 1931: 372–73). Bonnie G. Smith uses the concept of a third sex when analysing the professional career possibilities of the first generation of female historians (Smith 2000: 185–88; see also O’Dowd 2012: 355). Early professionals like Alma Söderhjelm had an ambivalent status.

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They were physically and emotionally isolated from their male colleagues, but also from women outside of academia. They were pioneers who had broken through into the ‘semi-monastic’ male world of the university history departments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Smith 2000: 185–212; Porciani & O’Dowd 2004). Alma Söderhjelm described the life of a female scholar in her memoirs Åbo tur och retur in 1938: A scholar is bound to his source material and the subject of his study. He cannot bring his persons with him. They, on the contrary, drag him away from the world. Even so, to be a man and a scholar is still possible. In both social life and love, a man has the capacity to enjoy momentary pleasures. But to be a woman and a scholar requires a life of complete solitude. Not looking in any other direction, not thinking about anything else. If a woman wants to be a scholar, she should not be a woman but rather one of those clever specimens of her sex who originally was destined to belong to the strong sex and who had the measure of cold bloodedness needed for doing vivisections. A woman like me should not be a scholar (man of science). Here we should say men. Scholarly work is a male occupation. Therefore, there cannot be something called a woman of science. Even the term denotes degradation. Nor should we say female student or female author. (Söderhjelm 1938: 158–59)7

The career development of the first generation Disappointed, Alma Söderhjelm turned to freelance writing and lived for several years in Stockholm. She created a new career for herself as a journalist and author. She wrote novels, essays, short stories and columns and collected material for a study on the links between Sweden and the French Revolution. Her extensive study Sverige och den franska revolutionen was published in 1920 and 1924. In 1927, she was invited to become a professor of general history at a new university, Åbo Akademi University, which was founded in 1919 for the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland (Engman 1996: 61–66; Söderhjelm 1931: 372–73). Her post was funded by donations. She could be counted among a select few female academic historians in Europe. The Atlas of European Historiography shows that women held university posts in history only in Finland, the Irish Republic, Italy, France, Czechoslovakia and Latvia at the time (Porciani & Raphael 2011). During the 1930s, as a professor at Åbo Akademi University, Alma Söderhjelm continued her studies on the French Revolution. Her study ‘Fersen et Marie-Antoinette’ was published in 1930. She retired from Åbo Akademi University in 1937 and moved from Turku (Åbo) to Stockholm, subsequently writing several books on the history of Sweden (Söderhjelm 1938: 158–59; Engman 1996: 178–95).



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In the cases of Ellen Fries, Lydia Wahlström and Aleksandra Skoglund, academia and the professional fringe of historians excluded them from the community. This meant they were marginalized as historians. All three female historians were ultimately employed in girls’ schools. Ellen Fries and Lydia Wahlström continued their careers as historians outside the academic community, where both were active writers and scholars. Outside the community of professional historians, they were, however, free to make their own decisions concerning research themes and topics. They were active, participating in the work of historical organizations and giving lectures. All three were also active in the women’s movement. Fries participated in the founding of several women’s groups (Ohlander 1992, 1994, 2009), while Wahlström became well known in Sweden and also at the general European level for her work on women’s rights (Nicklasson 2000: 67–73). Skoglund was one of the founders of the Lands föreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (County Association for Women’s Suffrage), and in the 1920s and 1930s she participated in the women’s group of Sweden’s Moderate Party.8 Ellen Fries wrote in her diary that writing history had given her the greatest satisfaction.9 She continued her research work and was an active historian for the rest of her life. In 1889, she published a biography on Chancellor Erik Oxenstierna, and in 1895 she published sketches from the family life of the Swedish aristocracy. In addition, she published two volumes of women’s history, Märkvärdiga qvinnor [Remarkable Women], in 1890 and 1891. She was also active in the women’s movement and participated in the founding of several women’s groups (Ohlander 1992, 1994, 2009). Ellen Fries analysed the history of Swedish women: ‘The history of Swedish women is still largely unwritten. The cultural work that has belonged to women in Sweden, the influence that they have exercised on social development as well as the influence which it has had on them, are still only partially noted by our scholars’ (Ohlander 1992: 244; see also Fries 1890, 1891). Fries died in 1900 at the early age of forty-four. Although Lydia Wahlström worked as a teacher, she was also productive as a researcher and writer. She published scientific works, popular biographies, fiction and travelogues. Her career as a teacher and scholar outside the academic community of historians was a disappointment to her (Wahlström 1949; Odén 1980: 252–53). Her comments in her memoirs indicate that she was very disappointed never to be recommended by Professor Hjärne for a post as a docent. She sent all her literary works to Hjärne; later she heard from male colleagues that Hjärne had said that if she would continue in the same way, she could become a docent (Wahlström 1949: 258). Wahlström wrote that she had never received any understanding from her male colleagues. However, the academic community was

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changing and the younger generation of historians was different – she felt at home among them (Wahlström 1949: 258). The Dane, Ellen Jørgensen, was the only female historian of the first generation who even had the possibility of applying for a professorship. She was the next woman after Anna Hude to earn the Doctor of Philosophy degree in history in 1909 in Denmark (Damsholt 1994: 183; see also Jørgensen 1909). Her doctoral thesis addressed the problem of the worship of saints in Denmark from the eleventh century until the Reformation. Both Professor Steenstrup and Professor Erslev encouraged Jørgensen and advised her to apply for a professorship in 1912 and again in 1916. She did not have any success with these applications, however. In 1916, Erik Arup, the successor to Kristian Erslev, was elected to the professorship (Svenstrup 2006: 230, 239, 243–49). Ellen Jørgensen remained on the fringes of academia, working as a librarian at the Royal Library (Kunglige Bibliotek, KB) from 1915 to 1941. As head of the Department of Manuscripts, she edited several volumes of Danish Middle Age source material (Jørgensen 1920, 1926). She continued as an active researcher, publishing two volumes on the history of historiography in Denmark and several works on medieval church history (Damsholt 1994; Jørgensen 1931, 1943). She also published several articles in Historisk Tidsskrift [Danish Journal of History]. Libraries and archives were typical workplaces for female scholars who could not obtain university posts. The career development of female doctors was the same all over the Western world. A detailed statistical study outlining the educational backgrounds, ages, marital status, employment patterns and career histories of 334 female Doctors of Philosophy in the discipline of history in the USA from the 1890s until 1940 reveals that female doctors were employed primarily in schools, libraries and archives (Goggin 1992: 769–71).

Women in the field Jacqueline Goggin shows in her analysis that female historians in the United States had difficulty obtaining positions on historical association committees and governing boards, in publishing articles in major historical journals and in presenting papers at the meetings of major historical organizations. When they did attend professional meetings, they were frequently confronted with segregated social functions, such as smoking for men and tea for women (Goggin 1992: 770–71; see also Odén 1980). Among Nordic female historians, the status of Ellen Jørgensen was special because she was accorded duties in the organizations of historians that were highly respected



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among professionals. The academic community of historians accepted her as a true professional even though she was never promoted to a professorship. She was the first female editor-in-chief of Historisk Tidsskrift, serving from 1924 to 1931. The journal was founded in 1839 and controlled by a scientific elite who set high standards for publication. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Historisk Tidsskrift became more exclusively a forum for professional scientific communication and published articles written by educated and professional historians. The nomination of Ellen Jørgensen was part of a schism between two groups of Danish historians, older (conservative) and younger (radical) historians.10 Arup and his students wanted to renew the structures of Danish institutions of history, like Historisk Tidsskrift and the Danish Historical Society. Jørgensen was known as a conservative historian. However, she became an editor-in-chief when Arup left his post as chief editor. In 1939, Jørgensen was the first woman to be elected president of the Danish Historical Society (Svenstrup 2006: 309–26).11 At the beginning of the twentieth century, international scientific congress organizations were founded. Historians took part in this trend and they had their first gathering in The Hague in 1898 and the second in Paris in 1900. This was the first stage on the path leading to the founding of the Comité International des Sciences Historiques (CISH) (Myhre 2012: 268–70; Middel and Naumann 2013: 87). Nordic historians had a scientific meeting for the first time in Lund at the beginning of June 1905. This meeting was Professor Martin Weibull’s idea. His aim was to highlight the history of seventeenth-century Sweden (‘Sveriges stormaktstid’). In the meeting, Nordic historians were supposed to get to know each other and begin to develop cooperation in their field (Zander 2007; Torbacke 2005: 52–53; Tersmeden & Dhondt 2011: 116–19).12 The call for the meeting was signed by three professors: one from Sweden, one from Norway and one from Denmark. The meeting had approximately two hundred participants, out of which 168 were Swedish. There were twenty-eight Danes and nine Finns. This first conference of Nordic historians was characterized as a Swedish national meeting, a ‘svenska historikerdagar’.13 Nordic female historians were not among the speakers at the Lund conference.14 Alma Söderhjelm had a semi-official status because she published a report on the conference in Historiallinen Aikakauskirja [Finnish Journal of History] (Söderhjelm 1905: 134). She also analysed her feelings more than thirty years later in her memoirs: ‘I had decided to participate in the congress of historians in Lund already at the beginning of June. I had suffered because I never had the opportunity to meet other historians and I expected a lot from the congress. I gained something from the congress also in another way: patriotic feelings were at their peak. The congress took

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place in the days of the separation of Norway from the union with Sweden’ (Söderhjelm 1931: 330–33). Among the conference participants in Lund in 1905 was another Finnish female historian, Jully Ramsay, who is known in Finland as a remarkable pioneer in genealogy. She collected a large amount of genealogical material from the archives in Finland and Sweden, and she also managed to publish biographical and genealogical articles, for example in Finsk Tidskrift [Finnish Journal]. Ramsay’s career is exceptional among Finnish female historians. She worked as a researcher without an academic degree, but the Finnish Historical Society still invited her to become a research member in 1915. The next time a woman would be accorded the same status would be in 1949. Alma Söderhjelm and Liisi Karttunen also participated together in the general meeting of Nordic historians and philologists in 1912 in Gothenburg (Lagercrantz 1913), the only Nordic conference in which Karttunen participated (Garritzen 2011). During the 1920s, the Congress of Nordic Historians was established. These congresses were organized five times during the interwar period: in 1920 it was held in Christiania, in 1923 in Copenhagen, in 1931 in Helsinki, 1935 Stockholm and in 1939 again in Copenhagen. Halvdan Koht, a Norwegian, was active in organizing Nordic and international cooperation in the field of history. The oldest professors of history from each of the Nordic universities were nominated to be members of the committee for the Congress of Nordic Historians.15 Given this model, these meetings remained male-dominated. From the 1940s onwards, women were allowed to join the organizing committee only when they became professors of history. During the 1920s, the social programme of the conference was also established. There was an official reception organized by the host city and several expeditions to museums, exhibitions and tourist sights. The professors of the host city invited their Nordic colleagues to their homes and thus began the so-called ‘hemma hus’ evenings.16 The number of female speakers was quite small at the congresses. During the 1920s and 1930s, only three female historians gave a lecture in one of the meetings, although at least thirty-five lectures and presentations were held at each congress. In this male-dominated community, women were actually invisible, in effect cementing male dominance even further. In the Helsinki meeting in July 1930, Lis Jacobsen (1882–1961), Doctor of Philosophy, talked for the first time about ‘Kong Haralds og Kong Gorms Jelling-Monumenter’ (The Jelling stones of King Gorm). She was a philologist who had specialized in Danish philology and language history, working as the director of the Society for Danish Language and Literature (Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab).17



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At the Copenhagen Congress in 1939, one of the main themes was the breakthrough of modern historiography. Speakers from Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway had prepared presentations from their own points of view. In this meeting, two women were among the speakers. Astrid Friis, from Denmark, gave a lecture on ‘Rigsraadet og Statsfinanserne’ [State Council and Finances],18 while Ingrid Gaustad, from Norway (Cand. Philol.), later known as Ingrid Semmingsen, presented a paper on the history of emigration, ‘Norsk utvandring til Amerika i det 19. århundre’ [The Emigration from Norway to America in the Nineteenth Century]. These two female speakers at the Copenhagen congress symbolized the process of change that had occurred in the field of historical research. Astrid Friis concentrated particularly on economic history and did not belong to the old tradition of national history. Ingrid Gaustad, whose scientific breakthrough had occurred in 1938, one year before the congress, belonged to the younger generation. Her first article, ‘Utvandringen til Amerika 1866–1873’ [The Emigration to America in 1866–1877], was published in Historisk Tidskrift in 1938 (Svalestuen 1980: 9–37). This was the starting point for a new research area in the history of emigration.

Women in men’s communities Nordic female historians needed strong support and a good mentor at the beginning of their careers as doctoral students in order to build an academic career and obtain a professorship. They had to write a thesis that was also remarkable from an international perspective.19 National appreciation was not enough. They needed a new scientific approach, a new research area or new methods. From this standpoint, Astrid Friis, Ingrid Semmingsen and Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg all succeeded. When Astrid Friis gave a lecture at the Copenhagen congress, she was a 46-year-old D.Phil. without a permanent position at the University of Copenhagen. She had defended her thesis in history in 1927 as the next woman in line after Ellen Jørgensen (Jacobsen 1994: 33–54). As a young student, Friis had followed the lectures of Kristian Erslev on the theory and methods of historical research (Westergaard 1952). It was important for her career that she became a student of Erik Arup. The seminars and teaching methods of Arup led to Friis’ decision to pursue a career as a historian. Arup worked as a professor of history at the University of Copenhagen from 1916 to 1947. He was a controversial figure and the historical community was rent by bitter strife during the interwar period. Arup himself saw the conflicts as attempts to suppress his supposedly new and path-breaking way of interpreting and writing history in terms of substance and method,

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especially with respect to his Danmarks historie [History of Denmark], which was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1932. Arup’s international perspective on the conception of history inspired Astrid Friis. She had planned to do her research on colonialism, but Arup gave her a new theme concerning the economic history of England. Friis took special interest in the historical study of the interrelations between economics and politics, and this was a new point of view (Svenstrup 2006). At the beginning of the twentieth century, Friis collected source material from the Public Record Office and the British Museum in London. This city was an innovative milieu for economic history in the 1920s and 1930s. Research and education at the London School of Economics under R.H. Tawney and Eileen Power had created a new and prominent profile for economic history. The Economic History Society was founded in London in 1926 and Eileen Power was at the centre of this society. The Economic History Review was established in 1927 by Eileen Power, and its first editors were E. Lipson and R.H. Tawney (Berg 1996: 166–70). In London, Friis did not attempt to form contacts with local universities and British economic historians. This is odd, because during her London years there were many activities underway in this research field. Friis, however, was bound by Danish ideology concerning historical research in her Ph.D. studies. Her supervisor, Arup, thought that the Ph.D. was proof that a young scholar was able to do independent research work. She did not need to have a group around her. Nevertheless, Arup sent letters to Friis in London and gave her advice as to what kinds of documents she should try to find and use at the Public Records Office (Odén 1994: 196). In addition, a young scholar needed a letter of introduction from her supervisor in order to participate in seminars and lectures at foreign universities and research institutes. Friis defended her doctoral thesis, ‘Alderman Cockayne’s Project and the Cloth Trade: The Commercial Policy of England in Its Main Aspects, 1603– 1625’, in September 1927 (Odén 1994). Her book immediately established her reputation among English historians. All reviews were very positive. R.H. Tawney wrote about the book in the Economic History Review in 1929 (Tawney 1929): ‘Alderman Cockayne’s Project and the Cloth Trade, by Miss Astrid Friis, is one of the most important books which have appeared in English on the economic history of the 17th century. It throws a flood of new light on English trade and trade policy during the reign of James I. It uses, with conspicuous success materials such as the Port-Books, which have hitherto been little worked on. Altogether it is an extremely valuable work’. This review was important for Astrid Friis, and boosted her selfconfidence. In the context of Danish historiography, her subject was exceptional. Thus, no Danish historian wrote a review of it. Because it dealt with English trade and economic life, her research was not considered essential



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from the Nordic standpoint. In Britain, however, where new studies were being published in this research area, it was viewed as an authentic and interesting book. After completing her Ph.D., Astrid Friis moved on to study the history of Denmark. She earned her living by writing biographical articles for Dansk Biografisk Leksikon [Danish National Biography] on the lives of officials and/or merchants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She also wrote articles for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Odén 1994; Ellehøj 1968), and she was active in several historian forums. In 1942, she began work as an editor of the Danish Journal of History. International cooperation in the field of history was important for her, but she felt more at home in the international congresses of historians than in the field of Nordic cooperation (Ellehøj 1968). After the Second World War, the time was ripe in Scandinavia for female professors in the field of history. In 1939, Astrid Friis applied for the professorship in history at Aarhus University. This particular Danish university and its academic community of historians, however, were not yet ready to nominate a female professor. Friis had two disadvantageous characteristics: she was a woman and she was an economic historian. She felt, though, that she did not get the post primarily because of her gender. Before this episode occurred, she had received criticism of her interpretation of the history of Denmark. This was the work she had done with Erik Arup, where the nation-state and politics formed a subject for historical research. The works by Arup and his school of followers were controversial because they had expanded the boundaries towards economic history and international commerce (Jørgensen 2000: 119–24). Astrid Friis was subsequently named to the oldest chair of history at the University of Copenhagen in 1946. As a professor, she had to carry out several assignments at the university and in the community of historians at the national, Scandinavian and international levels. As a researcher, she turned her attention to the study of prices and wages in Denmark.20 In Finland between 1910 and 1939, fifty-four historians earned doctorates, with fifty-one of them being male. No women defended their theses between the years 1910 and 1934, whereas four women defended theses between 1935 and 1940. Among them was Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg, who defended her thesis in 1934 (Krusius-Ahrenberg 1934). She was young to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree, only twenty-five years old. Finnish women historians Sisko Vilkama, Katri Laine and Maija Rajainen, who defended their theses in the 1930s, approached the history of Finnish education from different angles and embedded gender perspectives, at least to some extent, in their works. These women and their works have been completely ignored in Finnish historiography. Their work was not appreciated

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in their own time and the history of education was not seen as an important topic (Wilkama 1938; Laine 1935; Rajainen 1940). Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg was born in Marburg, Germany. The Krusius family moved to Finland when Lolo was in school. After taking her matriculation exam, she studied at the University of Helsinki and the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Her thesis on the adoption of nationalist ideology and liberalism in nineteenth-century Finland was highly regarded, especially abroad (Krusius-Ahrenberg 1934; Engman and Korppi-Tommola 2004; Engman 2005a). In her study, Krusius-Ahrenberg placed the development of Finnish liberalism and nationalism in a European context. Her time in Frankfurt (1929–1931) gave her a wider perspective on the field of science and on society in general. As a historian, she was not entangled with methodological nationalism. The Swedish Ph.D. Carl-Fredrik Palmstierna praised Krusius-Ahrenberg’s work in a review article in Historisk Tidskrift [Journal of History, published in Sweden], saying that she successfully situated the development of Finland within the context of Russian development. The bibliography of Krusius-Ahrenberg’s study includes references in Finnish, German, French, Swedish and English. After finishing her Ph.D., she worked as a bookkeeper in the family company. During the 1930s and 1940s, she concentrated on constitutional history (KrusiusAhrenberg 1944, 1947). Although other female scholars remained unmarried, Krusius-Ahrenberg married at the age of twenty and had one son. During the war, she participated in war service in the Finnish Lotta Svärd organization, a voluntary paramilitary organization for women. In 1945, she was appointed docent in constitutional history and political science at the Swedish School of Economics and in the same year docent in Finnish and Scandinavian history at the University of Helsinki. She was invited to become a research member in the Finnish Historical Society, only the second woman to receive such an invitation (Bergmann-Winberg 2008; Engman 2005a). Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg was named professor of history and political science at the Swedish School of Economics in Helsinki in 1948. Before this, she had been an acting professor of political science at the University of Helsinki. As a professor, she was more a political scientist than a historian. She participated actively in theoretical discussions on the constitution and human rights in the Finnish Political Science Association (Paakkunainen 1985: 185–93; Bergmann-Winberg, Ahonen and Hellbom 1989: v–vii). She tried to adopt a comparative approach in her teaching as well as in her research on constitutional history. She worked to internationalize her discipline and build contacts between Finnish researchers and the International Political Science Association. She also dealt with a broader scientific field than did most Finnish historians. For example, journals and newspapers in



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Sweden published review articles of her books, and she participated in scientific discussions in Finland and abroad. In 1954, she was invited to write a history of the Finnish parliament (Engman 2005a: 228–38). Ingrid Semmingsen,21 née Gaustad, a Norwegian, concentrated in her research on the social history of Norway, particularly on the history of emigration. As a student, she participated in the seminars and lectures of Edvard Bull, Sr and Sverre Steen, both of whom inspired her as a historian. She received an eight-month grant for language studies in Paris in 1931 and 1932. While there, she combined the language studies with the study of French history and participated in seminars (Durovic-Andic 2013: 48). Halvdan Koht had lectured on American history at the University of Oslo and made it an obligatory part of the regular curriculum in the discipline of history (Wasser 1966: 493–94; see also Durovic-Andic 2013). Semmingsen studied in the United States before the Second World War, and in 1941 published her main work, Veien mot Vest [Way to the West]. Professor Koht praised the book as a pioneering work in the history of migration in Norway.22 Semmingsen published the second volume of Veien mot Vest as her thesis. She defended her doctoral thesis in 1950, becoming the first female to receive a doctorate in history in Norway). Her humanistic and social-historical approach was new in the field of Norwegian historical research. The whole area of study, the history of emigration, was new because up until then historians had concentrated so extensively on national history, on the history of the fatherland, and had not been interested in groups that had displayed their dissatisfaction with their own country by emigrating. In 1960, Semmingsen was nominated to be an assistant lecturer at the University of Oslo. She also broadened the area of her study by analysing emigration from Norway to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. (Svalestuen 1980). Subsequently, Semmingsen was appointed professor of American history at the University of Oslo for five years in 1963. Her post was changed to a permanent one in 1968. She was the first female professor of history in Norway, attaining this status at the age of fifty-eight (Myhre and Corell 2010).23 As a researcher, she began to use such new methods as quantitative data and computer techniques. Semmingsen was given the title ‘The Uncrowned Queen of Migration History’. In the community of historians, the professorship position brought female professors Friis, Krusius-Ahrenberg and Semmingsen new kinds of duties. Krusius-Ahrenberg was a member of the Finnish national committee of CISH, and Friis acted as a chair in the Danish committee from 1948 until 1966. She was one of the founders of the Scandinavian Economic History Review and a member of its editorial board. During the 1960s, she was the chair of the Danish Historical Society and for twenty years the editor of the Danish Historical Journal (Odén 1994; Ellehøj 1968).

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The Congress of Nordic Historians provides one particular case that aids in analysing the visibility, or invisibility, of professional female historians in the field of history. During the 1950s and 1960s, Astrid Friis and Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg participated regularly in the congresses. As professors, they were invited to be plenary speakers (keynote speakers) and to become members of executive and local committees. For example, Krusius-Ahrenberg was invited to become a member of the Finnish working committee in February 1951. The committee discussed the Gothenburg Conference that would be held in August of the same year.24 In Gothenburg, Friis was the only female speaker. She gave a lecture on the topic ‘Danmark og Europa i det 16. Aarhundre’ [Denmark and Europe in the Sixteenth Century]. She was also one of the vice presidents of the congress.25 The next meeting was held in Turku, Finland. The main theme, the plenary theme, was ‘Ståndesamhällets upplösning’ [Disintegration of the Old Regime]. The Turku meeting was exceptional because for the first time there were two female speakers. The historians from Norway chose Ingrid Semmingsen, Ph.D., to speak at the plenary session. During the 1950s and 1960s, the proportion of female doctors of history increased in the Nordic countries. This was also recognized in the local organizing committees of the Congress of Nordic Historians. The main theme of the Aarhus (Denmark) congress in 1957 was ‘Hanse staederne og Norden’ [The Hanseatic Cities and the North]. Each Nordic country gave a lecture on this subject. Representing Norway was Grethe Authén (Authén Blom 1957). Docent Ingrid Hammarström also presented her paper on price development in Europe and Sweden at the beginning of the 1500s.26 Hammarström had been named a docent in 1956. Grethe Authén Blom worked on her thesis from the late 1950s until 1967. In 1968, she was named professor of history at the Teachers’ College in Trondheim, later to be called the University of Trondheim (Authén Blom 1977). Birgitta Odén, Anne Riising and Pirkko Rommi (Finland) represented the younger generation and they also participated in and gave lectures at the Nordic congresses.27

Being a woman The dissonance between women, science and scholarly work has been analysed in several studies. Scholars like Ruth Watts and Margaret Rossiter, as well as several others, have described the obstacles and struggles faced by female scientists who established themselves as contributing members of the academic community. Also, the history of science as well as biographies of scholars and scientists highlight the inventions and achievements of such



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female scientists as the famous Russian mathematician Sophie Kowalevski, who was appointed to a full professorship at Stockholm University in 1889, the first woman to hold such a position at a northern European university. Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first person and the only woman to win it twice. These women were exceptional and they were remarkable actors in the international academic community (Watts 2007; Rossiter 1984). In such fields of science as medicine, chemistry and mathematics, scientists had to make inventions and scientific breakthroughs in the international arena to receive accolades and to be rewarded. The system was different in the field of history and other nationally important disciplines. Scholars needed first to convince the academic community of historians on their own home ground and to work with important themes that confirmed the national narrative. International contacts and scholarly work abroad were appreciated only in relation to national history. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the number of academic staff in the field of history in the Nordic countries was low. This was the period when the number of female doctoral students began to increase. In her provocative work The Gender of History, Bonnie G. Smith analysed the first generation of professional female historians. She used the concept of a third sex for female historians who remained unmarried. They knew that taking an academic job or even pursuing an academic degree meant renunciation of family life (Smith 2000: 189). In the Nordic countries, the first generation of females receiving a doctorate in history had common features, but at the same time many of their circumstances were completely different. They came from middle class and upper middle class families. All were family girls and their families appreciated girls’ education. The role of supervisors and mentors was important. Anna Hude, from Denmark, was a special case for different reasons. She was the only one from the first generation who married. These female historians were active in several forums. Söderhjelm, Fries and Wahlström continued to work as researchers outside of academia. They wrote scientific and popular books as well as fiction. Such literary work was one way to earn a living. Most of the female historians from the first generation found themselves more than once in a situation where they had to start their lives anew. Liisi Karttunen was in Rome without work and money. Söderhjelm moved to Stockholm, disappointed by the Finnish university system and Finnish legislation. Wahlström was disappointed when she understood that as a woman, a university career was an impossible dream. In the introduction, the question was posed as to whether or not history as an academic discipline possesses a special characteristic that has led to the marginalization or the exclusion of female historians. This

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characteristic was obvious when the first generation of female historians tried to find employment in the academic field of history. Male historians concentrated on analysing the formation of the nation-state and writing national histories wherein famous men, kings and politicians were the main actors. Professional skills culminated in making archival findings and in the ability to interpret sources. Kings and politicians had the main role in national histories, and professional historians did not question whether women might have been actors. The relationship between professional male historians and the state was close in several countries at a time when many history professors were active in state politics. In Finland during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, several history professors, such as Yrjö Koskinen, Johan Richard Danielson-Kalmari and Ernst Gustaf Palmén were active politicians. When women were excluded from societal actions like elections, it was difficult to see them teaching history at the university and defining the past of the nation-state. The first generation of Nordic female professors of history – Friis, Krusius-Ahrenberg and Semmingsen – shared common features. From the beginning of their careers, they were international scholars pursuing transnational interests. For the career of Astrid Friis, it was important that her doctoral thesis was acknowledged in several British journals. In Danish historical research, her book represented something new by being a study of British trade that combined economics and politics. Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg also presented a new way of understanding historical research when she combined history and political science. For her career, the important factor was her German background, which gave her a wider perspective on the Finnish academic world and on her work as a historian. For her, it was an obvious step to think internationally, transnationally and with a comparative perspective even with regard to Finnish history. Ingrid Semmingsen created a totally new research area. She had wide-ranging contacts in the United States, and she built scientific contacts between Norway and migration networks in the USA. A distinctive feature of the first generation of female historians was a feeling of loneliness. Women as students and as historians were alone in the male-dominated community. In the late nineteenth century, these women received a middle class education with strict moral norms. This created two separate spheres. The life and career of Astrid Friis demonstrates the characteristic features of the female scholarly career. When she defended her thesis, newspapers sent a journalist to provide a report on the public defence. Because she was a woman, the journalist gave an extensive description of her dress and accessories. Friis received several tributes. However, she herself thought that because she was a woman, she was left outside such communities as



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the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab). Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg recounted in an interview given in the 1990s that she had experienced discrimination because of gender only one time, and that was in regard to a political question concerning her history project on the Finnish parliament. Astrid Friis did manage to have a successful career in just such a maledominated community. She did not have any women colleagues in her own department and she was not interested in creating female networks in a Nordic or international context. She knew the works of female economic historians like Eileen Power, but she was not interested in personal contacts with other female scholars. In the case of Eileen Power, this fact is interesting because her own personal life and career and that of Friis had similar features. In her private life, Friis always lived with women; first with her grandmother and unmarried aunts, later with her sister. Her mother had died when she was only one year old, and her father had rejected the family and moved abroad. In an interview in 1952, Friis was asked about the sacrifices she had made as a woman in the male-dominated community. She answered that the price she had paid was loneliness.28 Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg commented on the concept of loneliness in a different way. She was alone in her research area, and because of that, she never experienced any strong solidarity with Finnish female historians. Clearly, the Nordic female historians were not able or willing to build a supportive network between themselves. Their position was marginal within the community of historians, and the most important posts were occupied by male professors. Before the late 1970s, women did not have many possibilities to break the old structures and create transnational networks, such as the Nordic Women’s History Conference. Mervi Kaarninen, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her research interests include gender history, the history of childhood and youth and the history of education and universities, on which she has published a number of  books and articles. In  the field of historiography, she has contributed to the Atlas of European Historiography: The Making of a Profession 1800–2005, edited by Ilaria Porciani and Lutz Raphael (Palgrave McMillan, 2010), to History and Women: Storia della Storiografia 46(2004), edited by Mary O’Dowd and Ilaria Porciani, and to Kirjoitettu kansakunta [The Written Nation], edited by Marja Jalava, Tiina Kinnunen and Irma Sulkunen (SKS, 2013).

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Notes 1.  I include the academic community of the Nordic historians’ universities, congresses and congress organizations, journals and societies. 2. Håkan Gunneriusson has defined the concept of ‘the field’ (Gunneriusson 2002: 16–33). 3.  This special permission was called an exemption from their sex. 4.  Anna Hude and Kristian Erslev married in 1910 after Erslev divorced his former wife. (Ohlander 1987: 1, 7). 5. ‘I Sin fars dotter har jag lagt in mina känslor för Harald Hjärne i ett dotterförhållande, därför att min far var den man som stått mig närmast.’ See also Bokholm 2009. 6. After earning her Ph.D., Tekla Hultin made a career at the Statistical Office of Finland. She was also a journalist and had been an activist in women’s struggles for suffrage. She was a member of parliament from 1908 to 1924 (Kiiski 1978: 44–49). 7.  ‘Men en vetenskapsman är bunden till sina arkivalier, till sitt ämne eller den träbit han skall undersöka. Han kan inte dra sina personer med sig. De dra honom tvärtöm bort från världen. Att vara man och vetenskapsman kan ännu gå an, ty mannen har både i sällskapsliv och kärleksliv förmånen av snabba ögonblickens glädje. Men att vara kvinna och vetenskaps fordrar att man kan leva fullständigt ensam. Inte se åt något håll, inte tänka på annat. Om en kvinna skall vara vetenskapsman, so bör hon icke vara kvinna, utan ett av dessa duktiga exemplar av könet, som ursprungligen har varit destinerad till att höra det starka könet till och som har det mått av kallblodighet, som fordas för vivisektionsarbete. En sådan kvinna som jag bör icke vara vetenskapsman. Ty här måste man säga man. Vetenskap är ett manligt yrke. Det kan därför icke finnas något som heter vetenskapskvinna. Redan denna beteckning betyder minusgradering. Inte studentska eller skriftställarinna.’ 8.  L.S Alexandra Skoglund, Historiker, Lärare, Kvinnosaks politiker. Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (art av Inger Ström-Billing), accessed 19 April 2017. https://sok.riksarkivet.se/ sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=6020 9. ‘Den djupaste tillfrädställelse jag har känt har varit vid skrivandet av historia’ (Ohlander 1994: 207). 10.  It is not possible here to discuss in depth the special question concerning the influence of the schism among Danish historians with respect to the career and status of Danish female historians. See Svenstrup 2006: 309–26; Ellehøj 1968: 162–173. 11.  For more on the relationship between Erik Arup and Ellen Jørgensen, see also Floto 2006. 12.  Weibull did not attend this conference. He died in 1902. 13. The Norwegian historians boycotted the meeting because of the union crisis (Zander 2007; Torbacke 2005: 52–53). 14.  I have not seen a list of the conference participants for the Lund meeting. Finnish Historiallinen Aikakauskirja and Swedish Historisk Tidskrift published short reports of the conference programme. 15. Koht was active in the International Historical Congresses from the beginning of the twentieth century. See Erdman 2005: 78–79; ‘Den nordiska historikerkongressen i Kristiania 1920’, Historisk Tidskrift, pp. 160–62; ‘Nordiska historikermötet i Lund 7-9 augusti 1961: Utgiven av Arbetsutskottet inom Kommitén för nordiska historikermötet i Lund 1961’, pp. 7–10. 16. ‘Den nordiska historikerkongressen i Kristiania 1920’, Historisk Tidskrift, pp. 160–63; Wimarson 1924. 17. Lis Jacobsen had a serious disagreement with Erik Arup. In 1926, she strongly attacked Arup’s interpretation of the Viking age in Danmarks historie (Svenstrup 2006: 537–41).



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18. ‘Det 7. Nordiske Historikermøde i København 8–14. August 1939 af Harald Jørgensen’, Historisk Tidsskrift 1939., bind 10, række, 5 (1939–1941) 477–514. 19.  Söderhjelm wrote her thesis in French, Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg in German, Friis in English. 20.  ‘Astrid Friis in memoriam’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 1967(15): 172–73. 21.  Marina Durovic-Andic (University of Oslo) wrote her Master’s thesis on the career of Ingrid Semmingsen (Durovic-Andic 2013). Typically, women historians have not been interested in female historians who did not concentrate on women’s history (Blom 2004). 22 .‘Ingrid Semmingsen’, Norsk biografisk leksikon.Written by Ingunn Norderval. Accessed 19 April 2017. http://nbl.snl.no/ingrid_semmingsen. 23.  Ida Blom became the first female lecturer in history in 1961. 24.  Pohjoismaisen historiantutkijoiden kokouksen Suomen työvaliokunnan kokous, 26 February 1951. (The meeting of the Finnish Working Committee of the Congress of Nordic Historians, The Archive of The Finnish Historical Society) Suomen Historiallisen Seuran arkisto. Finnish National Archives Service. 25.  Nordiska Historikermötet i Göteborg. Berättelse. Utgiven av mötets arbetsutskott, Lund, 1952. 26.  Beretning om Det nordiske historikermøde i Århus 7–9. august 1957. Utgivet af Organisationsudvalget, Aarhuus, p. 5. 27.  Nordiska historikermötet i Lund. 7–9 augusti 1961. Utgiven av arbetsutskottet inom kommittén för Nordiska historikermötet i Lund 1961. 28.  Compare with Eileen Power in Berg 1996.

Bibliography Arup, E. 1907. Studier i engelsk og tysk handels historie: En undersøgelse av kommissionshandelens praksis og theori i engelsk og tysk handelsliv 1350–1850. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Arup, E. 1925. Danmarks historie I. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz forlag. Arup, E. 1932. Danmarks historie II. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz forlag. Authén Blom, G. 1957. ‘Norge’, in Det Nordiske syn på förbindelsen mellem (ed.), Hansestæderne og Norden: Det nordiske historikermøde I Århus, 7.–9. august 1957. Red Vagn Dygblad Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, pp. 1–54. Authén Blom. G. 1967. Kongemakt og privilegier i Norge inntil 1387. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Authén Blom, G. (ed.). 1977. Urbaniserings prosessen i Norden I–III. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Authén Blom, G. 1992. Norge i Union på 1300-tallet: kongedømme, politikk, administrasjon og forvaltning 1319–1380. Del 1, Kongefellesskapet med Sverige 1319–1350. Trondheim: Tapir. Berg, M. 1996. A Woman in History: Eileen Power 1889–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bergmann-Winberg, M.-L. Von. 2008. ‘Krusius-Ahrenberg, Lolo (1909–2003) – talouspolitologian professori, historiantutkija’, in Suomen Kansallisbiografia: Hakemisto, pp. 46–48. Bergmann-Winberg, M.-L. von, G. Ahonen and K. Hellbom (eds.) 1989. Studier i politik, historia och ekonomi: Festskrift tillägnad Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg. Essays in Politics, History and Economics in Honour of Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg. Helsingfors: Svenska handelshögskolan. Blom, I. 2004. ‘Women in Norwegian and Danish Historiography c. 1900– c.1960’, Storia della Storiografia 46: 130–51. Bokholm, S. 2009. ‘Lydia Wahlström 1869–1954: Prästdottern som blev historiker och feminist’, in A.W. Johansson and R. Björk (eds), Svenska historiker från medeltid till våra dagar. Stockholm: Nordstedt, pp. 323–36.

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Cederschiöld, M. 1915. En banbryterska: Skildringar från Ellen Fries´ studentår i Uppsala. Stockholm: P.A. Nordstedt. Damsholt, N. 1994. ‘Jordbaesyltetøj skal vaere godt for Gejsten: Fra historikeren Ellen Jørgensens korrespondence’, in M. Alenius, N. Damsholt and B. Rosenbeck (eds), Clios Døtre gennenm hundrede år: I anledning af historikeren Anna Hudes disputats 1893. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University, pp. 183–92. Durovic-Andic, M. 2013.Veien til historien: Ingrid Semmingsens vei til historieforskningen. Masteroppgave i historie [Master´s thesis in history]. Institut for arkeologi, konservering og historie. Oslo: University of Oslo. Ellehøj, S. 1968. ‘Astrid Friis 1.8.1893–31.7.1966’, Historisk Tidsskrift 12(3) (1968–1969): (Haefte 1–2), 162–173. Engman, M. 1996. Det främmände ögat: Alma Söderhjelm i vetenskapen och offentligheten. Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland. Engman, M. 2005a. ‘Nationalismin ja liberalismin, Suomen eduskuntalaitoksen ja työmarkkinasuhteiden tutkija Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg’, in E. Katainen et al. (eds), Oma pöytä: Naiset historiankirjoittajina Suomessa. Helsinki: SKS, pp. 228–39. Engman, M. 2005b. ‘Tapojen tuntija ja Ranskan historian tutkija Alma Söderhjelm’, in E. Katainen et al. (eds), Oma pöytä: Naiset historiankirjoittajina Suomessa. Helsinki, SKS, pp. 122–26. Engman, M., and A. Korppi-Tommola. 2004. ‘Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg 1909–2003’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 2: 288–89. Erdmann, D. 2005. Toward a Global Community of Historians: The International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences 1898–2000. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Floto, I. 2006. ‘Myten om Erik Arup in anledning af en disputats’, Historisk Tidsskrift 106(2): 521–50. Fries, E. 1883. Bidrag till kännedomen om Sveriges och Nederländernas diplomatiska förbindelser under Karl X Gustafs regering. Uppsala: R. Almqvist & J. Wicksell’s boktryckeri. Fries, E. 1889. Erik Oxenstierna. Stockholm: [no publisher]. Fries, E. 1890. Märkvärdiga qvinnor 1: Utländska qvinnor. Stockholm: Hierta. Fries, E. 1891. Märkvärdiga qvinnor 2: Svenska qvinnor. Stockholm: Hierta. Fries, E. 1895. Teckningar ur svenska adelns familjelif i gamla tider. Stockholm: [no publisher]. Friis, A. 1927. Alderman Cockayne’s Project and the Cloth Trade: The Commercial Policy of England in its Main Aspects 1603–1625. Copenhagen: [no publisher]. Garritzen, E. 2011. Lähteiden lumoamat: Henry Biaudet, Liisi Karttunen ja suomalainen historiantutkimus Roomassa 1900-luvun alussa [Enchanted by Sources: Henri Biaudet, Liisi Karttunen, and Finnish Historical Research in Rome in the Early Twentieth Century]. Helsinki: SKS. Goggin, J. 1992, ‘Challenging Sexual Discrimination in the Historical Profession’, The American Historical Review 97 (June): 769–802. Gunneriusson, H. 2002. Det historiska fältet: Svensk historievetenskap från 1920-tal till 1957. Uppsala: Studia Historica Upsaliensia 204. Hude, A. 1893. Danehoffet og dets Plads i Danmarks Statsforfatning. Copenhagen: Forlagt af universitetsboghandler G.E.C. Gad. Jacobsen, G. 1994. ‘Kvindelige historikere og historieforskningen, 1893–1943’, in M. Alenius, N. Damsholt and B. Rosenbeck (eds), Clios Døtre gennenm hundrede år: I anledning af historikeren Anna Hudes disputats 1893. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University, pp. 33–61. Jørgensen, C.M. 2000. ‘Patterns of Professionalization and Institutionalization in Denmark from 1848 to the Present’, in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 114–48.



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Jørgensen, E. 1909. Helgendyrkelse i Danmark: Studier over kirkekultur og kirkeligt liv fra det 11. aarhundredes midte til reformationen. Copenhagen: Hagerup. Jørgensen, E. 1920. Annales Danici medii ævi. Copenhagen: Selskabet for udgivelse af kilder til dansk historie. Jørgensen, E. 1926. Catalogus Codicum Latinorum Medii Ævi Bibliothecæ Regiæ Hafniensis. Hafniae: [no publisher]. Jørgensen, E. 1931. Historieforskning og historieskrivning i Danmark indtil aar 1800. Copenhagen: H. Hagerups forlag. Jørgensen, E. 1943. Historiens studium i Danmark i det 19. aarhundrede. Copenhagen: Bianco Lunos Bogtryckeri A/S. Kaarninen, M., and T. Kinnunen. 2004. ‘“Hardly Any Women At All” – Finnish Historiography Revisited’, Storia della Storiografia 46: 152–70. Kiiski, V. 1978. Tekla Hultin, poliitikko. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopisto. Krusius-Ahrenberg, L. 1934. Der Durchbruch des Nationalismus und Liberalismus im politischen Leben Finnlands 1856–1863. Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia. Krusius-Ahrenberg, L. 1944. Från grundlagskommitté till lantdagsordning. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet. Krusius-Ahrenberg, L. 1947. Tyrannmördaren C. F. Ehrensvärd: samhällssyn och politiskt testamente. Helsingfors: Söderström. Lagercrantz, O. (ed.). 1913. Förhandlingar vid Svenska Filolog- och Historikermötet i Göteborg den 19 august 1912. Gothenburg: Wald Zachrissons Boktryckeri A.B. Laine, K. 1935. Otavalan pellavanviljely- ja kehruukoulu Ruotsi-Suomen pellavanviljely- ja kehruupolitiikka 1700-luvulla. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura. Manniche, J.Chr. 1994. ‘En umaettelig kundskabstørst: Anna Hude, Danmarks første kvindelige historiker’, in M. Alenius, N. Damsholt and B. Rosenbeck (eds), Clios Døtre gennenm hundrede år. I anledning af historikeren Anna Hudes disputats 1893. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University, pp. 141–64. Middel, M., and K. Naumann. 2013. ‘The Writing of World History in Europe’, in M. Middel and L. Roura (eds), Transnational Challenges to National History Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 54–139. Myhre, J.E. 2000. ‘A Strong Common Professional Identity: Professionalisation and the Creation of a Discipline in Norwegian Historical Scholarship in the 20th Century’ in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 184–214. Myhre, J.E. 2012. ‘Wider Connections: International Networks among European Historians’, in I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 266–87. Myhre, J.E., and S. Corell. 2010. ‘Norway’, in I. Porciani and L. Raphael (eds), Atlas of European Historiography: The Making of a Profession 1800–2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 77–79. Nicklasson, S. 2000. ‘Lydia Wahlström: En svensk föregångskvinna’, in G. Strömholm (ed.), Lydia Wahlström: Till hundraårsminnet av hennes doktorsdisputation 1898. Uppsala: Historiska institutionen vid Uppsala Universitet, pp. 67–73. Nordiska Historikermötet i Göteborg 1951: Berättelse. Utgiven av mötets arbetsutskott [Issued by the meeting’s work commitee]. Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet. Odén, B. 1980. ‘Forskande kvinnor inom svensk historievetenskap’, Historisk Tidskrift 3: 244–65. Odén, B. 1994. ‘Astrid Friis – Danmarks första kvinnliga professor’, in M. Alenius, N. Damsholt and B. Rosenbeck (eds), Clios Døtre gennenm hundrede år: I anledning af historikeren Anna Hudes disputats 1893. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University, pp. 193–206.

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Odén, B. 2000. ‘Lydia Wahlströms forskarutbildning’, in G. Strömholm (ed.), Lydia Wahlström: Till hundraårsminnet av hennes doktorsdisputation 1898. Uppsala: Historiska institutionen vid Uppsala Universitet, pp. 57–65. O’Dowd, M. 2012. ‘Popular Writers: Woman Historians, the Academic Community and National History Writing’, in I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 351–71. Ohlander, A.-S. 1987. ‘En utomordentligt balansakt: Kvinnliga forskarpionere i Norden’, Historisk Tidskrift 1: 2–22. Ohlander, A.-S. 1992. ‘Ellen Fries – Female Historian and Historian of Women’s History’, Gender & History 4(2): 240–47. Ohlander, A.-S. 1994. ‘Ellen Fries – Kvinnlig historiker och kvinnohistoriker’, in M. Alenius, N. Damsholt and B. Rosenbeck (eds), Clios Døtre gennenm hundrede år: I anledning af historikeren Anna Hudes disputats 1893. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University, pp. 207–13. Ohlander, A.-S. 2009. ‘Ellen Fries 1855–1900: En kvinnlig historikerpionjär’, in A.W. Johansson and R. Björk (eds), Svenska historiker från medeltid till våra dagar. Stockholm: Nordstedt, pp. 260–77. Paakkunainen, K. 1985. Demokratia, tiede, kansanvalistus: Valtiotieteellisen yhdistyksen intellektuaalihistoriaa 1935–1985. Jyväskylä: Gummerus. Palmieri, P.A. 1995. Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Porciani, I., and M. O’Dowd. 2004. ‘History Men and History Women’, Storia della Storiografia 46: 3–34. Porciani, I., and L. Raphael (eds). 2010. Atlas of European Historiography: The Making of a Profession 1800–2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rajainen, M. 1940. Vanhan Suomen koulut 1: Normaalikoulut vv. 1776–1806. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura. Rossiter, M.W. 1984. Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Semmingsen, I. 1941. Veien mot Vest: Utvandringen fra Norge til Amerika 1825–1865. Oslo: [no publisher]. Semmingsen, I. 1950. Veien mot Vest: Utvandingen fra norge til Amerika 1965–1915. Oslo: [no publisher]. Skoglund, A. 1903. De yngre Axelsönernas förbindelser med Sverige (1441–1487). Uppsala: Wretmans tryckeri. Smith, B.G. 2000. The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Söderhjelm, A. 1900. Le régime de la presse pendant la révolution française. Vol. 1. Helsingfors: [no publisher]. Söderhjelm, A. 1901. Le régime de la presse pendant la révolution francaise. Vol. 2. Paris: H. Welter. Söderhjelm, A. 1905. ‘Ensimmäinen pohjoismainen historiallinen kongressi’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 4: 134–41. Söderhjelm, A. 1920. Sverige och den franska revolutionen: Bidrag till kännedom on Sveriges och Frankrikes inbördes förhållande i slutet av 1700-talet. 1. Gustav III:s tid. Helsingfors: Söderström. Söderhjelm, A. 1924. Sverige och den franska revolutionen: Bidrag till kännedom on Sveriges och Frankrikes inbördes förhållande i slutet av 1700-talet. 2. Förmyndarregeringens tid 1792–1796. Helsingfors: Söderström. Söderhjelm, A. 1929. Min värld I. Stockholm: Bonnier. Söderhjelm, A. 1930. Min värld II. Stockholm: Bonnier.



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Söderhjelm, A. 1930. Fersen et Marie-Antoinette. Paris: Kra. Söderhjelm, A. 1931. Min värld III. Stockholm: Bonnier. Söderhjelm, A. 1938. Åbo tur och retur. Stockholm: Bonnier. Strömholm, G. 1992. ‘1800-talets kvinnliga Uppsala-studenter’, in B.E. Rydén (ed.), Studenten, staden och sanningen: Bilder och essayer. Uppsala nation 350 år. Uppsala: Upplands nation, pp. 243–66. Sulkunen, I., S.-L. Nevala and P. Markkola (eds). 2009. Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reforms. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Svalestuen, A.A. 1980. ‘Professor Ingrid Semmingsen – emigrasjonshistorikeren’, in S. Langholm and F. Sejersted (eds), Vandringer: Festskrift til Ingrid Semmingsen. Oslo: Forlagt av H. Aschenhoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), pp. 9–42. Svenstrup, T. 2006. Arup – en biografi om den radikale historiker Erik Arup, hans tid og miljø. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University. Tawney, R.H. 1929. ‘Astrid Friis, Alderman Cockayne’s Project and the Cloth Trade: The Commercial Policy of England in Its Main Aspects, 1903–1925’, The Economic History Review 2(1): 155–57. Tersmeden F., and P. Dhondt. 2011. ‘The Bicentenary of the University of Lund in 1868’, in P. Dhondt (ed.), National, Nordic or European? Nineteenth-Century University Jubilees and Nordic Cooperation. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 99–137. Torbacke, J. 2005. ‘Hundra år av vetenskaplig gemenskap: 25 nordiska historikermöten’, Nordisk Tidskrift 1: 52–59. Wahlström, L. 1898. ‘Sveriges förhållande till Danmark 1788-89’, Ph.D. dissertation. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, H. Wretmans tryckeri. Wahlström, L. 1949. Trotsig och försagd: Mitt livs minnen. Stockholm: Natur och kultur. Watts, R. 2007. Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History. London: Routledge. Westergaard, W. 1952. ‘Danish History and Danish Historians’, The Journal of Modern History 2: 178–79. Wilkama, S. 1938. Naissivistyksen periaatteiden kehitys Suomessa 1840–1880-luvuilla: Pedagogisaatehistoriallinen tutkimus. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura. Wimarson, N. (ed.). 1924. Nordiska Historikermötet i Göteborg 5–7 juli 1923. Gothenburg: Wennerhol & Béwes tryckeri. Zander, U. 2007. ‘I skuggan av unionsupplösningen: Skandinavismen, nationalism och historikermötet i Lund’, in H. Gustafsson et al. (eds), Den dubbla blicken: Historia i nordiska samhällena kring sekelskiftet 1900. Lund: Sekel, pp. 27–36.

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Trans-Nordic neo-empiricism in a European setting – or, why did Foucault leave Uppsala? Peter Edelberg

Introduction In 1957, the then unknown historian, Michel Foucault, who for two years had been cultural attaché at the Maison de France in Uppsala, turned in a thesis, later to be known as The History of Madness, to Professor Sten Lindroth at the University of Uppsala’s Department of the History of Ideas. Professor Lindroth rejected the thesis for not being proper history in his eyes, and Foucault returned to Paris the following year, where his friend and tutor, Professor George Canguilhem, accepted the thesis. Fifty years later, Sten Lindroth was only remembered in Sweden,1 whereas Foucault was the most cited scholar in the field of humanities worldwide,2 not least because of his world-famous thesis on the history of madness. The story of Foucault’s exit from Uppsala has been told before as a story of cold and conservative Scandinavians standing in contrast to the smart Parisian intellectual. The story has no doubt grown in the telling; Foucault was actually quite fond of both Uppsala and Professor Lindroth (Eribon 1993: 84). However, Foucault’s exit from Uppsala highlights some important divisions in the understanding of history in the late 1950s and 1960s. Historians in the Nordic countries were revising empiricism, developing what Norwegian historian Ottar Dahl called critical empiricism. Notes for this section begin on page 307.



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This was an endeavour that crossed national borders in the Nordic region, and Dahl cooperated with Danish historian Hans Peter Clausen in developing and institutionalizing new ideas about history along with more conservatively minded colleagues in Sweden and Finland. In this chapter, I will explore these new ideas from a transnational point of view and situate them in a European context. This strategy will demonstrate how the theory of history in Scandinavia in the 1960s was far from being an incomplete or scattered version of later 1970s ideas, as has been suggested, but rather constituted a distinct response to the challenges of history in the 1960s that were felt all over Europe, but being answered in different ways. I will not make a complete survey of European methodological ideas in history; rather, I will pick out contrasting examples that highlight the specific path Scandinavian academic history took in the 1960s.

Methodological nationalism The history of Scandinavian historical methodology and theory has mainly been interpreted through the lens of methodological nationalism. In the article ‘In the Footsteps of a Father’ (2000), the Danish historiographer Bernard Eric Jensen interpreted the Danish methodological tradition as ‘the handling of a legacy’ (Jensen 2000: 280), after the Danish historian Kristian Erslev. The ‘Erslev question’ was much debated among Danish historians during the twentieth century, and was (once again) taken up during the turn of the millennium during the sometimes heated debates over what constituted proper history, this time spurred by the linguistic turn and postmodernism. A short and selective overview of the discussions about methodology in Denmark since the 1970s will serve to demonstrate what I want to do in this chapter, namely zoom out and replace the often nationally framed discussion on methodology with a broader Scandinavian and European discussion of methodology. I believe that the specific flavour of Scandinavian methodology will stand out more distinctly in this way. As a proponent of classical empiricism and scientific history, and the author of classical introductions to history – one of which was still in use at the university level a hundred years after it was published – Erslev undeniably holds a special position in Danish historical methodology. In the above-mentioned article, Jensen discusses how Erslev’s breadth of focus helped ensure his immortality. Erslev formulated the classical empiricist positions in a Danish setting, inspired by French and German historical methodologists. He classified sources according to whether they were

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actual relics of the past (‘überreste’ in German, ‘levning’ in Danish), or accounts of the past, and he established procedures for the proper and systematic critique of accounts. By introducing this systematic source criticism, Erslev believed that a new kind of scientific objectivity could be achieved, thereby establishing a division between old-fashioned, conservative and romantic historians and modern, progressive and realist historians. Later in his life, Erslev rewrote the introduction to his work on historical method, or Historical Technique (Erslev 1911) as the title was in 1911, and explained that historical sources did not by their own nature fall into either the category of relic or account, as he himself had written in his 1892 introduction to the work Nogle Grundsætninger for historisk Kildekritik [Some Basic Tenets of Historical Source Criticism] (Erslev 1892). The way in which a historian used a source determined the category that it fit into, was Erslev’s new point of view. Thus, for example, the famous Danish medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus was a relic of the High Middle Ages but only an account of older times, and not the undisputed authority or ‘monument’ that older generations of historians had made him out to be. Jensen also discusses in the article how different generations of Danish historians have chosen the early, positivist and ‘practicing’, or else the later hermeneutic and ‘reflexive’ Erslev as their role model according to their own taste, and how the very breadth of Erslev’s writings has been important in solidifying his role as the father of modern Danish history. Jensen had already in the 1970s made major contributions to the theory of history; the article ‘A Contribution to the Revision of the Basis of Methodology’ (1976) is often cited as providing a breakthrough in ‘the functional source concept’. The functional source concept was the 1970s formulation of the later, ‘reflexive’ Erslev, i.e. the notion that historical evidence is not a relic or account in and of itself, but only reflects a historian’s questions with respect to a particular source. In the article, Jensen argues that cognition should be regarded as residing in the subject rather than emanating from the historical evidence. He credits Erslev with being the first to realize this aspect of historical inquiry, but suggests that he did not fully understand the consequences. While he admits that Clausen approached the functional view of historical research via a question-answer model (Jensen 1976: 124, n. 18), Jensen downplays Clausen’s importance and limits his discussion of Clausen to the footnotes. According to Jensen, Clausen had a ‘subject-forgetting ideal of cognition’ (1976: 122, n. 15),3 which stood in contrast to Jensen’s own ‘subjectdeveloping ideal’ (1976: 124). The contrast that Jensen draws between Erslev and the subject-developing ideal leads him to the conclusion that a ‘radical revision’ (1976: 114) of methodology, indeed a ‘paradigm shift’ (1976: 115), has begun.



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Another Danish historiographer, Helge Paludan, has also assessed the Danish tradition through the lens of methodological nationalism. In a 2001 article, Paludan discusses who invented the functional source concept. According to Paludan, Bernard Eric Jensen was the first to clearly articulate this view of historical evidence in a 1976 article,4 but the tradition goes even further back in time. Like Jensen, Paludan traces the tradition back to Erslev, but he argues that the Aarhus historian Troels Fink was the first to seriously address the consequences of Erslev’s ‘reflexive’ view as early as the 1950s. Thus, Paludan argues that Fink is an important and much overlooked figure in Danish methodological debates. Fink hired Clausen, who in turn organized the Nordic Conferences on Historical Method and Theory, and Fink collaborated with Clausen on renewing methodological teaching at Aarhus University. Paludan contrasts Clausen to his Scandinavian contemporaries, Ottar Dahl, Rolf Torstendahl and Sivert Langholm ‘and their neo-positivism’, thus singling out Clausen as the individual most responsible for revitalizing methodological tradition (Paludan 2001: 84). Paludan’s article is a passionate defence of the functional view, which he sees as being the only correct view; it is also not just a defence of Denmark and the Danish academic tradition but also of his native city of Aarhus, where both Fink and Clausen worked. In his overview of theoretical and methodological discussions at Aarhus University’s History Department, Claus Møller Jørgensen also chooses a national framework, which is more understandable since his text is part of a Festschrift to his department. Nonetheless, Møller Jørgensen underscores the fact that Ottar Dahl was Clausen’s ‘great source of inspiration’ (Jørgensen and Christensen 2004: 90, 96) rather than ignoring Dahl’s influence on Clausen or reducing it to only a minor role, as Paludan and Jensen do. These national, and even local, explanations of methodology address many important issues, but naturally they hide other important questions that a transnational approach can better address. Both Jensen and Paludan distance themselves from positivism, and thus they highlight the 1970s and the functional view as representing a breakthrough in terms of methodology and providing a valid theory of historical evidence. As a result, the 1960s theoreticians are bracketed based on an explicit formulation of a functional view of the evidence, and at best they are seen as having taken a step towards the correct way of viewing evidence. If we instead bracket the exact periodization for a functional view of the evidence, the 1960s stand out as a distinct period in terms of Scandinavian reflection on historical theory and method in its own right. A figure like Clausen can thus stand out as a person who responded to his own times instead of being someone who merely formulated a 1970s

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theory in an incomplete or partial manner. If there is the tendency to walk in the footsteps of one’s fathers in Danish academic history, there is also a great deal of patricide. Nonetheless, the 1970s methodologists were not as revolutionary as they thought. The 1970s methodologists thought they had found the golden middle way between empiricism and subjectivism by naming and fine-tuning ‘the functional view of historical evidence’ (in Danish, ‘det funktionelle kildebegreb’), a methodology that was really invented by the 1960s methodologists. In the wake of the ‘linguistic turn’ in the 1990s, it became quite popular again to declare the death of classical empiricism, perhaps understandably since, as I shall also argue, empiricism is not a stage we have left, but a tradition that is still with us (see, for example, Nevers 2005: 219). However, the Danish historian Dorthe Gert Simonsen, who was inspired by the linguistic turn, did not declare the death of history, but instead merely shifted the positions of such classical concepts as source criticism, functional or material, subject and object. In the article ‘A Challenge to the Source-Critical Subject’ (2001), she argues that there was never the decisive break between ‘material’ and ‘functional’ source criticism that historians like Jensen and Paludan want to see. Simonsen lumps the so-called ‘positivist Erslev’ together with the so-called ‘hermeneutic or humanistic Erslev’ (or ‘practicing and reflexive Erslev’, as others would say) under the heading ‘the problematics of subjectivism’ (Simonsen 2001: 110), by which she means that empiricism deals with the problem of how we can trust that sources filtered through individual subjectivities tell us ‘what really happened’. Regardless of whether we regard historical evidence as pieces of a puzzle or as texts that can help us answer our questions correctly, we are putting the past in a subject-object relationship, which we can only study in perhaps a fragmented way by using incomplete or un/reliable witnesses. In contrast to ‘the problematics of subjectivism’, Simonsen suggests another theory: ‘the analytics of the sign’, which deals with how signs constitute both subjects and objects. Simonsen thus bypasses the discussion about whether ‘it really happened’, and instead suggests that we investigate how signs, objects and subjects circulate in meaning-generating relations. By reconstituting the field of discussion, Simonsen lumps ‘functionalists’ and ‘materialists’ together in a manoeuvre that allows for new kinds of historical-theoretical discussions. During the last two decades, a transnational inquiry into Scandinavian historiography has been taking place. The process of inquiry seems especially strong in Norway, perhaps because before that time a national trend in history was especially strong there, and thus the need for renewal was more urgently felt (Fulsås 2000: 240). This interest in a transnational approach has changed the level of discussion from that of attributing theoretical and



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methodical differences to departmental rivalries or generational gaps to that of analysing how theoretical and methodological choices were part of larger alignments with European ideological currents and the similarities and differences in national ideological foundations.5 I want to align myself with this transnational current in Scandinavian historiography as well as to argue that Clausen, Dahl and their Scandinavian methodological colleagues were not a station between Kristian Erslev and an updated 1970s historical theory. The 1960s was a flourishing period when it came to theories about history and methodology. Many of today’s historiographical debates have their roots in the 1960s. Furthermore, Scandinavian historical theorists of the 1960s clearly articulated a position vis-à-vis Marxism, and, contrary to other forms of periodization, Marxism did not emerge from the 1960s and flourish in the 1970s; the process of periodization is much more complex. Much Scandinavian historical theory in the 1960s was a response to historical materialism and Marxist theory in academic historiography reaching back to the interwar period. I will also argue that twentieth-century Scandinavian historiography cannot be viewed merely as a ‘critical period’ standing in contrast to a more ‘naive’ nineteenth-century historiography that glorified the nation-state. If we go a level above the national histories and study history as part of a transnational approach, we can see that twentieth-century Scandinavian historiography also glorified the state, just a new kind of state: the social state or welfare state that was gaining hegemony in the postwar years. But first I want to outline historical theory and methodology in Scandinavia in the 1960s.

Historical theory in Scandinavia in the 1960s In the 1960s, new studies on historical method came out in four Scandinavian countries. In Denmark, assistant lecturer H.P. Clausen published Hvad er historie? [What Is History?] in 1963 (Clausen 1963). In 1964, lecturer Ottar Dahl in Norway followed with Innföring i historieforskningens metodelære [Introduction to Historical Methodology] (Dahl 1964), which was a stencilled manuscript, later published as a proper book with the new title Grunntrekk i historieforskningens metodelære [Basics of Historical Methodology] in 1967 (Dahl 1967). In 1965, the Finnish history professor Pentti Renvall published Den moderna historieforskningens principer [Principles of Modern Historical Research] (Renvall 1965), and finally in 1966 the Swedish historian and lecturer at Uppsala University Rolf Torstendahl published Introduktion till historieforskningen: Historia som vetenskap [Introduction to Historical Research: History as a Science] (Torstendahl

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1966). Clausen, Dahl and Torstendahl all eventually became full professors in their respective countries. Renvall’s book was primarily a reworking in expanded form of his 1947 work on historical methods. As few other Scandinavians are able to read Finnish, the translation of the new book into Swedish in 1965 presented it to a larger audience in neighbouring countries. Renvall’s theories were to a large extent idiosyncratic and contradictory, but nevertheless the book was well received as a handbook on source criticism and defended the idea of ‘scientific’ historiography against ‘ideological’ historiography (including modern sociology) (Ahtiainen and Tervonen 2000: 66–67). Renvall was, anyway, a valued senior member of the Scandinavian network of methodologists that developed in the 1960s.6 Sivert Langholm’s book Historisk rekonstruksjon og begrunnelse [Historical Reconstruction and Argument] should also be mentioned here. Langholm’s book was mainly thought of as an easy-to-read version of Ottar Dahl, and Langholm largely followed his mentor Dahl in positing his theories (Langholm 1967).

Networks of Scandinavian theory debates Ottar Dahl in Oslo and H.P. Clausen in Aarhus developed their theories in cooperation with each other, even though the first personal contact between them only occurred in September 1963, when Dahl published a review of Clausen’s book What Is History?7 Dahl wrote to Clausen, and Clausen wrote back, and soon they became personal friends. Every letter between them ended with the friendly words, ‘Please give my regards to your wife’. Even though Clausen published his study first, he had read Dahl’s investigations of historiography, which inspired him to look at history in a different way. Dahl had discussed how concepts and historical theories (such as nationalism or Marxism) influenced the writing of history, and furthermore, how to understand historical studies in a purely logical way in his books on historical materialism, causation and Norwegian historiography (Dahl 1952, 1956 1959). Dahl’s studies led him to the rather humble conclusion that we cannot reach absolute certainty in history, but we can achieve certain degrees of plausibility by using empirical data systematically, something that had been lacking in previous ideologically informed historical studies. Furthermore, Dahl’s studies demonstrated clearly that the key question in historiography was not whether this or that particular historian had used the historical evidence in the proper systematic manner,



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but rather which ideologies, preconceptions and concepts the particular historian or generation of historians had worked with. After initial contact had been established between Dahl and Clausen, Clausen suggested working together on a common Nordic introduction to historical method as a replacement to Erslev’s 1911 book. Clausen imagined a common instructional text with different sets of partially overlapping examples from each Nordic country. His problem was that he did not have contact with any colleagues in Sweden with an interest in theory and method, as Dahl did, namely Rolf Torstendahl at the University of Uppsala.8 Clausen wanted Dahl’s opinion of the project, but when Dahl responded that he viewed his newly published book on method as just such an introduction, Clausen’s project was dropped.9 It is clear that from the beginning of the 1960s, scholars already perceived a shared common ground, one that was expanded and strengthened in the years to come. The turning point was the Nordic Historians’ Meeting in Bergen in August 1964. There, Dahl met Clausen. According to Danish tradition, Clausen had arranged for a meeting of ‘methodists’, as they jokingly called themselves, during the conference. The Norwegian tradition diplomatically mentions both Clausen and Dahl as the initiators of such a meeting (Simensen 1989: 9). A working committee was established, which consisted of Dahl and Clausen along with Professor Pentti Renvall from Helsinki and Associate Professor Jörgen Weibull. The committee was charged with setting up the first Nordic Historians’ Conference on Historical Method in 1965 (Clausen 1966: 1).10 An annual forum for theoretical and methodological debate was thus set up as a result of Dahl’s foundational work and Clausen’s enthusiasm and initiative, which helped stimulate new contacts between scholars in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. The connections between Scandinavian theorists broadened and deepened in the following years. The historian Stellan Dahlgren from the University of Uppsala wrote to Dahl asking him for copies of his book on method, since ‘no modern handbooks on this subject exist’.11 Jörgen Weibull became professor in Aarhus in 1967, creating a powerful duo consisting of him and Clausen, who, together with others such as Troels Fink and Henning Poulsen, made Aarhus a centre of theoretical reflection on aspects of historical research. Clausen and Weibull invited Dahl to lecture in Aarhus, which he did even though he did not enjoy lecturing. His acceptance was no doubt due to the personal connections between them – and Dahl in his answer made sure to extend his greetings to the wives of both Aarhus professors, whom he of course knew personally.12 Dahl made sure to return the favour; he arranged for Clausen to lecture in Oslo during an extended stay. Dahl

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made sure that Professor Renvall was in Oslo at the same time, so the two could meet.13

Methodological theories of the 1960s Let me continue by outlining the theories that were proposed in the 1960s. Generally, we see a division between Danish-Norwegian rationalism and Swedish-Finnish empiricism. Dahl and Clausen emphasized the creative role of the historian and the distance between themselves and classical historical empiricism, whereas Torstendahl and Renvall embraced classical empiricism and distanced themselves from any kind of subjectivism or relativism. However, the rift is rather invisible since both Torstendahl and Renvall in their books, which came out last among the group, concluded that historians in the Scandinavian countries agree on the basics of historical methodology. This is a rather astonishing remark, and one that I shall return to later. All four historians mentioned the need to answer to accusations of subjectivism and relativism. They all emphasized that history is a science firmly grounded in logic and historical evidence. However, they differed on the nature or role of the historian and the nature of the sources. Dahl and Clausen wanted first and foremost to argue for historical method as part of a larger theoretical structure, which Dahl called ‘critical empiricism’ (Dahl 1964: 1). However, this critical empiricism differed greatly from classical empiricism in that the empirical evidence only became evidence in relation to a historical question or theory put forward by the historian. Dahl wrote: We will found our systematics … on the view of scientific cognition [‘vitenskapelig erkjennelse’] as an interaction between questions and answers. In this ‘dialectical’ process both elements are necessary, and presuppose each other reciprocally. More specifically, one can say that the question has logical priority in correlation with the answer provided. On the other hand, a posed question will always have its precondition in a set of established statements, that is, answers to other questions. (Dahl 1964: 3; Dahl’s emphasis)

Dahl established the question as the beginning of historical enquiry in order to clearly distance himself from views that emphasized the priority of historical evidence, but he maintained a cognitive circle as his model. Renvall, holding a more traditional view, emphasized the objective-scientific nature of historical research and described history as relations between facts (Renvall 1965: 30, 42). Dahl and Clausen both praised the creative nature of historical research. They rejected the classical split between a supposedly objective



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establishment of facts standing in opposition to the creative process of history writing. Instead, they described the whole process of historical research as a creative circle. Historical research starts with a hypothesis, wrote Clausen, not with facts or sources. These hypotheses come from the researcher’s own subjectivity: The research questions [‘problemformuleringerne’] are the historian’s actual original contribution to the research process; they are the first precondition so that his research can become of value. Here, the individual researcher’s imagination, ingenuity, and combinatory ability as well as his knowledge of the world and people becomes of the greatest value. (Clausen 1963: 60)

In Dahl’s book, the hypotheses come from ‘the researcher’s creative originality’, where he is ‘principally free’ (Dahl 1964: 5). In contrast, Torstendahl described historical research as the explanation and organization of facts with the aim of establishing relations between causes and effects. Acknowledging the difficulty of establishing exact relations, Torstendahl wrote that probability rather than truth was the aim of scientific history. Clausen did not share Torstendahl’s belief in the scientific discovery of causes and effects. Clausen acknowledged the importance of a logical approach to causes and effects, but he leaned rather towards the view that ‘the historian is characterized by the causes he proposes’ (Clausen 1963: 132),14 thus allowing for the historian’s own imagination to play a large role. Renvall was quite critical of proposing causes and effects, and he suggested that we should instead establish broader, more general relations of development. Renvall did not share Torstendahl’s doubts about scientific truth, and he wrote that the traces of the past (i.e. the historical evidence) secured what he referred to as a ‘concrete reality’ (Renvall 1965: 41). These differences point to a fundamental disagreement over the historian as subject. As what we can call a metaphorical aristocrat, Clausen saw himself and his equals as a given reality and others as being caught up in different circumstances. For Clausen, people in the past should be viewed as unique individuals determined by time and place. Thus, historical evidence is not only a product of the creator’s own subjectivity but also of the factors that affected her or him. In the end, historical evidence is determined by societal conditions rather than individuals. However, the historian was not so determined in Clausen’s way of thinking. As mentioned previously, for Clausen a historian’s questions were shaped by his originality and imagination rather than by social or political conditions. Clausen rejected ‘theories of perspective’ (Clausen 1963: 111), since, as he wrote, a historian was held in check by his colleagues, and therefore questions and answers were not formed by a single perspective. In his opinion, ‘One should strive to gaze as clearly back as possible without letting the time in between or the

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moment blur your eyes’. ‘In lucky moments this can be done’, he felt (Clausen 1963: 108). Clausen’s idea of history as ‘gazing back’ prevented him from turning the gaze at himself. The historian as subject was not as tied to time and place as other persons in history. Dahl was more or less in agreement with Clausen, but he acknowledged the problem of whether the historian too might be influenced by personal and social conditions. Sounding more like a monk than an aristocrat, Dahl wrote that the research community and the research tradition stands outside of society, and therefore neither are socially determined. His questions might be subjective, but his methods, theories and conclusions were neutral and objective. Objectivity, Dahl wrote, is the knowledge that it is possible to reach intersubjective agreement regarding the degree to which a particular historical theory is adequate (Dahl 1964: 67–68). Though this solution may at first seem convincing, Dahl himself rejected history as a search for concrete reality and instead believed that history emerges from the questions we pose and the answers we construct; as a result, our questions will determine what reality we choose to verify, reject or modify. Knut Kjeldstadli wrote in an obituary to Dahl that the experiences of the Second World War had made Dahl wary of human dreams and ideals, and he had sought in logical positivism a sense of security against the dangers of mankind’s passions (Kjelstadli 2012: 187). This feeling was common at the time, but the solutions were numerous, as we shall see later. This view of the autonomous historian, or historian community, was rejected by Renvall, who wrote that an individual, like everything and everyone else, was a generalization and a historical figure. Renvall viewed the idea of the historian as a subject standing outside of history, as one who could empathically understand the past, as but a romanticist stage of history writing, which had now been succeeded by a ‘modern scientific-objective stage’ (Renvall 1965: 30). History is not art, he emphasized; he strove to eliminate the historian as subject altogether, and instead to base the study of history on precise scientific operations. Mankind does not represent firm ground for the historian, but rather a problem to be solved, he wrote (Renvall 1965: 18, 36). In his formulation: Scientific-objective historical research seeks to arrive at historical truth, which is a knowledge of reality that can be regarded as valid. History is not art, and it serves no other purpose than knowledge …. (Renvall 1965: 36)

For Renvall, social structures were the objective realities of the past, and individuals, events and institutions were conditioned by the larger social structures they were part of (Renvall 1965: 56). This view was different from that of both Dahl and Clausen in that he saw Clausen’s theories as



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old-fashioned romantic notions; in opposition to Dahl, he placed both the historian and his community firmly under the same conditions of historicity as everything else. Torstendahl was on Renvall’s side, and he too rejected as unscientific and uninteresting anything that had its source in the historian’s own subjectivity (Torstendahl 1966: 142). For him, only the results that a historian can prove by using strict scientific principles were a matter of concern; Torstendahl believed that such results could be seen apart from the historian who produced them, with all of his subjective and socially determined prejudices. The instabilities of empiricism did not only emerge in the relationship between the authors and their different, but connected, ideas about history proper. Instability also emerged within each oeuvre; for example, consider Clausen’s two different standards regarding people in history and historians in the present. Interestingly, in his work on Norwegian historiography in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Dahl described how historiography itself was a part of history. Historians’ ideas about history were conditioned by the needs and ideologies of their age. Rather than giving up the idea of a concrete past, Dahl set out to salvage a firm foundation for future history writing. This was a venture that he had previously argued had not been possible, and so eventually he had to place the historians’ community outside of society in order to make the theory fit. Instability also emerged from Torstendahl’s more firm positivism. Declaring that history was an empirical science, Torstendahl went on to say: Historical knowledge is the fruit of observation. The historical scientist builds his argument upon data collected from experience. (Torstendahl 1966: 51)

However, Torstendahl also rejected the idea of history as a process of gathering the pieces of a puzzle and putting them together (Torstendahl 1966: 160). A historian ought to organize and explain facts from the past (1966: 54); in other words, she or he should determine the relations between facts both synchronically and diachronically. However, these relations exist on a level of abstraction that cannot be observed. The facts might be empirical, but their relations are invisible. One consequence of both Dahl’s and Clausen’s idea that the objectivity of history relied on the intersubjective agreement of the historical community is that people outside of the community had little chance to disagree with the conclusions. For them, history was built either on observations of the past (Torstendahl) or traces of the past (Renvall). For Clausen, on the other hand, a historian does not have access to the past in and of itself, but could only possibly verify, modify and/or falsify his or her hypotheses with the aid of historical evidence. This evidence, however, only became evidence in the hands of a historian ‘with the right knowledge

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and technical ability’ (Clausen 1963: 34), which in practical life meant a university degree. As such, historians were the gatekeepers of history. The 1960s generally witnessed a social turn in history writing in the Western world, with historians turning away from a limited focus on medieval and political history. Interestingly, this turn meant in some countries a turn away from classical historical positivism, which had been better suited to a history of events. However, it seems that in Scandinavia social history did not stand in contrast to a classical empiricist theory of history. Dahl and Clausen turned away from a type of source criticism especially suited for medieval studies, such as that employed by Erslev, and instead extended Erslev’s principles to cover any kind of source material, including pictures, newspapers and other material of the modern age. While it would be enticing to call Torstendahl and Renvall oldfashioned and to position Dahl and Clausen as the torchbearers of a new theory of history, this would be misleading. Historians in Scandinavia have struggled with the nature of historical evidence throughout the twentieth century. The idea that the evidence is not self-evident and is but a function of the historian’s question had been lying dormant in Erslev’s Historisk Teknik [Historical Technique] since 1911. With Dahl and Clausen, that idea was shouted from the rooftops, and they made it the centrepiece of their theory of history; the idea has continued more or less unmodified in some later handbooks and academic introductions to the field (Thorborg 1977: 6–7; Kristensen 2007: 48). The idea of historical research as a circular process of questions, modifications and answers would be defended by most Scandinavian historians today, I believe. In turn, most contemporary historians would disagree with the theory that historical research only has to do with collecting objective data from different sources and inductively building larger and larger structures. Nonetheless, the autonomous subject or community that Dahl and Clausen proposed flies in the face of later theories on the nature of scientific communities and their ties to social and political interests, for example Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of knowledge. Thus, we should not overemphasize the ‘contemporary flavour’ of Dahl and Clausen. Reading Renvall’s statements about the individual as a generalization of his or her times and as a problem to be solved, one is reminded of post-structuralism, for example Foucault’s closing remarks in The Order of Things, but this was more due to Renvall’s interest in Gestalt psychology. The point is that we should not attach ideas to a straightforward timeline stretching from the ‘outdated’ to the ‘modern’, but instead should see how particular ideas echo through time. It is remarkable that all four authors rejected Marxism as a theory of history (Renvall 1965: 72; Torstendahl 1966: 56; Dahl 1952: 90; Clausen



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1963: 7). All four agreed that history’s primary aim is to generate intellectual insights, but all four also saw important secondary aims in benefitting society – not so much Clausen, but Dahl wrote that a proper view of history hinders black and white thinking and the types of actions that result from it. In their minds, proper history also opposes fanaticism, dogmatism and intolerance. For Renvall, on the other hand, the main objective is to write the history of ‘our people’ (Renvall 1965: 271) and make it possible for individuals to internalize their history as their own epos. ‘History is reality’s poetry’, he wrote (Renvall 1965: 280). Torstendahl stated, like a true partisan for the scientification of history, that the aim of history is ‘to solve large problem complexes in cooperation with actively steering and funding authorities’ (Torstendahl 1966: 49). In other words, there was no single social or epistemological turn in historical methodology in the 1960s. Likewise, we should be wary of naming progressives and reactionaries in the methodological tradition. Both Renvall and Torstendahl wrote in their books, which came out after Dahl’s and Clausen’s books, that there was unity among Scandinavian historians and that they shared basic scientific principles. Instead of poking fun at such statements, my aim is to show that this unity was a unity in diversity. If we accept those statements, then historical methodology in Scandinavia in the 1960s becomes a very broad field indeed, or a very large tool box, as Foucault would say. One could be either a hardcore positivist, like Torstendahl, or an agnostic with respect to reality, like Clausen. One could say that the individual is the core of history, or that social relations and structures are everything. So long as historians subscribed to the basic principles of source criticism and the concomitant security that history is as much a science as any other field of study, then they could be located squarely within the field of scholarly history. What the 1960s did for historical methodology was carry on a tradition of empiricism and combine it with elements of Popper’s critical rationalism, with the result being what Dahl called critical empiricism. Hence, a crucial factor that held Nordic historiography together was the treasuring of the concept of – in Danish ‘levning’, ‘kvarleva’ in Swedish or ‘überreste’ in German – that is to say, the concept of relics or incontrovertible facts in history. Despite all their differences, the four authors all retained classical source criticism as a key element in their theories. Perhaps this was what secured the continued feeling of a distinctive Nordic historiography in spite of the allure of Marxism and other controversial theories. They do not seem to share a particular geographical unity or historical unity that bound them together. Dahl and Clausen extended history to cover any sociocultural question situated in a chronological context. Torstendahl warned against patriotism as a source of error in history, and

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only Renvall wrote poetically about ‘our people’s history’ and history as a national epos. In other words, no true sense of Scandinavianism emerged as a result of these books. Some political unity, however, did seem to emerge from between the lines. All four scholars were against dogmatic Marxism and other metaphysical views of history; at the same time, they were all against perspectivism, subjectivism and ‘general relativism’ (for example, Clausen 1963: 104).

European historical theoretical debates in the 1960s If we turn our eyes towards the rest of Europe in the 1960s, many new waves were forming in historical theory that were moving in directions other than Scandinavian neo-empiricism. Dahl and Clausen were inspired by critical rationalism, especially by the Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper, who in The Poverty of Historicism had criticized classical historical positivism; later, in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) he expanded the argument with a thorough rebuttal of the historical theories of, among others, Hegel and Marx. Popper added to a thorough criticism of what he termed historicism, a new theory of falsification as the criterion for sound scientific theories. He combined these rather ascetic theories with a passionate plea for ‘piecemeal social engineering’ rather than revolutionary changes in society. All in all, Popper’s scepticism, passion and scientific rigour formed a perfect state philosophy for Scandinavian welfare societies. However, Popper did not become a model for historical studies everywhere in Europe. In 1961, the British historian E.H. Carr delivered a lecture series entitled What Is History? The series of lectures, later published as a book, went on to become a standard text on historical theory. In the first chapter of the book, Carr ridicules, rages against, and presents several alternatives to classical source criticism. ‘The belief in a hard core of historical fact existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate’ (Carr 1961: 12), wrote Carr. However, such thinking seems to have been eradicated to a certain degree in British history today, since no equivalent to ‘überreste’, ‘levning’ or ‘kvarleva’ springs to mind. The phrase most commonly used in British history is ‘historical evidence’, and this difference in vocabulary highlights the differences in theoretical traditions. Carr openly polemicized against Popper, saying that Popper had misunderstood historicism and especially Marx. Carr defended Marx and Hegel, he defended the idea of real progress in history and the global victory of Western-style reason over superstition and savagery. We should



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perhaps see Carr as a neo-historicist who wanted to go back to a type of history before the advent of source criticism and cultural relativism. Carr advocated understanding as a key word in history writing, an interest he shared with hermeneutic philosophy that also affected theories of history in the postwar era. In Britain, R.G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History was published after the war, a book that proposed the radical hermeneutical idea that all history was the history of thought. Hermeneutics was one direction in which the philosophy of history was going in the 1960s, while structure-history was another. Structurehistory was mainly associated with the Annales School of history in France, which was centred on the journal Annales and France’s leading academic from the 1950s to the 1980s, Fernand Braudel. He became noted for his theorizing of different timescales: the time of events, of conjunctures, and of what he called ‘la longue durée’ – long-term historical structures. For Braudel, real history involved describing ‘la longue durée’, a timescale that did not lend itself to strict fact checking, falsification or clear hierarchies of causes and effects. Many of Foucault’s thoughts in the 1950s and 1960s revolved around the problem of history. That was the time of his so-called archaeological period, where he published works such as The History of Madness, The Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things. In each of the three works, Foucault alternatively unsettled conventional wisdom on the subjects of madness and reason, medicine and objectivity, and language and science. Instead of progress and the advance of reason, Foucault unearthed different ‘archaeological’ layers of discursive and practical reason from the Renaissance to the modern period. Foucault presented each layer as being self-contained; instead of increasing humanism and rationality, Foucault described, for instance, how during the Renaissance those accused of being mad had been accorded an important place in the symbolic and social world, whereas during the modern period such people had been silenced and locked up on the grounds of superior scientific and humanistic practices.15 At the time that The Order of Things was first published in 1967, Foucault situated himself as a historian, and he highlighted the work of the French Annales historians, among others, as ‘making possible a new adventure in knowledge’ (Foucault 2000a: 279). Wrestling with the questions of subjectivity and objectivity in historical writing, Foucault said: … the author is constitutive of the thing he is talking about. My book is a pure and simple fiction: it is a novel, but it is not I who invented it, it is the relationship of our age and its epistemological configuration with that whole mass of statements. So the subject is, in fact, present in the whole book, but it is the anonymous ‘one’ who speaks today in everything that is said. (Foucault 1967: 286)

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Foucault’s statement can be read as an alternative to the then-current ideas of the historian as subject. He was neither an old-fashioned authority supposedly defending reason and progress from an enlightened position nor a historian presenting the results of his properly tested and intersubjectively agreed-upon question-and-answer investigations. In Foucault’s meditations on the philosophy of history, the historian and his work are one, and a fiction at that, but the historian is ultimately not the author of the fictional account in question. In this way, the question of objectivity versus subjectivity that the Scandinavian historians were struggling with was bypassed by focusing on how language (‘a set of structures’ [Foucault 2000a: 290]) and discourse (‘functional units’ [Foucault 2000a: 290]) created both the subject and the object. ‘I am analyzing the space in which I speak’, Foucault explained in an article from 1968. ‘I am laying myself open to undoing and recomposing that space which indicates to me the first indices of my discourse’ is how he put it (Foucault 2000b: 311). Clearly, for Foucault, history was a way to unsettle not only conventional wisdom but also oneself. This unsettling and fictionalizing of both history and its authors did not mean that Foucault wanted to remove the historian from the equation, or shroud him in darkness, as the Scandinavian methodologists had a tendency to do. Responding to Jacques Derrida’s critique of The History of Madness, Foucault replied aggressively that Derrida was a representative of the reduction of discursive practices to textual traces, the elision of the events produced therein and the retention only of marks for a reading … A pedagogy that teaches the pupil there is nothing outside of the text … A pedagogy that gives conversely to the master’s voice the limitless sovereignty that allows it to restate the text indefinitely. (Foucault 2000c: 416)

For the purposes of this chapter, it does not matter who was right or wrong, or whether Foucault accurately represented Derrida’s opinions. The point here is that when it came to historical methodology, the reworking of the historian as subject did not mean dispensing with responsibility or denying the importance of history for people’s lives. Thus, neo-historicism à la Carr, the hermeneutic philosophy practised in Germany, France and England, Annales-style French historiography, or what was not yet called post-structuralism, all went in different directions than Scandinavian historical theory. Common to all of these European trends in history writing in the 1950s and 1960s was a clear distancing from the earlier empiricist ideals and a turn towards a more literary understanding of history. Although based on historical evidence, and therefore not ‘just’ convenient fictions, scholars no longer viewed history writing as a text that could be split up into parts, each of which could be empirically



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tested. Nor was it any longer possible to falsify conclusions, since they were often now viewed by readers as interpretations offered by the historian rather than an objectively correct set of causes and effects. If we place Scandinavian historical thinking in a more general European setting, then, apart from the inspiration first derived from German/French empiricism and later from Austrian/British logical positivism, British social history was akin to Scandinavian historical interests. The most prominent social historian in Britain at the time was E.P. Thompson, who in 1963 published The Making of the English Working Class. In the book, Thompson on the one hand famously wanted to ‘rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity’ (Thompson 1980: 12), and on the other hand understood class as a relation rather than a fixed category, clearly inspired by Karl Marx’s sixth thesis on Feuerbach: man as the sum of social relations (Marx 1962: 92). British history, whether formulated by the historiographically conservative Carr or the socialist Thompson, was thus deeply ideological and actually quite far from the Scandinavian non-ideological ideal, both the Finnish/Swedish classically empiricist type and the Danish/ Norwegian critically empiricist and anti-Marxist type of historical theorizing. What is clear is how historical theory was linked to the political struggles of each particular country. Further evidence can be found in the 1970s and 1980s when Marxism entered Nordic academic life.

Welfare state history A striking parallel to the Nordic empiricist unity in diversity idea is the ideological unity with respect to the welfare state. In a recent standard work on Danish welfare history, the period from 1956 to 1973 has been described as a time of social political scientification and depoliticization (Petersen, Petersen and Christiansen 2012: 33). Ideological debates were replaced with a technocratic expert culture. The expansion of the welfare state, which had its golden age in the 1960s, was overseen by social engineers animated by ideas of rationality, order, planning and science as a means of solving, or indeed dissolving, political-ideological disagreements (Petersen, Petersen and Christiansen 2012: 71). Even though welfare expansion was not uniform in the Scandinavian countries, compared to the rest of Europe it still became a common Scandinavian ideology. Michel Foucault even stated in an interview with a Swedish literary magazine in 1968 that it was his stay in Uppsala that had inspired him to respond to ‘this terrible anti-humanism with which they, perhaps a bit

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too strongly, characterize me’ (Eriksson 1968: 204). ‘Swedish reality has a beauty, a rigour, and a necessity that show that man in such a reality never is anything but a point that moves, obeys laws, schemes, and forms in a traffic that is above and more powerful than the individual’, he stated (Eriksson 1968: 204). Clearly, Foucault both admired and feared this socalled anti-humanism; later, though, he developed a less anti-individualist outlook. Just as the professionalization of history in the nineteenth century was tied to processes of nationalism and nation-state building, so too critical empiricist methodology was tied to the processes of building up the welfare state. For the critical empiricist, the historian too was partly a social engineer animated by rationality rather than ideology.

Conclusion The Danish debates on the functional source concept were part of a larger reorientation in historical study, namely the so-called social turn. Arguably, positivist methodology is to political and medieval history what functionalist methodology is to social history. While there can be much truth to this statement, the statement hardly fits historical methodology in the 1960s in Scandinavia, as I have demonstrated, since a positivist methodology could easily go hand in hand with social themes in history. It is important to take with us the understanding that methodological and theoretical debates cannot be conceptualized as a matter of generation, particular historical turns or states of progress towards the right interpretation. Any easy periodization of positivists as opposed to functionalists fails when held up against the evidence of actual historians and their work. Different standpoints on the question of the possibilities of history writing can meaningfully be grouped together under the headings of classical empiricism, critical empiricism and post-structuralism, but any easy mapping of these concepts onto a straightforward chronology flies in the face of any practical reality of historical scholarship in Scandinavia. An important aspect of historical theory in the 1960s was the urge to rethink the foundations of knowledge and practice. For some philosophers, this led to postmodern or post-structural ideas regarding a sense of lack, of fragmentation and of loss. The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser explained that history ‘had stolen our youth’, referring in particular to the Spanish Civil War and the Popular Front as well as the Second World War as factors that led him to dogmatic Marxism (Althusser [1965] 1969: 15). The historian who most notably laid the foundations for the reorientation of Scandinavian historical theory and methodology in the 1960s, Ottar



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Dahl, was also deeply influenced by his experiences during the Second World War. During the German occupation of Norway, Dahl wrote the following in an article for a Christian student magazine: [w]e have learned now that we cannot build the future of Norway on human deeds or human ideas. We have seen where that leads. We have seen that tumbling down which we thought was unshakeable. (Kjeldstadli 2012: 147)

Instead of postmodernism or dogmatic Marxism, Dahl was led to a Christian worldview, one could even say to a specific Scandinavian, Protestant and demythologized Christian worldview. Dahl’s version of a post-World War historical theory was focused on criticizing ideologies, studying the world empirically and being humble when it came to conclusions. Conventional historiographical wisdom assumes a periodization of twentieth-century historiography that begins with empiricism or positivism, à la Erslev, then proceeds to a social turn in the 1960s and 1970s combined with a functional turn in methodology. This social turn develops into Marxism, even into the (currently) much criticized dogmatic Marxism of the 1970s, after which time the cultural turn arrived sometime in the 1980s, followed sharply by a labyrinth of turns: linguistic, material, emotional and so on. If we want to understand 1960s historiography, it is fruitful to see it as a response to Marxism rather than as a precursor to it. Dahl’s critical empiricism was a response to Marxism as well as to nationalism and Nazism, all of which he had criticized as theories of history. However, there were many different answers among the postwar generation to a perceived semiotic challenge, or perhaps a totalitarian challenge in Dahl’s case. Therefore, a new kind of Marxism was also on the move in the 1960s in Europe, a more ‘humanistic Marx’ suited for history writing rather than the dogmatic and totalitarian Marx of the Stalinist era. Thus, the twentieth century saw alternating waves of Marxism and empiricism, rather than one school of thought merely following the other. The same thing could be said of scepticism and positivism in history writing, both of which were strangely and intimately bound up with, among other themes, the Holocaust. A strict periodization of historical methodology is even harder to schematize than theories of history or themes in history. In this chapter, I have laid out different methodologies, especially those regarding where the historian should situate herself or himself: systematic source criticism, critical empiricism, functional source criticism, a Foucauldian unsettling of subjects, or sign analytics. The different methodologies could be mapped onto a timeline, more or less as they stand here, but the reality is that all are still in use among different historians in Scandinavia today, probably even within each individual history department.

306

Peter Edelberg

In Scandinavia in the 1960s, methodologists introduced new interpretations of old questions that were better suited to new ways of studying social issues from a historical standpoint. The new interpretations included a reworking of how historians should view sources, a view that was more in line with critical rationalism in the tradition of Popper and Wittgenstein than with positivism. The Nordic historians faced the challenges of the postwar period by standing together in a programme of revised empiricism, with some leaning more towards the classical empiricist positions and others more towards critical and rationalist positions. Although they differed in several crucial matters, what seems to have mattered most for them was unity in diversity, or vice versa. A shared sense of opposition to ‘subjectivism’ and ‘perspectivism’ while still treasuring the classical concepts of relic versus account, as well as coming together at seminars on method and theory, renewed and strengthened the ties that bound Scandinavian historians together and gently separated them from more continental epistemological ideas that were brewing in the 1950s and 1960s. Social history with a critical empiricist foundation was not the last word on the proper writing of history. Just as historicism fitted a nineteenth-century construction of the nation-state, a new focus on ‘ordinary people’ and a methodology underlining the fact that history is an endless process of asking questions and finding answers to clearly stated problems fit the needs of the expanding Scandinavian welfare states in the 1960s. Popper’s critical rationalism was tied to ‘piecemeal social engineering’ and to an ideal philosophy for progressive middle-of-the-road historians of the period. In October 1958, Foucault left Sweden and went to Poland to work, rewriting his thesis on madness and reason, before finally submitting it in Paris. The new wave of philosophy that Foucault was a part of did not fit the Scandinavian idea of what history was and should be. Later his ideas would return to Scandinavia as his popularity grew enormously after his death. Scandinavian neo-empiricism was one of the reason that he left, and perhaps also the reason why he ultimately returned so forcefully. Peter Edelberg, Ph.D., is currently a part-time lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. His publications include Storbyen trækker: Homoseksualitet, prostitution og pornografi i Danmark 1945-1976 [The City Pulls: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Pornography in Denmark 1945–1976] (Djøf, 2012) and ‘Changing the Subject: Epistemologies of Scandinavian Source-Criticism’, in the Scandinavian Journal of History (2015), with Dorthe Gert Simonsen.



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Notes 1.  A biography of Lindroth exists in the collection of historians’ biographies by Björk and Johansson (2009). 2.  Most Cited Authors of Books in the Humanities 2007, retrieved 27 February 2014 from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/405956.article. 3.  All translations from Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mine. 4.  Jens Henrik Tiemroth also highlights the article as constituting a breakthrough in terms of offering a new view on source criticism, while describing the 1960s methodologists as incomplete or ‘scattered’ (Tiemroth 1978: 55). Jeppe Nevers also chooses a national framework for his criticism of the Danish tradition of source criticism (Nevers 2005). 5.  See such anthologies as Sørensen and Stråth 1997; Hubbard et al. 1995; and Meyer and Myhre 2000. 6.  National Archives, Oslo, Ottar Dahl’s private archive, Correspondence (hereafter ‘Dahls’ correspondence’), Ottar Dahl to Det norske videnskapsakademi, 11 January 1968. This study of the correspondence between the Nordic historians is based on Ottar Dahl’s private archive in Oslo, which contains both the letters he received and copies of the letters he sent. No private archive exists for Clausen. 7.  Dahl’s correspondence, Clausen to Dahl, 10 September 1963. 8.  Dahl’s correspondence, Clausen to Dahl, 23 May 1964, and Torstendahl to Dahl, 8 March 1964. 9.  Dahl’s correspondence, Dahl to Clausen, 29 June 1964. 10.  Regarding the initiative, see Paludan 2001: 84. 11.  Dahl’s correspondence, Stellan Dahlgren to Dahl, 23 August 1964. 12.  Dahl’s correspondence, Weibull to Dahl, 6 October 1967, and Dahl to Weibull, 16 October 1967. 13. Dahl’s correspondence, Renvall to Dahl, 1 May 1969, and Clausen to Dahl, December 1969. 14.  The sentence is taken directly from Carr 1961: 90: ‘The historian is known by the causes he invokes’. And, of course, so is Clausen’s title. 15.  The French edition of The History of Madness, Folie et déraison: Historie de la folie à l’âge classique, was published in 1961, followed by an abridged English version in 1964 called Madness and Civilization. An English translation of the complete 1961 work was published in 2006 as The History of Madness.

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Dahl, O. 1952. Historisk Materialisme: Historiesynet hos Koht og Bull. Oslo: Aschehoug. Dahl, O. 1956. Om årsaksproblemer i historisk forskning: forsøk på en vitenskapsteoritisk analyse [Problems of Causation in Historical Research]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Dahl, O. 1959. Norsk historieforskning i det 19. og 20. Århundre. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Dahl, O. 1964. Innföring i historieforskningens metodelære. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Dahl, O. 1967. Grunntrekk i historieforskningens metodelære. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Eribon, D. 1993. Michel Foucault. London: Faber & Faber. Eriksson, G.O. 1968. ‘En intervju med Michel Foucault’, Bonniers Litterära Magasin 3: 203–211. Erslev K. 1911. Historisk Teknik. Copenhagen: Den danske Historiske Forening. Erslev, K. 1892. Nogle Grundsætninger for historisk Kildekritik. Copenhagen: Jacob Erslev. Foucault, M. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. 1973. The Birth of the Clinic. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. 2000a. ‘On the Ways of Writing History’, in J.D. Faubion (ed.), Michel Foucault: Aesthetics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984. London: Penguin Books, pp. 279–296. Foucault, M. 2000b. ‘On the Archeology of the Sciences: Response to the Epistemology Circle’, in J.D. Faubion (ed.), 2000, Aesthetics: Essential Works of Foucault. London: Penguin Books, pp. 297–334. Foucault, M. 2000c. ‘My Body, This Paper, This Fire’, in J.D. Faubion (ed.), Aesthetics: Essential Works of Foucault. London: Penguin Books, pp. 595–418. Foucault, M. 2006. History of Madness. New York: Routledge. Fulsås, N. 2000. ‘Norway: The Strength of National History’, in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, Department of History, pp. 240–264. Hubbard, W.H., et al. 1995. Making a Historical Culture: Historiography in Norway. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press. Jensen, B.E. 1976. ‘Et bidrag til revisionen af metodelærens grundlag’, Historisk Tidsskrift 76(3): 113–148. Jensen, B.E. 2000. ‘In the Footsteps of a Father’, in F. Meyer and J.E. Myhre (eds), Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, Department of History, pp. 280–304. Jørgensen, C.M., and E. Christensen (eds). 2004. Historiefaget på Aarhus Universitet 75 år. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Kjeldstadli, K. 2012. ‘Minnetale over Professor Ottar Dahl’, in Årbok for Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi. Oslo: Novus Forlag, pp. 141–157. Kristensen, B.E. 2007. Historisk Metode. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Langholm, S. 1967. Historisk rekonstruksjon og begrunnelse: Metodebok i historiefaget. Oslo: Dreyer. Marx, K. 1962. Økonomi og filosofi: Ungdomsskrifter, ed. Villy Sørensen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Meyer, F., and J.E. Myhre. 2000. Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century. Oslo: University of Oslo, Department of History. Nevers, J. 2005. Kildekritikkens begrebshistorie. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Paludan, H. 2001. ‘Det funktionelle kildebegreb – en århushistorie?’, in M. Mordhorst and C.T. Nielsen (eds), Fortidens spor – nutidens øjne: kildebegrebet til debat. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur, pp. 73–98. Petersen, J.H., K. Petersen and N.F. Christiansen (eds). 2012. Velfærdsstatens storhedstid: Dansk Velfærdshistorie Vol. 4, 1956–1973. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Popper, K. 1945. The Open Society and Its Enemies. New York: Routledge. Popper, K. 1957. The Poverty of Historicism. New York: Routledge.



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Renvall, P. 1965. Den moderna historieforskningens principer. Stockholm: Natur och kultur. Simensen, J. 1989. ‘De nordiske fagkonferencerne for historisk metode 1965–1985: En historiografisk skisse’, in Historisk kundskab og fremstilling: oplæg fra den 20. Nordiske fagkonference i historisk metodelære, Rødhus Klit, 23.-27. maj 1987. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, pp. 7–21. Simonsen, D.G. 2001. ‘Udfordring til det kildekritiske subject’, in M. Mordhorst and C.T. Nielsen (eds), Fortidens spor – nutidens øjne. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur, pp. 99–140. Sørensen, Ø., and B. Stråth (eds). 1997. The Cultural Construction of Norden. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press. Thompson, E.P. 1980. The Making of the English Working Class. Rev. ed. Toronto: Penguin Books. Thorborg, K. 1977. Arbejdspapirer til Historisk Metode, vols. 1 and 2, rev. edn. Copenhagen: Historisk Institut, Copenhagen University. Tiemroth, J.H. 1978. Erslev – Arup – Christensen: Et forsøg på strukturering af en tradition i dansk historieskrivning i det 20. årh. Copenhagen: Institut for Samtidshistorie, C.A. Reitzels Boghandel A/S. Torstendahl, R. 1966. Introduktion till historieforskningen: Historia som vetenskap. Stockholm: Natur och kultur.

Index

Index of Subjects and Concepts Aarhus University, 140, 188, 191, 196–8, 273, 289, 292, 293 Åbo Akademi, 41, 116, 266 aesthetics, 83–4, 87 Annales School, 301, 302–3 aristocratic empiricism, 10, 132–3, 136, 137–8, 140, 143, 145, 146, 147. See also empiricism asymmetrical comparison, 106, 107–8, 221, 229n29 biographical approach, 257–9 border states policy, effects of, 115–16 Britain (England), 64, 133, 273, 301, 302, 303 economic history of, 221–2, 229n23, 272 capitalism, 101, 103, 108, 110–1, 222 bourgeois state and, 111 commercial capitalism, 212 nationalization of, 110 career development of female historians, 256, 257, 259, 266–8 Carlsberg Foundation, 157 Carnegie Endowment, 238 Carnegie Institution, 116 class struggle, 108–12, 121n29, 172 comparative history, 106–7, 153, 160, 162, 167, 169, 173–6,175, 178, 180

Congress of Nordic Historians, 114, 115, 192, 216, 276, 281n24, 293 conservative (history and historians), 27, 39, 41, 44, 50n12, 59, 104, 108, 109, 111, 113, 115, 134, 143, 145, 181n6, 188–90, 192–194, 200–2, 239, 269, 286 Copenhagen, University of, 64, 66, 73, 78, 86–7, 97, 187–8,192–6, 244, 271, 273 counterfactual history, 225 critical empiricism, 286–7, 294, 299, 304, 305, 306 culture, 11, 13, 37, 81–2, 96–7, 111, 135, 139, 155, 170, 210, 224 academic cultures, 103, 137 ancient languages and, 166 arctic cultures, 173–4 common culture, 82, 83, 229n25 ‘culture sharks’, 40 definition of, 80 folk culture, 178 historical cultures, 9, 25, 129, 131, 237, 241, 244, 245, 247, 250–51 literary culture, 93 national cultures, 4, 9, 28, 35, 57, 67, 90, 95, 105, 155, 169, 219 notion of ‘cultural defence’, 155 pan-Scandinavian movement, cultural aspects of, 78–99 peasant culture, 228n15

312

Index

popular culture, 222–3 progressive culture, 109 society and, 102, 166, 171, 180, 214 transcending force of, 222–3 Dagens Nyheter, 29, 42, 49n9, 51n39 democratic nationalism, 142, 143, 146 economic history, 17, 133, 140, 167–8, 175, 186, 192, 195, 215, 218, 221, 271–2 Heckscher’s ideas about, 211, 224, 225 socio-economic history, 209–13 ‘emotional community’, 132 empiricism 18, 129–32, 136, 138, 287, 290, 294, 297–9, 304–6 aristocratic empiricism, 10, 132–3, 136, 137–8, 140, 143, 145, 146, 147 critical empiricism, 286–7, 294, 299, 304, 305, 306 neo-empiricism, 8, 287, 289, 290–1 Enlightenment, influence of, 59 epistemology (of history), 131, 133–7 Weibull-Arup circle, epistemology of, 137–8, 145–6 epochs, methodological and didactic basis for, 218–20. See also periodization Estonian-Finnish Historical Meetings (1933), 116 female intellectuals, 17–8, 257, 258, 259–60, 276 female historians, 17–8, 256–279 Finnish Civil War in 1918, 9, 28, 32, 39–46, 103, 223 First World War, 2, 9, 48, 64, 80, 103, 108, 111, 115, 116, 133, 136 aftermath of, nationalist internationalism in, 152–3, 154, 155, 160, 162, 178 folk high school movement (Danish and Icelandic) Grundtvig’s ideology and, 56–7, 73 Icelandic historiography and, 55–6, 60, 63, 65, 68 Frankfurt, University of, 274 functional source concept, 288–9, 290, 304, 305 functionalist periodization, 304

gender (in history), 11, 13, 256–7, 260, 263, 265, 273, 277, 279 German Kulturgeschichte in Finland, 102, 113, 130 Germany (and Prussia), 4, 16, 20n10, 41, 56, 64, 78, 81, 84, 85, 108, 133, 140, 155–6, 158, 161, 163–6, 192, 198, 230n32, 274, 302 Geschichtsregion (‘history region’ or ‘historical region’), 12 globalization global interconnectedness, growth of, 111–12 writing history and, 2, 3, 5, 13–14, 101 Gothenburg, University of, 81, 189, 199, 200, 270, 276 Helsinki, University of, 12–13, 33–4, 261, 265, 274 hermeneutics, 189, 288, 290, 301, 302–3 Historiallinen Aikakauskirja (historical journal in Finland), 103–4, 237, 241, 244, 245, 247, 250–51 historical fiction, 26, 29, 31, 35–8, 46–7, 301–2 historical identities, construction of, 27–8 historical narrative master (grand) narrative, 1–2, 47, 108, 207–9, 218–220, 226 national narrative, 17, 25–9, 35, 39, 44–47, 142, 144, 226, 239–243, 247–251, 277 historiography, 3, 4, 7–8, 13–14, 154, 174, 179, 211, 223 academic historiography, 5–6 criticism of traditional narrative, 136–7 German nationalistic historiography, influence of, 64 history of, establishment in Denmark and Sweden, 132–3 Icelandic historiography, 56–73 modern historiography and, 104–5 modern historiography, women and breakthrough of, 271 nation-state and, 18–19 nationalization of, 102–3 Nordic historiography, 3, 5, 6, 16, 207, 249–50, 299



Index

paradigms in history of, 8, 147, 288 periodization, 208 popular Finnish historiography, 15 power struggles, Nordic networks and, 188, 190, 192, 198 Scandinavian historiography, transnational inquiry into, 290–91 ‘scientific historiography’, 10, 107, 129–49, 153–4, 164–5, 167–8, 170, 179–180, 240, 287–8, 292, 295–7, 299–301 social history of, 48 Historisk Tidsskrift (historical journal in Denmark), 141, 268–9 Historisk Tidsskrift (historical journal in Norway), 104 Hufvudstadsbladet, 43 Iceland, University of, 12, 16–17, 68, 71, 72 foundation in Reykjavík (1911), 66–7 ideology, 5, 16, 39, 40, 217–18, 227, 303 internationalist ideology, 164, 167, 174 mandarin ideology, 112 methodology and, 3 national ideology, 158, 171 periodization and, 220–21, 224–5 incontrovertible facts, concept of, 299–300 industrial revolution, 217, 229n20 Institute for Comparative Cultural Research (ISKF), 170–7, 179 Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 9, 107, 119 institutionalization of history, 13, 101–2 Inter-Parliamentary Union, 154, 162, 167, 171–2 International Association of Academies (IAA), 152, 158 International Committee of Historical Sciences (CISH), 112, 116–7, 160–7, 174, 192, 238, 269, 275 establishment of, 161–3 historical research in Denmark and Schleswig question, 163–7 Norden, revision of textbooks and negotiation of, 238

313

Nordic historians of society, 112–13, 116–17 women in Nordic historical community, 269, 275 International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), 235 International Research Council (IRC), 158 internationalism, 8, 19, 107, 111, 117, 142 academic internationalism, 153–4, 155, 158, 167, 170, 179, 180 internationalist ideology, national significance of science and, 152–3 strengthening of internationalist values, 179 interpretation, ambiguity in, 137–8 intersubjective agreement, objectivity and, 297–8 Kalmar Union (1397-1523), 11, 20n9, 249 League of Nations, 236, 238 Leipzig, University of, 104 liberalism, 59, 97, 194, 217–8, 221–2, 224–5, 274 local history, 106, 177, 178–9 Lund, University of, 10, 83, 115, 132, 134, 135, 139, 189–90, 200, 247, 269–70 Marxism, 107–8, 111, 174, 194, 208, 218–19, 291, 298–300, 303, 304 medieval studies, 57, 60, 62, 64, 67–8, 105–6, 113, 132–7, 177, 188, 190, 200, 212, 213, 217–18, 222, 225, 228, 298, 304 mercantilism, 217–8, 224–5 methodological nationalism, 5–19, 26, 44, 47, 48, 104­–7, 118–9, 142–3, 208–9, 213, 224–6, 237, 238, 249–51, 274, 287–9 complex nature of, 105–6 historical processes and, 208–9 nation-state in historiography and, 18–19 network approaches and, 187, 201–2 Norden and, coherence as region, 15–16 Norden and, preconditions for, 16

314

Index

Nordic historians of society, 104–8 periodization and, 209, 220, 224–6 plurality in countering, 14–15 power of, 47 raison d’être of, 15 region, concept in overcoming, 13–19 trans-Nordic neo-empiricism in European setting, 287–91 universal validity claims and, 107 writing history, 5–10 methodology, 10–14, 287–92 contextualization, 136–7 methodological self-image, 129–30, 131 periodization, 212–5 Scandinavian methodologists (1960’s), 294–306 modernity, 6, 17, 213–17 multidimentionality, 102, 110–11, 118 mythical past, 142, 144, 236 narrative. See historical narrative nation-states, nation building and, 4–5, 6 National and University Library of Iceland, 79 National Archives of Denmark, 66 national identity, 25, 33, 34, 48, 72, 73, 78, 79, 153, 171, 177, 180, 224, 236, 241 national self-expression, historiography and, 130 nationalism, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 16–17, 31, 40, 47–48, 58–9, 73, 189, 194, 304–5 bourgeois nationalism, 111 cultural nationalism, 109 dangers of, 48 democratic nationalism, 142, 143, 146 micro-nationalisms, 11 nationalist ideologies, adherence to, 105 nationalist mindset, effects of, 109–10 nationalistic perspectives on history, 27–8, 33, 39–41, 56–60, 63–64, 67, 70–1, 73, 143, 201, 222–3, 225, 239, 242, 250, nationalist internationalism, 9, 152–82

nationhood, 27, 82 revision of textbooks (1920-1970), 242–6 natural sciences pan-Scandinavian movement, 83–4 ‘scientific’ methods and, 153–4, 179–80 neo-historicism, 301, 302–3 neutrality neutral states, challenge to academics in, 153 peace policy and, 154–5 Nobel Prize Committee, 168, 171, 173 Nobel Symposium in Stockholm (1990), 48 Norden, historical and historiographical region of, 10–13, 21n12 Norden, revision of textbooks, 18, 235–52 Norden Associations, formation of, 235–6 Norden Associations’ Committee for History Education, 238 Nordic Council Literature Prize, 29 Nordic historical heritage, diversity of, 11–12 Nordic historiography, 3, 5, 6, 16, 207, 249–50, 299. See also historiography and historical narrative Nordic narrative, construction of, 240–49, 251 Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS), 13 Nordic societies, historical roots of, 214 Nordic Women’s and Gender Historians’ Conferences, 13 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 11 objectivity, 18, 46, 131–2,138, 162, 169, 288, 296, 301–2 aperspectival objectivity, 131–2 mechanical objectivity, 130–2 versus subjectivity, 302 Ørsted Institute, 156, 157, 168 Oslo, University of, 12, 59, 192, 275 pan-Scandinavian movement, 10–11, 78–99 Scandinavism Society, 91



Index

paradigm in historical writing, 8, 147, 288 Kuhnian theory of, 143–4 periodization economic progress and, 216 European history as inspiration for, 217–18, 220–21 functional view and, 289–90 heuristic nature of, 216–17 influence of modernity on, 213–17 intellectual history as inspiration for, 217–18 methodological device, 208, 209–13, 226–7 methodological nationalism and, 209, 220, 224–6 positivist periodization, 304 processes of inclusion and exclusion within, 222 relative periodization, 219 schematization of, 305 philology, 57, 145, 156, 157–8, 159, 162, 166, 173, 177, 270 philosophy (and that of history), 7–8, 33, 40, 87, 146, 300–2, 306 positivism, 136, 190, 296, 297, 305 historical positivism, 298, 300 instabilities of, 297 logical positivism, 7–8, 303 neo-positivism, 289 positivist periodization, 304 source-critical positivism, 246 postmodernist, 7, 287, 304–5, post-nationalist scholarship, 2, 3–4 post-structuralism, 298, 302–3, 304 professional historical cultures, 129, 131–2, 178–9, 188, 256, 304 Red Guards (Finland), and Bolsheviks, 28 regionalism ambiguity of, 140 concept of region, 13–19 new synthesis in Scandinavian medieval history and, 137–47 regional schools, 60–61 relativism, 294, 300–1 revolution absence of, 214 industrial, 217 in France, 80, 176, 264–6

315

in Europe 1848, 91 in Russia, 108 scientific, 101 Rockefeller Foundation, 116, 117 Romanticism, influence of, 60 Royal Academy of Turku in Finland, writing history at, 12–13 Royal Library of Denmark, 79 Russia (and Finland), 16, 28–9, 31, 33–7, 41, 44–5, 47, 49n9, 50n24, 51n31, 51n44, 103, 108, 120n6, 222, 264, 274, 277 Scandia (historical journal), 140, 143–4, 190 Scandinavian Economic History Review, 13 Scandinavian Journal of History, 13 Scandinavian Union, 88–9 scandinavism, 10–11, 78, 86–98 Scandinavism Society, 91 Schleswig question, 155, 164–5, 166, 167, 180 ‘scientific historiography’, 10, 107, 129–49, 153–4, 164–5, 167–8, 170, 179–180, 240, 287–8, 292, 295–7, 299–301 Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, 208 Second World War, 2, 7, 12, 13, 140, 213, 223, 273, 275, 296, 304–5 Linna and history of, 26, 27, 29, 31, 33, 39, 47, 51n37 history textbooks, revision of, 239, 247, 249 society, works and networks of early historians of, 102, 107, 110, 119n3 social history, 48, 105, 175–6, 178–9, 211–12, 275, 298, 303, 304, 306 social structures as objective realities, 296–7 social turn in history writing, 298 socialism (socialist), 39–40, 103, 104, 109–11, 117, 172–3, 303 source criticism ideals of, 165–6 ‘material’ and ‘functional’, 290 source-critical expertise, 140–41 sociology (and history), 2, 5, 44, 146, 292, 298

316 Stockholm, University of, 200, 245–6, 277 subjectivism, 290, 294, 300, 306 subjectivity, 138, 208, 290, 295, 297, 301, 302 scientific historiography and, 130–31, 132 supranational entities, 215, 237–8, 251 synthetic interpretation, 138 Tampere, University of, 44–5 temporal dimension, 218 complexity and multifaceted nature of, 227 textbooks improvement of, methods for, 240–41 official knowledge and, 239–40 textbook revision process, 236–7, 249–51 theory (of history), 13, 82, 137, 141–4, 175, 188, 208, 271, 287–306 transnationalism comparative history approaches and, combination of, 103–4 empirical transnationalism, 7–8, 20n5 ideological flows, 215 national and transnational, entanglement of, 102–3, 110–11 social networks, role of, 186, 201–2 neo-empiricism in European setting, 287, 289, 290–91

Index

transnational work, national organization for, 237–40 writing history, 2, 10, 19 Trondheim, University of, 276 Union Academique International (UAI), 161–2, 164 Danish humanities scholars and, 158–60, 179–80 Uppsala University, 85–6, 139, 188, 98–201, 263, 286, 306 Versailles Treaty, 158 Weibull family influence of, 188–9, 190, 192–3, 195, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202 Weibullian medievalists, 140 welfare state, 2–3, 8, 11, 15, 45, 291, 300 welfare state history, 303–6 Whig interpretation of Western progress, 208 Winter War in Finland, 31, 36, 49n9 women in Nordic historical community, 17–18, 256–81 career development of female historians, 256, 257, 259, 266–8 female doctors in history (18831909), 258 female doctors (1950s and 1960s), proportion of, 276 legislative restrictions on career development, 257, 263–5 women’s colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, 259–60 youth societies (Iceland), 60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73



Index of Names Aðils, Jón Jónsson, 66–8, 73, 79, 90, 94–5, 96 Ahnlund, Nils, 192–3, 194, 195, 196, 198–9, 199–200, 200, 201, 202, 238, 241, 246 Alexander II, 34 Almqvist, Carl Jonas Love, 89, 91 Althusser, Louis, 304 Andersen, Holger, 194 Andersen, J. Oskar, 181n6 Andersson, Ingvar, 248 Andgren, Sigfrid, 247–8 Ankersmit, Frank, 7–8, 15 Arup, Erik, 10, 133–6, 137–8, 140–42, 143–4, 145–6, 147, 244, 271–3 Arwidsson, Adolf Ivar, 35 Authén Blom, Grethe, 276 Bagge, Povl, 238, 241 Bang, Nina, 181n6 Barfod, Frederik, 79, 92 Berendsen, Ivar, 181n6 Bergsgård, Arne, 238, 241, 247–8 Bernard, Claude, 148n5 Bernheim, Ernst, 136, 137, 148n2 Berr, Henri, 106 Biaudet, Henry, 262 Bjarnason, Þorkell, 59, 99n13 Bjarnason, Þorleifur (born 1863), 79 Bjarnason, Þórleifur (born 1908), 72 Bjerrum, N.J., 181n6 Björk, Ragnar, 130, 189 Bloch, Marc, 106, 173, 174–5, 175–6, 177 Blom, Ida, 281n23 Blomstedt, Yrjö, 43, 44 Blöndal, Sigrún P., 62 Boas, Franz, 173 Bøggild-Andersen, C.O., 197, 198, 238, 248 Bohr, Niels, 157, 166 Bolin, Sture, 189, 198 Bonnier, Albert, 36 Bourdieu, Pierre, 298 Brandes, Georg, 135 Braudel, Fernand, 142, 301

Index

317

Brøgger, Waldemar Christopher, 168, 182n19 Bruun, Henry, 246, 247–8, 249 Bull, Sr., Edvard, 102, 103–4, 105, 106, 107–8, 109, 111–12, 113, 114, 117, 118, 119n4 Butterfield, Herbert, 51n48 Canguilhem, George, 286 Carlgren, Wilhelm, 235, 237, 238, 241 Carlsson, Gottfrid, 246–7 Carr, E.H., 300–301, 302 Cederberg, A.R., 238, 245–6 Chernilo, Daniel, 208–9 Christensen, Aksel E., 148n17, 197, 198 Clapham, John, 221, 229n28 Clausen, Hans Peter, 287, 288, 289, 291–2, 293, 294–300, 307n6 Clausen, Julius, 79–80, 81–2, 83–4, 85–7, 90, 91, 96–7 Collingwood, R.G., 141, 301 Curie, Marie, 277 Curtius, Georg, 2 Dahl, Ottar, 104, 106, 110, 120n18, 121n29, 177, 178, 286–7, 289, 291–3, 294–5, 296–9, 300, 305, 307n6 Danielson-Kalmari, Johan Richard, 120n19, 261–2, 265, 278 Danto, Arthur, 47 Daston, Lorraine, 131 Derrida, Jacques, 302 Dirlik, Arif, 19 Donner, Jörn, 42 Dopsch, Alfons, 161, 174–5, 175–6, 177 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 50n23 Duara, Prasenjit, 2 Edström, Mauritz, 51n39 Einarsson, Snorri, 71 Engels, Friedrich, 108 Epple, Angelika, 4–5 Erdmann, Karl Dietrich, 160–61 Erikson, Leif, 243, 245 Erslev, Kristian, 131, 136, 137, 141, 143, 148n7, 157, 165–6, 181n6, 188–9, 280n4, 287–8, 289, 290, 291, 293, 298, 305

318 Eskola, Antti, 45–6 Eskola, Seikko, 42 Espólín, Jón, 59 Etzioni, Amitai, 11 Fabricius, Knud, 189, 191, 192–3, 194, 195, 196, 200–201, 202 Febvre, Lucien, 175 Fink, Troels, 289, 293 Floto, Inga, 132–3, 148n14, Forssell, Hans, 211 Foucault, Michel, 286, 298–9, 301–2, 303–4, 306 Fouillée, Augustine, 38 France, Anatole, 49n8 Fries, Ellen, 257, 260–61, 261, 262, 263, 267 Friis, Aage, 161, 162, 164, 165–7, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191–3, 194–5, 196, 197–8, 199, 201, 237, 238, 239, 243–4 Friis, Astrid, 148n17, 259, 271–3, 278–9 Fryxell, Anders, 32, 35, 50n18

Index

Herlitz, Nils, 237, 238, 245 Hjärne, Erland, 199, 201, 202 Hjärne, Harald, 49n8, 148n3, 188–9, 195, 199, 211, 221, 262, 263 Höjer, Torvald, 198–9, 200, 202 Holberg, Ludvig, 142, 146 Holmsen, Andreas, 179 Hude, Anna, 262, 268, 277, 280n4 Hultin, Tekla, 265, 280n6 Hvitfeldt, Arild, 142, 146 Ibsen, Henrik, 114 Iggers, Georg G., 8 Iorga, Nicolae, 16

Geijer, Erik Gustaf, 49n9, 83, 211 Ginzburg, Carlo, 8 Gíslason, Þorsteinn, 95 Glick Schiller, Nina, 6 Goggin, Jacqueline, 268 Grauers, Sven, 238 Grundtvig, N.F.S., 16, 55–75, 94 Guðmundsson, Barði, 242–3, 245 Gunneriusson, Håkan, 145, 186–7, 199, 203n1, 280n2

Jaakkola, Jalmari, 106, 245–6 Jacobsen, J.E., 67 Jacobsen, Lis, 145–6, 270, 280n17 Jameson, J.F., 116–17 Jansson, Jan-Magnus, 43 Jensen, Bernard Eric, 287, 288, 289, 290 Jensen, C.O., 181n6 Jespersen, Otto, 181n1, 181n6 Jóhannesson, Jón, 72 Jóhannesson, Þorkell, 72 Johannsen, Wilhelm, 181n1, 181n6 Jónsson, Jónas, 61, 67, 68–70, 73, 75n26 Jørgensen, A.D., 59, 66, 67, 94 Jørgensen, Ellen, 259, 268–9, 269, 271, 273 Jutikkala, Eino, 17, 21n15, 36, 42, 207–8, 209–13, 214, 216, 217–18, 218–19, 219–20, 220–23, 224–6, 227, 238

Haeckel, Ernst, 49n8 Hagerup, Francis, 168 Hallendorf, Carl, 161 Hammarström, Ingrid, 276 Hamsun, Knut, 28 Hasselberg, Ylva, 186–7, 204n27 Hasund, Sigvald, 177–8 Heckscher, Eli F., 17, 186–7, 195–6, 196–7, 199, 200, 207–8, 209, 210–13, 213–17, 217–18, 219–20, 221–3, 224–6, 227 Hegel, Georg W.F., 105, 300 Heiberg, Johan L., 157–8, 159 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 105

Kant, Immanuel, 201 Karttunen, Liisi, 259, 262, 270, 277 Kehler, Henning, 143 Kekkonen, Urho, 45 Kettunen, Pauli, 222 Kjeldstadli, Knut, 296 Klinge, Matti, 30, 45, 51n46 Knudsen, Henrik, 155 Knudsen, Martin, 156, 181n1 Koht, Halvdan, 1, 19, 59, 102–3, 103–4, 104–5, 105, 106, 107, 108–10, 111–12, 112–14, 115, 116–17, 118, 130, 132, 161, 163, 171, 172, 173–4, 178, 189, 191–2, 236, 238,



239, 241–2, 242, 243–4, 248, 270, 275 Kold, Christen, 66 Koselleck, Reinhart, 223, 228n5 Koskinen, Yrjö, 51n45, 104, 278 Koskull, Walter von, 238 Kowalevski, Sophie, 277 Kragh, Oluf, 181n6 Kretzschmer, Knud, 244 Krusius-Ahrenberg, Lolo, 259, 271, 273–4, 274–5 Kuhn, Thomas, 143–4 La Cour, Vilhelm, 190–91, 193, 194, 195, 197–8, 202, 203n1 Lagercrantz, Olof, 29, 42, 49n9–10, 270 Lagerlöf, Selma, 28–9, 30, 31–2, 38, 50n25, 51n36 Laine, Katri, 273–4 Lamprecht, Karl, 102, 104, 107, 108, 112, 119n5 Lange, Christian L., 154, 162, 236 Langholm, Sivert, 289, 292 Langlois, Victor, 136, 137, 148n2, 190 Lehman, Orla, 92, 93–4 Leira, Halvard, 172 Lindroth, Sten, 286, 307n1 Linna, Väinö, 25–6, 26–9, 30–1, 30–31, 31–6, 32–3, 33–4, 38–41, 41–4, 41–8, 44–6 Linvald, Axel, 161, 164, 165, 166, 194–5 Lo-Johansson, Ivar, 28, 42 Lönnroth, Erik, 148n10, 198, 199, 200– 201, 202 Lorenz, Chris, 8 Løvland, Jørgen, 171, 172 Luhmann, Niklas, 187 Lukacs, Georg, 50n23 Magerøy, Hallvard, 244–5 Mantere, Oskari, 238 Martinsson, Moa, 28, 42 Marx, Karl, 6, 33, 102, 108, 300, 303, 305 Matson, Alex, 50n23 Mauss, Marcel, 173, 187, 197 Mazzarella, Merete, 50n21 Meillet, Antoine, 175 Melsteð, Bogi Th., 64–5, 73, 79, 91–4

Index

319

Moberg, Vilhelm, 28, 42 Møller Jørgensen, Claus 289 Mommsen, Theodor, 49n8 Montgomery, Arthur, 221 Munch, Peter, 156, 157, 164 Myhre, Jan Eivind, 12, 21n13 Neergaard, Niels, 157, 181n6 Nicholas II, 49n8 Nielsen, Harald, 143 Nielsen, Henry, 155–6 Nightingale, Florence, 49n8 Nobel, Alfred, 168, 172 Nordenskiöld, A.E., 49n8 Novick, Peter, 20n6, 131 Nyberg, Paul, 30, 50n25 Odén, Birgitta, 148–9n18, 190, 263 O’Dowd, Mary, 256–7, 265–6 Oehlenschläger, Adam, 83, 92 Ólason, Páll Eggert, 59, 71, 75n18 Olsen, Albert, 148n17, 186, 187–8, 191, 192–3, 193–4, 195–6, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202 Oxenstierna, Erik, 267 Paasche, Fredrik, 236, 242 Paasivirta, Juhani, 43 Paavolainen, Jaakko, 45 Palander (see also Suolahti), Gunnar, 102, 105, 107 Palme, Olof, 49n9, 49n10 Palme, Sven Ulric, 29, 42, 49n8–9, 248 Palmén, Ernst Gustaf, 102, 278 Palmstierna, Carl-Fredrik, 274 Paludan, Helge, 289, 290, 307n10 Peschcke Køedt, Andreas, 81, 84–5 Petersen, Niels Matthias, 89–90, 99n11, 148n17 Pilsudski, Józef, 161 Pirenne, Henri, 106, 160–61, 174–5 Plesner, Johan, 196–7 Popper, Karl, 300, 306 Þorkelsson, Jón, 88 Þórólfsson, Sigurður, 70–1 Porciani, Ilaria, 256–7, 265–6 Poulsen, Henning, 293 Power, Eileen, 272, 279 Puntila, L.A., 43, 51n43

320

Index

Rajainen, Maija, 273–4 Ramsay, Jully, 270 Rasila, Viljo, 42 Rask, Rasmus, 158 Rasmussen, Vilhelm, 181n6 Ratzel, Friedrich, 104, 120n11 Renan, Ernest, 141 Renvall, Pentti, 43, 291–2, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299–300 Ribbing, Olof, 248 Ricoeur, Paul, 50n23, 228n2 Riising, Anne, 276 Ringer, Fritz, 137 Rist, Lárus J., 66 Rogstad, Anna, 236 Rolfsen, Nordahl, 38 Rommi, Pirkko, 276 Rossiter, Margaret, 276–7 Runeberg, Johan Ludvig, 27, 33, 37, 38, 39, 45 Rüsen, Jörn, 237 Ruutu, Martti, 238 Sars, J. Ernst, 94, 130, 194 Sarva, Gunnar, 103 Saxo Grammaticus, 138, 139, 140, 142, 146, 288 Säve, Carl, 89–90 Schreiner, Johan, 197 Schück, Henrik, 142 Scott, Walter, 35 Seignobos, Charles, 136, 137, 148n2, 190 Semmingsen, Ingrid, 18, 259, 271, 275–6, 278 Sigurðsson, Jón, 59, 60, 87, 88 Sigúrjonsson, Sveinbjörn, 238 Simensen, Jarle, 1 Simonsen, Dorthe Gert, 290 Skodvin, Magne, 238 Skoglund, Aleksandra, 263, 265, 267 Skovgaard-Petersen, Vagn, 238, 245 Smith, Bonnie G., 265–6, 277 Snellman, Johan Vilhelm, 33, 105 Söderhjelm, Alma, 122n44, 260–61, 261–2, 263–4, 264, 265–6, 266, 269–70, 277 Söderhjelm, Werner, 261, 264 Sombart, Werner, 102, 122n52 Southcott, Joanna, 303

Spencer, Herbert, 49n8 Stang, Fredrik, 154–5, 156, 157, 159–60, 167–70, 171, 173, 176–7 Steen, Sverre, 238, 241, 247, 248 Steinnes, Asgaut, 177–8 Storm, Gustav, 59 Stormbom, Nils-Börje, 45, 49n10 Suhm, Peter Friedrich, 82–3 Sundt, Eilert, 86 Suolahti (Palander), Gunnar, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111–12, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 120n13 Sverdrup, Johan, 104 Taine, Hippolyte, 141 Tawney, R.H., 272 Tegnér, Esaias, 83 Thompson, E.P., 303 Thomsen, Grímur, 87–90 Tolstoy, Leo, 47, 50n23 Topelius, Zacharias, 25–6, 26–9, 30, 31–5, 36–8, 39, 41, 46–8, 51n33 Topolski, Jerzy, 214 Törne, Per Olof von, 116, 122n51 Torstendahl, Rolf, 138, 289, 292, 293, 294, 295, 297, 298, 299 Tranmæl, Martin, 108 Trier, Ernst, 66, 94 Troebst, Stefan, 12 Troels-Lund, Frederik, 84 Tunberg, Sven, 148–9n18, 238 Valentin, Hugo, 199 Valery, Paul, 48 Varpio, Yrjo, 30, 50n16 Vasa, Gustav, 212, 217, 229n19, Vasenius, Valfrid, 30 Vigander, Haakon, 239 Vilkama, Sisko, 273–4 Vilmundarson, Þórhallur, 244 Voionmaa (Wallin), Väinö, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109–10, 111, 112, 113–14, 116, 117, 120n11 Wahlström, Lydia, 260, 262, 263, 267–8, 277 Weber, Max, 6, 141, 219 Weibull, Curt, 138, 139, 189, 192–3, 195, 198–9, 202



Weibull, Jörgen, 293 Weibull, Lauritz, 10, 133, 135–6, 138, 139–40, 148n13, 148n16, 148n18, 189–90, 198, 203n2, 247 Weibull, Martin, 134,139, 189, 269 White, Hayden, 7–8, 50n23, 227n1 Wimmer, Andreas, 6 Windelband, Wilhelm, 49n8

Index

321

Wittgenstein, Ludvig, 306 Worm-Müller, Jacob, 192, 193–5, 196, 199, 201 Wundt, Wilhelm, 104 Zahle, C. Th., 133 Zeldin, Theodore, 48 Zola, Emile, 49n8

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