The North has long attracted attention, not simply as a circumpolar geographical location, but also as an ideological space, a place that is 'made' through the understanding, imagination, and interactions of both insiders and outsiders. The envisioning of the North brings it into being, and it is from this starting point that this volume explores how the North was perceived from ancient times up to the early modern period, questioning who, where, and what was defined as North over the course of two millennia. Covering historical periods as diverse as Ancient Greece to eighteenth-century France, and drawing on a variety of disciplines including cultural history, literary studies, art history, environmental history, and the history of science, the contributions gathered here combine to shed light on one key question: how was the North constructed as a place and a people? Material such as sagas, the ethnographic work of Olaus Magnus, religious writing, maps, medical texts, and illustrations are drawn on throughout the volume, offering important insights into how these key sources continued to be used over time. Selected texts have been compiled into a useful appendix that will be of considerable value to scholars.
Author(s): Dolly Jørgensen, Virginia Langum (eds.)
Series: Cursor Mundi, 31
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: X+374
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Envisioning North from a Premodern Perspective / Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum 1
Scythia or Elysium? The Land of the Hyperboreans in Early Greek Literature / Pär Sandin 13
"Inter imperium sine fine": Thule and Hyperborea in Roman Literature / Lewis Webb 35
The North in Antiquity: Between Maps and Myths / Mirela Avdagic 59
The Making of Normandy as a "Northmen" Land: Mythological Cultivation and Coastal Way-Finding / Barbara Auger 81
The North in the Latin History Writing of Twelfth-Century Norway / Steffen Hope 101
Cold Characters: Northern Temperament in the Premodern Imaginary / Virginia Langum 123
Northern Seas, Marine Monsters, and Perceptions of the Premodern North Atlantic in the Longue Durée / Vicki Szabo 145
Beastly Belonging in the Premodern North / Dolly Jørgensen 183
Making Sami of the Scots: Britain's and Scandinavia's Near Norths / Jeremy DeAngelo 207
The Contours of the North? British Mountains and Northern Peoples, 1600–1750 / Dawn Hollis 223
Unknown and Barbarian: Scandinavia and the Boundaries of Civilization in Early Modern Spain / Mateo Ballester Rodríguez 243
"Omne malum ab Aquilone": Images of the Evil North in Early Modern Italy and their Impact on Cross-Religious Encounters / Helena Wangefelt Ström and Federico Barbierato 265
Elevating the Early Modern North: The Case of the Faroe Islands / Kim Simonsen 287
The "Vagina nationum" in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Envisioning the North as a Repository of Migrating Barbarians / Stefan Donecker 307
The "Northern Atlantis" Revisited: Inventing the Arctic Roots of Civilization in Late Eighteenth-Century Paris / Päivi Maria Pihlaja 329
Appendix: Excerpts from Primary Sources 349
Index 365
