Northern Europe and Islam. Borders and Non-contact Zones in Late Medieval and Early Modern Times, with a Focus on Scandinavia
Scientific Coordinators: Kurt Villads Jensen, Joachim Östlund, and Jan Loop
Venue and Date: University of Stockholm, Stockholm (Sweden) – June 6-9, 2023
Link to the Training School program
Training School call:
Over the past decades, Marie Louise Prat’s concept of “contact zone” has made an huge impact on studies of cultural encounters in travel writing and colonial settings. In current historiography contacts between Europe and Islam have mainly been studied in the context of a shared border, with its specific cultural and political dynamics, and thereby produced a certain theoretical/historical knowledge. Much less attention has been paid on how networks, encounters and knowledge were produced in the context of non-contact zones. This is the case for the Nordic region, which is geographically clearly separated from “Muslim Lands”. Nonetheless, imaginary borders were still produced.
The aim of this training school is to discuss the dynamics of encounters between Christian Europe and the Islamic world in non-contact zones, particularly, but not only, in Scandinavia in medieval and early modern times. It will study the transmission of objects, texts and people and analyse the ways in which they were interpreted and understood and how they affected individual and collective identities.
Field visits and lectures at the National Museums and Archives in Stockholm and Uppsala and guided tours at the Royal Museum of Livrustkammaren will complement our conferences and debate sessions, which are focused on the students’ personal research. The overarching goal is to create a space of debate and exchange among junior and senior scholars, as well as to promote a network of scholars of early modern migration and identities that will bring new perspectives into the field. The materials offered in the teaching sessions are mostly related to Scandinavia, but the discussion aims at methodological considerations as well as to wider analysis of other non-contact zones, and students working on them are most welcomed. Students will be asked to prepare one small introduction to a specific topic that will be discussed on those visits, and to make a brief presentation of their own case studies, with a specific focus on problems of research and methodologies, in one of the three panels specified below.
Main objectives of the activity: a) To study Late Medieval and Early Modern networks between the Islamic worlds and Europe, with focus on Scandinavia; b) To discuss trade, exchange and mobility of objects and knowledge between the Mediterranean and the Baltic basin; c) To analyse how such phenomena had an effect in the creation of individual and collective identities; d) To develop a student network on long-distance encounters and Islamic legacy in Europe and Scandinavia; and e) To promote a dialogue between junior and senior scholars.
Panel 1: Medieval interactions and geographies. Chair: Kurt Villads Jensen, Stockholm University. In this panel we will analyse the different flows of persons and ideas between the Islamic worlds and Scandinavia, especially in the later Middle Ages and 16th century. Source material will include texts, pictorial representations and physical objects; and methodological discussions will focus on the routes of exchange: who were the agents in moving things, were contacts direct or transmitted through persons and cultures that added new layers of understanding to the object, and did receiving milieus in Scandinavia actually consider these elements specific Islamic and Oriental or not? We will analyze how different contexts creates different interpretations of the same phenomenons, and discuss to which extent direct contact with members of another culture may create more thorough understanding or not. The panel is also open to the discussion of students’ presentations related to other similar non-contact zones and case studies.
Panel 2: Networks, experiences and knowledge exchange. Chair: Joachim Östlund, Lund University. This panel will study the mobility of objects and knowledge in the Mediterranean linked to Nordic travel and trade during the sixthteenth and the first half of the eighgteenth century. Source material will include texts and physical objects; and methodological discussions will focus on the routes and roots of knowledge exchange: how was Scandinavian long-distance trade and networks established, and who travelled along these routes? What external factors, such as political and cultural interests, made knowledge and objects travel and how did this change during the centuries? How did encounters give shape or transform imagined borders between Scandinavia and Mediterranean lands? The workshop will analyze situated knowledge and the dynamics between texts produced in so called non-contact zones (Scandinavia) and in contact zones (the Mediterranean) and thereby discuss methodoligical and theoretical aspects of cultural encounters. The panel is also open to the discussion of students’ presentations related to other similar non-contact zones and case studies.
Panel 3: Scientific studies. Chair: Jan Loop, Copenhagen University Early modern Scandinavia was for a couple of centuries hotspot for the study of Oriental societies, history, religion and not least linguistics. In this panel, we will look at the history of Oriental Scholarship in Scandinavia, considered in its local and global dimension, and based on a number of case studies (individual scholars, events, scientific expeditions etc.) and selected sources (annotated manuscripts and books, diaries etc). We will discuss the origin of oriental scholarship as part of Biblical studies and its development under changing religious, institutional and cultural contexts in the 18th and 19th century; and we will analyse the global networks, within which Scandinavian scholars moved and exchanged manuscripts, objects and knowledge. The panel is also open to the discussion of students’ presentations related to other similar non-contact zones and case studies.