Browsing by Subject "Scandinavia"
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Item Gerhard Munthe's Folktale Tapestries: Designing a Norwegian National Narrative in the Nineteenth Century(2014-12) Warren, EricaThis dissertation contemplates the role of the Norwegian landscape painter and designer Gerhard Munthe (1849-1929) in constructing the Norwegian nation. During the nineteenth century, the production of narratives that trace a progressive trajectory for Norway's history, within historical and decorative arts museums, along with art objects and visual culture, played a major role in constructing, defining, and promoting Norway as an independent, European nation. The Norwegian artist Gerhard Munthe, as a participant in the Paris 1900 World's Fair and through his role as a board member of the Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum) and the Kunstindustrimuseet (Museum of Decorative Arts and Design) in Oslo, participated in the nation-building process which effectively manipulated Norway's past as well as criticisms of Norway to construct and promote a modern Norwegian national identity. In their assessments of Munthe's tapestries, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics and scholars have noted the national aspects of his designs and some have struggled to note the tapestries place as expressive of national identity, while also noting how they might signal ambivalence towards that identity. The folktales depicted in the tapestries have the potential to negotiate that ambivalence, while also engaging with the larger project to imagine "the people." This larger project includes the efforts of the folklorists Peter Asbjørsen and Jørgen Moe, and philologist Ivar Aasen, who sought to recuperate and document folklore and language. Despite the failings of these projects, they, along with Munthe's tapestries, remain central to the story of Norwegian nationalism. Some contemporary critics seeks to demonstrate Munthe's significance in an art historical context beyond Norway through an investigation of Munthe's work and its engagement with the theories and motifs of the Aesthetic movement, the Arts and Crafts movement, art nouveau, japonisme, and Symbolism. In examining these modern movements and positioning Munthe as engaged with their ideas, it becomes clear that these movements or trends are tied together by certain repetitive narrative threads, including an insistent borrowing and imagining, a focus on craftsmanship, and a repurposing of the historical.Item Nordic Studies(2023-06-23) Vetruba, Brian W.Presentation about relevant collection development tools, vendors, publishers, databases, and reference works to assist librarians covering Nordic Studies or Scandinavian Studies. Also includes an overview of the academic field and recommendations for scoping a collections. The presentation also highlights content in the Nordic Studies chapter in the forthcoming Handbook for European Studies Librarians. Presented at the "European Language and Area Studies Workshop" on Friday, June 2023 which is sponsored the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of Research & College Libraries (ACRL)Item We are not the periphery: barbarian economies and Northern Europe in the exchange patterns of Western Eurasia, 1800 BC - AD 900(2013-12) Lelis, Arnold A.Examination of long-term exchange patterns involving northern Europe and neighboring regions of western Eurasia reveals that the world of the North has, typically, played an important role both as producer and consumer. Especially in the Carolingian period (AD 700 - 900), the system as a whole can be characterized best as a vast circuit of exchange flows rather than in terms of center - periphery relationships. The major regions participating in the western Eurasian exchange circuit were the North (Scandinavia - Baltic), Latin Christendom, European Russia, Byzantium, and the Islamic world of the Middle East and North Africa. Exchange within the circuit always operated at multiple levels, including elite and non-elite gift giving and resource sharing, but also including independent, professional merchant-adventurers who redistributed goods and materials for profit. This class of entrepreneurs can be analyzed further into long-distance wholesale traders, who linked the top-level nodal places in the system, and others who linked the nodal places with points in the local area down to the capillary level of individual producers and consumers. Typically, members of the mercantile class traveled armed and formed ad hoc aggregations for mutual protection. In the Carolingian Empire, their activities were governed by rules and administrative practices derived, ultimately, from the Late Roman. Commercial exchange can and does operate successfully even in pre-state and non-urbanized societies, i.e., without elite direction or coercion. The evidence shows that pre-commercial societies will incorporate commercial modes of behavior into their socio-economic value systems when opportunity to do so arises. Even "peasants" will behave entrepreneurially, feeding into the larger exchange system both as producers and consumers.