By examining clerical book collections in Norway 1650–1750, this book describes the flow of books in one of the northernmost areas of Europe, a flow dependant on three networking areas in particular, namely Germany, the Netherlands and England.

During recent decades much has been written about early modern book distribution, but until now Norway has been absent from the discussion. Drawing on book listings, this study seeks to fill this lacuna by exploring the market for books in early modern Norway. Its approach is multifaceted: consideration of the types of books accessed by different elements of Norwegian society is set alongside developments within the book market itself, such as the extended life of popular books, the gradual replacement of Latin by the vernacular and the rise in the eighteenth century in the number of books available on the market. The study demonstrates the internationality of the Norwegian book market while acknowledging specific patterns that determine its Norwegian character.

The essays in Private Libraries and their Documentation revolve around the users and contents of early modern private book collections, and around the sources used to document and study these collections. They take the reader from large-scale projects on historical book ownership to micro-level research conducted on individual libraries, and from analyses of specific types of primary sources to general typologies and overviews by period and by region. As a result of its comparative approach and active engagement with questions regarding the nature, selection and accessibility of sources, the volume serves as a guide to sources and resources in different regions as well as to state-of the-art methods and interpretational approaches. Publication of this volume in open access was made possible by the Ammodo KNAW Award 2017 for Humanities.

Seventeenth-Century Libraries: Problems and Perspectives presents key topics for understanding the theory and practice of library formation in the seventeenth century, both in Britain and on the Continent. In eight studies (plus a substantial introduction and afterword) based on meticulous research, the volume addresses questions of acquisition, classification, administration and access, spatial arrangement and furniture, networks of collecting, and dispersal of libraries, and serves as an introduction to methods of investigating these themes. Seventeenth-Century Libraries: Problems and Perspectives is a landmark volume that confronts outstanding issues of cultural and intellectual history by synthesizing recent research on the growth of libraries during a period that was crucial for the development of modern knowledge management, historical attitudes, and material culture. Contributors: Robyn Adams, Richard Foster, Francesca Galligan, Jaap Geraerts, Jacqueline Glomski, Shanti Graheli, Clodagh Murphy, David Pearson, Dominique Varry, and Elizabeth Wells.

Scholars of pre-modern literary culture rely almost exclusively on texts that have survived: mostly those that have reached the comparative safety of modern library collections. But the urge to record, catalogue and advertise the wealth of new publications in the age of print created an additional and valuable resource: book lists. Printers made lists of their available stock; owners catalogued their libraries; religious authorities drew up indexes of banned books; assessors inventoried collections and stock as part of the settlement of estates, or legal proceedings. This volume examines an array of such lists taken from a variety of European countries during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The result is a wide-ranging re-evaluation of one of the most interesting and underused resources for early modern book history. Contributors include: Jürgen Beyer, Flavia Bruni, Gina Dahl, Cristina Dondi, Shanti Graheli, Neil Harris, Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba, Alexander Marr, Kasper van Ommen, Andrea Ottone, Leigh T.I. Penman, Benito Rial Costas, John Sibbald, Kevin M. Stevens and Malcolm Walsby.

The formation of the European nation states was deeply affected by the Reformation processes during the 16th century. In order to understand today's Europe, it is necessary to come to terms with the historical processes that shaped these emerging nation states. The book discusses such processes with particular attention to how they affected the northernmost parts of Europe. The book consists of three main parts: 1) Church and State, 2) Interaction and Networks, 3) Ideas and Images. In the first part, the authors examine various aspects of the relationship between the church and the state, and how the Reformation processes contributed to reshape this relationship. In the second part, the development of the social and economic networks among the population of Northern Fennoscandia is mapped, taking account of how such networks were affected by different ethnic groups. The role of the church and the mission in the state integration of the Northern borderless areas is also examined, as well as the new Lutheran clergy and their social and material conditions. In the third part, the visual and material expressions of the Reformation period is analyzed, as well as the encounter between the Catholic, the Lutheran and the Sámi religion.

This book examines the experiences and interconnections of the Reformations, principally in Denmark-Norway and Britain and Ireland (but with an eye to the broader Scandinavian landscape as well), and also discusses instances of similarities between the Reformations in both realms. The volume features a comprehensive introduction, and provides a broad survey of the beginnings and progress of the Catholic and Protestant Reformations in Northern Europe, while also highlighting themes of comparison that are common to all of the bloc under consideration, which will be of interest to Reformation scholars across this geographical region.

Religious Reading in the Lutheran North opens up the doors to a part of early modern European history that has often been overlooked. In the Nordic countries, an abundance of religious literature in the vernacular was produced in the centuries following the Reformation, and reading was almost exclusively taught to children in a Lutheran Protestant setting. Literacy rates were high, and by the mid eighteenth century around ninety per cent of both men and women could read. The eight contributions to the present book investigate different aspects of religious reading in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Greenland, looking at the publication and dissemination strategies of authors and clergymen, as well as reading habits and interpretations among Scandinavian readers.

During the Enlightenment, other peoples, and also their cultures, were much discussed, with debates often focusing on their value as human beings and the level of tolerance that they were to be granted. Books on 'outer worlds', classified in libraries as historia, were an integral part of these deliberations as they conveyed distinct perceptions of peoples and places to their readers. This book explores how the broader world was presented to a Norwegian audience by means of both statistical analysis of books on 'the other' in Enlightenment libraries and consideration of how peoples were portrayed in bestselling works. Intriguingly, book distribution was very uneven, and the views that the bestsellers promoted were as multifaceted as the Enlightenment itself, with the texts expressing both prejudice and admiration, depending on the identity of the author and thee very context in which they were written.

Closely entwined with the educational revolution of early modernity, the Reformation transformed the pedagogical landscape and culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Embracing a broad understanding of the Reformation this volume examines the confessional dynamics which shaped the educational transformations of early modernity, including Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists and Roman Catholics in its scope. Going beyond conventional emphases on the role of the printing press and theological education of clergy in university settings, it also explores the education of laity in academies, schools and the home in all manner of topics including theology, history, natural philosophy and ethics. More well-known figures like John Calvin and Philipp Melanchthon are examined alongside less-well known but important figures like Caspar Coolhaes and Lukas Osiander. Likewise, more prominent centres of reform including Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands are considered together with often overlooked locations like the Czech Republic and Denmark.