The Common People and the Processes of Literacy in the Nordic Countries:
Excursions to the Scribal and Print Cultures in the 18th and 19th Centuries
(NOS-HS Explorative Workshop 2)
The Arnamagnaean Institute
Department of Scandinavian Research,
University of Copenhagen
(Njalsgade 136, Amager, Building 27, 2nd floor)
Matthew Driscoll, tel. +45 35 32 84 71
Anna Kuismin, tel. +358 44 995 7050
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Religion and literacy
10-12:30
Matthew Driscoll & Anna Kuismin, Opening of the workshop, introductions
Daniel Lindmark, The impact of revivalist movements (Comments by Anna
Kuismin & Henrik Horstbøll)
Petri Lauerma, Finnish revivalist movements and the development of written
Finnish (Comments by Elena Rosnes & David Olafsson)
Tarja-Liisa Luukkanen, A road to modernisation? Ostrobothnian Mystics and
their historical narratives (Comments by Britt Liljewall & Kaisa Kauranen)
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-15
Wim Vandenbussche, Religious fundamentalism as a factor in language
planning and nation building in 19th century Flanders (Comments by Lea
Laitinen & Tarja-Liisa Luukkanen)
Inge Lise Pedersen, “A plain and active, joyful life on Earth": Identity
construction in letters from (former) folk high school students at the close of
the 19th century. (Comments by Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir & Martyn Lyons)
15:00-15:30 Coffee break
15:30-17
Ann-Catrine Edlund, A short introduction of Everyday writing practices:
Diachronic perspective on literacy in Sweden and the other Nordic Countries
Planning the NOS-HS research grant applications and the joint publication
Vernacular literacy, nation building and modernisation in the Nordic countries
during the long 19th century (a working title)
18:30
Dinner at Munkekælderen, Vor Frue Plads, Port A. (The old university quarter)
Research from Below: Nation building, modernisation, secularisation
Friday, 4 December 2009
9:00-10:30 Martyn Lyons, For a new history from below: Popular writing in the First World
War (France and Italy).
10:45-12:30 Vidar Hreinsson, Ghosts, books and politics: Two paths from manuscripts to
modernity (A comment by Matthew Driscoll)
Sigurdur Mágnusson, The life of a working-class woman and selective
modernization in Iceland (A comment by Kirsti Salmi-Niklander)
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-15
Short presentations on methodological questions: Jyrki Hakapää, Kaisa
Kauranen, Kati Mikkola
Comments by Ann-Catrine Edlund, Daniel Lindmark and Wim Vandenbussche
15-15:30
Coffee break
15:30 -17
Planning the NOS-HS research grant applications and the joint publication
Vernacular literacy, nation building and modernisation in the Nordic countries
during the long 19th century (a working title)
PARTICIPANTS
Matthew Driscoll, PhD, lecturer in Old Norse philology, University of Copenhagen
 Manuscript and textual studies, particularly in the area of Old and Early-Modern
Icelandic
 the digitisation and text-encoding of medieval and post-medieval manuscripts using
XML
Henrik Horstbøll, PhD, Professor of Book History, University of Lund
 Literacy and nationalism, print culture and patriotism
 Book history
Pedersen, Inge Lise, Emeritus professor (Copenhagen and Tromsø)
 Contemporary and historical sociolinguistics
 Dialectology
 Language standardisation
Jyrki Hakapää, PhD, Researcher, Finnish and Scandinavian History, University of Helsinki
 Publication and dissemination of common people’s texts
 Book history
Kaisa Kauranen, Lic.Soc.Sci., graduate student of Social History, University of Helsinki
 Annotated catalogues of the textual corpus in the archives of the FLS
 Education, nation building, and women’s position in the texts of ‘the common
people’ in 19th century Finland
Anna Kuismin, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Finnish and Comparative Literature, University of
Helsinki
 Genres and discourses in ‘ego documents’ of Finnish self-taught writers
 Women’s manuscripts and life history research
Lea Laitinen, PhD, Professor of Finnish, University of Helsinki
 Metapragmatics, poetic grammar, language structure and linguistic ideology,
vernacular and standardization, literacy, self-educated writers
Petri Lauerma, PhD, Senior Researcher, the Research Institute for the Languages of
Finland
 History of standard Finnish
 Scribal traditions and private documents of the 19th century revivalist movements
Tarja-Liisa Lukkanen, PhD, Adjunct Professor, History of Ideas and Learning, University
of Helsinki
 Religion and nationalism
 19th century history of theology
 Religious literacy
Kati Mikkola, M.A. (PhD in 2009), Researcher, Comparative Religion, University of
Helsinki
 Nation building, modernisation and self-educated folklore collectors
Kirsti Salmi-Niklander, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Folklore Studies, University of Helsinki
 Hand-written newspapers of temperance societies, agrarian youth societies, labour
movement, student organizations
 Interface between orality and literacy
Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir, M. A., graduate student of history, University of Iceland
 Womens self-expression in manuscripts in the 19th century Iceland (letters,
biography, diaries, poems)
Vidar Hreinsson, M.A., director, Reykjavik Academy
 Literary and philosophical expression in 17th -19th century scribal culture, among
self-educated peasants
 Manuscripts and local culture
Sigurdur Gylfi Mágnusson, PhD, researcher, Reykjavik Academy
 Literary expression and material culture in 19th century Iceland

Microhistory
David Olafsson, PhD, researcher, Reykjavik Academy
 Scribal distribution and consumption of texts in 19th century popular culture and its
interaction with other textual media, both in print and oral culture
 Education and autodidactism in scribal culture
Elena Rosnes, M.A., graduate student of Finnish and Kven Languages, University of
Tromsø
 Letters written in the Kven language in the 19th century Norway
Ann-Catrine Edlund, PhD, Associate Professor of Scandinavian Languages, University of
Umeå
 Literary practices related to peasant diaries and handwritten song-books
 Role of literacy in identity formation processes
 Relationship between literacy and modernisation
Britt Liljewall, PhD, researcher, Göteborgs stadsmuseum
 Literacy and democracy
 Writing ability and writing habits among ‘common people’ women, compared with
men
 The impact of emigration on writing ability among ‘common people’.
Daniel Lindmark, PhD, Professor of History, Department of Historical, Philosophical and
Religious Studies, Umeå University
 Print culture; reading cultures, popular religious reading, catechisms
 Writing instruction and popular writing, print types
Wim Vandenbussche, PhD, Professor of Dutch Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 historical sociolinguistics
 the language situation in Flanders during the 18th and 19th century
Martyn Lyons, Professor of History, School of History and Philosophy, The University of
New South Wales, Australia.
Research Areas: The History of the Book, and of reading and writing practices in Australia
and Europe; Modern France. Selected publications: Reading Culture and Writing
Practices in Nineteenth-Century France, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2008.
Ordinary Writings, Personal Narratives: Writing Practices in 19th and 20th-century Europe,
Bern, Peter Lang, 2007. (ed.); "New Readers in the 19th century: Women, Children,
Workers", in A History of Reading in the West, eds. G. Cavallo & R. Chartier, Oxford,
Polity, 1999, ch.12, pp.313-44; and University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.
“Historians have too easily assumed that the lives of the poor and illiterate can never be directly
known because they have left few written traces. My research aims to demonstrate the contrary, by
analysing a wide range of 'Ordinary Writings' - the improvised and ephemeral writings of the poor,
semi-literate and hitherto silent people of history. My focus is on transitions to mass literacy in
France, Italy, Spain and Australia. I hope to illuminate the democratisation of writing practices, the
relationship between orality and literacy, and ways in which the masses received or challenged
ideas about national identity.”