Nordic Network
About
Active from August 2015 to August 2018, this network provided an inter-disciplinary home for Nordic studies at Oxford. The primary focus was to examine the critical tensions existing in the notion of a European centre and Nordic periphery, bringing together researchers in the history and culture of the Nordic countries.
Our events took a variety of formats, from workshop days that explore new perspectives on central Nordic figures, to seminars and lectures by visiting speakers.
All were welcomed.
Click here to view the Facebook group.
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Contact:
Eveliina Pulkki
Leah Broad, Faculty of Music
People
Events
Past Events
Music and the Nordic Breakthrough: Sibelius/Nielsen/Glazunov 2015 (August/September 2015)
A conference reappraising the works of Sibelius, Nielsen, Glazunov and their contemporaries
Topics included:
- The music of Sibelius, Nielsen, Glazunov, including its genesis, critical reception and analysis;
- Performance in the Nordic fin-de-siècle: the lives, careers, and mobilities of instrumentalists and divas such as Christina Nilsson and Aino Ackté;
- Notions of influence, inheritance, and legacy (e.g. the ‘shadow of Sibelius’);
- Definitions of ‘modernism’ and reactions/resistance to the ‘modern breakthrough’, conservatism;
The conference included an evening recital given by award-winning soprano Hedvig Paulig and Prof Gustav Djupsjöbacka, Rector of the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki.
Sibelius Symposium (November 2015)
Symposium about Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
First panel: Modernism & Cosmopolitanism
Charlotte Ashby (Birkbeck, University of London): Sibelius and the Home of the Nordic Hero
Rebecca Day (Royal Holloway University of London): Two sides of the same symphonic coin? Sibelius, Mahler, and self-referentiality in the twentieth-century symphony
Charlotte Ashby (Birkbeck, University of London): Sibelius and the Home of the Nordic Hero
Rebecca Day (Royal Holloway University of London): Two sides of the same symphonic coin? Sibelius, Mahler, and self-referentiality in the twentieth-century symphony
Second panel: Reception & Reconsideration
Sarah Moynihan (Royal Holloway University of London): Rotations and Ruminations: Reconsidering Sibelius’s Tapiola Complex
Philip Bullock (Wadham College, University of Oxford): Sibelius Reception in Britain, 1901-1939: Centre Periphery in the Musical Construction of the North
Sarah Moynihan (Royal Holloway University of London): Rotations and Ruminations: Reconsidering Sibelius’s Tapiola Complex
Philip Bullock (Wadham College, University of Oxford): Sibelius Reception in Britain, 1901-1939: Centre Periphery in the Musical Construction of the North
Recital of Sibelius Songs, Performed by Catherine Joule
Third panel: Theatre
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (St Catherine’s, University of Oxford): Minna Canth’s Anna-Liisa: A Theatrical Snapshot
Leah Broad (Christ Church, University of Oxford): Scaramouche, Scaramouche
Daniel Grimley (Merton College, University of Oxford): 'Some Heavenly Music’: Allegory, Symbolism, and Death in Sibelius’ Late Theatre Works
Nordic Architecture in Theory and Practice (November 2015)
Speakers:
Professor Reidar Due: The Ambiguous Social Modernism of Alvar Aalto
Mr Kasper Frandsen: Nordic Architecture. Society and Man - Light and Matter
"Spoken Language is a Prison": Ways of Belonging and Speaking in North-west Greenland (January 2016)
An audio-visual lecture
Speaker: Stephen Leonard (University of Oxford)
The Latitudes of Twilight in the North (February 2016)
Speaker: Professor Peter Davidson (University of Oxford)
The talk traced the emergence at the turn of the nineteenth century of schools of painting and writing which were fascinated by adverse weather and falling light, by belatedness and regret, and how this awareness of light conditions is itself a defining factor of "northness", setting itself in deliberate opposition to the static Mediterranean light which floods baroque landscape painting with an unwavering golden afternoon.
Hunger Beyond Norway: Hamsun and Cosmopolitanism (April 2016)
A seminar examining the relationship between cosmopolitanism and Knut Hamsun's works of the 1890s
“Knut Hamsun's Travels: Cosmopolitanism or Old-Style Colonialism?” Professor Emerita Monika Žagar (Minnesota) discussed whether Hamsun’s reflections on Native Americans, African Americans and large-scale immigration, in his 1889 book The Cultural Life of Modern America, fall under cosmopolitanism or old-style colonialism.
“A Fragment of Life Itself: George Egerton's Translation of Hamsun's Hunger”
Dr Stefano Evangelista (Oxford) spoke of George Egerton, Hamsun’s first English translator. His paper looked at the early English reception of Hamsun, paying particular attention to Egerton's double role as translator of Scandinavian fiction and writer about modern Norway.
“Aho, Hamsun, and Cosmopolitan Identity”
Eveliina Pulkki (associate professor in English at Oxford University) examined the role that cosmopolitan identity plays in the works of Hamsun and the yet to be translated work of his Finnish contemporary Juhani Aho.
Rethinking the Nordic Fairy Tale (May 2016)
Speakers:
Paul Binding, explored H.C. Andersen’s Iisjomfruen, taking it as the apotheosis of a Nordic fairy-tale that is also a German/French Novelle, and a sort of template of Swiss history.
David Hopkin, ‘The Soldier’s Tale: The Relationship of The Tinderbox to Oral Storytelling.’
Lise Grønvold, considered how Karen Blixen reshaped the Nordic fairy tale in her “tales” published between 1934 and 1958.
Equality, Inequality and Aesthetics (October 2016)
Speakers:
Dr Peter K. Andersson (University of Lund): "Distinction and Vulgarity: Dandyism in Late Nineteenth-Century Sweden"
Dr Mikkel Zangenberg (University of Kent): "On the Politico-Aesthetic Education of a Nordic, Proto-European Welfare Man; or, how to mobilize Schiller anew, through reading Holberg’s Erasmus Montanus"
Re-imagining Scandinavia in the World: Colonialism and Race (November 2016)
Speaker: Dr Michael McEachrane (University College London)
Respondents: Professor Elleke Boehmer and Louisa Layne (University of Oxford)
Chair: Eveliina Pulkki (University of Oxford)
Literary and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century Denmark (January 2017)
Seminar connecting scholars working on C19th Danish cultural history in the UK and in Denmark
Session One:
Chair: Lene Østermark-Johansen
Patrick Kragelund (independent scholar, Copenhagen): Constantin Hansen’s Prometheus Frescoes at the University of Copenhagen (1843-53) and the End of the Old Order
Elettra Carbone (UCL): Reading Sculpture: The Remediation of Thorvaldsen’s Sculpture in Literature
Michael Hatt (University of Warwick): Homosexual Time: Kristian Zahrtmann’s Socrates and Alcibiades
Session Two:
Chair: Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (UCL): Hans Christian Andersen and Illustreret Tidende (Illustrated News)
Colin Roth (University of Sheffield): Bottoms Up (and down): Bournonville, Andersen and the transmission of ideas
David Jackson (University of Leeds): Selling Christen Købke
Nordic Hospitality and Comfort through the Ages (February 2017)
A Nordic Network seminar on Scandinavian hospitality
Speakers:
Rebecka Klette (Birkbeck): 'Degenerate modernity and "Ibsenity": the satirical reception of Ibsen in Punch during the late 19th century.'
Heather O'Donoghue (University of Oxford): 'The Perils of Inhospitality in Medieval Iceland'
Morten Kringelbach (University of Oxford): 'Hygge: Lessons from neuroscience and Aristotle on hedonia and eudaimonia’
Fields of Knowledge: Natural History, Antiquarianism and the Discovery of the Romantic North (April 2017)
Speaker: Dr Kim Simonsen
Landscape, Environment, and Travelling European “Men of Science and Letters” 1800-1900
Masterclass in Conceptual Poetry (April 2017)
Dr Kim Simonsen on 'Globalised Yellow Rubber Ducks: Hyperobjects, Post-humanism and Scandinavian Conceptual Poetry'
The Nordic Voice (June 2017)
One-day seminar
Programme
PANEL ONE: Geographies (Chair: Daniel Grimley)
Lene Østermark-Johansen (University of Copenhagen), Victorian French Rococo with a Regional Danish Accent: Translating Walter Pater into Danish at the Fin de Siècle
Annika Lindskog (UCL), Märk hur vår skugga: Funeral music by Bellman and Kraus as representation of place
Philip Bullock (University of Oxford), North by North-East: Russia’s Nordic Voice
PANEL ONE: Geographies (Chair: Daniel Grimley)
Lene Østermark-Johansen (University of Copenhagen), Victorian French Rococo with a Regional Danish Accent: Translating Walter Pater into Danish at the Fin de Siècle
Annika Lindskog (UCL), Märk hur vår skugga: Funeral music by Bellman and Kraus as representation of place
Philip Bullock (University of Oxford), North by North-East: Russia’s Nordic Voice
PANEL TWO: Music (Chair: Eveliina Pulkki)
Leah Broad (University of Oxford), Nordic Voices in the Theatre
Anne Macgregor (University of Nottingham), The half-truths of Ture Rangström’s ‘Tristans död’
Daniel Grimley (University of Oxford), Singing against the waves: the Melancholia of Leevi Madetoja’s Syksy-sarja
Leah Broad (University of Oxford), Nordic Voices in the Theatre
Anne Macgregor (University of Nottingham), The half-truths of Ture Rangström’s ‘Tristans död’
Daniel Grimley (University of Oxford), Singing against the waves: the Melancholia of Leevi Madetoja’s Syksy-sarja
PANEL THREE: Representation (Chair: Kirsten Shepherd-Barr)
Charlie Louth (University of Oxford), On Denmark in Rilke’s ‘Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge’ (1910)
Glenn Cahilly-Bretzin (University of Oxford), A Pagan Voice from a Christian Writer: Representations of the Heroic Past in 14th-Century Iceland
Eveliina Pulkki (University of Oxford), Boules de suif: Foreign Bodies in Sofi Oksanen’s Stalin’s Cows (Stalinin lehmät, 2003) and Pekka Hiltunen’s BIG (ISO, 2013)
Charlie Louth (University of Oxford), On Denmark in Rilke’s ‘Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge’ (1910)
Glenn Cahilly-Bretzin (University of Oxford), A Pagan Voice from a Christian Writer: Representations of the Heroic Past in 14th-Century Iceland
Eveliina Pulkki (University of Oxford), Boules de suif: Foreign Bodies in Sofi Oksanen’s Stalin’s Cows (Stalinin lehmät, 2003) and Pekka Hiltunen’s BIG (ISO, 2013)
PANEL FOUR: Politics (Chair: Leah Broad)
Henrique Laitenberger (University of Oxford), "In the Sweat of Man' Brow" - The Christian Political Economy of Anders Chydenius
Matthew Weait (University of Portsmouth), Nanny Knows Best: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission and Exposure in the Nordic Countries
Nina Witoszek (University of Oslo), Is there a Nordic Humanism?
Henrique Laitenberger (University of Oxford), "In the Sweat of Man' Brow" - The Christian Political Economy of Anders Chydenius
Matthew Weait (University of Portsmouth), Nanny Knows Best: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission and Exposure in the Nordic Countries
Nina Witoszek (University of Oslo), Is there a Nordic Humanism?
Scandinavian Literature (October 2017)
Lecture complementing the Bodleian exhibition in Hilary 2019 Babel: adventures in translation.
Speakers: Ms Eveliina Pulkki
Exploring Nordic Song (October 2018)
Oxford Lieder Festival 2018
Norway
Eira Huse mezzo-soprano, Olga Jørgensen piano, Daniel Grimley speaker
Edvard Grieg’s folk-inspired cycle Haugtussa and songs by Ludvig Irgens-Jensen
Denmark
Mathias Monrad Møller tenor, Dahl Laursen piano, Leah Broad speaker
Songs by Carl Nielsen, Peter Heise and Peter Lange-Müller
Finland
Melis Jaatinen mezzo-soprano, Juho Alakärppä piano, Daniel Grimley speaker
Songs by Jean Sibelius, Leevi Madetoja and Toivo Kuula
Iceland
Oddur Jónsson baritone, Somi Kim piano, Hilary Finch speaker
Songs by Atli Heimir Sveinsson, Jórunn Viðar and Sigfús Einarsson, and Icelandic folksongs
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