Veröffentlicht von De Gruyter

Religious Minorities in the North

History, Politics, and Culture

Herausgegeben von: Jonathan Adams, Cordelia Heß und Christhard Hoffmann

ISSN: 2627-440X

e-ISSN 2627-4418

Übersicht
Bände

peer-reviewed

This Open Access series publishes monographs and collections on the history of religious minorities in all the Nordic countries and their former colonies from the arrival of Christianity to the modern day. Religious Minorities in the North takes a wide view of the history of religious minorities and their interactions with each other and the majority society. It promotes scholarship and creates new resources, including source editions, for the study of religious minorities in the North. The volumes encompass various disciplines including the fields of history, theology and history of religion as well as literary studies, political science, sociology, social anthropology, and linguistics. All volumes in the series are subject to two independent single blind peer reviews.

Editorial board:

Cora Alexa Døving, The Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies, Oslo, Norway.
Stefanie von Schnurbein, Nordeuropa-Institut, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
Håkan Rydving, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway.
Raisa Toivo, Faculty of Social Sciences, History, Philosophy and Literature, Tampere University, Finland.

Editorial contact:

Eva Locher (eva.locher@degruyter.com)

Zusatzmaterial

Call for Manuscripts

Fachgebiete

Buch Open Access 2025

Colonial Entanglements and the Medieval Nordic World

Norse Colonies and Indigenous Peoples

Cordelia Heß, Solveig Marie Wang, Erik Wolf

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The book investigates the multifaceted entanglements between the many pasts and presents of the Nordic medieval period and colonialism. The edited volume contributes to the untangling of questions concerning how present, recent, and past structures of colonialism affect historiography on the medieval Nordic past. Consisting of thematically diverse chapters, the book brings together a range of approaches related to medieval colonialism in a Nordic context, touching both on medieval and medievalist factors. The editors and contributors understand their project as part of the growing conversation about colonialism and its reverberations in academia, and as a contribution to decolonization efforts. The volume will offer an interdisciplinary approach to oft-neglected aspects of the medieval world through an incorporation of more inclusive methodologies and re-readings of both medieval texts and previous scholarship.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111386676
ISBN:: 9783111386676
ISBN:: 9783111386560
ISBN:: 9783111386751
Fachgebiet:: Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen in den Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Religion
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Historische Epochen
Fachgebiet:: Mittelalter
Fachgebiet:: Regionale und nationale Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Europa
Fachgebiet:: Nordeuropa
Fachgebiet:: Themen der Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Colonial und Postcolonial History
Verlag:: De Gruyter

Buch Open Access 2024

Narratives about Jews among Muslims in Norway

A qualitative interview study

Vibeke Moe Bjørnbekk, Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies

Band 7 in dieser Reihe

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What is the nature of Muslim-Jewish relations in Europe today? Based on qualitative interview data, this book explores narratives about Jews among Muslims in Norway. Drawing on culturally embedded narratives as well as personal experiences, interviewees reflect on the relationship between Jews and Muslims. The interreligious exchange between Islam and Judaism is as old as Islam. Today, the Arab-Israeli conflict has become an important frame of reference in the public discourse on Muslim-Jewish relations. The narratives presented in this book delineate shifting community boundaries and identifications that transcend dichotomised notions of "Muslims versus Jews." The analysis shows how Jewish history in Europe and the history of modern antisemitism serve as interpretative keys in the narratives, used for explaining the situation of the Muslim minority today. Furthermore, the book demonstrates how interviewees’ perceptions of society’s attitudes toward Muslim and Jewish experiences also strongly influence their perceptions of Muslim-Jewish relations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111329321
ISBN:: 9783111329321
ISBN:: 9783111329413
ISBN:: 9783111329284
Fachgebiet:: Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen in den Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Religion
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Regionale und nationale Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Europa
Fachgebiet:: Nordeuropa
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Studien
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Antisemitismus
Fachgebiet:: Theologie und Religion
Fachgebiet:: Islamische Studien
Verlag:: De Gruyter

Buch Open Access 2024

A Mirror of the Jewish Religion: A Critical Edition and Translation of Christian Petter Löwe’s “Speculum Religionis Judaicæ” (1732)

Jonathan Adams, Vetenskapsrådet / The Swedish Research Council

Band 6 in dieser Reihe

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In 1732, Christian Petter Löwe, a Jewish convert to Lutheranism, published his Speculum Religionis Judaicæ (Mirror of the Jewish Religion), a description of the Jewish religion and ceremonies as practised at the time. Over 50 years before Jews were permitted to settle in Sweden in 1782, the genre of Christian ethnographical writing about Jews and Jewish rituals had arrived in Sweden from Germany. In this volume, Jonathan Adams (University of Gothenburg) introduces the background to Löwe’s "mirror" by looking at both the earlier history of Jews in Sweden and the phenomenon of ethnographical writing about Jews. The text of Speculum is presented in its original Swedish with a translation into English facing on the opposite pages. This edition includes notes explaining technical terms, identifying people and places, and translating Hebrew words and phrases. The volume also includes two works published in Sweden prior to Speculum: Bezelius’ Die Herrlichkeit des Christenthums (The Glory of Christianity [excerpts], 1684) and Seeligmann’s Jüdischer Ceremonien (On Jewish Ceremonies, 1725). The volume should be of interest to students and researchers of Jewish and Scandinavian history as well as the history of Jewish–Christian relations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110986938
ISBN:: 9783110986938
ISBN:: 9783110998412
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Historische Epochen
Fachgebiet:: Frühe Neuzeit
Fachgebiet:: Regionale und nationale Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Europa
Fachgebiet:: Nordeuropa
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Studien
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Literatur
Fachgebiet:: Frühe jüdische Literatur
Fachgebiet:: Literaturwissenschaft
Fachgebiet:: Literaturen anderer Länder und Spachen
Fachgebiet:: Skandinavische Literatur
Verlag:: De Gruyter

Buch Open Access 2023

Decolonising Medieval Fennoscandia

An Interdisciplinary Study of Norse-Saami Relations in the Medieval Period

Solveig Marie Wang

Band 5 in dieser Reihe

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The interdisciplinary study investigates the relationship between Norse and Saami peoples in the medieval period and focuses on the multifaceted portrayal of Saami peoples in medieval texts. The investigative analysis is anchored in postcolonial methodologies and argues for the inherent need to decolonise the medieval source-material as well as recent historiography. This is achieved by presenting the historiographic and political background of research into Norse-Saami relations, before introducing an overview of textual sources discussing Saami peoples from the classical period to the late 1400s, an analysis of the textual motifs associated with the Saami in medieval literature (their relevance and prevalence), geo-political affairs, trading relations, personal relations and Saami presence in the south. By using decolonising tools to read Norse-Saami relations in medieval texts, influenced by archaeological material and postcolonial frameworks, the study challenges lingering colonial assumptions about the role of the Saami in Norse society. The current research episteme is re-adjusted to offer alternative readings of Saami characters and emphasis is put on agency, fluidity and the dynamic realities of the Saami medieval pasts.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110784305
ISBN:: 9783110784305
ISBN:: 9783110784350
ISBN:: 9783110784169
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Historische Epochen
Fachgebiet:: Mittelalter
Fachgebiet:: Themen der Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Colonial und Postcolonial History
Fachgebiet:: Literaturwissenschaft
Fachgebiet:: Literaturen anderer Länder und Spachen
Fachgebiet:: Skandinavische Literatur
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen der Literaturwissenschaft
Fachgebiet:: Postcolonial Studies
Verlag:: De Gruyter

Buch Open Access 2023

Jews in East Norse Literature

A Study of Othering in Medieval Denmark and Sweden

Jonathan Adams

Band 4 in dieser Reihe

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What did Danes and Swedes in the Middle Ages imagine and write about Jews and Judaism? This book draws on over 100 medieval Danish and Swedish manuscripts and incunabula as well as runic inscriptions and religious art (c. 1200–1515) to answer this question. There were no resident Jews in Scandinavia before the modern period, yet as this book shows ideas and fantasies about them appear to have been widespread and an integral part of life and culture in the medieval North. Volume 1 investigates the possibility of encounters between Scandinavians and Jews, the terminology used to write about Jews, Judaism, and Hebrew, and how Christian writers imagined the Jewish body. The (mis)use of Jews in different texts, especially miracle tales, exempla, sermons, and Passion treaties, is examined to show how writers employed the figure of the Jew to address doubts concerning doctrine and heresy, fears of violence and mass death, and questions of emotions and sexuality. Volume 2 contains diplomatic editions of 54 texts in Old Danish and Swedish together with translations into English that make these sources available to an international audience for the first time and demonstrate how the image of the Jew was created in medieval Scandinavia.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110775747
ISBN:: 9783110775747
ISBN:: 9783110775778
ISBN:: 9783110775662
Fachgebiet:: Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen in den Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Religion
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Regionale und nationale Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Europa
Fachgebiet:: Nordeuropa
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Studien
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Antisemitismus
Fachgebiet:: Literaturwissenschaft
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen der Literaturwissenschaft
Fachgebiet:: Religion
Verlag:: De Gruyter

Buch Open Access 2022

The Medieval Archive of Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

Cordelia Heß

Band 3 in dieser Reihe

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The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. This book, the first study on antisemitism in nineteenth-century Sweden, provides new insights into the debate from the specific case of a country in which religious homogeneity was the considered ideal long into the modern era.
Between 1800 and 1900, approximately 150 books and pamphlets were printed in Sweden on the subject of Judaism and Jews. About one third comprised of translations mostly from German, but to a lesser extent also from French and English. Two thirds were Swedish originals, covering all genres and topics, but with a majority on religious topics: conversion, supersessionism, and accusations of deicide and bloodlust. The latter stem from the vastly popular medieval legends of Ahasverus, Pilate, and Judas which were printed in only slightly adapted forms and accompanied by medieval texts connecting these apocryphal figures to contemporary Jews, ascribing them a physical, essential, and biological coherence and continuity – a specific Jewish temporality shaped in medieval passion piety, which remained functional and intelligible in the modern period.
Relying on medieval models and their combination of religious and racist imagery, nineteenth-century debates were informed by a comprehensive and mostly negative "knowledge" about Jews.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110757408
ISBN:: 9783110757408
ISBN:: 9783110757439
ISBN:: 9783110673432
Fachgebiet:: Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen in den Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Religion
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Regionale und nationale Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Europa
Fachgebiet:: Nordeuropa
Fachgebiet:: Themen der Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Kulturgeschichte
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Studien
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Antisemitismus
Verlag:: De Gruyter

Buch Open Access 2021

Religious Otherness and National Identity in Scandinavia, c. 1790–1960

The Construction of Jews, Mormons, and Jesuits as Anti-Citizens and Enemies of Society

Frode Ulvund

Band 2 in dieser Reihe

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The author discusses how religious groups, especially Jews, Mormons and Jesuits, were labeled as foreign and constructed as political, moral and national threats in Scandinavia in different periods between c. 1790 and 1960. Key questions are who articulated such opinions, how was the threat depicted, and to what extent did it influence state policies towards these groups. A special focus is given to Norway, because the Constitution of 1814 included a ban against Jews (repelled in 1851) and Jesuits (repelled in 1956), and because Mormons were denied the status of a legal religion until freedom of religion was codified in the Constitution in 1964. The author emphasizes how the construction of religious minorities as perils of society influenced the definition of national identities in all Scandinavia, from the late 18th Century until well after WWII. The argument is that Jews, Mormons and Jesuits all were constructed as "anti-citizens", as opposites of what it meant to be "good" citizens of the nation. The discourse that framed the need for national protection against foreign religious groups was transboundary. Consequently, transnational stereotypes contributed significantly in defining national identities.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110657760
ISBN:: 9783110657760
ISBN:: 9783110654295
ISBN:: 9783110654424
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Regionale und nationale Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Europa
Fachgebiet:: Nordeuropa
Fachgebiet:: Themen der Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Antisemitismus
Fachgebiet:: Sozialgeschichte
Fachgebiet:: Theologie und Religion
Fachgebiet:: Judaistik
Fachgebiet:: Religionsausübung
Verlag:: De Gruyter

Buch Open Access 2020

Antisemitism in the North

History and State of Research

Jonathan Adams, Cordelia Heß

Band 1 in dieser Reihe

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Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities.
This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634822
ISBN:: 9783110634822
ISBN:: 9783110632286
ISBN:: 9783110631937
Fachgebiet:: Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen in den Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Religion
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Regionale und nationale Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Europa
Fachgebiet:: Nordeuropa
Fachgebiet:: Themen der Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Kulturgeschichte
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Studien
Fachgebiet:: Jüdische Geschichte
Fachgebiet:: Antisemitismus
Verlag:: De Gruyter