Every once in a while, attempts have been made to reduce a complex period in international book history by focussing on the history of a single country or on the rivalry of two cities.1 But neither does the history of printing in the Netherlands replace the necessity of looking for other constitutive powers in a specific region and period of time, nor does that classical clash of ideological centres (Rome versus Wittenberg) alone write the history of Reformation and Confessionalisation in early modern Scandinavia. It is indisputable that Wittenberg rose to a position of uttermost importance for Protestant book printing in the middle of the sixteenth century from a very modest starting position.2 Yet, for a long time, Wittenberg and its main ‘brand’ were of less importance at least with regard to the production of the printed books essential for the spread and consolidation of the Reformation in Sweden.3 It is established practice to feature religion, geography or politics as the driving forces in history; nevertheless this is not sufficient in order to depict the correct image of the book market of that time. Scandinavian, especially Swedish and Danish, book markets which I will concentrate on in the present study, have never worked along clearly drawn lines dividing vernacular domestic and import markets from each other.
This is an understanding that expanded the longer I looked at certain actors and actions within early modern Scandinavian book history, as well as the statistics and bibliographical considerations pertaining to printing and distribution of books.4 With regard to the book market and book trade, one has to consider the important contributions by individual actors, places or powers that at times have been of major regional or even transnational importance as centres for book production or book trade. They join other driving forces and formative agents in history such as geography, climate or demography especially as stressed by the Annales school. The fact that there have been shifting centres, and at the same time shifting attention from the Scandinavian periphery as to what defines or what might create such a centre, allows us to ask questions about when and where new centres appeared and for what reasons.5
In early modern Scandinavia, religion was certainly one major driving force – but not the only one. The present study aims at investigating the interplay between mainly religion and other driving forces, such as geography, politics and people. To achieve this, it excludes typography or the technique of printing itself. There is no lack of studies highlighting some of the more well-known actors, and success stories but also obstacles that faced the emerging world of the printed book in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. On a general level, it is necessary to mention Andrew Pettegree’s more structured view on centre and periphery in the period of the ‘print revolution’. On a whole, Pettegree’s description of the third, the outermost circle in the first century of print, is quite applicable to the situation in northern Europe, to be more precise, mostly Scandinavia and Northern Germany. Pettegree identifies a few actors or acting forces shaping the peripheral book markets, such as demography and local political elites.6 Yet, he does not intend to explain the interplay of forces that shaped Scandinavian book history in greater detail. More fruitful in that respect is the approach of David Rundle in his sketch of the structure of humanist contacts, especially the main conclusion that ‘the studia humanitatis were less about genius of place than mastery over space’.7 Rundle’s work on the development of the humanistic field and, at the same time, of the humanists achieving and teaching that same discipline in the fifteenth century, does fit almost equally well the book world of the sixteenth century. Because what the world of books and its history in Scandinavia reveal, is not the genius of that one place or of that one bookshop. It opens up a conceptual way of investigating which forcing agents executed at least some mastery over Scandinavian and Northern European space.
Given the undisputable importance of the international Latin book trade as one of the intrinsic characteristics of the development of the northern European book world, this world simply cannot be understood as having been self-sufficient.8 A more recent study expands the number of driving forces shaping (at least regional) book history by reminding us of some of the borders that books had to tackle: the Protestant Reformation splitting the book market in two, political fragmentation increasing the number of border and customs controls in the way of imported books, and last but not least the division of Europe into territorial states.9 The Scandinavian territorial states of the sixteenth century temporarily separated a domestic vernacular book market from a foreign, export-orientated Latin book trade.
One late effect of the Reformation and the formation of consolidated states in Europe, especially in central and northern Europe, is not only that today we have to discuss their impact on Scandinavian book culture. The disintegration of the (at least to a large extent) unified pre-Reformation Europe for a long time prevented book producers, traders and consumers during the sixteenth century from having access to the Latin and Catholic part of the world of books, no matter how much they might have fitted in with Pettegree’s definition of the inner core in terms of book production.10 This almost cataclysmic period of events makes it even more a necessity to contemplate frameworks, acting forces and individual actors that formed Scandinavian sixteenth-century book cultures. Does the transition from a Western Christianity, theologically orientated towards Rome, to the duality of Catholic and Lutheran and Reformed confessions mean that frameworks simply shrank without a change of character? They did so to a certain extent, yes. We can deduce certain parallels before and after 1525 (roughly speaking), but there were differences as well. Let us begin our analysis by looking at the book trade starting in the middle of the fifteenth century.
1 Trade by Default
Until the Reformation, the places that had a major influence on Scandinavian print culture were the centres of international trade on the European continent that were looking for opportunities in the north. When it came to Mainz, the birthplace of printing, it is appropriate to start writing its book history with the start of book printing. Everywhere else, trade in books has preceded the printing of books, sometimes for decades.11 This, of course, was all the more true the farther one travelled from central western Europe out into the peripheries of the continent. Books as merchandise travelled faster than printing presses.
Not long after the invention of printing and less than a generation before the first printers established offices in Scandinavia, the first printed books reached the shores of the Baltic Sea.12 It was the most natural thing for a type of merchandise that fitted the needs of the Scandinavian readers but that also had to be traded in order to get a reward for the investment. This first period of the book trade in Scandinavia is characterized by reception rather than production. The earliest merchandise to a large extent consists of sought-after canonical literary works, their authors being far away from Scandinavia by time and space. While intellectual production in the modern sense of the word was not altogether unknown, intellectual reproduction still was the major business and encompassed the printing of (anonymously composed) liturgical books: the works of the church fathers and medieval theologians and standard school books, as well as pirated editions that met the market demand. The contents of late medieval and early modern Scandinavian book collections make it evident that much of the book trade did not necessarily involve identifiable authors at all.
This all-European book market was also dealing with relatively uniform merchandise, mainly liturgical books and scholastic literature. Being a commodity that fitted seamlessly the established transportation means and routes, books easily found their place among the merchandise with which the Hanse merchants dealt. Thus Lübeck became the natural centre for trade and printing, benefitting from its favourable geographical position on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea and as well as from its long-existing trade networks.13 But the trade with books also benefitted from the generally homogenous liturgical and intellectual culture in pre-Reformation western Europe. That means that mastery of space was more decisive than any genius of place.
At a time when all liturgy was in Latin and, on the whole, ‘Catholic’ or Roman, variations in the liturgies used by churches, monastic orders and other larger religious bodies were negligible. Clerics and lay people all over Europe adapted foreign liturgical tools for use in their home dioceses: south German psalters were employed in the Swedish dioceses of Skara and Uppsala.14 Nor was the use of Swedish liturgical books restricted to the dioceses they were originally printed for. The Graduale Arosiense for the diocese of Västerås, Sweden, and the Manuale Upsalense of 1487 for the archdiocese of Uppsala were demonstrably used simultaneously in the same parish, although they have been described by historians as partly incompatible.15 The Missale Dominicanum produced by Wenssler in Basel in 1488 has a rather late Norwegian provenance, but its binding and other signs of provenance suggest strongly that at least this copy was imported to Norway before the Reformation.16
Foreign liturgical books were used, with minor or major adjustments, because they were needed but also thanks to the international character of the pre-Reformation Roman church. This specific aspect of the pre-Reformation period allowed Rome to determine the overall framework of the book trade, but Rome was never its centre.17
During these early years, the books, texts and ideas that were transferred from one place to the other determined the scale and nature of the Scandinavian market. There is overwhelming evidence of the capacity of this market: the speed with which printed books could cross Europe and the scale of the trade as reconstructed from contemporary sources.18 Books produced in printing shops on the continent could easily take less than two years, and in some cases even less than one year, to travel to a destination in northern Europe, not only to Lübeck, Rostock or Hamburg from where they were shipped to Scandinavia, but also directly to Scandinavian markets and buyers as well. The 1483 Stockholm edition of the Dialogus creaturarum moralisatus was modelled directly on a Dutch print dated 1482.19 In 1531 the later Finnish reformer Michael Agricola (c.1509–1557), then resident in the Finnish town of Turku/Åbo, acquired a copy of Martin Luther’s Ennarationes seu postillae that had been printed in Strasbourg the year before.20 It was the reliable trade web spun by the indefatigable travels of printer-publishers and their agents between Venice, Basel and Nürnberg to Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig and finally Lübeck or the Netherlands that made possible this speed.21
The scale of the trade was impressive, too, yet difficult to grasp on a broader base due to the lack of preserved books, provenances or archival evidence. Among others things, the qualities of a printed text, that is, its content and target audience, format and genre, significantly influenced its chances of survival. School books and pamphlets, broadsheets and letters of indulgence, prayer books and psalters disappeared speedily and almost entirely. The survival rates of printed books that can be deduced from our knowledge of edition sizes and archival information on the scope of the book trade indicate the domestic production as well as the import from continental printers of thousands of books each year throughout the period.22
These printer-publishers acted within the framework of the pre-Reformation church and the political landscape, but it is quite evident that it was never the religious or political centres or forces that alone determined the structure of the trade or the printing. So, within a relatively stable external framework, the internal power structures were slowly changing, due to, among other things, the actions of individuals involved in the trade, and also due to external actions. Towards the end of the pre-Reformation period, German printer-publishers were no longer able to maintain their exclusive role in the Scandinavian book trade, although the regional significance of printers in Lübeck and Rostock remained unchallenged on the whole. From the 1480s, other actors entered the Scandinavian scene, actors who were not dependent on Hanseatic trade or, specifically, the merchants of Lübeck. In the last decades of the fifteenth century, Dutch merchants were granted privileges by the Danish king in an attempt to outmanoeuvre the dominant Hanseatic League.23 As we have seen, this had an almost immediate impact on the book trade between the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Although in the long run Lübeck would lose its dominant position, in the early years Dutch books were still sent to Lübeck to be bound before they reached their Scandinavian destinations.
Lübeck and Rostock, members of the Hansa, had been crucial for Scandinavian, especially Swedish, trade for centuries. Lübeck in particular dominated the pre-Reformation book trade with Scandinavia, with Rostock catching up not before the 1520s. German book printers and sellers were drawn to Lübeck as the main port to trade with Sweden. For decades efficient and well-supplied book trading systems, with Lübeck, the centre of Hanseatic trade on the Baltic, at their heart, ensured that Scandinavia was supplied with a good range of high quality books, mainly from Germany and Italy.24 The quality of this selection was superior to anything that could or, rather, might have been produced by printers active in Scandinavia. What is more, these editions were available at prices that Scandinavian printers could not afford to undercut.
The earliest Danish and Swedish printers all came from abroad, and their origins reflect the characteristics of the international trade network that connected Scandinavia to western Europe: most of the printers came from Lübeck and just the occasional odd one from the Netherlands or Hamburg. The technique of printing and its master craftsmen seemed to have followed in the footsteps of the trade, almost unintentionally, like a natural consequence.25 But almost from the start, printing and customers could rely upon the structures and framework established by the trade: the first printers active on Scandinavian soil seem all to have been deliberately called upon by institutional and private customers.26
2 Printing on Demand
The earliest book trade did not generally involve the original intellectual production of printed editions of texts conceived by Scandinavian authors, nor the internal and external processing of explicit and informed orders by Scandinavian customers. This dynamic changed to a certain degree as soon as customers evolved into becoming more experienced book buyers, actively seeking to overcome geographical boundaries. In this way, Scandinavian customers established (usually short-lived) local and regional centres of printing within the realm of the Scandinavian kingdoms. But even individual actions could contribute to the establishment or, rather, elevation in a way, of foreign printing towns to towns of regional importance for Scandinavian book trade. That was the case with Paris and its importance for Denmark in the early sixteenth century or with Rostock and Sweden later in that same century. While Lübeck and Rostock, geographically speaking, were more of a natural choice, Paris was not. Paris was a major print town in its own right, but Danish individuals co-created Paris as a centre for printing for the Danish book market, which accidentally spilled over to the Swedish book market.27
Before the Reformation, for more than two decades from 1483–1504, four Lübeck-based printers produced Danish books abroad. The importance of Lübeck for the production of Swedish books abroad lasted even longer, from 1485 to 1523, with four printers employed in the production of different editions.28 Already the production of the standard edition of the Revelationes of Saint Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373) had been outsourced to Lübeck, apparently due to the infrastructural challenges of this specific production, its volume and size.29 Printers residing in towns outside Scandinavia every now and then received print jobs commissioned by religious institutions in all the Scandinavian countries. The earliest pro-Reformation works intended for the Scandinavian market were either ordered from and produced in Rostock, or imported by means that were largely informal, private and illegal.30 But that was just another manifestation of the experience that private customers had developed with the continental book market and how they profited from it.
But the case of Paris in the beginning of the sixteenth century marked a new chapter in Scandinavian book history. For little more than a decade, between 1510 and 1520, Paris was the undisputed centre of printing Danish literature outside Denmark.31 An indicator for the yet minor quantity on a European scale we are talking about here, is the fact that this was entirely the work of one man, Christiern Pedersen (c.1480–1554). A native of Roskilde, he was appointed dean at the cathedral in Lund in the year 1505.32 Three years later, he left Denmark for Paris, where he continued his university studies and also established a stable business relationship with Jean Badin (Josse Badius Ascensius), the major Parisian printer-publisher of the early sixteenth century. Several Danish books were printed in Paris during Pedersen’s sojourn, most of them by Badin but also by several others: Jean Barbier, Thomas Kees and Guillaume Marchand, Wolfgang Hopyl, Jean Philippe, Jean Kerbriant and Jean Bieanayse as well as one unknown printer. While four printers in Lübeck produced nine titles over a little more than twenty years, these Parisian printing shops produced sixteen titles in less than half that time. Most of these titles were printed in the first half of the 1510s, commissioned directly by Christiern Pedersen.33 Even after leaving Paris around 1514, he continued to sustain the trade connection, most prominently manifested in the Malmö list as well as his later contributions to the Danish national bibliography while he was in Antwerp around 1530.34
During his life span, Pedersen presents several examples of the importance that one single actor could have for book production for Scandinavia and the potential of certain cities becoming centres of Scandinavian printing. He was heavily involved in printing books in Danish in Leipzig 1517–1518 and Antwerp between 1529 and 1531.35 Yet these later initiatives no longer had the long lasting effect as did his work in Paris.
I have previously described the Malmö list as a potent testimony of the power of the Danish book market and literary culture. The Malmö List is an inventory of books attributed to the then Danish town of Malmö, although the near-by city of Lund is mentioned as well, and to the aforementioned Christiern Pedersen. The inventory records 3,164 copies, a collection on a remarkable scale in any European context. It is not a private library and it cannot be ruled out that it might have been an institutional library either. Still, the List most probably represents the stock of a bookshop of regional importance. To a large extent, the Malmö List contains a large number of books that emanated in part directly from Pedersen’s work as an editor and author in Paris. Other books document the trade with printer-publishers in Paris in which Pedersen appears to have been involved even after he returned to Denmark. Of the 204 titles registered, seven percent were probably printed in Paris, yet they represent 46% of all copies. That might have made quite an impact on the local and regional book markets. The large number of copies for single titles also indicates deliberate decisions as to where specific titles should be produced.36 In the context of and in competition with a European market based upon knowledge as well as personal connections, a local book market had by no means a natural advantage. That point is easily proven by the struggle for local printers to establish themselves at one place for a longer period of time.
The emergence of Paris even had repercussions for Sweden a few years into the 1520s. Documented evidence of the connections between Scandinavian customers and foreign printers is not common, but there are exceptions. A number of Swedish bishops were well aware of the products of foreign presses and of their qualities, and they did not hesitate to initiate long-distance contacts to obtain specific books. Georg Stuchs in Nuremberg was commissioned to print the two breviaries for Linköping in 1493 and Skara in 1498; Jacob Wolff von Pforzheim in Basel produced two printed liturgical books in 1513.37 The correspondence of Hans Brask (1464–1538), the bishop of Linköping, in 1524 can stand as the final expression of the international connections involved in pre-Reformation printing. Brask was well informed about certain liturgical books printed for both Denmark and Sweden. This included Christiern Pedersen’s edition of a Danish book of hours, Vor Frue Tider, printed in 1514 in Paris by Jean Badin; the Missale Lundense, also printed in Paris the same year; and the Missale Upsalense printed in Basel in 1513.38 In a letter dated September 1524 and sent to Petrus Benedicti, then in Germany, Brask asked him to investigate how much the Missale Lundense had cost and how much it would cost to print 800 breviaries for the diocese of Linköping in the manner of the Missale Upsalense.39
The obvious decay of the united Scandinavian kingdoms and the introduction of the Reformation in the 1520s put an abrupt end to the promising trade connections established at least in part on the initiative of single customers. Even major investments made by religious institutions (most of the Scandinavian dioceses ordered liturgical books to be printed) or the occasional private customer could not provide the sort of long-term engagement and the market necessary for establishing a print centre and a firm basis for a sustainable print business, especially not in the emerging world of centralised territorial states. Yet they had had the potential of turning any specific place into an epicentre of printing in the pre-Reformation era.
This can be illustrated by the initiatives taken by Hans Urne (d. 1503), dean at Odense cathedral, which occurred in the most enigmatic period in Danish pre-Reformation book history. Between circa 1501–1503, Urne invested a total of 1583 Mark Lübisch, the equivalent of five times the value of the books exported from Lübeck to Scandinavia within a four year period 1492–1495, as recorded in the Pfundzollbücher. His collaboration with an otherwise unknown Lübeck-based printer, Simon Brandt (who possibly was the much better known Matthaeus Brandis), although not without its obstacles as revealed in the lawsuit from 1505 filed against the printer by the then deceased Hans Urne’s brother Jørgen, nevertheless resulted in the production of at least nine editions and hundreds of copies. This was an enormous undertaking by a private customer, apparently the last of a series of collaborations between Hans Urne and the Brandis family over the years. Hans Urne must have been involved in the book trade on a significant scale, judging not only by the commission of the years 1501–1503, but also by the large number of copies of books bequeathed to his family in his will (dated 1503), which far exceed the numbers of single works that were to be found in any private book collections in Scandinavia at that time.40 Yet, it didn’t make Odense a Danish print centre of more than just short-lived local importance.
But the story is a wonderful example of what a single customer could achieve with the help of money, determination and experience within the book trade. We know nothing of Hans Urne’s motives, they might have been purely economic altogether. Urne may have intended to do a good deed, in this case by commissioning the print of a diurnal and hundreds of school books: a large number of books were liturgical books printed for the church or school books printed for and bequeathed to poor pupils.41 Although by helping society he may also have hoped to aid his soul’s passage to heaven. In that case, religion might have proven to have influenced not only the general outline of the trade, but also directly a specific book trade enterprise. Anyway, what his engagement in the book business lacked was the stamina of external structures and movements. This becomes quite obvious as soon as the two major forces that determined the fate and nature of the sixteenth-century Scandinavian book trade entered the stage.
3 Reformation, Confessionalization and National Politics
From around 1520, two new actors entered the scene: religion and (at least forms of proto-)nationalism.42 The conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism skyrocketed Wittenberg into the position of the centre of Protestant printing. But soon, the book trade reconquered the more dynamic and complex state. One might say that monoculture never thrived in the world of books for long. The dynamic phase of this period stretches from a truly European pre-Reformation book market to the establishment of a new trans-national market after 1525, with the arrival of the Lutheran as well as the Low and Middle German book world in the second half of the sixteenth century. Lübeck was the place to go for printers from Cologne, Speyer, Nuremberg and Venice.43 But the actions of individual customers could temporarily boost other places such as Paris or Odense as well to become international or regional print centres.
The discontinuation of a united Scandinavian kingdom as a result of the war between Denmark and Sweden at the beginning of the 1520s of course had repercussions in the Scandinavian book markets. Between 1523 and 1526, no books were printed in Denmark, while the number of acquisitions for the cathedral library in Västerås, Sweden, dropped to its lowest level in fifty years.44 At the same time, though, Hans Brask, the last Catholic bishop of Linköping, Sweden, was able to establish a short-lived print shop that produced at least four books, making it the capital of political and religious turmoil. Brask also complained about the increasing illegal importation of Lutheran books in Sweden. He had come to realise that Lutheran books had been pouring into Sweden for some time, as he wrote in a letter dated March 1524.45 In another letter from the same month, he reminded the brothers in the Birgittine monastery of Vadstena that it was forbidden to sell, buy, receive or read schismatic literature.46 Yet, he had to admit that this had been going on for quite some years already.
Here appears an aspect of the new major forces that in different ways were about to exert a heavy influence on the emerging new Scandinavian book culture. The Reformation divided western Christianity, and the break-up of the united Scandinavian kingdom resulted in the subsequent establishment of the new Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark-Norway and Sweden (including Finland), respectively. These forces and the practical events they brought into play were the cause of the creation of a new phenomenon in printing and trading in Scandinavia: the emergence of illegal, schismatic and heretical texts as well as political propaganda, polemic works and written defences against them.
The years between 1522 and 1528 were a period of political and religious upheaval that started with the formal introduction of the Reformation in both countries against the background of a civil war between Gustav I Vasa (1523–1560) in Sweden and the Danish crown but also within the realm of the Danish kingdom itself.47 The struggle for the establishment of new political orders resulted in a number of printed works in both countries. This is the first time that politics appears both as a driving and prohibitionary force on the Scandinavian book scene. In the middle of this period are the six editions in three different languages of the future king Gustav I Vasa and the Council’s manifesto against the Danish King Christian II (1481–1559). As both the Low German and the High German versions were aimed at a German public, the first edition was printed in Lübeck, the other four were printed by the German printer Ludwig Dietz in either Lübeck or Rostock.48 The same year, 1523, saw the proclamation of the Danish State Council in favor of the election of King Frederick (1471–1533), followed by the elected king’s own letter addressing the German nation. Eight editions are known to have been published, three in Zwickau and five in Rostock.49 In the 1590s, foreign presses were used again as publishing agents for the struggle between king Sigismund Vasa (1566– 1632) and duke Carl (1550–1611).50 Printing abroad provided the opportunity of easily reaching out to a continental public, and also the means to bypassing political and governmental suppression, usually in times of turmoil, but also at the end of the sixteenth century at the height of the confessional struggles in Sweden.51
Printing is a servant, not a master, and the Scandinavian monarchies made that point very clear when they regained their strength in the aftermath of the establishment of the new territorial kingdoms and of the Lutheran confession from the middle of the 1520s onwards. The outline of that ‘new’ world of books was defined by confessional borders (constituting the theological importance of Wittenberg for the rest of the sixteenth century), and also by the persistence of certain centres of printing that violated confessional boundaries, such as Frankfurt am Main and Basel for literature in Latin, as well as Lübeck and Rostock as the first addresses for printed works in German and the vernacular. The importance of Frankfurt am Main and Basel became evident and remained established as early as the 1530s and 1540s. That has been quite convincingly shown by Otfried Czaika in his reconstruction of the library of Sveno Jacobi (c.1480–1554), the bishop of Skara, Sweden, in the 1540s.52
The situations that politics, confessionalization and economy brought about in the new national book markets in Denmark and Sweden had quite strong similarities. In Denmark, the number of printing shops receded to a total of two for most of the sixteenth century, the corresponding number for Sweden being one.53 Until the end of the century, the Scandinavian countries depended upon the major western and central European centres of printing for most of the literature consumed. Local, regional or even national book markets powered by one or two monopolised printing enterprises, satisfied the complementary basic literary needs of educational, liturgical, edifying literature as well as the information needs of the governments. Other literature was provided by an international book market.
But what was the immediate and long-term impact of the Reformation on Scandinavian book production? Thomas Kaufmann stresses in an article from 2015 the importance of printed texts in the vernacular languages not only for the Reformation as such, but also for the rise of a broad public sphere of reading and response.54 The years between 1527 and 1542 and again between 1552 and 1562 saw an impressive rise in the number of printed matter in the vernacular produced in Denmark. That corresponded in general with the development in Sweden.55
Beginning with the 1520s, literature in the vernacular became the predominant category in both Scandinavian countries, although there were differences. In Denmark we see predominantly religious and edifying contents, while Swedish production contained mostly religious and governmental publications. What both have in common is the fact that the introduction of the Reformation was more or less independent of a domestic production of pro-Reformation literature. If printing the works of Martin Luther was a clear sign of the Reformation of a country, then it is surprising to learn that the first complete Luther text in Swedish translation, Undervisning om Herrans nattvard, did not see the light of day until 1558.56 After that, it took almost forty years before another four works by Luther were printed between 1587 and 1597. This is interesting, given the fact that Lutheran and pro-Lutheran writings were introduced to a Scandinavian public quite early and, if we believe the stout anti-Lutheran Hans Brask, a development that came too easily thanks to illegal imports.57
The situation in Denmark differed, though, from the Swedish with regard to its relation to the writings of Martin Luther. As early as 1526, the first translation into Danish of one of his texts appeared in print in Copenhagen, followed by another printed in Viborg 1528.58 They were the first of a total of 44 of Luther’s printed texts until the end of the sixteenth century (according to the Danish national bibliography).
The early Reformation is an act of transfer of ideas that includes the printed as well as the written and spoken word. With regard to the word of the Reformation and their main proponents, the success of the Reformation in Sweden did not depend on a domestic production of Lutheran and reformed literature. The Reformation was helped by a multitude of ways in reaching Scandinavia: letters, printed books, Scandinavian students in Wittenberg or the presence of continental reformers in Scandinavia. In the early Reformation-period, we can almost speak in Sweden of a Reformation without Luther, that is, without his words, yet certainly not without his thoughts.
There was not just one print centre in the Scandinavian world; this sentence is just as true as another, namely, there was not just one centre of the Reformation. Import, selling and reading of reformed literature reveal a hidden power struggle over theological supremacy. Early modern Scandinavian book collections show signs of other reformers often occupying a quantitatively more important place than Martin Luther.59 In effect, in the early modern period neither was Luther the main author of the Reformation nor was Wittenberg the main force in the Scandinavian book trade. In the libraries of Sveno Jacobi (c.1480–1554) and Hogenskild Bielke (1538–1605) in Sweden, and in the monastery at Øm and the library of Lutheran pastor Peder Sørensen (1542–1602) in Denmark, we generally find more books written by Philipp Melanchthon, Johann Bugenhagen (1485–1558), and Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) than by Martin Luther.60 Brenz and other important reformers saw their works printed and distributed to northern Europe by publishers in Frankfurt am Main, Basel and Leipzig. This is a good illustration of the afore-mentioned thesis, that religion could set the framework for a book market that still developed largely according to its own inner dynamics, with readers creating collections that reflected this specific infrastructure.
4 Early Modern Book Imports
A monopolised domestic book market did not at all collide with book imports from abroad. The Scandinavian monarchies were aware of the limitations of domestic production and were often the first to perceive such limitations, the general lack of interest in printing books in one of the Scandinavian languages abroad, and the need for specialised literature that only an international market could satisfy. Communication with and knowledge of the capacities of foreign printer-publishers were an essential part of book importation. But sometimes even Scandinavian books reached readers outside their home countries, and with this the information about the commercial opportunities that lay in the production of sought-after vernacular books.
The ecology of the world of the printed book is rich, with niches for specified groups of customers. Accordingly, print centres of importance for an ecclesiastic or academic audience were not necessarily equipped for the needs of a profane reader. The books collected by the Swedish politician Hogenskild Bielke over the span of fifty years provide a wealth of examples.61 Here it is possible to highlight only a few aspects of the infrastructure of book-buying in Scandinavia. Of course, Swedish prayer books were sold in Finland, which at that time was an integrated part of the kingdom of Sweden. But it is a surprise to find Swedish psalters on the book market of the Danish capital Copenhagen in 1568, at a time when both countries were at war with each other.62
Captured during the Danish-Swedish war of 1567–1568, Hogenskild Bielke during his honorary captivity still was able to explore and exploit the book market of Copenhagen. The market was limited, yet international. Seventy to eighty percent of the 112 titles acquired by Bielke in 1568 came from German printer-publishers. Only eight percent were printed in Denmark. What should be underscored here is the relatively high number of Swedish books acquired by Bielke: nine percent. Neither geographical distance nor the ongoing war between Denmark and Sweden were obstacles to the importation of books to the Danish book market. One of the Swedish books acquired by Bielke was probably the Catechismus printed in 1567. Quite a few of the titles in Bielke’s book list had been printed no later than 1567. That seems to apply particularly to the books from Stockholm and Leipzig. In the 1520s, the newly elected king of Sweden had complained that Christiern Pedersen’s books were too widespread in Sweden for his taste.63 So far we have no knowledge of any Danish complaint about Swedish religious books travelling the other way half a century later.
From the second half of the sixteenth century on, we can continue following Hogenskild Bielke, now in his exploration of the book market of Stockholm, the Swedish capital. The bulk of his library has been reconstructed in the University Library of Uppsala, including his book acquisitions from the beginning of the 1570s until the turn of the century.64 We also have another book list dated 1578. If we combine all our information about the origins of the preserved books in Hogenskild Bielke’s book collection, we see the primacy of Frankfurt am Main, with almost double the numbers of titles as compared to Wittenberg and Basel (in second and third place, respectively). And almost all of these books were acquired in Scandinavia, mainly Stockholm. The analysis of the library of the former royal secretary, Henrik Matsson Huggut, leads to a similar result, except for an almost provoking lack of Swedish books: a majority of the identifiable editions was printed in Basel, Wittenberg and Frankfurt am Main.65 Just as Bielke, after his return to Sweden in 1568 Huggut has been residing in central Sweden and Finland exclusively. So the books that he acquired after that date were books that had been imported to Sweden to be sold on the book markets of Stockholm and Turku/Åbo.
Religion influenced not only national and international politics, but also the general boundaries of the international book market of which Scandinavia was a part. That is why the book markets of Copenhagen and Stockholm were so firmly grounded in the central and northern European Lutheran or reformed sphere. But the practical configuration of the infrastructure that provided Scandinavia with books followed other criteria as well. What is striking when we look at the literature acquired by Bielke in the Frankfurt editions, is the variety of genres, from light fiction to history, from medicine and law to economics and religious literature. No other printing town in Europe could provide such a wealth of genres within a politically correct religious framework, and no politics or confession could do anything against it.
5 Printing Abroad in the Vernacular
The registration of books printed in Scandinavia or in Scandinavian languages in the context of contemporary inventories of private book collections is an absolute exception, mostly due to the lack of the books’ status in the eyes of the owner or heirs. We therefore have to turn to institutional collections and recent findings in order to obtain information on where and when books in the vernacular were printed abroad. This enables us to identify long-term structures in the Scandinavian book market, especially a regional cluster of two cities, Lübeck and Rostock, that has been important for the Swedish book market at different times, though with two different approaches to that market.
It is easy to project a dichotomy on the early modern Swedish book market: on one hand, allegedly autonomous yet underdeveloped domestic book production answering to the needs of government and bureaucracy (royal decrees, panegyrical printed ephemera) as well as religious and ecclesiastic authorities (liturgical books, psalmbooks and edifying literature); on the other hand, the importation of religious, academic and educational literature (mostly in Latin).66
Of academic interest here is the considerably larger late sixteenth-century market for religious and edifying literature that aroused the interest of foreign printer-publishers. Czaika has described a number of hitherto unknown Swedish editions of psalters, prayer books and separate editions of one or a few religious hymns.67 The National Library in Stockholm has started to unearth and identify a number of fragments collected by its conservation workshop. This collection of mainly padding material from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century book bindings has already been shown to contain several fragments that appear to derive from previously unknown editions of Swedish religious and edifying literature.68 In the light of these recent discoveries it becomes quite clear that the market for religious and edifying books was much larger and more specific, and domestic demand much higher than previously assumed. This created the business interest of the printer-publishers from Rostock and Lübeck, who were aware of an unsatisfied market with the potential to absorb larger numbers of books.
Among the books described by Czaika, we find both consecutive editions of previously published books as well as first editions that predate already known editions, sometimes by decades. So the demand for religious literature as well as the readiness to assume a commercial risk was quite high. Especially the Swedish psalter seems to have been a veritable blockbuster. One way or another, Lübeck and Rostock printers realised that their colleagues in Stockholm alone could not produce enough copies to satisfy the Swedish and Finnish markets.69 Consequently, what they launched might be described as Nachdrucke or pirated printing, when viewed from an a-historical point of view. Actually, they were legitimate editions produced in substantial numbers of copies (at least 1,500–2,000 each) with an eye on making a profit. The list of thus far known editions of edifying literature printed in Lübeck and Rostock is impressive, as shown in Table 4.1 based on a rough reading of Swedish and Danish national bibliographies.
Religious books printed in Lübeck and Rostock för the Danish and Swedish markets
The production in Lübeck and Rostock of books in the vernacular for the Swedish and the Danish markets show similarities, but also differences. The most surprising similarity is the fact that according to my count, the percentage of the foreign production of religious and edifying literature in the vernacular is in both cases 25% (see figures below). Both numbers cover a whole range of popular genres, concentrating on various forms of edifying literature, with prayer books and psalters in first and second place; apparently these were always in great demand.70 Both cities produced large numbers of prayer-books and psalters. In third and fourth places for the Danish market one finds editions of catechisms and the New Testament for daily reading, the Evangelier & epistler. The Swedish market, by comparison, asked more for books of consolation and edification.
What is striking is the fact that printing in these genres was not especially frequent in either Denmark nor Sweden, speaking of the period from the 1520s to the 1560s, and definitely not in numbers of editions. But the numbers grew rapidly during the last three decades of the sixteenth century. In Denmark, the increase in the percentage of editions in certain genres before and after circa 1560 ranged from 138% (prayer books) up to 800% (Passio). If we examine the total output when divided between the periods from the 1520s to 1569 and from 1570 to 1600, the production during the last three decades exceeds that of the five preceding decades by 370%, on average.71 The Lübeck and Rostock editions explicitly strengthened the market for some until then underrepresented genres, such as catechisms and the Evangelier og epistler.
With reservation for inaccuracies in computing the figures and our limited knowledge of the real output in the sixteenth century, the Swedish results with respect to domestic production are still quite staggering. Half of the genres analysed underwent a marked decline in the numbers of domestic editions, for instance the literature of consolation and edification, postillas and psalters. But when we consider the total number of printed works available during the sixteenth century and produced both in Sweden and abroad for the Swedish market, then we clearly see the importance of and the opportunity for the printers in Lübeck and Rostock. They did not produce only in genres that provided stable sales over the decade; they definitely helped to some extent to balance the supply demanded in genres that the Swedish printers had increasingly neglected since the 1570s, thus increasing especially the numbers of psalters available on the market during the period from the 1580s to the 1590s.
What then did Lübeck and Rostock produce in the main genres and what was their proportion of the total domestic production in Denmark and Sweden? In the Swedish case, there is extensive correspondence between the outcomes of the two producing segments, the domestic and foreign publishing. With the exception of the editions of the Catechism and prayer books, the proportions of productions are congruent with each other (see Table 4.1). The printers of Lübeck and Rostock together produced in concordance with the output of their colleagues in Stockholm. Remembering the limited numbers of editions that we have knowledge of, nonetheless, the proportions indicate that the German printers produced in accordance with the requirements of the market.
The situation in Denmark looks a bit different, though again it has to be remembered that the numbers of editions registered in the national bibliography is limited. The Lübeck and Rostock-based printers in this case still emphasised the production of editions in a complementary order. The most obvious case is the genre of consolation literature with only 1 title produced abroad against an impressive 39 within the realms of the Danish kingdom.
Religious books printed in Swedish or Danish in Sweden, Denmark and abroad in the sixteenth century
Source: Collijn, Svensk bibliografi. Nielsen, Dansk bibliografi
6 Geography
The figures presented here seem to indicate not so much a significant rise in population at the end of the sixteenth century, but that Sweden and Denmark had entered a period of intensified confessionalization and increase of literacy, together with the growth of the market for edifying and religious literature, especially for prayer-books and psalters. Otfried Czaika has presented a well-founded theory that the number of psalters printed in Sweden alone might have reached totals from 20,000 to 80,000 at the least. This theory, among others, is based on an equally well-founded assumption that we might know about only half of all Swedish psalters printed in the sixteenth century.72 We have reason to believe that the market for texts printed in the vernacular was stronger in both countries and, at the same time, that an international business was stronger than previously assumed. The number of copies of psalters alone printed in and for Sweden during the sixteenth century, therefore, might have been directed at a much wider market than just the feudal, ecclesiastical and urban elites. These figures also confirm another insight, namely, the existence of a north-eastern cluster of printing towns and its exceptional importance for the book markets and the reading public in Denmark and Sweden. According to the Swedish national bibliography, Lübeck and Rostock were in fact the only continental towns producing books in the vernacular matching these genres for the Swedish market.73 That was not quite the case with regard to the Danish market, which received a small numbers of relevant books from four other towns as well: Hamburg and Erfurt (one title each); Antwerp (eight titles from 1531, due to Christiern Pedersen’s collaboration with the printer Willem Vorsterman); and Magdeburg (eighteen titles from the late 1530s to 1556). Yet, the quantitative contribution of these four printing towns to the Danish market is negligible in comparison to that of Lübeck and Rostock.
Finally, what does all this tell us about geography and its impact on the Scandinavian book trade and book culture in the sixteenth century? The four continental cities, besides Lübeck and Rostock, that contributed between one and a few editions each to the Danish of book market provide us with at least one interesting bit of information with regard to this question: that geographical vicinity was not decisive. Otherwise, the printers of Hamburg, directly on the border with Denmark, would have been in much wider demand.74 Instead, we have to consider geography in connection with trade routes in general, and (quite literally) the speed at which books travelled in particular. From the start in the middle of the fifteenth century, books were able to travel long distances in a relatively short time. Within a single year, a Venetian print, dated 15 February 1493, reached Nuremberg, where it was bound together with a Koberger print, dated 1492, in a binding that had used printer’s waste from the Schedel Liber chronicarum of 12 July 1493, finally reaching Rostock where it was acquired by a Danish student, Severinus Pauli. Another example is the Dutch 1482 edition of the Dialogus creaturarum moralisatus which provided the model for the edition printed in Stockholm the following year, 1483.75
As much as religion cannot be regarded other than a major force defining boundaries and framing conditions under which early modern book trade could take place and book cultures built up, the importance of religious centres at different times did not correspond with their relative importance in the book trade. Rome did not provide Scandinavia with books before the Reformation. And despite the transformation of Wittenberg from a sleepy provincial university town to a major player in the Protestant book world thanks to Martin Luther, its position in the middle of the world of the Reformation was not reflected in the same manner in sixteenth-century book collections. Geographically speaking, the distance between Copenhagen in 1568 and Frankfurt am Main was greater than the distance to Wittenberg. Still, the majority of the identified books acquired by the imprisoned Swedish officer Hogenskild Bielke in Copenhagen came from Frankfurt am Main and Stockholm despite the geographical distance and political obstacles. It is only after 1578 that Wittenberg rose to prominence and reached second place among the identified books in Bielke’s book collection, possibly because of the transition from the period of establishment of the Reformation to the confessionalization of the Lutheran church.76 The same trinity of printing places that dominated the Latin book collection of Hogenskild Bielke (Frankfurt am Main, Wittenberg and Basel) also did so among the places of origin in the library of Henrik Matsson around 1600.77
Within the primary boundaries of faith and nation, trade overcame geographical boundaries, and individuals found ways to at least temporarily draw new maps. It was hardly predictable that Odense would play a major role in Danish book printing immediately after 1500, except for the initiative and the money of Hans Urne.78 And, as mentioned earlier, it was due to Christiern Pedersen’s studies at the university in Paris and his major influence in the Danish church as dean of the cathedral in Lund, which was then seat of the Danish archbishop, that the printers of Paris gained that enormous importance in the 1510s. If we move our attention to the end of the sixteenth century, the national bibliographies of Denmark and Sweden suggest that certain individuals at different places actually gave rise to extensive publication activities. Usually this was a question of publications by Danes or Swedes living abroad, and not about the Scandinavian book market. Works in Latin written by Peder Palladius (1503–1560) and Niels Hemmingsen (1513–1600), Johannes Svenonius and Nicolaus Chesnecopherus (1574–1622) were printed abroad in larger numbers, but usually not for export back to their home countries.79 Instead, what was exported to Scandinavia were mostly religious books in the vernacular for a mass market that has largely remained under the radar of book historians due to the massive rate of destruction that affected prayer books, psalters, books of edification and consolation, and books in similar literary categories.
It is hoped that the present study helped to identify the main forces that shaped early modern Scandinavian book culture. Geography as well as religion seem to have provided a major overall framework for general trade and especially the book trade. Both established specific borders that admittedly limited the operational range within the book world and the prospects for individual customers for acquiring books to build collections. Of course, the most efficient border at that time was drawn by religion, especially when supported and upheld by the state, by censorship and force if necessary. Throughout the sixteenth century, this border was in fact a conditio sine qua non for trade and collection building, until the wars in the seventeenth century created, especially for Sweden, access to Catholic books on an unprecedented scale. Warfare and the political, economic and cultural ambitions of the Swedish government and its leading figures were then the new driving forces. They had such an enormous impact, at least on Swedish book culture, that for decades throughout the first half of the seventeenth century they dictated the terms on which Swedish libraries operated. Even though considered treasures and trophies at the moment of their ‘acquisition’ as well as in official declarations, within a short time war booty turned into a nuisance for the librarians and universities that had to deal with it.80
The wars of the seventeenth century provide an example of what at times was an overwhelming driving force shaping book history from the outside. Neither the number of books, the places of their printing or the contents of many of these books really corresponded with the needs of the receiving institutions in the long run. Nor did they fit well into the geographical boundaries of Swedish book, literary and academic culture at that time. Libraries and books were exploited, instrumentalized by politics. Most beneficial for Scandinavian book culture were the self-determined actions within the general boundaries set by certain major forces. These actions reveal reciprocal dynamics that cannot be fully explained by a Centre–Periphery paradigm based on geographic location or systemic position. What determined the range and characteristics of early modern Scandinavian book cultures was an intricate interplay of external and internal forces, revealing at times more or less predictable opportunities for printers, customers and readers.
Kristina Lundblad, ‘Föreställningar om förlag’, Biblis: Kvartalstidskrift för bokvänner, 72 (2015/16), pp. 3–11. Anna-Maria Rimm, ‘Elsa Fougt som internationell bokhandlare’, Biblis: Kvartalstidskrift för bokvänner, 47 (2009), pp. 2–36.
Andrew Pettegree, The Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation (New York: Penguin Press, 2015).
Wolfgang Undorf, ‘Reformation ohne Luther? Transnationale Druckkultur in Dänemark und Schweden in der Reformationszeit’, Bibliothek und Wissenschaft, 49 (2016), pp. 263–280.
Otfried Czaika has contributed a number of articles and books to this field by focusing on lost and rediscovered Swedish religious books. See his article ‘Ein weites und weitgehend unbekanntes Feld: Schwedische Gesangbücher und Lieddrucke des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Ottfried Czaika and Wolfgang Undorf (eds.), Schwedische Buchgeschichte: Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), pp. 87–110.
Gina Dahl, Books in Early Modern Norway (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011). Wolfgang Undorf, ‘Print and Book Culture in the Danish Town of Odense’, in Benito Rial Costas (ed.), Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the History of Printing and the Book Trade in Small European and Spanish Cities (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 227–248.
Andrew Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery in the European Book World’, Transactions of the Historical Society, 18 (2008), pp. 101–128, here 106–107.
David Rundle ‘Humanism across Europe: The Structure of Contacts’, in David Rundle (ed.), Humanism in Fifteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2012), p. 309.
Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery’, p. 107.
‘Later, the Protestant Reformation, political fragmentation and the division of Europe into nation states challenged views depicting Europe as a unitary, organic entity.’ Alessandro de Arcangelis, ‘The Cosmopolitan Morphology of the National Discourse: Italy as a European Centre of Intellectual Modernity’, in Tessa Hauswedell et al. (eds.), Re-Mapping Centre and Periphery: Asymmetrical Encounters in European and Global Contexts (London: UCL Press, 2019), pp. 135–154, here p. 135.
Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery’, p. 106.
Hans Widmann, Geschichte des Buchhandels (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1975).
Wolfgang Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther: Transnational Print Cultures in Scandinavia 1450–1525 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 65ff.
Alken Bruns and Dieter Lohmeier (eds.), Die Lübecker Buchdrucker im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert: Buchdruck für den Ostseeraum (Lübeck: Boyens, 1994).
Wolfgang Undorf, ‘Ett okänt Psalterium – ett Hymnarium Scarense?’, Föreningen för Västgötalitteratur: Meddelande, 2 (2003), pp. 6–7.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, p. 164.
Ibid., p. 156.
Ibid., pp. 66–70.
Ibid., pp. 70, 103.
Isak Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi intill år 1600 (3 vols., Uppsala: Svenska Litteratursällskapet, 1934–1938), 1, p. 25.
Otfried Czaika, ‘Plinius världshistoria med Agricolas ägaranteckning’, Biblis: Kvartalstidskrift för bokvänner, 51 (2010), pp. 30–39, here p. 37.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, pp. 83–85 with examples from the late fifteenth century.
Ibid., p. 120.
Hanno Brand, ‘Baltic connections: Changing patterns in Seaborne Trade (c.1450–1800)’, in Lennart Bes et al. (eds.), Baltic Connections Archival Guide to the Maritime Relations of the Countries around the Baltic Sea (including the Netherlands) 1450–1800 (3 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1, pp. 1–18.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, p. 83.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 13 on Danish commissions and p. 48 on Swedish commissions, all dated to the 1480s.
Ibid., pp. 20, 87–95.
Ibid., pp. 18, 54.
Collijn, Svensk bibliografi, 1, pp. 117–128.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, pp. 85–86.
Ibid., pp. 18, 20–21.
Jens Anker Jørgensen, Humanisten Christiern Pedersen: En præsentation (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 2007).
Lauritz Nielsen, Dansk bibliografi: Med særligt hensyn til dansk bogtrykkerkunsts historie (5 vols., Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1919–1996).
On the Malmö list, see Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, pp. 87ff.
Jørgensen, Humanisten Christiern Pedersen, p. 14.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, p. 95.
Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi, 1, pp. 128–132, 169–175, 221–237.
Hedda Gunneng, Biskop Hans Brasks registratur: Textutgåva (Uppsala: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 2003), no. 256.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, p. 55.
Ibid., pp. 36–47.
Ibid., p. 246.
Alexander Jacobson, ‘Proto-Nationalism in Scandinavia: Swedish State Building in the Middle Ages’, BA thesis (Seattle: University of Puget Sound, 2021), p. 7.
Heinrich Grimm, ‘Die Buchführer des deutschen Kulturbereichs und ihre Niederlassungsorte in der Zeitspanne 1490 bis um 1550’, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 7 (1965–67), cols. 1153–1932.
Åke Åberg, Västerås domkyrkas bibliotek år 1640 efter Petrus Olai Dalekarlus’ katalog (Västerås: Stifts- och Landsbiblioteket, 1973), p. 142; Wolfgang Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln in Schweden zur Zeit der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung’, in Czaika and Undorf (eds.), Schwedische Buchgeschichte, pp. 13–54, here p. 15.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, p. 277.
Gunneng, Biskop Hans Brask, pp. 266–268 no. 197.
Martin Berntson, Mässan och armborstet: Uppror och reformation (Skellefteå: Artos, 2010). Ralph Tuchtenhagen (ed.), Aspekte der Reformation im Ostseeraum (Lüneburg: Nordost-Inst., 2004).
Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi, 1, pp. 286ff., 367.
Nielsen, Dansk bibliografi, 4, p. 165.
Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi, 3, passim.
Kajsa Weber ‘Buch und Konfessionskonflikt: Übersetzung, Kompilation und Paratext in Petrus Johannis Gothus’ “Sköna och märkliga skriftens sentenser” (1597)’, in Czaika and Undorf (eds.), Schwedische Buchgeschichte, pp. 111–130.
Otfried Czaika, Sveno Jacobi: Boksamlaren, biskopen, teologen (Stockholm: Kungliga biblioteket, 2013).
Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln’, p. 15.
Thomas Kaufmann, ‘Ohne Buchdruck keine Reformation?’, in Stefan Oehmig (ed.), Buchdruck und Buchkultur im Wittenberg der Reformationszeit (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015), pp. 13–34.
Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln’, pp. 16–17.
Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi, 2, pp. 239–241.
Brask had written to the Brigittine brothers in Vadstena in 1524, reminding them of the ban on selling, buying, receiving or reading Lutheran literature. He further admitted in a public letter to the citizens of Söderköping that Lutheran books had already been imported into the city by foreign merchants for some years; Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, pp. 275–278.
Nielsen, Dansk bibliografi, 1, no. 163.
Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln’, pp. 24–25; Undorf, ‘Reformation ohne Luther?’, pp. 273–276 and 280.
Czaika, Sveno Jacobi; Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln’, pp. 25–46 (Hogenskild Bielke); Bo Gregersen and Carsten Selch Jensen (eds.), Øm Kloster: Kapitler af et middelalderligt cistercienserabbedis historie (Emborg: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2003); Hans Michelsen, Peder Sørensen: En præst og hans bøger: en bog- og bibliotekshistorisk undersøgelse (Roskilde: Roskilde Stiftsblad, 1995).
Wolfgang Undorf, Hogenskild Bielke’s Library: A Catalogue of the Famous 16th Century Swedish Private Collection (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1995).
Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln’, pp. 27, 30ff.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, p. 63.
Undorf, Hogenskild Bielke’s library.
Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln’, pp. 35–38, 59–60.
Ibid., pp. 53.
Czaika, ‘Ein weites und weitgehend unbekanntes Feld’.
The signature is 288 Et 1 / 288 Bo 5. Among some 20-ish unidentified religious books there are for example ‘Euangelia och Epistler’ [Stockholm ca 1572?], ‘Euangelia’ [Lübeck ca 1607?], and a sixteenth century prayer book in Swedish.
The most recent discussion of circulation numbers of Swedish printed matter in Otfried Czaika, Några wijsor om Antichristum (1536) samt handskrivna tillägg (Skara: Skara stiftshistoriska sällskap, 2019), pp. 29–38.
On the case of the Swedish psalters, see Otfried Czaika, Then Swenska Psalmeboken 1582 (Skara: Skara stiftshistoriska sällskap, 2016), p. 20.
These figures are based on the number of printed works registered in the national bibliographies of Denmark and Sweden respectively.
Czaika, ‘Ein weites und weitgehend unbekanntes Feld’, p. 103.
Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi, 1, pp. xxvi–xxxi.
During the years 1489–1510, Johannes Borchardes was the only Hamburg-based printer of some significance before the Reformation; Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, p. 20.
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, pp. 70, 201.
Undorf, ‘Buchhandel und Buchsammeln’, pp. 29–34, 52.
Terhi Kiiskinen, The Library of the Finnish Nobleman, Royal secretary and Trustee Henrik Matsson (ca. 1540–1617) (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2004).
Undorf, From Gutenberg to Luther, pp. 36–47.
Nielsen, Dansk bibliografi, 1–4; Palladius, nos. 1225–1226, 1256, 1258–1266, 1269, 1271, 1275–1286; Hemmingsen, nos. 743, 746, 748, 800–807, 811–812, 815–818, 820–833, 837, 840–847, 850, 852–854, 858, 861–865, 871–885, 906–909, 914–916. Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi, 1; Svenonius pp. 211, 231–232; Chesnecopherus, pp. 164, 196, 312–313.
Peter Sjökvist and Krister Östlund, ‘Bokliga krigsbyten som kulturtransfer?’, in Peter Sjökvist (ed.), Kulturarvsperspektiv: Texter från en seminarieserie om specialsamlingar i Sverige (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2018), pp. 141–149, here p. 146.