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Oriental Cultures and Scholarship in the Baltic Region
Series: - The History of Oriental Studies, Volume: 19
This volume uncovers the rich, yet little-known history of scholarly and cultural engagement with the Orient in the Baltic Sea region from 1500 to 1800. Spanning disciplines from theology and philology to diplomacy and material culture, the chapters trace how Islamic, Jewish, and Asian knowledge circulated through universities, libraries, and diplomatic missions. Contributors explore how Northern European scholars, clerics, and collectors engaged with Oriental texts, languages, and artefacts and how they shaped and were shaped by local traditions of knowledge. The book brings to light a vibrant network of exchange that connected the Mare Balticum with the wider early modern world.
Cornelia Linde, PhD, is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Greifswald. She is the author of How to Correct the ‘Sacra Scriptura’? Textual Criticism of the Latin Bible between the Twelfth and the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 2012) and the editor of Nicolaus Maniacoria, Suffraganeus bibliothece (Turnhout, 2013).
Jan Loop, Dr. phil., is Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Cultures at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620-1667). Arabic and Islamic Studies in the 17th Century (Oxford, 2013) and co-editor of The European Qur'an. Encounters with the Holy Text of Islam from the Ninth to the Twentieth Century (Berlin, 2024).
Bernd Roling, Dr, phil., is Professor for Classical and Medieval Latin at the Freie Universität Berlin. His monographs include Physica Sacra. Wunder, Naturwissenschaft und historischer Schriftsinn zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Leiden, 2013), Odins Imperium. Der Rudbeckianismus als Paradigma an den skandinavischen Universitäten (1680–1860) (Leiden, 2020), and together with Julia Weitbrecht, Das Einhorn. Geschichte einer Faszination (München, 2023).
Jan Loop, Dr. phil., is Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Cultures at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620-1667). Arabic and Islamic Studies in the 17th Century (Oxford, 2013) and co-editor of The European Qur'an. Encounters with the Holy Text of Islam from the Ninth to the Twentieth Century (Berlin, 2024).
Bernd Roling, Dr, phil., is Professor for Classical and Medieval Latin at the Freie Universität Berlin. His monographs include Physica Sacra. Wunder, Naturwissenschaft und historischer Schriftsinn zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Leiden, 2013), Odins Imperium. Der Rudbeckianismus als Paradigma an den skandinavischen Universitäten (1680–1860) (Leiden, 2020), and together with Julia Weitbrecht, Das Einhorn. Geschichte einer Faszination (München, 2023).
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
1 Oriental Studies and Cultural Exchange in the Mare Balticum Region
An Introduction
Bernd Roling, Cornelia Linde, Jan Loop
2 Knowledge of Islam in the Scandinavian Middle Ages
Stereotypes or Experience, or Both?
Kurt Villads Jensen
3 The ‘Orient’ in the Stomach of Northern Europeans
Carsten Jahnke
4 Oriental Culture and Scholarship in the Early Modern Baltic Regions of the Holy Roman Empire
A Diplomatic Perspective
Indravati Félicité
5 Oriental Languages at the University of Greifswald, 1539 to 1655
Cornelia Linde
6 A Key to Kabbalah and a Christian Talmud
Johan Kemper’s Lutheran Reconstruction of the Primeval Religion of the Hebrews
Níels Páll Eggerz
7 Framing Moses
Biblical Philology and Lutheran Orthodoxy in the Early Modern Baltic Region
Benjamin Wallura
8 Semitic Sweden
Oriental Archetypes in Johannes Bureus’s Study of the History of Runic Writing
Matthew Norris
9 Swedish Scholars Comparing Languages by 1800
Motives and Methods
Toon Van Hal
10 From Niels Kiöping to Carl Fredrik Bergstedt
The Prehistory of Swedish Indology
Bernd Roling
11 The Perception of and Interest in the Orient in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Egdūnas Račius
12 Orient Imagined, Asia Described
Representations of the East in Printed Texts in Early Modern Lithuania
Liudas Jovaiša
13 Encounters with Near-Eastern Artefacts in the Baltic Region
Isabelle Dolezalek
14 A Learned Man in Odense
Thomas Broder Bircherod and the Qurʾan
Kurt Villads Jensen
15 Danish Oriental Studies
Between the Sacred and the Secular, the Local and the Global (1600–1850)
Jan Loop
Index of Persons
Index of Places
List of Figures and Tables
1 Oriental Studies and Cultural Exchange in the Mare Balticum Region
An Introduction
Bernd Roling, Cornelia Linde, Jan Loop
2 Knowledge of Islam in the Scandinavian Middle Ages
Stereotypes or Experience, or Both?
Kurt Villads Jensen
3 The ‘Orient’ in the Stomach of Northern Europeans
Carsten Jahnke
4 Oriental Culture and Scholarship in the Early Modern Baltic Regions of the Holy Roman Empire
A Diplomatic Perspective
Indravati Félicité
5 Oriental Languages at the University of Greifswald, 1539 to 1655
Cornelia Linde
6 A Key to Kabbalah and a Christian Talmud
Johan Kemper’s Lutheran Reconstruction of the Primeval Religion of the Hebrews
Níels Páll Eggerz
7 Framing Moses
Biblical Philology and Lutheran Orthodoxy in the Early Modern Baltic Region
Benjamin Wallura
8 Semitic Sweden
Oriental Archetypes in Johannes Bureus’s Study of the History of Runic Writing
Matthew Norris
9 Swedish Scholars Comparing Languages by 1800
Motives and Methods
Toon Van Hal
10 From Niels Kiöping to Carl Fredrik Bergstedt
The Prehistory of Swedish Indology
Bernd Roling
11 The Perception of and Interest in the Orient in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Egdūnas Račius
12 Orient Imagined, Asia Described
Representations of the East in Printed Texts in Early Modern Lithuania
Liudas Jovaiša
13 Encounters with Near-Eastern Artefacts in the Baltic Region
Isabelle Dolezalek
14 A Learned Man in Odense
Thomas Broder Bircherod and the Qurʾan
Kurt Villads Jensen
15 Danish Oriental Studies
Between the Sacred and the Secular, the Local and the Global (1600–1850)
Jan Loop
Index of Persons
Index of Places
Intellectual historians, historians of scholarship, students of global cultural exchange.