This book, like the book collections described and analysed in it, has been influenced and formed by historical events. Most of the chapters were originally intended to be presented at the conference ‘Sacred Books, Looted Books: Formation, Transfiguration and Replacement of the Northern European Libraries in the Confessional Age (c.1500–c.1650) and their Afterlife’ at the National Library of Latvia, Riga, in October of 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference had to be cancelled. Instead, an open online workshop was held in March of 2021, where the authors presented and discussed their chapter drafts. In putting the volume together, the editors noticed some conspicuous gaps and approached other authors to render the collection, if not complete, at least less wanting. We want to thank all contributors for their efforts in making this such a rich volume. We also want to thank the series editors Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen for encouraging the editors to publish the book in the Library of the Written Word series. Finally, the editors want to express their gratitude to Lund University, which generously bestowed funding to make this an open-access publication, and the National Library of Latvia, which funded the copy-editing.1 The language editing has been carried out by Professor Andrejs Plakans, whom the editors thank for a thoroughly performed work.
Jonas Nordin, Peter Sjökvist and Gustavs Strenga
The book has been partially funded from the project of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia ‘The Significance of Documentary Heritage in Creating Synergies between Research and Society’, VPP-IZM-2018/1-0022.