Uppsala University Publications – förlag

Hur kan lärare och forskare veta vad som fungerar i undervisningen, när det fungerar och för vilka elever? För att ta reda på vilka material och metoder som faktiskt gör skillnad i olika ämnen och för olika elevgrupper behövs experimentella metoder som kan belysa kausala samband. I den här boken visas hur man systematiskt kan pröva vad som är effektiv undervisning för att stärka elevers kunskapsutveckling – utan att tappa bort klassrummets komplexitet. Experimentella metoder och statistik för forskning om undervisning ger en praktiskt orienterad introduktion till experimentella och kvasiexperimentella studier i skolmiljö. Utgångspunkten är ämnesundervisning i historia och samhällskunskap, men exemplen och metoderna är relevanta också för andra skolämnen.Boken går igenom centrala begrepp som intervention, kontrollgrupp, randomisering, validitet, reliabilitet, konstrukt och effektstorlek. Olika designalternativ – från mindre klassrumsförsök till större, starkare experiment – presenteras med deras styrkor, begränsningar och etiska överväganden. Hur lärares ämnesdidaktiska kunskap och mixade metoder kan kombineras med systematisk prövning av undervisningsupplägg belyses också.Processen från idé, via konstruktion av uppgifter och genomförande i klassrummet, till analys och tolkning av resultat synliggörs steg för steg. Utifrån konkreta exempel och aktuell forskning om effekter i skolan får läsaren en introduktion till grundläggande statistiska analyser – deskriptiv statistik, t-test och chi-två-test – med praktiska vägledningar och enkla övningar i statistikprogrammet Jamovi. Boken vänder sig till lärarstudenter, verksamma lärare, doktorander och forskare som vill fördjupa sin förståelse för hur experimentella metoder kan användas i undervisningsrelaterad forskning. Målet är inte att göra alla till statistiker, utan att ge ett stöd för att planera, granska och genomföra studier som kan bidra till en starkare vetenskaplig grund i skolan.Thomas Nygren är professor i didaktik med inriktning mot historia och samhällskunskap vid Uppsala universitet. Hans forskning rör bland annat undervisning om källkritik, demokrati och desinformation, samt hur experimentella och designbaserade studier, i samarbete med lärare och elever, kan användas för att utveckla undervisningen i olika skolämnen.

I våra flerspråkiga samhällen är kommunikation och samverkan mellan människor viktigare än någonsin. Ett av skolans viktigaste uppdrag är därmed att ge eleverna möjlighet att utveckla sina språkliga förmågor, utveckla interkulturell och flerspråkig kompetens samt lära sig navigera i varierande kulturella kontexter. Denna antologi är tänkt att erbjuda inspiration, värdefulla kunskaper och praktiska råd till lärare och andra aktörer i skolan som ansvarar för språkundervisning och språkutbildning samt vara en resurs för lärarstudenter, lärarutbildare och forskare som arbetar med språk i en utbildningskontext. Antologin samlar texter som belyser språkundervisning ur både teoretiska och praktisk-didaktiska perspektiv. Med bidrag från verksamma lärare, lärarutbildare och forskare riktar antologin blicken mot dagens språkundervisning och belyser den spännvidd som finns inom den nordiska skolkontexten. Författarnas bidrag berör ett brett spektrum av klassrumspraktiker, såsom undervisning av språkliga kompentenser, bedömningspraktiker samt faktorer för språkundervisning och -inlärning. Idéen till antologin föddes i samband med att Fortbildningsavdelningen för skolans internationalisering (FBA) vid Uppsala universitet år 2024 fyllde 60 år.

Vilken betydelse bör moraliska överväganden ha för politiska aktörers handlande? Och vilken relevans bör etiken ha för det politiska livet? I denna studie analyseras fyra olika teorier, som ger skilda svar på dessa frågor. Den politiska cynismen hävdar att politiken inte alls har med moral att göra, medan den politiska realismen menar att den moral som är relevant för politiskt handlande är en annan än den som gäller för relationen mellan enskilda. Den politiska moralismen hävdar däremot att moralen bör ha direkt relevans för politiska aktörers handlande och för utformningen av politiska institutioner. Författaren kritiserar dessa tre teorier och argumenterar i stället för vad han kallar en kritisk politisk etik. Denna teori hävdar att moralen bör få en större betydelse för politiken än vad som är fallet i dagens realpolitik. Samtidigt menar den att etikens uppgift inte är att ge politisk rådgivning utan att ur ett moraliskt perspektiv kritiskt granska den politiska makten. Detta är en teori som i hög grad är influerad av sådana politiska filosofer som Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib och Rainer Forst. I boken diskuteras hur deras diskursetik och etiska konstruktivism kan vidareutvecklas och ge en ansats för en sådan kritik av politiken.

This thesis explores aspects of what happened to the state Church of Sweden during the rise of the importance of public opinion and the evolution of the democratic nation state. Denmark provides the most well known Nordic example of how an old state Church became a democratic Folk (i.e. National) Church during this general transition. By comparing the Swedish with the Danish case, this study elucidates the less well known Folk Church ideology in Sweden. In Denmark a strong agrarian movement influenced by revivalism managed to take hold of public opinion making the state Church a part of the Danish national identity. Such a movement never appeared in the more industrialised Sweden. Instead a secular working class movement took hold of public and national opinion. The investigation is focused upon Harald Hallén (1884-1967), a pastor and a Social Democratic Member of Parliament. Lacking the revival elements of the Danish nationalism Hallén found that in order to get a Folk Church accepted within the secular Working class movement, it had to rest upon the heritage of the Enlightenment. Hallén regarded the Church as an expression of common ethical values within the Swedish nation. The Folk Church was supposed to strengthen existing ideals for a righteous socialist society by delivering the message of the Kingdom of God. Hallén strove to make the Church more democratic in order to express this ethical folk religion. Social Democratic nationalism became the dominant factor in Swedish political life between 1905 and 1933. The period was characterised by conflicts. First Hallén and those whom he represented fought against the Youth Church movement, which strove to establish another Folk Church ideology, by supporting the Swedish King against the rise of political Democracy. Later on, within his own Social Democratic party, Hallén fought his battle against the Marxist view of the state Church as a simple reflection of the dominant class. Hallén was in line with the political development, which resulted in a period of solid Social Democratic nation building from the 1930s onwards. From that decade on the Folk Church ideology of Hallén was established.

I denna avhandling studeras en såväl bärande som spänningsfylld idé inom svensk utbildningspolitik: idén om en forskningsbaserad skola. Det är en idé som ger upphov till antaganden om och förväntningar på skola och forskning. Med detta följer förhoppningar om att skolan kan utvecklas och förbättras om bara forskning utgör grund för utbildningspolitik och skolprofessioners arbete. I avhandlingen studeras denna idé utifrån en läroplansteoretisk förståelse och i fokus står frågor om (I) vad räknas som forskningsbaserad kunskap? Och (II) hur ska denna kunskap organiseras? Mot bakgrund av dessa frågor är det övergripande syftet med avhandlingen att bidra med kunskap om förskjutningar i idén under åren 1997–2015. Historiskt har denna idé kommit till uttryck på skilda vis: Under industrialismen, i slutet av 1800-talet, etablerades de första lärarseminarierna, vid vilka grunden lades för den vetenskapliga disciplinen pedagogik. Senare, under efterkrigstiden, gavs forskningen i uppdrag att ta fram underlag för det framtida utbildningssystemet. Under 1970-talet växte kritiska perspektiv på skola som samhällsinstitution fram och som upplöste de allianser som tidigare formats mellan politik och forskning, medan 1980-talet innebar en rörelse mot decentralisering och styrningsprinciper hämtade från det privata näringslivet. I en samtida kontext har uppmärksamhet riktats mot evidensrörelsen inom skolområdet och dess inverkan på utbildningspolitik och undervisningspraktiker. De yttre ramarna för den empiriska undersökningen är åren 1997 och 2015. Denna period om 17 år har beskrivits som karakteriserad av omfattande skiften och politiska reformer inom både utbildnings- och forskningspolitik. Genom studier av offentliga dokument, såsom direktiv, utredningar och propositioner, samt intervjuer med informanter härrörandes till profession, forskning och politik, studeras i hur olika uttolkningar och innebörder av idén om en forskningsbaserad skola tar form. Dessa uttolkningar och innebörder analyseras utifrån ett språkligt intresse och begreppsparet idé och diskurs används som analytiska begrepp. Avhandlingens resultat och analys visar hur det under åren 19972015 växer fram olika idéer om en forskningsbaserad skola och hur dessa formar olika dominerande idékluster. Två dominerande idékluster identifieras: ett akademiskt kluster kring idéer om mångdisciplinaritet, vetenskaplig kvalitet och finansiering via ett statligt forskningsråd, respektive ett evidensinriktat kluster innefattandes idéer om relevans, tillgänglighet, tillförlitlighet, systematiska forskningsöversikter och praktiknära forskning. Mot bakgrund av den empiriska undersökningen identifieras tre förskjutningar i idén om en forskningsbaserad skola: från direkt till indirekt relevans, från lärarutbildning till fortbildning och från forskningsråd till myndighetsstyrning. Avslutningsvis diskuteras dessa förskjutningar i ljuset av de implikationer som de ger upphov till för styrning, roll- och maktfördelning samt inflytande över institutionen skola.

Den föreliggande volymen har tillkommit som resultat av symposiet “Namn och konflikter” som hölls i Uppsala i november 2023. Symposiet arrangerades av Institutet för språk och folkminnen och Institutionen för nordiska språk vid Uppsala universitet i samarbete med NORNA. Symposiet samlade cirka 60 deltagare. Plenarföredagen hölls av associate professor Karen Pennesi, University of Western Ontario, och docent Maria Gussarsson, Försvarshögskolan. Konferensvolymen innefattar 14 fackgranskade artiklar som presenterar undersökningar av ortnamn, personnamn, binamn, övriga namn samt kommersiella namn med perspektiv från språkhistoria, sociolingvistik, namnvård och lingvistiska landskap. Artiklarna täcker en tidsperiod från medeltiden fram till nutid och analyserar namn från Danmark, Finland, Kanada, Norge och Sverige.

In the late eleventh century, Symeon Seth – a Byzantine scholar originally from Antioch – produced a translation of the highly popular Arabic fable collection Kalila wa-Dimnah and dedicated it to the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. As an educational and at the same time entertaining text, the translation under the title Stephanites kai Ichnelates quickly spread in the Byzantine Empire. Exactly how Symeon Seth changed the source text in his translation and how these changes affected the didacted content is, however, hard to tell, since there are no surviving Arabic manuscripts from before the thirteenth century.The present book sets out to address these issues. It reconstructs as closely as possible the connection between the Arabic sources and the Greek translation and rethinks medieval translation practices. It also analyzes the didactic techniques by which the text sought to teach its readers. In addition, a close examination of manuscripts and of Symeon Seth’s translation practices offer new methodological approaches. First, the comparison of manuscripts and other writings attributed to the same historical person can help constructing what in this study is termed a writing persona. Second, the analysis of didactic narratological devices employed in the text furthers the understanding of how texts attempt to educate their readers.

I dag är det närmast självklart att använda sig av ljud- eller videoinspelning i samband med dokumentationsarbete. Många bär dessutom ständigt med sig utrustningen som en del av sina smarta mobiltelefoner. Men hur resonerade man och hur gick det till när ljudinspelningstekniken började tas i bruk för att dokumentera ljud i syfte att bevaras för framtiden och för att användas i kunskapsproduktion? I denna musikvetenskapliga doktorsavhandling undersöks föreställningarna kring och användningarna av det första ljudbärarformatet: vaxrullar till fonografer. Studien är inriktad mot kulturhistorisk dokumentation och forskning med koppling till olika slags svenska minnesinstitutioner (arkiv, bibliotek, museer och andra samlingar) med huvudsaklig inriktning mot inhemsk kultur. Undersökningens fokus ligger på inspelningar av musik, i synnerhet folkmusik. Visor och låtar var nämligen det dominerande innehållet på arkivinspelningarna som gjordes i Sverige mellan 1898 och 1948 på fonografrullar.

How can teachers and researchers know what works in teaching, when it works, and for which students? To identify which instructional approaches truly make a difference—across school subjects and student groups—we need experimental methods that can clarify causal relationships without losing sight of classroom complexity. Experimental methods and statistics for educational research is a practical guide to experimental and quasi-experimental studies in school settings. While the starting point is teaching and learning in history and social studies, the examples and methods are relevant across the curriculum. The book introduces key concepts such as intervention, control group, randomization, validity, reliability, constructs, and effect sizes. It presents design options ranging from small classroom trials to larger, more robust studies, along with their strengths, limitations, and ethical considerations. It also shows how teachers’ wisdom of practice and mixed methods can becombined with systematic testing of instructional approaches. Step by step, the reader is guided from an initial idea and task design, through classroom implementation, to analysis and interpretation. Drawing on practical examples and current research on educational impact, the book introduces foundational statistical analyses—descriptive statistics, t-tests,and chi-square tests—with practical guidance and simple exercises in the user-friendly statistics program Jamovi. The book is written for preservice teachers, practicing teachers, doctoral students, and researchers who want to deepen their understanding of how experimental methods can be used in education research. The goal is not to turn everyone into statisticians, but to support planning, evaluating, andconducting studies that contribute to a stronger scientific foundation for teaching and learning.

Cette étude décrit et analyse les contextes, structures et circonstances qui conditionnent la participation des filles et des femmes dans l’espace public, dans les sphères de prise de décision et dans des rôles de leadership au sein des arènes locales au Burkina Faso. Malgré des décennies de campagnes d’information et de sensibilisation menées, de mesures engagées et de décisions prises, l’égalité du genre en ce qui concerne le leadership sociopolitique et la participation politique demeure faible, tandis que les femmes comme mobilisatrices sociales et politiques sont mises en avant. Une équipe des anthropologues a conduit les recherches de terrain sur le leadership féminin dans 14 communes burkinabè. Le thème central est le combat des femmes leaders. Il s’agit de ces « femmes de devant » qui ne se laissent pas faire et qui luttent pour construire un leadership féminin qui peut définitivement changer la donne pour permettre à ce que les femmes puissent percer en politique. Au quotidien, les femmes de devant mènent le combat sur plusieurs fronts: politique, institutionnel, ménager, associatif, financier, social, éducatif, psychologique, culturel, etc.

This thesis explores the ways in which African filmmakers have historically addressed Christianity and the Bible on the continent. It begins with the premise that on the African continent, marked political films (Mazierska) are embedded in transnational dynamics involving movements of economic and symbolic capital, ideas, discourses and multiple publics. Within these movements, questions of identity, and questions, of the cultural, political or religious are explored in conversation and encounter with Others. With this premise in mind, I ask how the films address Christianity and interpret the Bible; how they frame the religious in relation specific historical, cultural and political contexts; and what are the potential implications of the transnational dynamics and circulation of films. Although much research has focused on the representation of religions in African video and screen media especially in the 2000s, surprisingly little has been dedicated to earlier cinematic expressions and political cinema. To contribute to the history of the cinematic treatment of religion on the continent, four fictional films were chosen as case-studies: La Chapelle, (The Chapel, dir. Jean-Michel Tchissoukou, 1980, Republic of Congo), Au Nom du Christ (In the Name of Christ, dir. Roger Gnoan M’Bala, 1993, Côte d’Ivoire), La Génèse (Genesis, dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1999, Mali) and Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006, South-Africa). The analyses reveal that filmmakers have portrayed and interpreted the presence of Christianity and the Bible in relation to legacies of colonialism and decolonisation. Their attitudes narrate the presence of Christianity and the Bible in terms of resistance, suspicion, negotiation, and appropriation. In doing so they oscillate between distancing from and rapprochement with developments in African Christianity and theology. The films’ narratives and aesthetics reflect tensions around the creation of discourses of African authenticity, but also around religious modernity. The political framing roots the contextualisation of biblical narratives in social and historical analyses that strive to provide responses to local instances of oppressions as well as a platform for a more universalist reading addressed to global publics. Finally, the films contribute to the construction of African religious realities and imageries and to the broader image of Africa.

Denna praktiska handbok är en resurs för dig som är intresserad av att organisera och genomföra moderna, klimatanpassade arbetsrelaterade resor och möten. Vi presenterar här en ny metod för att skapa bästa möjliga förutsättningar för djuparbete på tåg, särskilt anpassat för långa distanser. Vi visar hur tågresan kan organiseras så att den fungerar som gemensam arbetstid och en unik och värdefull arbetsplats. Vi kallar det Brain Train.

This practical handbook is a resource for those interested in organizing and conducting modern, climate-adapted work-related travel and meetings. We present a new method for creating the best possible conditions for deep work on trains, specifically designed for long distances. We demonstrate how the train journey can be organized to function as shared working time and a unique and valuable workplace. We call it Brain Train.

This textbook describes theory and practice in analog role-playing game (RPG) design that encourage specific transformative impacts in participants, including tabletop, live action role-playing (larp), and Nordic and American freeform. We describe three types of transformative RPGs: transformative leisure, therapeutic, and educational. We present our model of nano-game design, offering recommendations for designing transformative goals; framing activities such as workshops and debriefs; narrative and culture design. This interdisciplinary book highlights theories from role-playing game studies, peace and conflict studies, psychology, social psychology, sociology, counseling, anthropology, pedagogy, and several other fields. Key concepts include bleed, alibi, RPGs as transformational containers, immersion, identity, transfer, ritual, psychotherapeutic techniques, group theories, and educational theories. We emphasize psychological safety before, during, and after games, as well as strategies for cultivating transformational communities. Key topics include working with specific populations; crisis management; sensitive content and representation. Then, we discuss working with myth, symbolism, and ritual, narrative, and postmodern magic as methods for transforming the stories of our lives. We cover forms of culture within and around RPGs, as well working with conflict in scenarios related to politics, culture, gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. We share thoughts around the use of RPGs to foster activism, advocacy, inclusion, and accessibility. Finally, we offer considerations for researchers studying transformative role-playing games, including academic argument, structure, theory, method, data collection, ethics, and other considerations. We introduce key methods, including Research through Design, ethnography, and qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The book closes with a summary of evidence-based research available on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral effects of role-playing games.

The present work contains records of the Christian Arabic Bible translations and Bible commentaries that are kept at the Department of Asian and African Studies at the British Library. Many of these manuscripts have previously been described in various catalogues, yet with different levels of detail. The main problem, however, for those interested in the material is to find and navigate through all these catalogues in order to get an overview of the corpus. As a means of enabling access to such an overview, Stocks and Baker published a Subject-Guide to the Arabic manuscripts at the British Library in 2001, where shelfmarks are arranged according to genre and where references to their respective catalogues are provided and point to the microfiches of the manuscripts that were produced by Brill in 2001. The Subject-Guide has been an important step forward in making the collections easier to navigate and the present catalogue builds on this important initiative. In contrast to the Subject-Guide, the present work is limited to a specific genre, Christian Arabic Bible translations. In addition, it includes a higher number of items and incorporates data into the work, allowing it to be used both as a guide and a catalogue. The present work also aims at systematizing and updating codicological and content-related information about these valuable sources, many of which have previously been described only by title and approximate date and some, which have not yet been catalogued. Finally, the present work includes sample images of the manuscripts it describes as well as indices over scribes, commissioners, dating systems, immediate sources of acquisition, etc.

This volume ensues from the conference Enchanted reception: Religion and the supernatural in medieval Troy narratives, held at Ghent University in June 2021 and organized by the two co-editors of this publication. We would like to thank all participants for the fruitful exchanges that took place on that occasion, as well as all the authors for their enthusiasm for contributing to this volume. Special thanks go to Prof. Ingela Nilsson and the Studia Graeca Upsaliensia series in Sweden, who have made this publication possible. The conference and this volume have received funding from the European Research Council project Novel Echoes at Ghent University, as well as from the Flanders Research Foundation, the Special Research Fund of Ghent University, Åke Wibergs stiftelse and Stiftelsen Konung Gustaf VI Adolfs fond för svensk kultur.

This dissertation explores the reception of Russian strategic narratives among Russian-speaking youth in Latvia. Bringing together media and communication studies, international relations and Baltic studies, it approaches narrative persuasion and its reception from a cultural perspective. The primary data for this study consist of 12 focus groups and 13 individual follow-up interviews with 69 young Russian speakers aged 18–30 in Riga, Daugavpils and Liepāja between 2021 and 2022. Drawing on the conceptual framework of strategic narratives, such narratives pertaining to history, freedom of speech and language were identified and analysed in Russian foreign policy documents, press briefings and Sputnik Latvia media texts. The media ecology in which these narratives were projected and received were studied using thematic analysis, focusing on participants’ media use and perception of news as a social and cultural context for the reception of narratives. Using Carolyn Michelle’s reception model, participants’ sensemaking of these narratives was analysed on denotative and connotative levels of meaning. By adapting Michelle’s model, this study adds affect as a factor that influences the reception of narrative texts. It demonstrates that affect serves as a force that increases narrative persuasion, pushing participants to skip denotative levels of meaning and move directly to connotative levels. It is also a force that can push a reader into a mediated mode and become critical of the text because of its emotional content. Heightened or diminished affect facilitates shifts. Findings reveal that young Russian speakers in Latvia are a far from homogeneous group. Generally, they are neither critically opposing Russian strategic narratives nor uncritically taking them to heart. The reality is rather somewhere in between. As such, this research project brings nuance to a situation where censorship, ‘us versus them’ thinking, and polarisation are increasingly taking over public discourse.

This story is a micro-historic narrative about an individual’s human destiny in an institutional setting, which aims to offer an insight into a sanatory stay about ninety years ago, described by a young woman, 19 years old, suffering from tuberculosis. She described her stay at the sanatorium in personal letters to her family. Mainly, two themes are illustrated, the care routines and her friendship relations that developed during her stay. Her described stay and treatment is discussed in relation to Goffman’s concepts of a total institution, social relations between staff and patients and stigma, Foucault’s concepts disciplinary techniques and bio power, as well as Parsons’ sick role. In the letters, the treatment of the sanatorium is presented as an interplay between the medical treatment with focus on the best for the single patient, the nursing staff and the daily routines. Besides, despite being a patient she saw herself as a student even in the future rather than a sick person. Important for her personal well-being was her fighting spirit, her social relations with other patients and the emotional support from her family. Described in letters is a world of women.

This textbook explores implementation practices for running transformative analog role-playing games, such as transformative leisure, educational, and therapeutic applications. We foreground central considerations for hacking existing games, framing, scaling up existing designs, adapting to the needs of specific populations, creating functional groups, and working with stakeholders.Additionally, the textbook covers many practical considerations when producing and running logistics. Examples include project management, organizational teams, establishing the setting, character writing, location logistics, as well as tech, interaction, and sensory design. We offer suggestions for communication, casting, documentation, guiding player preparation, workshop design, and onsite logistics.  Next, the textbook discusses different facilitation roles and responsibilities. We describe several skills associated with good facilitation and recommendations for working in different settings. Additionally, the textbook presents general principles for cultivating safer and more accessible transformational communities surrounding play. We discuss ways to address physical and psychological risks in implementation for both organizers and players, such as injury, psychological overwhelm, and inappropriate behavior in the community.  The textbook also features theories connected to the play experience, including motivation, creative agendas, and labor. Then, we present several concepts related to transforming one’s self concept, social identity, relationships with others, and spiritual development through transformative play. We include various practical recommendations for working with preparatory activities, steering, bleed, different types of immersion, interpersonal dynamics, group dynamics, and gathering play experiences through feedback and documentation.  The textbook closes with a chapter offering practical advice for playtesting, iteration, and conducting research on transformative play, including study design, ethics, data gathering, and analysis. We conclude with a list of studies offering empirical evidence for the affective, cognitive, and behavioral benefits of these games.  We recommend also reading the first book in this series, Transformative Role-playing Game Design, edited by Bowman, Diakolambrianou, and Brind.

It has been a tradition to write about ‘Vikings’ and ‘Varangians’ within the framework of national histories of Scandinavia. However, it is known that most of them were outsiders in the local societies of the respective countries. Vikings shaped their identity profiles beyond the social and political borders of their homelands, which means that ‘Viking Studies’ actually represent a transnational history. In order to overcome the tendency to marginalize these social categories, we need to see their place in a global historical context. The material culture of Scandinavia reveals some ‘oriental’ influences, which took place in the 9th and 10th centuries. These influences can be traced in weaponry, riding gear, coins, clothing, jewellery, ceramic, textile and copper vessels; however, no interpretative model has yet been proposed to explain them. No critical interpretation of these objects can be undertaken without tracing channels of communication, forms of contacts and social and cultural environments in which they were circulated. During the past decade, I have studied military aspects and cultural contacts in the early towns of Scandinavia and Rus´, and lately also contacts between Byzantium and the Viking world. One result of these studies is the identification of Byzantine influences on cloth style, city life, court ceremonies, town planning and defense, all contributing to a ‘Byzantine dimension’ of Scandinavian history. There are numerous examples of national histories of the North, while the concept of a transnational history still needs to be explored. The method of writing a transnational history remains to be defined, though we are aware that in dealing with a number of local histories we are required to find one story – a way of uniting different histories in a common plot. Topics that unite histories are, for example, movements of people and the spreading of ideas and technologies across national boundaries. Such common topics are quite popular in the writing of medieval history, but depending on political and/or cultural preferences they may be approached with different attitudes; sometimes they are simply denied. The debate about a Byzantine heritage in Scandinavia offers us a case in point. The question of whether or not Byzantine cultural influences may be discerned have been debated at length and are still far from being resolved. Some historians of religion and art deny any considerable impact due to a lack of plain evidence. By contrast, other scholars, especially archaeologists, try to show the importance of Byzantium in the spreading of Christianity and in the shaping of a local elite in Scandinavia. In this debate the role of Old Rus´ as an agent of cultural transfer between Byzantium and Northern Europe has indeed been noted. Northmen, who were known in the East as Rhos and Varangians, held a unique position in world history; originating from the North they became representatives of a transnational history.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century, states within the German language area passed groundbreaking laws against the unauthorized reprinting of books. The authorial rights reforms that swept the region prompted fierce disagreements over concepts such as authorship, piracy and reprinting. How should these terms be defined and implemented? What was an author? How did authorship differ from piracy? Who wielded the power to define the difference? The questions raised by the reform wave echo in current debates about piracy, authorial rights, and intellectual property. This book explores the history of these controversies with the aim of rethinking German print piracy in the early nineteenth century, a period when unauthorized reprinting is believed to have disappeared from the German language area. Against the view a German age of piracy came to an end in the early nineteenth century, this dissertation portrays the size of the German reprinting industry as a contentious matter. Was the German language area on the cusp of an anarchic infestation of piratical book merchants, the historical actors asked? Or had the forces of modernization already purged the book market from disreputable publications? In these discussions, the meaning of words mattered greatly. Those who could assume the authority to define terms such as authorship and unauthorized reprinting also wielded the power to determine whether piratical books had vanished from the German book market. Jens Eriksson is a teacher and researcher at the Department for the History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University, Sweden. This is his dissertation.