Book History in the Nordic Countries: Introduction

Abstract

What characterizes Nordic book history? This was the first thing on our minds when we considered the present special issue of Mémoires du livre – Studies in Book Culture. Setting out on the project and distributing the call for papers we hoped to come up with some sort of answer to our question. However, there is no simple single‑word or single‑sentence answer that encapsulates Nordic book history. On the contrary, several new questions arose: Are there any research topics that are especially common among Nordic book historians? And is there a special Nordic book historical approach when it comes to theory and practice?