Regional and Global Readers: Transnational Approaches to Book History and Literary Sociology in the Nordic countries

Abstract

This paper explores the historiography of History of Reading in a Nordic context. The populations of the Nordic countries were probably the first in the world to ascend to mass literacy, and widespread basic reading ability was achieved by the early 1700s. The Nordic countries have always been dependent on the import of literature, both in translation and in the original language. In that sense, the Nordic readers can be said to have constituted “glocal” reading communities, with ties to both local and global book markets. The Nordic book market of the nineteenth century was marked by trans-national exchanges and political and linguistic co-operation, and only by then was access to books fully democratised. Future studies should take archival sources that can reveal reading habits on both a macro and micro level into careful consideration. It is further essential to compare the findings from both regional and global case studies in order to detect general patterns of book consumption.