Norwegians in colonial Africa and Oceania had varying aspirations and adapted in different ways to changing social, political and geographical circumstances in foreign, colonial settings. They ...included Norwegian shipowners, captains, and diplomats; traders and whalers along the African coast and in Antarctica; large-scale plantation owners in Mozambique and Hawai'i; big business men in South Africa; jacks of all trades in the Solomon Islands; timber merchants on Zanzibar' coffee farmers in Kenya; and King Leopold's footmen in Congo. This collection reveals narratives of the colonial era that are often ignored or obscured by the national histories of former colonial powers. It charts the entrepreneurial routes chosen by various Norwegians and the places they ventured, while demonstrating the importance of recognizing the complicity of such "non-colonial colonials" for understanding the complexity of colonial history.
Inspired by transnational research on medieval state formation, this book presents a comprehensive study of the political incorporation and subsequent judicial and administrative integration of ...Iceland, the Faroes, Shetland, and Orkney, into the Norwegian realm c. 1195-1397.
In Iceland's Networked Society, Tara Carter examines how Viking Age Iceland, despite being positioned at the margins of competing empires, achieved social complexity on its own terms by successfully ...managing ties to key players in a global social network.
By examining clerical book collections in Norway 1650-1750, this book describes the flow of books in one of the northernmost areas of Europe, a flow dependant on three networking areas in particular, ...namely Germany, the Netherlands and England.
Drawing on literature such as the industrious revolution and consumer revolution, this book is a thorough study of the economic and structural changes taking place in the Norwegian economy prior to ...the Industrial revolution.
This book applies a legal anthropological framework to high medieval Norwegian history. It formulates the question of state formation in a new and challenging way by showing how the king a ...substantial degree based his dominion on unpredictability and presence.
The book discusses the relation between the Icelanders and the mediaeval Norwegian kings, as it appears in sagas and legal texts. By reassessing legal material and the sagas of Möðruvallabók, it ...finds the Icelanders partly subjects of the king, and partly beyond his power.
In the period 1900-1940 the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland reacted in divergent ways to the same foreign military threats. This volume argues that their internal politics and ...politico-military strategic culture are vital keys to understanding those differences.
Drawing on a wide range of types of evidence this book offers a fresh impression of the 'empire' built by King Cnut (1016-1035) in England and Scandinavia, and offers insights into contemporary ...developments in the conceptions of this new dominion.
The fragmentary medieval chronicle, , is the oldest piece of historical writing from Norway, and probably our first specimen of Norwegian literature. It was composed in Latin in the second half of ...the twelfth century, perhaps in the Oslo area. Only the beginning of the work exists today, but it offers, among other things, a detailed report of a shamanic séance among the Sami as well as a unique early geographical description of Norway and the North Sea realm. Furthermore, we are presented with an early version of the Norwegian kings' genealogy, beginning with the mythical Yngling kings and ending, abruptly, with Olav Haraldsson's claim to the throne in 1015. This is the first critical edition of the Latin text since 1880, accompanied by a modern English translation by Peter Fisher. The introduction and full commentary in English take stock of previous scholarships and are new contributions to the interpretation of the text.