5th to 9th March 2025

Place: Sigtunastiftelsen, Sigtuna, Sweden

Contact: Anders Claesson, Head Librarian.

We want to turn our gaze towards the Nordic region during this Winter Symposium. The text of this winter Symposium was selected as it was written by a theologically schooled clergyman, later selected archdeacon and archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden. Olaus Magnus (1490-1553) travelled in the Nordic region, and once he was exiled to Rome due to the Reformation by the Swedish King Gustav Wasa, he decided to write a book about his “home”. The Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555) is a compilation of 12 books dealing with everything from brewing beer and making cheese and descriptions of flora and fauna to reports of local culture. The texts will carry the possibility of attracting any one from biology and physics to chemistry and cartography, particularly with an interest in how different regions where governed and cared for at the brink of the modern era. What we will encounter in this book are depictions of the Indigenous people of the North, both Inuits on Greenland and Sami people in the North. 

This Symposia will also provide a platform for dialogue about Sami lifeviews and vitality through the artistic project Spirit Lands with Emma Göransson and Frank Berger.