The Northern Scholars Lectures: Anders Mortensen

About the lecture

'C.B. Wadström, S.T. Coleridge and the importance of radical Swedish-British networks in the 1790s'.

By Anders Mortensen

In my talk, I will start off by discussing the importance of a work by the Swedish economist, abolitionist, and Swedenborgian Carl Bernhard Wadström - his Essay on Colonisation, published in London in two volumes in 1794 and 1795. I will then move on to a speech given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge against the slave trade in The Assembly coffee house in Bristol in 1795.

These observations will serve as a case study for a larger investigation aimed at the historical context of the radical Swedish-British networks of the 1790s, which attracted religious dissenters and intellectuals committed to social utopianism and utopian colonisation, radical economics and abolition.

I will also examine how these shared radical beliefs can be accessed through the poetry of William Blake, Thomas Thorild, and Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna, as well as in Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, well-known to have been printed in Bristol in 798 in Lyrical Ballads.

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About the speaker

Anders Mortensen is Director for the Centre for Scandinavian Studies and Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at the Centre for Languages and Literature at Lund University. He has previously spent time in Edinburgh as a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in 2004, and as a Visiting Scholar in Scandinavian Studies in 2017. His current research focuses on the Romantic tradition of aesthetic economy in European literature. He is also busily engaged in an edition of the complete poetry of Gunnar Ekelöf on behalf of the Swedish Academy.

About the Northern Scholars

The Northern Scholars Scheme was established at the University of Edinburgh in 1956.

Its role is to foster co-operation between scholars of Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and colleagues in the University of Edinburgh.

Mutual areas of interest include aspects of linguistics, and historical and other cultural studies which are common to these countries and to Scotland.

Each year, the Northern Scholars Scheme Committee sponsors visits by scholars of the member countries to Edinburgh, during which time they give departmental seminars and public lectures.

Find out more about the Northern Scholars

Are you interested in Scandinavian Studies at Edinburgh?

We are the only university in Scotland, and one of only two in the UK, to offer undergraduate honours programmes in Scandinavian Studies, enabling you to learn modern Danish, Swedish or Norwegian in the context of Scandinavian culture, past and present. We also welcome candidates for postgraduate research degrees (MSc by Research and PhD) in various aspects of Nordic languages, literature, history, culture and society.

Find out more about Scandinavian Studies at Edinburgh