Bjarne Thorup Thomsen

Honorary Fellow

Scandinavian Studies
Department of European Languages and Cultures
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Email: Bjarne.Thomsen@ed.ac.uk
Web: Edinburgh Research Explorer profile

Street: 50 George Square
City: Edinburgh
Post code: EH8 9LH

Biography

Qualifications

Cand. Phil. in Scandinavian Literature (University of Copenhagen)
PhD (University of Edinburgh)

Teaching & PhD supervision

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Current PhD students supervised

PhD in Scandinavian Studies:

• Rachel Rankin, 'Breaking the Social Agreement: Translating Norwegian Hybrid Poetry' (co-supervisor).

Past PhD students supervised

PhD in Scandinavian Studies:

• Anja Tröger, ‘Affective Spaces: Trajectories of Migration in Scandinavian and German Transnational Narratives 2011-2017’ (completed 2020) (co-supervisor).

• Barbara Tesio-Ryan, ‘Reassessing Karen Blixen’s Gengældelsens Veje/The Angelic Avengers: A Novel Challenging Gender, Totalitarianism and Colonial Practises’ (completed 2019) (co-supervisor).

• Ian Giles, ‘Tracing the Transmission of Scandinavian Literature to the UK, 1917-2017’ (completed 2018) (co-supervisor).

• Ruairidh Tarvet, ‘Re-Imagining Sleswig: Language and Identity in a Borderland; the Regional, National and Transnational Dimensions of Understading Minority Identity’ (completed 2018) (co-supervisor).

• Dominic Hinde, ‘Our Common, Contested Future: The Rhetorics of Modern Environment in Sweden’ (completed 2015) (co-supervisor).

• Charlotte Berry, ‘Publishing, Translation, Archives. Nordic Children’s Literature in the United Kingdom, 1950-2000’ (completed 2013) (principal supervisor).

• Steinvör Pálsson, ‘Linguistic Strategies in the Representation of Sexual Violence: Norwegian Narrative Perspectives’ (completed 2006) (principal supervisor).

• C. Claire Thomson, ‘Danmarkshistorier: National Imagination and Novel in Late Twentieth-Century Denmark’ (completed 2003) (principal supervisor).

• Dana Caspi, ‘Images of a Promised Land in Norwegian and Swedish Emigrant Novels’ (completed 2000) (principal supervisor).

• Fiona Twycross, ‘Approaching Ragnarok: Use of Norse Mythology in Late Twentieth Century Scandinavian Literature’ (completed 1997) (principal supervisor).

PhD in Comparative Literature:

• Laura Chapot, ‘Décadence, Dekadenz, Dekadens: An Interdiscursive Exploration of Decandence in German and Scandinavian Literature, Society and Culture at the Fin de Siècle’ (completed 2019) (assistant supervisor).

• Ida Hummel Vøllo, ‘The Functions of Autoreception: Karl Ove Knausgård as Author-Critic and Rewriter’ (completed 2019) (assistant supervisor).

Research

Research summary

Bjarne Thorup Thomsen’s main research interests concern ideological, affective, and aesthetic dimensions of place and space in modern Scandinavian literature, travel writing, and journalism. His work explores topics such as the mapping and problematisation of nation space and its communities, the interrogation of notions of centre and periphery in narrative, the role of transnational thought in textual topography, and, more recently, the relationship between geopolitics and literature.

Bjarne Thorup Thomsen’s work displays, moreover, interests in the relationship between national representation and international spread of culture, in questions of textual and cultural hybridity, and in the transfer of cultural expressions to new genres, new media, and new audiences. He has a side interest in Scandinavian silent cinema and its dialogic relationship with prestige literature.

Furthermore, Bjarne Thorup Thomsen has published on Danish sixteenth-century literary history, on literary historiography, and on Danish working-class autobiographies.

New publications:

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/bjarne-thomsen-2

Complete list of publications:

ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEWED ACADEMIC JOURNALS:

’Geopolitics, City Life, and Contested Places in Eyvind Johnson’s European Journalism, 1921-1925’, Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research, 2023:4, pp. 218-229. ISSN 0013-0818.

’Shining a Light on Eyvind Johnson’s Sidelined Novel, Nittonhundrasjutton: Wartime and Modernism on the Margins’, European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 52:1, 2022, pp. 81-102. ISSN 2191-9399.

’New Nordic Environments in Eyvind Johnson’s Factual and Fictional Prose, 1928-1932’, European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 48:1, 2018, pp. 19-41. ISSN 2191-9399

’Marginal and Metropolitan Modernist Modes in Eyvind Johnson’s Early Urban Narratives’, Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 54:2, 2015, pp. 61-90. ISSN 0036-5653.

’Geomodernism and Affect in Eyvind Johnson's Urban North’, Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research, 2015:1, pp. 18-31. ISSN 0013-0818.

’Ejvind Johnson’s Hybrid North. Dynamics of Place and Time in Travelogues and Memory Sketches 1943-1963’, Journal of Northern Studies, 2014:1, pp. 19-36.

’Text, Traffic and Transnational Thought. Perspectives on prose publications by Selma Lagerlöf in periodicals and anthologies, with particular reference to ”En emigrant” (1914), ”Lappland-Schonen” (1917) and the First World War period’, Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 51:2, 2013, pp. 208-224. ISSN 0036-5653.

’(Trans)national Geographies and Alternative Families in Selma Lagerlöf’s Bannlyst’, European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 42:1, 2012, pp. 1-18. ISSN 2191-9399.

’Comparative Considerations: Lagerlöf, Andersen – and the British Perspective’, Northern Studies, 42, 2011, pp. 41-54. ISSN 0305-506X.

’Contesting the Novel: Andersen and the Challenges of Criticism, with Particular Reference to De to Baronesser’, Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 46:2, 2007, pp. 175-194. ISSN 0036-5653.

Review article: ‘Kampen om Lagerlöf’, Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research, 2006:1, pp. 100-103. ISSN 0013-0818.

’Connecting Cultures: Hans Christian Andersen as a Travel Writer’, Northern Studies, 39, 2005, pp. 51-69. ISSN 0305-506X.

’Lagerlöfs relative landskaber. Om konstruktionen af et nationalt territorium i Nils Holgersson’, Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research, 2004:2, pp. 118-135. ISSN 0013-0818.

’Nils Holgersson og grænselandet’, Kritik, 146, 2000, pp. 56-62. ISSN 0454-5354.

’Translation and Transplantation: Sir Alexander Gray's Danish Ballads’, co-authroed with Graves, Northern Studies, 34, 1999, pp. 35-59. ISSN 0305-506X.

’Aspects of Topography in Selma Lagerlöf's Jerusalem, Vol. I’, Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 36:1, 1997, pp. 23-41. ISSN 0036-5653.

’Maskine, Nation og Modernitet hos Andersen og Almqvist’, Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap, 1995:2, pp. 27-46. ISSN 1104-0556.

’Om stedsans, mytteri og polyfoni i romanen’, Kritik, 116, 1995, pp. 54-61. ISSN 0454-5354.

’Sandemoses stemmer. Om flertydigheden i En sjömann går i land’, Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research, 1992:1, pp. 28-35. ISSN 0013-0818.

’From Jante to Utopia? Aksel Sandemose and the Fascination of North America’, Northern Studies, 28, 1992, pp. 41-45. ISSN 0305-506X.

’Fra Ragnarok til Apollons oprør. Villy Sørensens forfatterskab i firserne’, Dansk Udsyn, 1990:4, pp. 221-30.

’Æstetik, natur og politik. En analyse af Arne Rustes “Konvalldikt. Om svaler”’, Kursiv. Meddelelser fra Dansklærerforeningen, 1981:3, pp. 53-64.

AUTHORED AND CO-AUTHORED BOOKS:

In progress: Monograph exploring Eyvind Johnson’s early modernist and journalistic work, 1921-1931.

Lagerlöfs litterære landvinding. Nation, mobilitet og modernitet i Nils Holgersson og tilgrænsende tekster. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Contributions to Scandinavian Studies, 2007. 182pp. ISBN 978-90-809186-4-1.

Dansk litteraturhistorie, vol. 2: 1480-1620, co-authored with Brask, Friis-Jensen, Glebe-Møller, Hind, Skafte Jensen, Jørgensen, Kværndrup, Rahbek Rasmussen and Risum. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2000 [new edition; originally published 1984]. 526pp. ISBN 87-00-47356-1.

En selvskreven historie. Om erindringsbøger og dagbøger af bønder, håndværkere og arbejdere i Danmark, co-authored with Toft Andersen and Zerlang. Copenhagen: Samlerens Forlag, 1982. 280pp. ISBN 87-568-0629-9.

EDITED AND CO-EDITED BOOKS:

Re-Mapping Lagerlöf: Performance, Intermediality, and European Transmissions, co-edited with Forsås-Scott and Stenberg. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014. 351pp. ISBN 978-91-87351-21-1.

Centring on the Peripheries. Studies in Scandinavian, Scottish, Gaelic and Greenlandic Literature. Norwich: Norvik Press, 2007. 218pp. ISBN 978-1-870041-66-9.

Hans Christian Andersen – New Approaches, co-edited with Andersen. Norwich: Norvik Press, 2007. 282pp. ISBN 978-1-870041-77-5.

Minority Languages: The Scandinavian Experience, co-edited with Blom, Graves and Kruse. Oslo: Nordic Language Secretariat, 1992. 186pp. ISBN 82-7433-002-1.

BOOK CHAPTERS:

Forthcoming: Introduction to volume of short stories by Selma Lagerlöf in new English translations to be published by Norvik Press, London.

’Lagerlöf on the Border with Norway’, in Islands of Place and Space. A Festschrift in Honour of Arne Kruse, ed. Christian Cooijmans. Edinburgh: The Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 2022, pp. 58-69. ISBN 978-1-3999-3523-4.

’Outreach, Invasion, Displacement: Denmark’s Disputed Southern Borderland as Negotiated through Strategic and Affective Aspects of Space in Novels by Andersen and Bang’, in Nineteenth-Century Nationalisms and Emotions in the Baltic Sea Region: The Production of Loss, ed. Anna Bohlin, Tiina Kinnunen and Heidi Grönstrand. Leiden: Brill, 2021, pp. 164–191. ISBN 978-9-0044-3038-9.

Chapter 1: ’Re-Mapping Lagerlöf. The volume and its parameters’, in Re-Mapping Lagerlöf (2014, see above), pp. 13-17.

Chapter 14: ’(Trans)national narratives and European transmissions. Sectional portal’, in Re-Mapping Lagerlöf (2014, see above), pp. 183-186.

Chapter 15: ’Text and Transnational Terrain, 1888-1918’, in Re-Mapping Lagerlöf (2014, see above), pp. 187-206.

’On Forms and Fantasies of Locomotion in Lagerlöf and Andersen’, in Love and Modernity. Scandinavian Literature, Drama and Letters. Essays in Honour of Professor Janet Garton, ed. C. Claire Thomson and Elettra Carbone. London: Norvik Press, 2014, pp. 129-139. ISBN 978-1-870041-99-7.

’Hybrid hjemmebane. Regionalt, transnationalt og utopisk hos Selma Lagerlöf’, in Hemmaplan. Om den regionala litteraturens traditioner, tekniker och funktioner, ed. Margareta Ullström and Sofia Wijkmark. Karlstad: Karlstad University Press, 2012, pp. 27-45. ISBN 978-91-86637-08-8.

’Curriculum, flerkulturalitet og litterær globalisering’, in Litterære livliner. Kanon, klassiker, litteraturbrug, ed. Marie-Louise Svane and Erik Svendsen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2011, pp. 197-207, 236-37. ISBN 978-87-02-09047-5.

’Nordic National Borderlands in Selma Lagerlöf’, in Centring on the Peripheries (2007, see above), pp. 79-93.

’Introduction’, in Centring on the Peripheries (2007, see above), pp. 8-12.

’A Place and a Text In-Between: ”Translation" Patterns in Hans Christian Andersen’s I Sverrig’, in The Discovery of Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia, ed. Marie Wells. Norwich: Norvik Press, 2007, pp. 163-175. ISBN 978-1-870041-69-0.

’Help from The Heart of Midlothian: The Hans Christian Andersen Novel and the Imagining of the Realm’, in Images and Imaginations: Perspectives on Britain and Scandinavia, ed. Arne Kruse and Peter Graves. Edinburgh: Lockharton Press, 2007, pp. 145-161. ISBN 1-874665-02-8.

’The Orient According to Hans Christian Andersen: Conceptions of the East in En Digters Bazar’, in Der Norden im Ausland – das Ausland im Norden, ed. Sven Hakon Rossel. Wien: Praesens Verlag, 2006, pp. 675-683. ISBN 978-3-7069-0371-4.

’Ibsen, Lagerlöf, Sjöström and Terje Vigen: (Inter)nationalism, (Inter)subjectivity and the Interface between Swedish Silent Cinema and Scandinavian Literature’, in Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema, ed. C. Claire Thomson. Norwich: Norvik Press, 2006, pp. 193-204. ISBN 1-870041-63-1.

’Om topografin i Selma Lagerlöfs Jerusalem, del I’, in I Selma Lagerlöfs värld, ed. Louise Vinge. Stockholm: Symposion, 2005, pp. 166-181. ISBN 91-7139-723-X. [Also published in English in the journal Scandinavica, see above].

’Translation and Transplantation: Sir Alexander Gray's Danish Ballads’, co-authored with Graves, in Frae Ither Tongues. Essays on Modern Translations into Scots, ed. Bill Findlay. Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto, Sydney: Multilingual Matters, 2004, pp. 231-251. ISBN: 1-85359-700-7. [Also published in the journal Northern Studies, see above].

’Noter og bibliografi’, in Dansk litteraturhistorie, vol. 9. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2000 [new edition; originally published 1985], pp. 41-42. ISBN 87-00-47356-1.

’Terra (In)cognita. Reflections on the search for the sacred place in Selma Lagerlöf’, in Selma Lagerlöf Seen from Abroad, ed. Louise Vinge. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1998, pp. 131-141. ISBN 91-7402-289-X.

’Location in Hamsun's Turn-of-the-Century Short Stories’, in Hamsun in Edinburgh, ed. Peter Graves and Arne Kruse. Hamarøy, Norway: Hamsun-Selskapet, 1998, pp. 71-82. ISBN 82-91002-12-6.

’Destruction and Construction in Selma Lagerlöf's Jerusalem, Vol. II’, in Proceedings of the Eleventh Biennial Conference of the British Association of Scandinavian Studies, ed. Charlotte Whittingham and Phil Holmes. Hull: University of Hull, 1997, pp. 82-98. ISBN 0-85958-716-9.

‘Den selvskrevne historie’, in AUC i debat. Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 1984, 2 p.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENCYCLOPEDIC WORK:

14 entries on Danish authors, in Larousse Dictionary of Writers. Edinburgh and New York: Larousse, 1994, pp. 1, 2, 105, 532, 533, 535, 544, 545, 711, 743, 816, 911.

‘Kaj Munk's Plays’, in International Dictionary of Theatre, Vol. 2. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994, pp. 687-689.

‘Ludvig Holberg's Plays’, in International Dictionary of Theatre, Vol. 2. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994, pp. 485-487.

10 entries, in Chambers Dictionary of World History. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 1993.

‘Anders Bodelsen’, in Contemporary World Writers. Detroit: Detroit: St. James Press, 1993, pp. 68-69.

‘The Language Situation in Denmark’, in Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. R. E. Asher and J. M. Y. Simpson. London: Pergamon Press, 1993.

BOOK REVIEWS IN ACADEMIC JOURNALS:

Review of Sally Magnusson, The Sealwoman's Gift (2018), University of Edinburgh Journal, 49:1, 2019, pp. 66-67.

Review of Claus Ingemann Jørgensen, Scherfig og fru Drusse. Af Ude og Hjemmes historie (1993), Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 33:1, 1994, pp. 107-108. ISSN 0036-5653.

Review of Elias Bredsdorff, Kjeld Abell. Et brevportræt (1993), Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 1994, 33:2, pp. 241-243. ISSN 0036-5653.

Review of Hans Jørn Nielsen, ed., Kultur, identitet og kommunikation (1988), Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 29:2, 1990, pp. 281-283. ISSN 0036-5653.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES:

‘Ny film er en kilde til håb’, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 19 November 2023.

‘Farvefest og storbypuls i færgeafstand, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 14 May 2023.

‘Tag sydpå og få en stor kunstoplevelse’, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 3 March 2023.

‘Krig mellem kammerater i fremragende film’, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 6 January, 2023.

‘Danmark er rollemodel’, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 3 July 2022.

‘Konflikt set i kulturens bakspejl’, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 19 April 2022.

‘Nolde i Nordjylland’, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 20 January 2022.

‘När Eyvind Johnson var NSD:s skribent i Berlin, Norrländska Socialdemokraten, 28 December 2021.

‘Stærk tradition for skotskternet krimilitteratur’, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, 1 November, 2021.

‘EM-spelarens bok en fin passning till nästa generation’, Norrländska Socialdemokraten, 29 June 2021.

‘Eyvind Johnsons glömda roman om en tid som vår’, Norrländska Socialdemokraten, 20 march 2021.

Current research interests

Bjarne Thorup Thomsen’s current research centres on the role of geopolitics in modern Scandinavian literature and journalism and on new spatial approaches to modernist writing, including ‘modernism of the margins’. – He has recently published a study of ideological and affective dimensions of the representation of the contested Danish-German borderland in novels by Hans Christian Andersen and Herman Bang, spanning the period from 1848 to 1906. The study is entitled ‘Outreach, Invasion, Displacement’ and was published as a book chapter in Nineteenth-Century Nationalisms and Emotions in the Baltic Sea Region: The Production of Loss, ed. Anna Bohlin, Tiina Kinnunen and Heidi Grönstrand (Brill, 2021). – Bjarne’s main current research project is focused on the relationship between geopolitics, geomodernist modes of writing, and reportage in Nobel Prize-winning ‘proletarian’ author Eyvind Johnson’s work from the early to the mid interwar period. In terms of primary material, the project establishes connections between Johnson’s prose fiction, journalism, and memory writing. – In a recent article, ‘Geopolitics, City Life, and Contested Places in Eyvind Johnson’s European Journalism, 1921-1925’ (Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research, 2023), Bjarne investigates thematic and stylistic patterns displayed in, and publication practices associated with, Johnson's foreign newspaper correspondence. – In another recent article, ‘Shining a Light on Eyvind Johnson’s Sidelined Novel, Nittonhundrasjutton: Wartime and Modernism on the Margins’ (European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 2022), Bjarne offers a re-assessment of a little-known Johnson novel, which was published purely in periodical form. The article approaches the novel through the theoretical lens of the widening and softening tendencies that characterise current understandings of the field of modernist literature. The appreciation of Johnson’s novel is informed, furthermore, by new insights into the role of interwar modernism in registering and responding to the afterlife of war as well as the spectre of a future war. – These two studies follow a number of related articles, in which Bjarne explores modern environments in Eyvind Johnson’s early prose fiction and foreign and domestic travel reportage and in his autobiographical sketches. These articles comprise: ‘New Nordic Environments in Eyvind Johnson’s Factual and Fictional Prose, 1928-1932’ (European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 2018), ‘Marginal and Metropolitan Modernist Modes in Eyvind Johnson’s Early Urban Narratives’ (Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 2015), ‘Geomodernism and Affect in Eyvind Johnson’s Urban North’ (Edda. Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research, 2015), and ‘Eyvind Johnson’s Hybrid North. Dynamics of Place and Time in Travelogues and Memory Sketches 1943-1963’ (Journal of Northern Studies, 2014). – Bjarne is in the process of developing the above studies into a monograph mapping the author’s work from 1921 to 1931.

Past research interests

Bjarne Thorup Thomsen’s previous research activity had its main focus on the negotiation of region, nation and transnationalism in Scandinavian nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and travel writing. – In 2007, he published a monograph, Lagerlöfs litterære landvinding (Amsterdam Contributions to Scandinavian Studies), which explores these topics in the work of Swedish novelist and Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf. In 2014, he co-edited and contributed to a volume of international scholarship offering a range of new perspectives on Lagerlöf’s work, on its transmissions into other media and a range of European cultures, and on the author’s influential public persona and ideological involvements. The book is entitled Re-Mapping Lagerlöf: Performance, Intermediality and European Transmissions (Nordic Academic Press). Additionally, Bjarne has researched aspects of Lagerlöf’s more marginal production and its relationship to the culture of periodicals. – In a related research context, Bjarne has investigated Hans Christian Andersen’s novelistic experimentation and his innovations in travel writing. This research has been published in a number of articles and papers and in a co-edited book of New Approaches (Norvik Press, 2007) to Andersen’s work. – Bjarne’s research on Lagerlöf and Andersen may be seen as contributions to the re-assessment of two Scandinavian cultural figures of world-literature status, highlighting innovative aspects of their work as well as reductive patterns in their reception history. – The scrutiny of notions of centre and periphery, which played a part in the above work, formed the main focus of a comparative anthology of studies in Scandinavian and Scottish literature, Centring on the Peripheries (Norvik Press), which Bjarne published in 2007.

Projects

Project activity

Bjarne Thorup Thomsen’s main current research project is focused on the relationsship between geopolitics, geomodernist modes of writing, and journalism in Nobel Prize-winning ‘proletarian’ author Eyvind Johnson’s work. (See the Research field for further information).