Nordic Women’s Writing and Religious Faith Female Agency From the 16th Century to the Early 20th Century

Introduction: Nordic Women and Religious Faith

Anna Bohlin and Margrét Eggertsdóttir

1. “Pray for me”. The Case of Marine Lauridsdatter’s Prayer Book

Anne Mette Hansen

2. The Company She Keeps: Poetry on Female Martyr Saints in Early Modern Icelandic Manuscripts

Natalie van Deusen

3. The Saint and the Sea: Úrsúlukvæði and Women’s Mobility in Premodern Iceland

Katelin Marit Parsons

4. Sacred poetry at Snæfellsnes: Kristín Árnadóttir's book of rímur

Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir

5. The Excessive Grief of Helga Jónsdóttir: Poem, Response Poem, and Historical Context

Þórunn Sigurðardóttir

6. The Cross and the Pen: On Ingeborg Grytten’s writing

Vigdis Berland Øystese

7. Norwegian Hymnwriter Berte Kanutte Aarflot’s Contemporary Role and her Indebtedness to The Forgotten Women Emissaries of The Hauge Movement

Marie Nedregotten Sørbø

8. Awakenings: Women Writers, Religious Faith, and Women’s Agency in Nineteenth-Century Finland

Kati Launis and Viola Parente-Čapková

9. The Nordic Emancipation Novels of the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Between Lutheran Nationalism and Catholic Calling

Anna Bohlin

10. The Cheerful Leprous Poet of Suffering: The Case of Kristín Guðmundsdóttir

Guðrún Ingólfsdóttir

11. Fiction, Moral Reform, and Religion – Finnish Feminists at the Turn of the Century

Tiina Kinnunen

12. Hebrew Motifs in a Secularized Jewish Context: Sophie Elkan’s Short Stories

Kamilla Skarström Hinojosa

13. “Is it you, Bjørnson?” Ragna Nielsen’s Spiritualism as a Hauntology of the Modern Breakthrough

Giuliano D'Amico

Biography

Anna Bohlin is Professor of Nordic Literature at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her main research interests are in Scandinavian nineteenth-century literature, with a focus on feminism, religion, and nationalism. Recent publications include co-editing the cross-disciplinary anthology Tracing the Jerusalem Code III: Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750–ca. 1920) (2021).

Margrét Eggertsdóttir is Research Professor at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík. She has co-edited an edition of the works of Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–1674), authored numerous scholarly publications on the literature of late pre-modern Iceland, and led several research projects on early modern Icelandic literature.