Among the research topics of our Scholar in Residence, Vigdis Andrea Baugstø Evang, is Olaus Magnus (1490-1557), the Swedish archbishop in exile in Italy. Undoubtedly a learned man, Olaus Magnus was also a man who would like for his fellow ecclesiastics to know a great deal more about Sweden than they did. How could he garner sympathy and support for the Catholic Church in his homeland if no-one knew the first thing about it?
In creating a lavish map of the north, the Carta Marina, and in publishing a book, the Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, detailing the places and people he had not himself seen for many years, Olaus Magnus presents himself as an especially trustworthy source because he himself was a native of the land he described. Yet this position is a layered one. As both cartographer and cartographic source, as both learned bishop and exotic foreigner, as both a local and a traveller, Olaus Magnus employs a number of legitimating strategies at once. How should we read this multivalent self-presentation, Vigdis asks in this presentation, and in what way should it shape our understanding of his map and his book?
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Participants are invited for an aperitivo immediately after the seminar.