Arendse Wenzel Måge

• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2026). Usamtidighedens ø: Eggert Ólafssons Reise igiennem Island (1772) læst som synkroniseringsforsøg. Slagmark. ISSN 0108-8084. 89, p. 17–34. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  I 1752 begiver den unge islandske digter og naturhistoriker, Eggert Ólafsson (1726-1768), sig ud på en femårig ekspedition til sin fødeø, hvor han på Kong Frederik den 5.s befaling skal rejse rundt og indsamle viden om dens geografiske, sociale og økonomiske forhold og hvordan de kan forbedres. Hans observationer og konklusioner samlet i den posthumt udgivne rejseberetning Reise igiennem Island (1772), hvor han også retter skarp kritik mod nogle af de forbedringstiltag, kongen allerede har sat i gang. Hvor den eksisterende har forskning har set denne forbedringsdisput i lyset af den oplyste enevældes rationaliserings- og reformpolitik og en gryende islandsk nationalisme, præsenterer denne artikel en ny temporal analyse af sagen inspireret af Reinhart Koselleck og Helge Jordheim. Artiklen argumenterer for, at parternes forskellige visioner for islandsk forbedring er baseret på forskellige ’diagnoser’ af dens usamtidighed og at disse bliver stillet med henvisning til forskellige forståelser af klima og opfordrer til mere forskning i samspillet mellem idéer om tid, temporalitet og klima i den såkaldte Sattelzeit.

• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2024). Kortlagte fællesskaber: Kartografi og identitet i Snorri Sturlusons og Arngrímur Jónssons historieskrivning. Arr - Idéhistorisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0802-7005. 2024(2-3), p. 19–34. doi: https:/arrvev.no/artikler/kortlagte-f%C3%A6llesskaber. Full text in Research Archive
• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2021). ”Når kilderne kommer”. In Thorup, Mikkel & Pedersen, Simone Sefland (Ed.), Samtidens idéhistorie. Baggrund. ISSN 9788799676293. p. 192–206. Full text in Research Archive

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• Måge, Arendse Wenzel & Pold, Valdemar Nielsen (2026). Arr /2025 nr. 3-4 Ny nordisk renessance. doi: https:/tekstallmenningen.no/butikk/kunst-kultur/arr-2025-03-04/. Full text in Research Archive
• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2025). “Too Lazy to Look Back: Páll Vídalín’s Visions of Famine and Historical Crisis in 17th-Century Iceland”. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  As the 17th century came to a close, the Icelandic weather grew colder and its population hungrier. With famine looming large, Icelandic lawyer Páll Vídalín (1667-1727) sat down to understand why and penned the first economic treatise about Iceland titled Deo, Regi, Patriæ (1699). Through close, contextual reading, this paper examines his efforts to declare his country’s present predicament a crisis and determine what kind. Drawing on a Koselleckian concept of history, it argues that Páll shunned common climatic explanations and attempted to cement the current crisis as a historical one in a double sense of the word: as an acquired problem arising from past, political action and as a lack of historical consciousness itself. To describe the crux of this crisis, he employed the vocabulary of sloth. Originally a capital sin steeped in theological tradition, several scholars have noted how it was secularized and rose to prominence on the political agenda in the 18th century. Dwelling and developing on Páll’s idea of sloth, the paper engages in critical discussion on the boundaries between religion, history, and economy in early modernity and argues for the benefits of keeping the lines blurred analytically – especially when approaching the subject of crisis.

• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2024). Negotiating Human and Climatic Historical Agency in the Icelandic Enlightenment. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In recent years, posthumanist scholars have portrayed the Enlightenment as the birthplace of ideas of human exceptionalism that they wish to overcome. Sociologist Simon Susen defines the humanism they sign up against as “a worldview that stresses the role and value of human agency in shaping the course of history” and roots it firmly in the European Enlightenment along with the binary distinction between humans and nature (Susen,2022:64-65). This paper seeks to nuance this view of the Enlightenment by presenting examples of how Enlightenment thinkers did not just conceive of human historical agency in opposition to nature but in dialogue with it and argue that this period is in fact a fruitful place to study the complexities and entanglements between ideas of the human, nature, and history in political thought. Drawing on John Robertson’s definition of the Enlightenment as a movement committed to the betterment of life in this world rather than the next, I will present two cases from the 1750s of political attempts at bettering the living conditions in Iceland by (re)introducing agriculture to the island and analyze how their different visions of what could be done were devised with reference to what nature dictated. The different kinds of nature given argumentative sway, I argue, are organized around competing 18th-century concepts of climate and can be seen as part of an intellectual negotiation of the boundary between human and climatic historical agency that deserves more consideration in both the historical study and posthuman portrayal of the Enlightenment.

• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2024). En kærlig kakofoni. Anmeldelse af Emil Nicklas Johnsen & Ina Louise Stovner (red.) Early Modern Genres of History (Routledge, London & New York, 2024). Arr - Idéhistorisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0802-7005. p. 68–71. Full text in Research Archive
• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2024). Saving Iceland from the Brink of Ruin: Climates, History, and Human Agency in 18th Century Icelandic Political Thought. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In 18th-century Iceland, dystopia was not a farfetched thought experiment but imagined to be right around the corner. In 1751, Icelandic treasurer Skúli Magnússon declared his country on the brink of “total Ruin” and begged his monarch, Danish King Frederik V, to intervene. What he should do was laid out in an eleven-point proposal comprising i.a. import of crops and farmers from other Danish territories to teach the Icelanders to cultivate their land and thus transform it into “the second Norway” that its latitudinal position promised it could be. The king implemented Skúli’s proposals but stayed on the lookout for more and commissioned an expedition to traverse the island and study its conditions which would reach very different conclusions on how to improve them. The expedition ran from 1752 to 1757 and was led by Icelandic poet and naturalist Eggert Ólafsson, who contrary to Skúli found that comparing Iceland to other places and ignoring its unique natural conditions only pushed it closer to the edge. This paper examines how Skúli and Eggert each employ different ideas of climate to formulate plans to bring Iceland back from the brink. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck and Helge Jordheim's theories of historical time and recent histories of the concept of climate, the paper explores how different climate ideas are used to stage an intervention into Iceland’s course of history and how this works to (re)shape ideas of historical time and human historical agency. For both Skúli and Eggert what can be done depends on how history works and is seen as intimately connected to what kind of climate Iceland has, which highlights the entanglement of ideas of climate, time, and historical agency and calls for more scholarly attention to the role of climate ideas in the temporalization and politicization processes of the so-called Sattelzeit.

• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2024). Oplysningens dikotomier: Nord/Syd. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Siden antikken har skellet mellem Nord og Syd haft et fast greb om den europæiske forestillingsverden, men i oplysningstiden blev der vendt op og ned på deres betydning. Norden gik fra en barbarisk udørk til et frihedens og fremtidens land, mens det civiliserede Syden forvandledes til et træt og stagnerende sted. I forskningen er denne omtolkning ofte blevet forklaret med fremkomsten af fremskridtstanken og henvisning til Reinhart Kosellecks såkaldte Sattelzeit: ’Nord’ og ’Syd’ var simpelthen bare nogle af de begreber, der skiftede betydning på tærsklen til moderniteten. Men i mit ph.d.-projekt vender jeg denne forklaring på hovedet og spørger i stedet, hvordan idéer om Norden blev brugt som retorisk ressource til at problematisere og formulere forståelser af tid. I denne session vil jeg præsentere en analyse af, hvordan den norske historiker Gerhard Schøning i Velmeente Tanker om Agerdørkningens muelige Forbedring i Norge (1758) demonterer den traditionelle dikotomi mellem Nord og Syd og ved hjælp af et mere dynamisk begreb om Norden formulerer forholdet mellem fortid og fremtid, og hvad der er muligt at stille op med det norske agerbrug i hans samtid. Det er en analyse som vil revurdere billedet af ham som en tro discipel af historien som magistra vitae og i stedet pege på, hvordan han ved ”Nordens” hjælp sætter betingelser for dens autoritet.

• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2023). Katastrofetanker. Baggrund. Full text in Research Archive
• Måge, Arendse Wenzel (2022). Kan man sige fremskridt på fortidens sprog? Full text in Research Archive

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