Blood, tears and prayers: Affective strategies in an 18th-century Moravian mission diary
Magnus Hørnes, MA History of knowledge
My project focuses on the Moravian missionary Christian Prottens (1715-1769) diary from his missionary attempt on the danish-norwegian Gold Coast in the mid-18th-century. The Moravian church was a radical pietist movement who established themselves globally through their missionary endeavours. Being some of the first protestant missionaries they were influential in most corners of the Atlantic world maintaining successful mission outposts and colonies in places as varied as the Caribbean, Pennsylvania and Greenland. A lesser-known venture was their attempted missions to West Africa centred around the danish-norwegian slave fort of Christiansborg. These attempts were led by Christian Protten, himself a local of the Gold Coast being of both Danish and Ga decent. Previous studies of Protten have primarily been interested in his role in the complicated power relations of West African society. My own research is more textually focused placing emphasis on what Protten does in writing his mission diary. This was not a private journal; it was intended for the global Moravian community and must be read as a call for resources to his mission. My focus is therefore on the rhetorical strategies Protten implements to market the Gold Coast as a fruitful field of mission. His primary means of doing this is through emotions relying on the affective theological language of the Moravian church with its emphasis on bridal- and blood mysticism. To be successful in this he needed to portray both his own, and the potential converts, emotional states as susceptible to the mission, both of which he viewed as intimately connected with the surrounding environment. At the core of the study is an interest in how emotions are mobilizing for action, the vast and influential Moravian missionary endeavour which was largely shaped by affective strategies is therefore a fruitful field of study.
Magnus Hørnes has a bachelor’s degree in intellectual history (2024) and is taking a master’s degree in the history of knowledge, both at UiO. He as also been the chief editor of the student’s journal of intellectual history Molo from 2024-2025.
The Didactic Form of the Icelandic Physiologus: Structuring Moral Interpretation
Essi Nuutinen, MA Viking and Medieval Norse Studies
My project examines how the Icelandic Physiologus structures moral interpretation through the organization of its entries and their presentation in the manuscript. Originating as a late antique Christian didactic text and transmitted widely across medieval Europe, the Physiologus describes animals and hybrid creatures together with allegorical explanations that connect their behavior to moral and spiritual instruction. The Icelandic fragments AM 673 a I 4to and AM 673 a II 4to (c. 1190–1210) preserve a vernacular adaptation of this tradition and offer evidence of how inherited didactic texts were transmitted and reshaped in medieval Iceland. The study combines close reading of selected entries with analysis of the manuscript’s mise-en-page, including layout, hierarchy of initials, and the relationship between text and image. Particular attention is given to the recurring sequence in which descriptive narration, allegorical explanation, and moral application appear together within individual entries. These textual and visual features guide the reader from narrative description toward allegorical understanding while structuring the process through which moral meaning becomes recognizable. By examining both textual organization and manuscript presentation, the project explores how the Icelandic Physiologus functions as a didactic work that mediates inherited allegorical traditions within a vernacular cultural context. In this perspective, nonhuman creatures serve not only as narrative figures but also as interpretive anchors through which moral meaning is articulated and learned.
Essi Nuutinen is pursuing a master’s degree in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies at the University of Iceland and the University of Oslo, and holds an MA in Folkloristics from the University of Turku. Her academic background centers on narrative traditions and manuscript culture, with experience working across both medieval and later vernacular materials, particularly in relation to cultural adaptation.
Literature as Existential and Affective Territory: Ecological Axiology in Essays Written for Future Library
Sara Louise Gjelsvik West, MA Literary Mediation
This project analyses essays written in connection with the art project Future Library (2014–2114). The art project invites one author each year to submit a manuscript that will remain unread until 2114, when it will be printed on paper made from a forest planted specifically for this purpose. Rather than mediating literary works in a conventional sense, Future Library stages literature as an idea, a practice, and a future-oriented event. The thesis examines how the authors’ essays articulate and perform literature's value within this unique temporal and ecological framework. I approach the texts through the concept of ecological axiology, focusing on how reflections on literature, time, and materiality are entangled with ecological thinking. The essays situate literature within broader systems of relation—between readers and texts, culture and nature, and present and future generations. I argue that they present literature as an existential and affective territory. The analysis explores how literature is imagined through ecological elements such as forests, cyclical time, and organic growth. In selected essays, literature emerges neither as pure ideality nor as reducible to material form; rather, it appears as a relational event dependent on readers, cultural contexts, and ecological conditions. By examining how literature's value is staged within the Future Library context, the thesis argues that selected essays articulate a future-oriented, relational, affective, and open understanding of value. Rather than grounding literature’s worth in immediate use or reception, they emphasize its capacity to persist, transform, and generate meaning within uncertain ecological and cultural futures.
Sara Louise Gjelsvik West has a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Oslo, and is currently pursuing a master’s in literary mediation (litteraturformidling).
Drafts of the different projects will be sent out to project members in advance. Other participants interested in the seminar can contact Stefka G. Eriksen or Sara Louise Gjelsvik West for further information.