Long before Klondike, Scandinavians already had a fixed idea of America as a place of overnight riches - and just as easily, ruin. This talk traces that founding myth back to the California Gold Rush of 1849, with a particular focus on the Lehmann brothers' California cosmorama, a moving panorama that brought the gold fields, and their promise and peril alike, to Scandinavian audiences.
The talk is free and open for all.
Speaker bio
Steinar A. Saether is professor of history at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History. His research interests include Latin American social and political history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Scandinavian migration to and within Latin America between independence and the Second World War, and comparative and transnational topics in early modern global history. He is currently on leave, serving as head of Forskerforbundet (National Association of Researchers).