Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries: Shifting Centres and Peripheries in the Nineteenth Century

Charting the early dissemination of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries in the 19th century, this opens up an area of global Shakespeare studies that has received little attention to date. With case studies exploring the earliest translations of Hamlet into Danish; the first translation of Macbeth and the differing translations of Hamlet into Swedish; adaptations into Finnish; Kierkegaard’s re-working of King Lear, and the reception of the African-American actor Ira Aldridge’s performances in Stockholm as Othello and Shylock, it will appeal to all those interested in the reception of Shakespeare and its relationship to the political and social conditions.

The volume intervenes in the current discussion of global Shakespeare and more recent concepts like ’rhizome’, which challenge the notion of an Anglocentric model of ’centre’ versus ’periphery’. It offers a new assessment of these notions, revealing how the dissemination of Shakespeare is determined by a series of local and frequently interlocking centres and peripheries, such as the Finnish relation to Russia or the Norwegian relation with Sweden, rather than a matter of influence from the English Cultural Sphere.

Nely Keinänen is a lecturer in English at the University of Helsinki, Finland, researching the early reception of Shakespeare in Finland. She is on the board of the Nordic Shakespeare Society (NorSS).

Per Sivefors is Associate Professor of English Literature at Linnaeus University, Sweden. He has published extensively on early modern literature and culture and is currently working on the early reception of Shakespeare in Scandinavia (1760 - 1820). He is Chair of the Nordic Shakespeare Society (NorSS).