Exhibitions on book history are relatively rare in Finland, but the National Library of Finland makes a great exception: a continuous flow of exhibitions on books and and their writers, producers, and readers is one of its most visible activities. During the renovation of late 1990s the National Library opened new exhibition rooms and has ever since shown its own treasures as well as invited scholars and book collectors to show their wide learning and special collections.
The current main exhibition in the Gallery of the library is The View From Paradise. The History of the Maps of the Heavens. The exhibition shows the history of viewing, illustrating and mapping of heavens from Antiquity to the present day from the scientific, cultural and historical perspectives. The exhibition was planned by professor Tapio Markkanen, and the event belongs to the activities of the International Year of Astronomy (2009).
The exhibition displays treasures from the National Library’s collections. Many of the maps come from the Nordenskiöld Collection. This collection is probably the most famous collection of the library. Scientist and explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832–1901) collected thousands of maps (mostly historical), geographical literature and travel books, and nowadays the collection is inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.
The exhibition is divided in three parts: first it shows the development of astronomy from the Antiquity to the Renaissance. The oldest works displayed date from the late 15th century. Ptolemy's Almagest was the key title for astronomical information until the explorations ond scientific works of Tycho Brahe and Nikolaus Copernicus – also shown at the exhibition – changed the view. The exhibition also show important books which moulded people's understanding but have since been forgotten: Alessandro Piccolomini is presented as one of the early writers to popularize astronomy in the 16th century.
The second part of the exhibition belongs to star cataloguing, and shows Finnish scholars at their work. Finland had its own place in the global research networks since the 18th century, when French scientist Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis traveled to North of Finland to measure a degree of latitude along a line of longitude to investigate whether the earth was flattened at its poles. During the early 19th century Finnish astronomers began to participate in the international mapping efforts. But all was not professional: also hobbyists’ star atlases and guidebooks from the 1800s to the present day are also shown.
Finally the exhibitions shows pieces of traditional equipment as well as pictures of the University of Helsinki Observatory, built in 1834. The Department of Astronomy used the observatory until last year.
The View from Paradise closes at the end of April. Soon after, the library will open a new exhibition What could kill the Book. The Book Now and in the Future in the gallery. In the Rotunda the library is also preparing to open an exhibition on Kalevala, the Finnish national epic which was first published 175 years ago. Both will be open during SHARP's annual conference in August.
Showing posts with label popularization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label popularization. Show all posts
2010/03/15
2009/08/10
History of Writing in the Middle Ages - Book Review
Tuomas Heikkilä. Piirtoja ja kirjaimia. Kirjoittamisen kulttuurihistoriaa keskiajalla. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 2009 [Tuomas Heikkilä. Strokes and Letters. Cultural History of Writing in the Middle Ages. Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki, 2009].
Jyrki Hakapää
Piirtoja ja kirjaimia is the latest proof of Finnish researchers’ lively interest in medieval book culture. It sums up many recent findings and research results for a wider readership and succeeds admirably in creating an overview of a European history of writing through the Middle Ages. While writing in the European context, Tuomas Heikkilä (acting professor of general history at the University of Helsinki) seeks also to reveal “an open secret” of Finnish history, as he points out in the first pages of the book: although for a long time Finnish scholars have known the presence of writing and books in local societies at least from the 12th century onwards, that is, from the time when Catholic church arrived to south-western shores of the current Finland, this knowledge has not reached wider acknowledgement. Drawing from a number of examples, Heikkilä shows that medieval Finland and its writers and readers were full-blooded participants of European cultural activity and heritage during the late Middle Ages.
Heikkilä begins by explaining various equipments and raw materials that were needed for writing and creating the final product the manuscript. He continues with presenting the environment for writing: how the church, administration, educational institutions and business created the need and possibilities for putting texts on parchment or paper. He introduces the history of various styles of writing and discusses the uses and influences of writing and written texts in the medieval times. At the end Heikkilä shortly presents the emergence of the printing press and the gradual decline of the medieval scribal tasks.
The challenge for Heikkilä's task of combining a European tradition to Finnish culture is the scarcity or anonymity of original material in Finnish archives. Only a dozen or so locally produced or used medieval codices have survived to modern times. Other sources have revealed only few bishops' and monasteries' acquisitions and library collections. Collections of fragments have been left unexplored.
Especially the last-mentioned fragments are a difficult source material: as the promotion of Lutheranism progressed in the late 16th and early 17th century Swedish realm, the administration broke old and in the new settings infidel catholic manuscript books in sheets. These sheets disappeared for example to the sky as firework wrappers or artillery’s pouches for gunpowder, or to the garbage cans as candy and spice wrappers. However, in the end we might have to thank the civil servants of the early modern era, because many sheets were used to cover official document collections and have survived until today. These archives have been now explored, and Heikkilä and other Finnish medievalists have recently taken the task to find, save, identify and study over 10 000 fragmentary sheets as well as finally to digitize them – a project, which will surely be presented in this blog later on. The project greatly increases our chances of understanding medieval societies both in Finnish and European contexts.
In Piirtoja ja kirjaimia, the Middle Ages are not one continuous entity, but have multiple periods. Heikkilä mentions three renaissances – the Carolingian renaissance, renaissance of the 12th century, and the proper Renaissance – as periods which witness the emergence of written culture’s modern elements. The book concentrates on the late medieval centuries from 13th century onwards and follows the research tradition to separate the monastic and secular eras of medieval writings. Heikkilä concentrates on the increase and distribution of scribal culture and its products as well as the secularization and professionalization of the book culture during the last medieval centuries. He takes part in the discussion on the influences of the printing press by arguing how many of the elements of the print culture – various bibliographic terms, font styles, range of punctuation marks, sizes and forms of codices, isolation of various tasks and professions of the book business, use of vernaculars etc. – had been created already during the age of manuscripts. His vision continues the discussion on the continuous and evolving history of the book culture which took place from the 13th to the 16th century, over the emergence of the printing press. His book works much in the spirit of Marcel Thomas’s introduction on late medieval book culture into Lucien Frebvre's and Henri-Jean Martin's L’Apparition du livre as they both seek to connect the late medieval book history to the history of the printed books.
Heikkilä's book proves that researchers of the medieval manuscript culture adhere to many of the ideas developed within the modern book history. The need to understand the chain of production, distribution and reception is apparent. Especially the need of various skills for producing a copy as well as the living and working conditions of the artists and artisans responsible for this are described well. Heikkilä succeeds also in showing the importance of the writing activities and texts in the medieval societies.
While one can criticize Heikkilä’s insistence on the significance of the medieval scribal culture for the later developments in book culture, he convincingly argues for the necessity of combining the study of the book cultures of the late medieval centuries and early modern period together. Too often, at least in the Finnish context, researchers tend to study either the medieval manuscripts or the later printed books, but rarely are they put together in one research project. While Piirtoja ja kirjaimia is an admirable work on medieval history of writing, it also makes intriguing suggestions for studying the oral, manuscript and written culture together.
Jyrki Hakapää
Piirtoja ja kirjaimia is the latest proof of Finnish researchers’ lively interest in medieval book culture. It sums up many recent findings and research results for a wider readership and succeeds admirably in creating an overview of a European history of writing through the Middle Ages. While writing in the European context, Tuomas Heikkilä (acting professor of general history at the University of Helsinki) seeks also to reveal “an open secret” of Finnish history, as he points out in the first pages of the book: although for a long time Finnish scholars have known the presence of writing and books in local societies at least from the 12th century onwards, that is, from the time when Catholic church arrived to south-western shores of the current Finland, this knowledge has not reached wider acknowledgement. Drawing from a number of examples, Heikkilä shows that medieval Finland and its writers and readers were full-blooded participants of European cultural activity and heritage during the late Middle Ages.
Heikkilä begins by explaining various equipments and raw materials that were needed for writing and creating the final product the manuscript. He continues with presenting the environment for writing: how the church, administration, educational institutions and business created the need and possibilities for putting texts on parchment or paper. He introduces the history of various styles of writing and discusses the uses and influences of writing and written texts in the medieval times. At the end Heikkilä shortly presents the emergence of the printing press and the gradual decline of the medieval scribal tasks.
The challenge for Heikkilä's task of combining a European tradition to Finnish culture is the scarcity or anonymity of original material in Finnish archives. Only a dozen or so locally produced or used medieval codices have survived to modern times. Other sources have revealed only few bishops' and monasteries' acquisitions and library collections. Collections of fragments have been left unexplored.
Especially the last-mentioned fragments are a difficult source material: as the promotion of Lutheranism progressed in the late 16th and early 17th century Swedish realm, the administration broke old and in the new settings infidel catholic manuscript books in sheets. These sheets disappeared for example to the sky as firework wrappers or artillery’s pouches for gunpowder, or to the garbage cans as candy and spice wrappers. However, in the end we might have to thank the civil servants of the early modern era, because many sheets were used to cover official document collections and have survived until today. These archives have been now explored, and Heikkilä and other Finnish medievalists have recently taken the task to find, save, identify and study over 10 000 fragmentary sheets as well as finally to digitize them – a project, which will surely be presented in this blog later on. The project greatly increases our chances of understanding medieval societies both in Finnish and European contexts.
In Piirtoja ja kirjaimia, the Middle Ages are not one continuous entity, but have multiple periods. Heikkilä mentions three renaissances – the Carolingian renaissance, renaissance of the 12th century, and the proper Renaissance – as periods which witness the emergence of written culture’s modern elements. The book concentrates on the late medieval centuries from 13th century onwards and follows the research tradition to separate the monastic and secular eras of medieval writings. Heikkilä concentrates on the increase and distribution of scribal culture and its products as well as the secularization and professionalization of the book culture during the last medieval centuries. He takes part in the discussion on the influences of the printing press by arguing how many of the elements of the print culture – various bibliographic terms, font styles, range of punctuation marks, sizes and forms of codices, isolation of various tasks and professions of the book business, use of vernaculars etc. – had been created already during the age of manuscripts. His vision continues the discussion on the continuous and evolving history of the book culture which took place from the 13th to the 16th century, over the emergence of the printing press. His book works much in the spirit of Marcel Thomas’s introduction on late medieval book culture into Lucien Frebvre's and Henri-Jean Martin's L’Apparition du livre as they both seek to connect the late medieval book history to the history of the printed books.
Heikkilä's book proves that researchers of the medieval manuscript culture adhere to many of the ideas developed within the modern book history. The need to understand the chain of production, distribution and reception is apparent. Especially the need of various skills for producing a copy as well as the living and working conditions of the artists and artisans responsible for this are described well. Heikkilä succeeds also in showing the importance of the writing activities and texts in the medieval societies.
While one can criticize Heikkilä’s insistence on the significance of the medieval scribal culture for the later developments in book culture, he convincingly argues for the necessity of combining the study of the book cultures of the late medieval centuries and early modern period together. Too often, at least in the Finnish context, researchers tend to study either the medieval manuscripts or the later printed books, but rarely are they put together in one research project. While Piirtoja ja kirjaimia is an admirable work on medieval history of writing, it also makes intriguing suggestions for studying the oral, manuscript and written culture together.
2009/07/02
Hibolire Doctoral Summer School - Tampere June 4-5 2009
Ilkka Mäkinen
It was a cold (+5 degrees Celsius), wet and rainy early June 2009 in Tampere, Finland (hard to imagine now, a couple of weeks later, when it is +25 degrees). I had advised the participants of the HIBOLIRE Doctoral Summer School that this time of year was usually nice and warm: but now “rough winds” did “shake the darling buds of June”. Happily, leaving the cold winds outside, the 25-person group gathered at the new faculty building of the University of Tampere to create their own warmth. The participants, all members of HIBOLIRE, came from different Scandinavian and Baltic countries.
It was a cold (+5 degrees Celsius), wet and rainy early June 2009 in Tampere, Finland (hard to imagine now, a couple of weeks later, when it is +25 degrees). I had advised the participants of the HIBOLIRE Doctoral Summer School that this time of year was usually nice and warm: but now “rough winds” did “shake the darling buds of June”. Happily, leaving the cold winds outside, the 25-person group gathered at the new faculty building of the University of Tampere to create their own warmth. The participants, all members of HIBOLIRE, came from different Scandinavian and Baltic countries.
The mood was enthusiastic since, among the senior members and the doctoral students, were new faces some of whom were to speak before an international audience for the very first time: true “darling buds”. An item of news that also inspired was that our HIBOLIRE member Henrik Horstbøll had been installed as the new professor of Book and Library History at the University of Lund, on that very day. Unfortunately, because of that event, he could not participate in our summer school.
HIBOLIRE, the Nordic-Baltic Research Network on the History of Books, Libraries and Reading, is a multinational and multidisciplinary network of scholars from Scandinavian and Baltic countries. We also wish to improve our cooperation with scholars in northwestern Russia. The activities of HIBOLIRE are supported by Nordforsk, an independent institution operating under the Nordic Council of Ministers for Education and Research. Our intitial three-year funding covered the period from 2006 to 2009, while an extension will enable further activities from 2009 to 2010. The network organises annually at least one doctoral seminar, in addition to other events. Next year, our main goal will be to co-organize the annual SHARP conference in Helsinki. Minna Ahokas, a member of the organizing committee, informed us of the present status of planning.
The first keynote speaker, Dr. Lotte Hellinga from UK, former Deputy Keeper at the British Library, opened the summer school with her speech titled Histories of the book, old and new, and what they have in common, where she touched upon many important themes. What especially struck me was the importance she laid on the popularization of book history. Why doesn’t someone write a “Gutenberg Code” or a “Schoeffer Code”? Book history is full of good stories. The popularization theme is closely connected with another matter she raised, namely, the importance of lifting one’s eyes from details and over the national boundaries in order to see and talk about the larger context.
Dr. Hellinga’s coments about popularization reminded us that our network had listed popularization as one of the initial aims of HIBOLIRE. Popularization in a manner that is both exacting and appealing is difficult to do, but in our own way we shall try, by publishing in July a popular book on the library histories in the region that our network covers; indeed covering a large part of the globe from Greenland to Finland. The book will be titled Library Spirit in the Nordic and Baltic Countries. Historical Perspectives. Not a “Library Code” (perhaps a “Dewey Code”?) but hopefully more accessible than ordinary treatises on library history.
The theme of the summer school, Books as material objects, books in space, books in movement, was deliberately unrestrictive, since all doctoral students of the network irrespective of the subject of their dissertation should have a chance to receive feedback. The theme was intended also to involve jointly both book and library historians. Nevertheless, one theme, books in space, was so successful in gathering speakers that the theme earned its appearance in the title of the summer school. One of the keynote speakers, Prof. Alistair Black of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke about Books, Buildings and Social Engineering. Early Public Libraries in Britain from Past to Present based on the newly-published book co-authored by himself, Simon Pepper and Kaye Bagshaw. His presentation was as richly documented with images as the book itself. I believe it was fortunate that the somewhat trite term “social concept” was replaced by “social engineering”.
A senior member of the network, Nan Dahlkild from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, entered the history of library buildings from the Scandinavian angle, and a doctoral student, Pentti Mehtonen, from the University of Tampere presented his dissertation project on the discourse on library buildings in the Finnish professional press. The trio was completed by the presence of Ms. Hanna Aaltonen, who has written an extensive article on Finnish public library buildings in the recent Suomen yleisten kirjastojen historia (History of Finnish public libraries) published just after the summer school. Such a congregation of themes is very welcome, even if it is not possible always to achive, since research themes in the fields covered by the network are so varied.
There were additional senior researcher papers by Wolfgang Undorf (Royal Library, Stockholm) challenging a number of concepts that we take as self-evident in book history, and Alma Braziniune (Vilnius University, Lithuania) about the private library as an object of research in book science and librarianship. Both subjects also have a contemporary importance given the current digitisation of books and even whole libraries. These papers should surely be published as articles or books.
It is impossible to provide summaries of every doctoral students’ paper at the summer school. And, fortunately, there is no reason to do so. Students will be presenting the results of their work in due course themselves: the entire workshop program becoming available at here.
We were successful in gathering people from different levels of scholarship, from different countries and with different disciplinary backgrounds. The mix created a fruitful opportunity for getting to know people and exchanging information and opinions. A problem was the different rhythm of universities in the Nordic countries that prevented people from certain countries from participating. This fact must be taken into account when future events are planned.
Doc. Ilkka Mäkinen is a lecturer at the Department of Information Studies, University of Tampere, and the treasurer of HIBOLIRE.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
