Physical and Cultural Space in Pre-Industrial Europe: Methodological Approaches to Spatiality

By Nordic Academic Press

Written by 19 scholars of history, archaeology, and ethnology, this book takes a multidisciplinary approach to European spaces of the past and the human agents within them. Prior to the Industrial Era, the geography of Europe posed problems but also offered possibilities for its people. Distances created obstacles to communication and state formation, but at the same time, inhabitants and officials in peripheral areas gained room to pursue more independent action, allowing unique customs to flourish. Focusing on northern Europe, this history answers how early modern Europeans - rulers, officials, aristocrats, scholars, priests, and commoners - perceived, utilized, and organized the space around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9789187121203

Book preview

Introduction

Mapping Physical and Cultural Space in Pre-industrial Europe

Marko Lamberg

Space in history

Stockholm is known for its picturesque Old Town, whose narrow streets and alleyways are often crowded with tourists. The heart of the Old Town remains, as it was in the Middle Ages, the Great Market Place and the tall brick houses that surround it. We know from old records that these elegant houses were once owned and in many cases occupied by wealthy townspeople. However, it seems that the southwestern corner of the square was a less attractive location and that well-to-do inhabitants avoided living in the adjacent houses. Why was this? The reason becomes apparent when we consider the name of the street that leads westwards from this corner: Kåkbrinken (Pillory Slope). In medieval and early modern times, the pillory stood in this corner of the Great Market Place. It is evident that the more respectable strata of the community did not want to be personally associated with such an environment, polluted as it was by shame, crime and the presence of the lower orders. Although a respectable burgher might buy a house next to the pillory, he would be more likely to rent it out than live in it himself.¹ This single corner of Stockholm thus provides us with one example of how space was used and perceived–both concretely and mentally–within an early modern society.

Over the past two decades, space has become a widely researched theme within the humanities. During the 1990s scholars from various disciplines began to show a growing interest in borders and boundaries, both as concrete entities and as abstractions. Although interest in borders and boundaries persists, the themes of publications and seminars since the turn of the century suggest that scholars are increasingly focusing on what lies in-between sites of demarcation: in other words, space. One can claim that it has become fashionable to address and discuss space, for instance through analysis of how space is perceived and utilized. This ‘spatial turn’ can be seen as one of the most recent scholarly paradigm shifts.²

The concept of space has simultaneously undergone a deep process of theorization. Today, historians (like other humanists) operate with several spatial concepts such as space, place, area, environment, landscape, region, distance, proximity and mapping. Instead of being treated as a single entity, space is now seen as something multifaceted; consequently, we can speak of multiple spaces. The idea of multiple levels of space is reflected in the concept of ‘place’: there is agreement across several disciplines that this key concept should be defined as an aspect of space that has been given a special meaning in a specific cultural and temporal context.³ The area close to the pillory in an early modern town could also no doubt be termed a ‘place’ according to this theorized meaning. But spaces do not need to be concrete, and not all spaces can be measured and defined numerically or by means of mathematical quantities. The Stockholm pillory example clearly demonstrates how a concrete space is also a social or mental space when it is connected to contemporary worldviews and values, in this case medieval and early modern conceptions of honour and dishonour. From the point of view of human culture, space (like any other aspect of human culture) is a social construction. The avoidance of the pillory site proves how the relationship towards space or a specific place is constructed in an interaction between the ‘mental’ dimension and the ‘real’ dimension of space: places are never merely concrete or imagined, since within the human mind concrete and imagined aspects of place interact and can even be intertwined.⁴ In addition to the existence of the Stockholm pillory area in physical reality, people of the distant past ascribed their own culturally determined connotations to this particular space, the imagined character of the site. This imaginary or associative aspect of place, in turn, influenced (to some extent) how the physical space was perceived and utilized.

Correspondingly, places of fantasy, such as the settings of myths or folk tales, can reflect elements and contours of concrete physical places. Even ideas about the afterlife are not free from the spatial imagination. Both learned and popular medieval descriptions of hell, for example, are expressed through references to spatial features such as ‘a waiting room’, ‘a narrow bridge’ and ‘the deepest gulf’. Likewise, although the lost souls have been separated from their physical bodies, they are nevertheless imagined as movable spatial beings upon whom eternal and renewed torments can be enacted.⁵ As human beings, we live and act in physical space, and so it is natural that our perceptions of the world around us also affect the way we describe places we have never visited. In this sense, we can claim that human imagination always has some basis in reality. As Franco Moretti’s mappings of nineteenth-century fiction indicate, it is possible to identify hidden and perhaps largely unconscious cultural structures through analysis of the use of real-life places as settings for fictional characters and action. One recurring pattern of the novels highlighted by Moretti was the ethnocentric worldview, one of the uni-versalities of human culture.⁶ This finding reflects the character of space as identity marker. Places have identities of their own and people usually have or develop an identity on the basis of the place where they are living–or they are at least expected to have an identity of their own by outsiders. Human identities are always interpretations of the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘others’. Simultaneously they are spatially determined.⁷

Due to the ‘three-dimensionality’ of human imagination the relationship between the spatial turn and the preceding important paradigm shift, the linguistic turn, should not be characterized as oppositional. Rather, the spatial turn can be viewed as a continuation and broadening of the insights of the linguistic turn. During the 1970s, humanists began to argue that language not only affects how we humans perceive the world around us but also constitutes and constructs our reality.⁸ As we have already seen, perceptions and descriptions of space are connected to language. Maps, in turn, can be equated with language. According to the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, a map is usually a ‘drawing or other representation of the earth’s surface or a part of it made on a flat surface, showing the distribution of physical or geographical features (and often also including socio-economic, political, agricultural, meteorological, etc., information), with each point in the representation corresponding to an actual geographical position according to a fixed scale or projection…’⁹ A map is indeed a representation furnished with information. Thus, it functions in a similar way to human language, which in both its spoken and written forms is basically a symbolic code system whose purpose is to transmit information. Mind maps, with their visualization of cognitive processes, form a sort of a bridge between verbal communication and representations in maps and other illustrations.¹⁰

Human communication does not have to be objective and neutral; it can and usually does contain a message, a view or an expression of opinion. Maps not only reflect the world but also cast light upon the worldview of the map-drawer. Like words, maps are tools that facilitate the expression of reality within a specific cultural context. In the history of Western cartography, the creation and persistence of the projection devised by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator (1512–1594) provides a well-known but remarkable example of how space can be presented in a way that simultaneously reflects and strengthens existing ideological patterns. All two-dimensional maps have to reconcile the reality of the Earth’s curvature with the restrictions imposed by a flat surface. In the Mercator projection the southernmost and the northernmost latitudes are far longer than those at the equator. The result, given the positioning of the continents, is that Europe and the rest of the northern hemisphere appears to be larger than it is, while Africa, South America and Australia appear disproportionally small. Even today, most Western world maps seem to legitimize the leading economic, political and cultural role of Western civilization. ‘Locally’ accustomed variations of this ethnocentric worldview are also found: in US world maps, for example, the Americas usually occupy a central position (thus splitting Eurasia in half).¹¹

Although the concept has enjoyed increased popularity over the past decade, space has been of interest to a number of scholars for much longer than this. Both Henri Lefebvre’s Production de l’espace and Yi-Fu Tuan’s Topohilia appeared in 1974 and three years later Yi-Fu Tuan published his Space and Place. Lefebvre was apparently influenced by the linguistic turn, and the same was true of Yi Fu-Tuan, at least to a certain extent. But within the fields of history, interest in space has even deeper roots. As Edward W. Soja points out, history and geography ‘were almost inextricably connected’ long before the ideas of Lefebvre and Yi-Fu Tuan began to inspire humanists.¹² Soja cites Herodotus as the earliest example of a pre-modern interdisciplinary scholar who addressed the concept of space. Indeed, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern era it was customary to detail both history and geography within learned treatises about nations and realms. In addition, ethnographic details were also often included: early scholars were frequently interested in the habits and customs that prevailed in certain areas. A remarkable example of this holistic pre-scientific approach is offered by the Swedish scholar Olaus Magnus, who published not only the very detailed and beautifully illustrated map Carta marina septentrionalis (1537), but also a quantitative ‘explicatio notarum’ entitled Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555).

The spatial aspect also persisted in more modern research which predated the spatial turn.¹³ History essentially consists of stories about spaces. Traditional history writing was an interpretation of the past of a state and aimed to describe the development of its political and societal contours in spatial frameworks. Modern historians have also maintained their need for spatial descriptions–often combined with a variety of maps that depict a multitude of aspects of human culture. Historical school atlases with their versatile contents can be held as a classic example of mapping tradition within history. Although they are not objective reflections of the past cultures, these atlases (like the Mercator projection) reveal something about the historical context in which they came into being. The historical mapping tradition is connected with sociology and cultural geography in the field of social topography. Because it analyses the division of urban space between different social groups, social topography (which has long-standing roots in German research) can also be regarded as a form of structural mapping.

Ethnographers, in turn, have sought to clarify the geographic spread of different aspects of material culture. In ethnographic atlases, the distribution of different popular customs and beliefs has been presented in the form of maps. In a similar vein, linguists have identified linguistic patterns, including dialectal areas, connected to geographic frameworks.

Why do we still have to map?

Although earlier studies have cast light upon several aspects of human culture, the dynamics of the relationship between human beings and their surrounding physical space have usually been neglected: space has frequently been reduced to a mere static framework, and many maps tell us little, if anything, about how space actually affected the depicted phenomena. Despite standard dictionary definitions and everyday usage, it must be stressed that ‘mapping’ as a scholarly method is not synonymous with ‘cartography’–although clearly historians can learn a lot from the past through map analysis and maps, too, can be utilized as sources for mapping. Mapping does not necessarily involve any concrete physical map: a historian who is undertaking mapping does not have to draw or analyse a visual map. Recognition of the spatial dimension within analysis is the defining characteristic of the mapping method. The spatial dimension can be expressed through non-pictorial means as well as through pictorial presentations. When we address the spatial structures of human culture, we are mapping irrespective of whether we use physical maps or not. Concrete visual maps function merely as tools of study, although naturally they make both the analysis and the presentation of the results more comprehensible for the scholar and his or her audience alike.

Mapping makes the scholar an active agent who considers the use of space and the cultural or societal impact of space in a specific context. When a historian adopts a mapping approach, the outcome is, or should be, a spatially orientated interpretation of a certain physical area–a place. Within present-day mapping there is particular interest in the ways in which space and human culture influence each other. But why should we once again deal with early modern space? Why should the current volume be devoted to mapping this space? Given all the existing theorizing approaches towards spaces, what new insights can be gleaned through the analysis of texts, maps, illustrations and even material remnants that are several hundred years old?

To put it succinctly: space mattered more then than it does nowadays. Of course, space is still significant (and will in all probability continue to be so), but in pre-modern and pre-industrial societies and communities, space was more segregated and hierarchical; the connotations attached to specific places could be very normative and even restrictive. Society was structured according to entirely undemocratic principles and state-formation and nation-building processes were in their infancy. Many everyday boundaries, especially those relating to ‘others’¹⁴ and mental and gendered taboos,¹⁵ were more drastic and more sharply drawn than they are today. However, in other respects aspects of spatiality could be more flexible, blurred or a cause of dissonance: this was particularly true of the boundaries and relationships between different political and judicial unities. Within such unities, space affected the relationship between rulers and their subjects. Concrete physical space –experienced and measured in distances, areas, volumes and physical contours of the environment and nature–influenced the functions of societies in a far deeper way than has been case in later societies with advanced technology and faster means of communication.

Pre-industrial societies and communities could be far removed from each other. Naturally, all distances are relative: what was considered remote before the era of motorized travelling may appear proximate in our modern everyday experiences. Nowadays we spend only an hour or two in order to cover distances that previously necessitated a full day’s travel.¹⁶ Furthermore, factual distance was intertwined with social and mental distance: in early modern reality, ideas about otherness could result in even neighbouring villages being regarded as distant places.¹⁷ The feeling of simultaneity, the consolidation of the calendar and the increasing spread of common information thanks to the invention of printing–all of which have been linked to the origins of national consciousness ¹⁸–would not have been possible if societies had not managed to resolve their problems with distances and peripheries. Of course, this was a slow process and peripheral areas existed in later centuries, as they still do in the globalized world, at least from certain perspectives. Although peripheries persisted, development towards more unified spaces was clearly already underway in the early modern era.

In the course of the unifying processes in pre-industrial societies, the central power had to rely on written and oral information, gathered from across the realm or delivered from the ruler to local representatives. The administrative systems of early states had to take into account the distance between central government and local communities. Although a time-consuming process, map making was one way in which the central power could form an idea about space it controlled or at least should control. One solution was to try to not only control space but also utilize it as a tool of control. This could be achieved by erecting castles, churches and border stones or by sending representatives of the central power to local communities, at least temporarily. In spite of the distances involved, the influence of the central power could be felt at the local level. However, the control of space remained vague: in most cases, the real power that a ruler could wield decreased as distance from the centre increased.

Naturally, at the local level, there were also those who took advantage of the slow flow of information and the limits of central control. For some, unsatisfactorily controlled space offered freedom, a place of safety or a tool of resistance. Some early modern areas continued to remain beyond the control of local authorities, at least for some time. However, not only ordinary subjects of the Crown benefited from distance from the centre: energetic and unscrupulous officials were themselves able to occupy spaces of relative independence and thus build their own power networks. We know more about state formation and mental patterns in centres, less about processes and perceptions in peripheries. As interest in peripheral areas has developed relatively recently,¹⁹ there is room for further analyses.

Presentation of the contents

This volume consists of case studies which describe how medieval and early modern societies conceived, controlled and utilized both physical and mental space. The book covers the period from the Middle Ages to the present day, with a particular focus on the conditions in Western European culture between c. 1400 and c. 1800. The thirteen chapters provide concrete examples of how historians dealing with pre-modern societies collect data (some of which can be very fragmentary) when attempting to reconstruct spatial relationships in and over past environments. It is hoped that the relatively large number of authors has ensured the versatility of the contents. The roots of this book can be found in the research project ‘Politics of Brothers, Neighbours and Friends–Political Culture and Strategies of Influence in Early Modern Sweden c. 1500–1700’, funded by the Academy of Finland. The editors chose to solicit contributions from authors from various disciplines, in order to create a versatile textbook that could engage meaningfully with concepts of spatiality across the humanities.

The case studies are based on strong empirical evidence: various different kinds of sources have been consulted, thus allowing the text as a whole to cast light on pre-industrial societies from several perspectives. The variety of analysed source materials, applied theories and methodologies should ensure that this volume provides valuable resources for researchers, teachers and students with an interest in spatiality.

The following chapters have been divided into six major sub-themes, all of which are connected to spaces and spatiality. Of course, there is some overlap between the content of various chapters, and individual chapters may themselves treat their subjects from several viewpoints and premises.

In the opening chapter, Ismo Puhakka considers the ways in which cartography, topography and coeval religious and political structures were intertwined in the Reformation era. By focusing on the production of sixteenth-century atlases, Puhakka shows how, even though they were beginning to depict profane (non-ecclesiastic) spaces, cartographic and topographic representations continued to be deeply influenced by theological interpretations. However, one cannot trace any clearly Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist or other narrowly defined religious tradition among atlas-makers. Rather, geographers borrowed various elements from each other, neglecting religious and cultural boundaries. Naturally, their ‘excerpts’ were influenced by their own mental and cultural backgrounds and surroundings.

Kimmo Katajala is also concerned with borders and maps. The borders of medieval and early modern states (pre-French Revolution) have often been viewed as indefinite frontier zones. Although this description seems well suited to theories about national state-building processes, it is less easy to maintain such a position when faced with archival sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: contrary to common beliefs among historians, the idea of the linear border already existed in the Middle Ages. Through analysis of a large collection of maps dating from the fifteenth century to 1800,²⁰ Katajala is able to outline and discuss the ideas and worldviews reflected in these medieval and early modern representations. Special attention is paid to the cartographic development of the early modern Swedish state, especially its eastern border and border zone (which lay in largely remote and scarcely populated forested areas, far away from Swedish political centres).

Although Jukka Korpela also considers borders and the same eastern geographic area discussed by Katajala, he focuses on the local level and provides analysis of movements in peripheral space. The vast forests of east Fennoscandia had originally been settled by semi-nomadic hunter–fisher populations. However, colonization movements by Sweden and Russia in the late medieval period saw the emergence of two competing realms within the region. Both administrations sought to extend their reach in order to secure resources and exert control: roads were built and there was a subsequent decline in the role played by the water routes used by the native population. Korpela considers how Europeanization and Christianization processes affected the division and conception of space and reach in the border forests.

Piia Einonen combines the concept of power with the spatial dimension of an individual officeholder’s authority. In her chapter, we follow Johan Rosenhane, a seventeenth-century Swedish nobleman, on his journeys: first within the peripheral part of the Swedish realm (partially overlapping with the geographical foci of Katajala and Korpela) and then as a governor in a more central location. In practice, Rosenhane’s political power was attached to a number of relatively remote towns. Moreover, the existing networks of local power elites in peripheral areas made it difficult for him, a royal official coming from ‘outside’, to exert any kind of control over his allocated region. Such a situation required the governor to travel extensively. Letters, gifts and even ritualistic welcomes and departures could also serve to diminish the impact of spatial distance and its consequences. For Johan Rosenhane the spatial dimensions of power were concrete and essential. It seems that distances were of great importance to him: he used to record the distance and duration of his journeys in his diary (a rare early modern source of its kind).

Ulla Koskinen remains in the same geographic and political periphery, but considers the transmission of information between the periphery and the centre. The analysis focuses on responses to the king’s 1583 order that a fortress should be built on the river Neva (Sw. Nyen) in Ingria. At the same time, it is also a story of the everyday life, or struggle, of the noble officeholders who took care of administration at the edges of kingdom. Koskinen focuses on the process of executing the decisions and demands issued by the central power in the form of letters. The central concern addressed by Koskinen is whether local officeholders could take advantage of their distance from the centre, the slow speed of communication and the central power’s lack of up-to-date knowledge of events on the ground.

Letters are also central in the next chapter, in which Christian Kühner maps the network of a politically active nobleman. Louis II de Bourbon, known as the Grand Condé, was a key figure in seventeenth-century France. His contacts stretched across the continent, even extending into the geographically peripheral kingdom of Sweden. By analysing the Grand Condé’s correspondence, Kühner operates with European macro-space and considers the international and the spatial dimensions of the Grand Condé’s network during his most politically active period (from the 1640s to the 1660s).

The importance of networks as a means of occupying and controlling space is examined in more depth by Marko Hakanen in his study of the space controlled by an influential family. This seventeenth-century family operated within an aristocratic fiefdom that covered a vast but sparsely populated area of northern Finland. Hakanen’s analysis shows that although it was possible for one individual’s sphere of influence to cover a very wide area, this was dependent upon the utilization of social networks. Such networks were based on family strategies: male family members would be appointed to various strategic offices within the state administration. Using data relating to the family and its networks, Hakanen maps out the area over which the head of the family was able to exert control, with the help of his eight children (who all held important local offices and acted as bailiffs, clergymen, rural police chiefs or jurisdictional district judges).

Networking and dawdling officeholders were not the only obstacles that obstructed the central power’s aspirations to control local space. Janne Haikari implies that within local communities the power of the victorious military state–as seventeenth-century Swedish rule is usually depicted–was not always absolute. The great physical distances involved could also provide subjects of the Crown with opportunities to resist the local authorities. Haikari focuses on an adulterous affair that came to the attention of the courts in the mid-seventeenth century. Both suspects escaped and were never caught by the authorities. The scene of the crime is not the only place discussed. On the contrary, the limits imposed by the whole geography of the micro-space (including terrain and road network) provide us with a picture of the operational environments both of the local administration in this particular part of western Finland and of the individuals who succeeded in evading the law and its executors.

Power and local space are also addressed by Päivi Maaranen, who leads us to ‘conquered peripheries’. The spatial representations of national or even transnational power were one way of extending such power into the local sphere. Many churches and castles built in the Middle Ages remained as monuments of power in the early modern era. Although some monuments are still standing today, certain landscapes have been lost: a number of churches, chapels and fortifications have disappeared, with few (if any) visible traces left behind. Fortunately, analysis of historical sources and archaeological evidence can provide us with glimpses of some lost landscapes. Maaranen is concerned with how landmarks of secular and religious power and their surroundings would have appeared at the beginning of the early modern period. Landscape analysis of southernmost Finland largely supports the idea that medieval landscapes were organized to some extent. Furthermore, buildings were not simply functional sites, in which necessary secular and religious tasks were performed, they were also built in order to impress others. This paves the way for interpretations of the ways in which members of society may have attempted to secure secular and religious power.

Kari Uotila and Isto Huvila continue with a similar theme but focus on the potential methodological innovations offered by new technology. The writers clarify the ways in which new technology can be used in archaeological research, specifically the modelling of pre-historic or historical sites and landscapes. Uotila and Huvila examine two sites in southwest Finland as case studies. Visualization is given considerable emphasis: it serves as both a tool for presenting results and a method by which collected data can be analysed. Despite the advantages of virtual archaeology, the authors also introduce a note of caution: modelled spaces must always be understood as interpretations and not as exact recreations.

Marko Lamberg, Minna Mäkinen and Merja Uotila lead us to everyday living spheres within early modern communities and societies. Their chapter focuses on the concept of the micro-level border, in the context of a village community. Combining historical and ethnological approaches, the writers explore the various forms of boundaries within the little village of Toivola (close to one of Finland’s oldest highways but still relatively far removed from political and administrative centres). There are several ways to define the space of the village. At one level, the space could be defined by the geographical contours upon which judicial and administrative definitions were based. However, the more abstract aspects of boundaries are also considered: in other words, how ‘concrete’ or administrative boundaries have been involved in the construction of local conceptions of ‘us’ and ‘others’ and how those boundaries were nevertheless crossed.

Everyday space and culture is also considered by Vesa-Pekka Herva, Timo Ylimaunu, Titta Kallio-Seppä, Tiina Kuokkanen and Risto Nurmi, who focus their attention on eighteenth-century social topographies. Although one of the chapter’s central topics is clearly the distribution of wealth, the need for privacy within an early modern space is also foregrounded. The authors chart the mention of curtains in probate inventories from the remote town of Tornio (Sw. Torneå)–curtains were gradually becoming a more common feature of the material culture of early modern elites. By mapping the distribution of curtains in urban homes, the authors are able to draw conclusions about the need to distinguish and mark the boundaries between private and public spaces.

The question of distribution of wealth is also considered in the final chapter. Here, Ilkka Nummela examines and maps variations in levels of wealth and the geographical concentration of wealth in late sixteenth-century Finland. The Reformation and the growing degree of centralism in administration and jurisdiction–all trends that had been initiated by the king–had changed the economic patterns of Finnish society in many ways. One outcome was a decline in the number of farms owned by peasants. However, because conditions and forms of agriculture varied across Finland, different kinds of premises and solutions were employed in order to react to the specific changes faced. Nummela’s analysis of tax lists from 1571 highlights this variance.

This volume places considerable emphasis on peripheries: contacts with and from peripheries, as well as everyday patterns within peripheral areas. Of course, periphery and centre are relative concepts: for most western Europeans early modern Sweden appeared to occupy a geographical periphery, but within Swedish space there were internal conceptions of centre and periphery that could vary according to context. Similarly, seventeenth-century Sweden has often been seen as a prime example of an early modern military state, in which everyday culture was impregnated by religious fundamentalism and the lives of the subjects strictly controlled by the authorities. However, several of the chapters in this volume challenge this picture.

Although most case studies deal with Sweden and especially its eastern peripheries, the interested reader should find that the methods and findings presented in different chapters can be generalized and utilized as tools of comparison within a wider European context. Broadly speaking, our case studies deal with three different categories of spatial processes: how space was depicted and sensed; how space was occupied, divided, controlled and crossed; and how space could be used as a tool of independence and resistance within the early modern world. There are certainly more sub-themes, which the reader is now at leisure to explore.

Notes

1

Lamberg 2000, p. 147.

2

The spatial turn is discussed, for instance, in Warf & Arias (eds.) 2009 and Kingston 2010. See also the thematic issues of Scandia (2008:2) and Historiallinen Aikakauskirja (2010:1), both devoted to the spatial turn within the history discipline.

3

Yi-Fu Tuan 1977; Massey 2005, p. 138–142, 183–184; Knuuttila, Laaksonen & Piela (eds.) 2006.

4

Lefebvre 1991, pp. 6–7, 11–14 and Chapter 2; Soja 1996, Chapter 2.

5

Dinzelbacher 1999; Ankarloo 2003.

6

Moretti 1998. For an adaptation of Moretti’s method in Nordic context, see Lamberg 2009. For other analyses of the relationship between space and cultural variety, see e.g. Gordon & Klein (eds.) 2001, esp. Part II; Sanford 2002, Chapter 1 and Clarke 2006, esp. Chapter 3.

7

Paasi 1986; Knuuttila & Paasi 1995; Soja 1996, pp. 87–88; Allen 1999; Lord Smail 2000; Tilley 2006; Knuuttila, Laaksonen & Piela (eds.) 2006; Jones & Olwig (eds.) 2007.

8

Clark 2004.

9

Oxford Dictionary of the English Language: ‘map’: I.1.a.

10

Buzan 1996.

11

Massey 1995; King 1996, p. 37; Brotton 1997, pp. 166–169. Maps as reflections of ethnocentrism or hegemonic aspirations are also discussed in Yi-Fu Tuan 1974, Chapter 4; Black 2000 and Anderson 2006, pp. 170–178.

12

Soja 1996, p. 167. See also François, P., Syrjämaa T. & Terho, H. 2008, p. xi.

13

See, for example, Robinson & Petchenik 1976, Chapter 5 (‘The Conception of Space’).

14

Snell 2003; Lamberg 2007.

15

Romano 1989; Stark 1998; Eilola 2004; Coster & Spicer 2005; Spicer & Hamilton (eds.) 2005; Raguin & Stanbury (eds.) 2005; Pohl 2006; Flather 2007; Cohen 2008.

16

Kühnel (ed.) 1992; Retsö 2007; Betteridge (ed.) 2007.

17

Snell 2003. Cf., though, Dyer (ed.) 2007. See also the chapter written by Marko Lamberg, Minna Mäkinen and Merja Uotila in this volume.

18

Anderson 2006, Chapter 3.

19

Regarding earlier approaches towards peripheries, especially in Nordic context, see Heikkinen 1988; Harrison 1995; Harrison 1998; Häyrynen & Landgren (eds.) 1997; Simonson 1999; Johansson (ed.) 2002; Lamberg 2003; Matikainen 2004; Stenqvist Millde 2007.

20

The Norderskiöld Collection in the National Library of Finland, Helsinki.

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PART I

EARLY MODERN MAPPING DECODED

CHAPTER 1

Theology and Map Publishing

Ismo Puhakka

And in this corruption of nature, however, God has given such a good judgment on man, there is nothing in this universe, so well hidden or distant, that this sovereign spirit had not attacked and enforced to be seen till the core.¹

Antoine du Pinet, Plantz, povrtraitz et descriptions de plusieurs villes et forteresses, tant de l’evrope, Asie, que des Indes, & Terres neuues (Lyon, 1564).

Introduction

Antoine du Pinet, a pastor and editor of one the first French atlases, praised Man’s privileged ability with the noble disciplines of cosmography and chorography to allow the Cosmos to be seen. In this essay, I will draw some very tentative initial outlines of an interesting, but only narrowly researched, phenomenon of mid-sixteenth-century map publishing. The primary question raised here is: why during a certain period, broadly from the 1530s to the 1570s, did many of those (few) authors editing atlases in France seem to have links to some sort of Protestantism? Was there something within Protestant thought that supported map production? I am perfectly aware that ‘Protestant thought’ is not a monolith and that there were significant differences between different forms of Protestantism. However, this relative variety inside something we call Protestantism should not be used as a pretext to avoid considering new perspectives to aid our understanding of the history of cartography. Because an impressionistic view can sometimes illuminate better the contours and ideas of its subject than can a minutely detailed work, I hope that you, dear reader, will go through this humble draft with an open mind, taking the several obscure expressions and concepts contained within as ‘bricks to knock the door with’: when the door opens, the ‘brick’ can be thrown away.

The following pages are arranged in a somewhat head-to-toe manner. I will begin with theoretical considerations and then move on to the more solid landscape of a real case. Thus, in the first section I will take a broader look at the transformations which took place in sixteenth-century cartography and tentatively discuss what kind of role religion may have played in this process. The next section discusses the ideas of the two foremost Protestant theologians, Philip Melanchthon and John Calvin. Melanchthon and Calvin represent two different branches of Protestant theology: Lutheran and Calvinist. However, irrespective of the differences between them, in broader theological currents they