Nordic Women’s Writing and Religious Faith

This book explores how Nordic women writers for more than 400 years operated within the Lutheran state churches. It is a cross-disciplinary anthology bringing together 13 studies on Nordic women’s writing, examined through the lens of religion. Whereas the Lutheran state churches restricted women’s agency, they simultaneously provided platforms for women’s voices during the period covered in the anthology: from the Protestant Reformation around 1550 until around 1920. A wide range of material is investigated—from a prayer book owned by a noblewoman during the Reformation in Denmark to transcriptions of spiritualist séances held in the early twentieth century by the Norwegian women’s rights activist Ragna Nielsen; from Icelandic poetry on female martyr saints to Finnish late-nineteenth-century feminist magazines; from unpublished poems written in a leprosy hospital in Iceland by the unknown Kristín Guðmundsdóttir to novels written by the world-famous Swedish author Fredrika Bremer. The focus is on Lutheran Christianity, but the anthology unearths an undercurrent of Catholic, Marian devotion running through the centuries. As the twentieth century drew near, the religious landscape was diversified—the revivalist movements are highlighted in Norwegian hymns and Finnish novels, while the Swedish-Jewish Sophie Elkan’s short stories are related to Rabbinic storytelling.
This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of Nordic literature, women’s studies, religious studies, and cultural history. It addresses broad subject areas including gender and religion, literary history, Scandinavian studies, feminist theology, and the intersection of faith and women’s agency in early modern and modern Europe.
The chapters in this book were originally published as special issues of Women’s Writing.