During the Enlightenment, other peoples, and also their cultures, were much discussed, with debates often focusing on their value as human beings and the level of tolerance that they were to be granted. Books on 'outer worlds', classified in libraries as historia, were an integral part of these deliberations as they conveyed distinct perceptions of peoples and places to their readers. This book explores how the broader world was presented to a Norwegian audience by means of both statistical analysis of books on 'the other' in Enlightenment libraries and consideration of how peoples were portrayed in bestselling works. Intriguingly, book distribution was very uneven, and the views that the bestsellers promoted were as multifaceted as the Enlightenment itself, with the texts expressing both prejudice and admiration, depending on the identity of the author and thee very context in which they were written.

"Elephants are not picked from trees" are the words of Swedish taxidermist and conservator David Sjölander, spoken while he was in Angola looking for a fine bull elephant specimen in the autumn of 1948. At the age of 62 Sjölander was to satisfy his life's dream of shooting the elephant he for so long had wished to prepare and exhibit. The African elephant was to be the main attraction in the Mammal Room of the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History. Liv Emma Thorsen, professor of cultural history, has reconstructed the collection history of four mammals exhibited in the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History that attracted much attention when they were displayed to the public for the first time: The elephant, gorilla, Tonkean macaque and walrus. The book examines how the museum acquired animals for its exhibits from 1906 to 1948, and how living animal bodies became museum exhibits. Using photographs and documents from the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History, the book shows that these museums are in possession of valuable material for writing the cultural history of animals, and that the museums of natural history display a nature that is historically, socially and culturally construed.

Contents: Ancient Studies, Thomas Heine Nielsen An Essay on the Extent and Significance of the Greek Athletic Culture in the Classical Period, Vincent Gabrielsen The Piraeus and the Athenian Navy: recent archaeological and historical advances, Helmut Brückner, Alexander Herda, Marc Müllenhoff, Wolfgang Rabbel, & Harald Stümpel On the Lion Harbour and Other Harbours in Miletos: recent historical, archaeological, sedimentological, and geophysical research, Silke Müth The Historical Context of the City Wall of Messene: preconditions, written sources, success balance, and societal impacts, James Roy Emplekton Technique in Fortification at Ithome/Messene, Megalopolis, and Mantinea: the work of Theban military engineers?, Klavs Randsborg Kephallénia Masonry, Stella Drougou Hellenistic Pottery – Content and Methodology; Art Historical Studies, Karen Nystrøm Simonsen Immortalised in Marble: Lord Byron portrayed by Bertel Thorvaldsen; Reports on Danish Fieldwork in Greece, Maria Andreadaki-Vlazaki & Erik Hallager Excavations at the Agia Aikaterini Square, Kastelli, Khania 2005 and 2008: a preliminary report, Erik Hallager, Yannis Tzedakis & Maria Andreadaki-Vlazaki The Greek–Swedish Excavations at Kastelli, Khania 2001: a preliminary report, Erik Hallager, Yannis Tzedakis & Maria Andreadaki-Vlazaki The Greek–Swedish–Danish Excavations at Kastelli, Khania 2010: a preliminary report, Olympia Vikatou, Rune Frederiksen & Søren Handberg The Danish–Greek Excavations at Kalydon, Aitolia. The Theatre: preliminary report from the 2011 and 2012 campaigns, Bjørn Lovén & Mads Møller Nielsen Zea Harbour Project – preliminary report 2009-2010.

War and conflicts have always played a significant role in defining national identities, often with reference to events that happened centuries ago. The role of passing on collective memories of these types of events has become even more complex in a globalising world, where new configurations of cosmopolitan memories challenge more locally and nationally based memories. The many aspects of societies' remembering and forgetting call for interdisciplinary studies. This book reflects this effort. With reference to current theories of cultural memory, it explores how memories of war and conflict are passed on from generation to generation, how these complex processes have transformed and shaped collective identities, and how they are still inform national 'conversations'. Contributions from, among others, James Wertsch, Alistair Thomson, Judith Pollman, and Paula Hamilton.

We have evolved to enjoy sleep, sex and sweets ─ and so we do. But negativity permeates our lives too: we are drawn to murder and violence on the news; we remember the schoolyard bully as if it was yesterday, and we are taught to accept boring education. It is in our genes, but it is also deeply ingrained in our culture. We must pull ourselves together! This is the message from Hans Henrik Knoop, Associate Professor at Aarhus Univesity, President of the European Network for Positive Psychology. If we create the right conditions for growth and self-regulation, we can raise ourselves above primitive desires to achieve far greater well-being.

The late Hellenistic period, spanning the 2nd and early 1st centuries BC, was a time of great tumult and violence thanks to nearly incessant warefare. At the same time the period saw the greatest expansion of 'Hellenistic' Greek culture, including ceramics. Papers in this volume explore problems of ceramic chronology (often based on evidence dependent on the violent nature of the period), survey trends in both production and consumption of Hellenistic ceramics particularly in Asia Minor and the Pontic region, and assess the impact of Hellenistic ceramic culture across much of the eastern Mediterranean and into the Black Sea.

Who were and who are the European other(s), and how have their socio-cultural circumstances been aesthetically expressed and discussed in works of literature and art in European history? Members of the interdisciplinary group of researchers "The Borders of Europe" address these questions in this book and shed new light on the notion of European transnational identity, self-conscience and exclusion. Making a mental, space-time journey across and beyond internal and external borders of Europe -- moving from medieval times to the present, from Istanbul to the northernmost tip of Norway -- the authors show how the dangerous dynamics of othering, estrangement, intolerance and hatred have become an inherent part of the continent's history.

Excavations carried out by the Danish Moesgaard Museum on the island of Failaka in Kuwait in 1958-1963 produced a large collection of stone vessel fragments which have ever since puzzled scholars. The settlements excavated on Failaka, Tell F3 and Tell F6, belong to the 2nd millennium BC, but stone vessels of Série Ancienne and Umm an-Nar styles of the 3rd millennium BC are well represented in the Failaka collection. Besides vessels of Wadi Suq and Late Bronze Age styles there is a significant group of figurative decorated stone vessels in a style completely unknown from anywhere else in the region, which may throw light on the mid 2nd millennium Dark Age in South Mesopotamia. The Failaka stone vessel collection is presented in all its details, and the significance of the many different vessel styles is discussed in the context of recent developments in our understanding of Arabian Gulf archaeology.

The present volume is the second publication generated by the Project "Text, Action and Space". The first volume, Exploring Textual Action (Aarhus University Press, Acta Jutlandica, Humanistic Series, 2010), focused on textual action and performativity and their spatial implications. This volume aspires to contribute to the investigation of emotions and their interaction with the dynamics of textuality and spatiality, showing the essential role of literature and the arts in the understanding of affective phenomena, such as emotions, feelings, sentiments, dispositions and moods. All the articles are explorative in the sense that they work with concrete texts and other art works. As in the first volume, those with greater emphasis on the conceptual aspects are united in the section "Elaborations", while the contributions with a stronger analytical perspective can be found under the heading "Explorations".

This book investigates literary and chemical encounters, from medieval alchemy to contemporary science fiction, in works of the likes of Dante, Goethe, Baudelaire and Dag Solstad as well as in literary writing of scientists such as Humphry Davy, Ludwig Boltzmann and Oliver Sachs.

In presenting 25 industrial sites of national significance in the context of changing techno-economic paradigms, this book considers the development of Danish industrial landscapes and built-up environments in the period 1840-1970. Three case studies of ports, sugar mills, and cement plants are also presented. The book concludes with two chapters that discuss perceptions and strategies for the conversion of industrial sites, and an overview is given covering the preservation of industrial heritage in Denmark, historically.

Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other diseases related to modern lifestyles have spread with frightening speed all over the globe, a development that is often correlated with an increase in the consumption of sugar. Latin America -- the cradle of the world's sugar production -- is no exception; it has witnessed an explosion of cases of diabetes, especially in Brazil and Mexico. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the problem, this book asks two questions. First, what are the relationships between diabetes, sugar intake, and ‘dangerous' modern lifestyles? And second, how can research into the material, symbolic, and historical functions of sugar redefine the concept of modernity? Experts in medical science, agriculture, sociology, food science and anthropology, as well as in Latin American, Brazilian, and literary studies use sugar as a prism for understanding the complicated relations between disease and cultural and social habits, between past and present, and between symbolic meanings and material effect. Through this truly interdisciplinary perspective, both traditional approaches to lifestyle diseases and current understandings of modernity are questioned. This book serves as an example of and a call for interdisciplinary dialogue in response to the grand challenges of modern society.

Since its inception in the 19th century, photography has brought to light a vast array of represented subjects. Always situated in some spatial order, photographic representations have been operatively underpinned by social, technical, and institutional mechanisms. Geographically, bodily, and geometrically, the camera has positioned its subjects in social structures and hierarchies, in recognisable localities, and in iconic depth constructions which, although they show remarkable variation, nevertheless belong specifically to the enterprises of the medium. This is the subject of Representational Machines: How photography enlists the workings of institutional technologies in search of establishing new iconic and social spaces. Together, the contributions to this edited volume span historical epochs, social environments, technological possibilities, and genre distinctions. Presenting several distinct ways of producing space photographically, this book opens a new and important field of inquiry for photography research.

In late Antiquity, archaeology demonstrates lively and far-flung exchange along the river Dniester, through current Poland to the Baltic. By the 11th century the former Barbaricum had been transformed into a string of Christian kingdoms and principalities, whose parallel histories are as conspicuous as their differences. From the legendary (if possible real) migrations of the Goths in Antiquity to the Varangian guard at the imperial court of Byzantium in the late Viking Age, trans-cultural interaction complemented important historical development. This book is about aspects of the changing interactions from late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages, from Goths to Varangians, and from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The history and archaeology of these connections have been poorly exposed and investigated in modern times. The papers presented in this volume are a selection of those presented during a series of four meetings organised 2007-2009 by the "Varangian Network", an interdisciplinary network for archaeological and historical research on relations between the Baltic and the Black Sea from late Antiquity to the medieval period.

Drawing on both textual and archaeological sources, this book discusses how Christians in Late Antiquity negotiated the sculptural environment of cities and sanctuaries in a variety of ways, ranging from creative transformations to iconoclastic performances. Their responses to pagan sculpture present a rich window into the mechanisms through which society and culture changed under the influence of Christianity. The book thus demonstrates how Christian responses to pagan sculpture rhetorically continued an old tradition of discussing visual practices and the materiality of divine representations. Focusing in particular on the Egypt and the Near East, it furthermore argues that Christian responses encompass much more than mindless violence and need to be contextualised against other social and political developments, as well as local traditions of representation.

Zackenberg (or ZERO - Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations) is an ecosystem research station and monitoring facility situated in the Northeast Greenland National Park in north-eastern Greenland. Zackenberg is owned by The Government of Greenland and is operated by the Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University. The book's beautiful photographs document the people living at the station during winter and their field research in harsh conditions.