Dr Peter Stadius: The Mental Mapping of the North

Lecture title: The Mental Mapping of the North

Date: 6 March 2008, 5.15pm

Venue: Faculty Room South, David Hume Tower, George Square, Edinburgh

Lecture abstract

How do we grasp the reality of imprecise beliefs, stereotypes and image traditions? What is potentially the impact of imagining or mentally mapping a place? These questions have been asked frequently during the last two, three decades or so within cultural studies. Initially these questions arose from the emerging post-colonial paradigm on otherness. However, place image traditions can also be applied to less clearly defined cultural dichotomies within Europe .

When examining the image of the North in a broader chronological and geographical perspective, the relativity of what can be considered Nordic or Northern is exposed. Recently within and outside the self-defined area of Nordic Countries the notions

North , Nordic and Northern , have become objects for various current studies and research projects. Common for most of these is the aim to stretch the borders of the Nordic. Another central feature is to define the substance in various discourses on the North. Freedom, coldness, wilderness, progress, prosperity, melancholy and barbarian manners are thus often mixed in an ambiguous image of the North.

This mentioned ambiguity can be exposed through the idea of two European traditions of mentally mapping the North. A negative, patronising and self-affirming southern Renaissance image of the north can be compared with a positive Enlightenment discourse that upgraded the North with respect to the heartlands of Mediterranean culture. This European North and South dichotomy has during the later centuries not had a political impact comparable to that of the East and West. However, the North and South dichotomy tradition is interesting from a contemporary point of view. And finally, the logic and structure of mentally mapping the North in recent European history can not be understood without taking into account the South.