Erobringstokt i urmørket. Jonas Ramus' Norriges Kongers Historie (1719) og spekulasjoner om den nordiske urtid.

Abstract

This Master's degree dissertation in European culture/intellectual history deals with the 1719 work Norriges Kongers Historie (“History of Norway's Kings”) by the Norwegian author, historian, and clergyman Jonas Ramus (1649-1718), focusing on his fanciful an speculative depictions of the most remote Nordic past. A not-too-well-known milestone in Scandinavian historiography, it is notable for being the first modern history of Norway written in the vernacular, and for containing the most developed and condensed version of a theory proposing that the Norse god Odin and the Homeric hero Odysseus were the same historical person – an idea that earned him some academic notoriety up until the present, but has been overlooked in terms of serious scholarly treatment. Analysing and contextualising some central sections of the book's first part, this dissertation seeks to examine its account of the earliest Scandinavian history (though far too encrusted with legend and filled with imaginative musings to fit our contemporary concept of “history”), relating it to the scholarly standards and political factors of the time. It contains chapters dedicated to NKH's most relevant contextual preconditions regarding the history of knowledge (widely considered); to Ramus and his work, including its creation and impact; to his speculations about the unity of Odin and Odysseus; to Norway's legendary founding and the challenges involved in his approach to the nation's infancy; and to the treatment of monarchy included and implicit throughout the book's pages.