Passagiere des Eises. Polarhelden und arktische Diskurse 1874 [Passengers of the Ice: Polar Heroes and Arctic Discourses, 1874]

Abstract

northern Europe, Germany and Austria. These build on the first great pan-European study of witchcraft, Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen’s Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries (which it is difficult to believe is over 20 years old, having been published in 1993). Although the descriptive rhetoric of centre and periphery is no longer particularly current, the notion of bringing together work on an ever-wider range of European (and global) witchcraft prosecutions is appealing. So is the notion of translating into English (for ignorant near-monoglots like myself) key studies from across the world, which could transform our understanding of the phenomena that contribute to accusation, prosecution and conviction. At the conference organized by Willumsen and Rita Voltmer in Tromsø last year, it certainly seemed that a renaissance of northern European witchcraft studies was in prospect, and perhaps a second wave of the enthusiasm that prompted Ankarloo and Henningsen’s enterprise in the early 1990s. Willumsen’s pioneering work, both the detailed local study and her theoretical stance on the necessity of comparison, is likely to be highly influential in such a desirable development.