4 - Monsters, Myths and Methods: The Making and Global Reception of a Norwegian History

Summary

HOW FAR DOES THE production of attractive books with careful design, fine typography, quality paper and well-crafted images assist in making the incredible believable? This chapter offers a test case.

Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, published his Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie in Copenhagen in two parts in 1752 and 1753. It was translated into German as Versuch einer natürlichen Geschichte Nor-wegens and the first part published, also in Copenhagen, a year later in 1753, with the second part following in 1754. A year after that, both parts were translated into English and published together in London as The Natural History of Norway. The three editions, in Danish, in German and in Eng-lish, issued between 1752 and 1755, forged the reputation of the Naturlige Historie; no further editions of the full work were published, although the publications of the 1750s spawned numerous later extracts, commentaries and references. Plentiful illustrative engravings and, in the London version, a pull-out map, accompanied the different printed editions. Numerous European periodicals reviewed Pontoppidan's work. Major institutions across mainland Europe ordered the Danish- and German-language edi-tions, and, most conspicuously, the English edition was bought by dozens of institutions and significant writers and collectors around the world.

The London edition was the finest and in many ways the most authoritative version of Pontoppidan's great endeavour, even though it was not in the original language. Its success, this chapter argues, was the result of the intersection of ideas and material forms and of the appreciation and subliminal effect of that union both then and since. Comparative study of the Naturlige Historie reveals how different translations, not only in language but in format, typographical choices and designs, inserted and re-cut illustrations, and publication and promotional processes contributed to different valences of authenticity and authority, and, as this chapter details, to a legacy of debate and influence.

By focusing study on a single title, we might chart the history of an individual work from its genesis, publication, circulation and reception in different forms and in different places across generations of use and conservation.