Nordic Orientalism

Nordic Orientalism explores the appropriation of Oriental imagery within Danish and Norwegian nineteenth-century nation-building. The project queries Edward Said's binary notion of Orientalism and posits a more complex model describing how European countries on the periphery - Denmark and Norway - imported Oriental imagery from France to position themselves, not against their colonial Other, but in relation to central European nations. Examining Nordic Orientalism across a century in the context of modernization, urbanization and democratization, the study furthermore shows how the Romanticists' naive treatment of the Orient was challenged by increased contact with the "real" Orient.