Project overview
- Project Lead: Dr Mathelinda Nabugodi (The School of European Languages, Culture and Society-Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry)
- Project name: Nordic Noir: Uncovering the Hidden History of Scandinavian Involvement in Transatlantic Slavery
- Funding: Philip Leverhulme Prize in Languages & Literatures
About the project
‘Nordic Noir’ examines Scandinavian involvement in the Black Atlantic world. For hundreds of years, Sweden and Denmark engaged in trafficking African captives, establishing slave-trading forts in West Africa as well as colonies the Caribbean. This history is little researched and its cultural repercussions largely unexplored. In part, it has been overwritten by later colonial developments: for example, the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy, which was in Swedish possession 1784-1878, now belongs to France, whereas the former Danish West Indies (1672-1917) is today the US Virgin Islands.
This project combines archival and site-specific research to demonstrate how deeply slavery and colonialism impacted on Scandinavian culture. It also explores the work of Afro-Scandinavian artists and activists who engage with the afterlife of transatlantic slavery to understand the period’s legacy in our present.
