On 9-10 May 2024 the international and interdisciplinary conference The Arctic in Eastern and Central Europe. Knowledge, Perception and Communication in 17th -19th century organised by MIARC and UMK took place at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.
„It is always great to meet people with similar interests, in a wonderful historical place like Toruń is.” – Ildikó Sz. Kristóf (Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest)
This conference brought together specialists in the history of Central and Eastern Europe working on the reception of knowledge from the Arctic in scholarly, pedagogical, and religious debates I the early modern period and 19th century. The papers presented at this conference confirmed that interest in the Arctic in Central and Eastern Europe is not just a contemporary phenomenon, intensified by climate change, but that it has a long history.
New research fields and historical sources were presented in papers and discussed by participants during this exiting and ground-breaking conference which has notably shown that the reception of knowledge from the Arctic from the 17th -19th c. proved to be embedded in the process of civilisation, creation of self-awareness of religious or scientific communities or even nation building in the 19th c.
The conference revealed the need for historical research on the circulation of knowledge about the Arctic based on multilingualism which can help to understand the different mental backgrounds of European interest in the Arctic today.
© A. Mikołajewska
Vice-Rector of the UMK, Professor Wojciech Wysota © J. Borm
Visit in the library of the UMK © J. Borm
© J. Borm
Guest lecture by Andrzej Dybczak and Magdalena Zych © J. Borm
