Imagine a digital map of the world visualizing all the places, countries, and regions mentioned from year to year in Norwegian literature published between the year of the constitution (1814) and the year of the country’s national independence (1905). Which contours of Norway and the world would emerge? Where would we find literature’s centers and peripheries, and how would they change throughout the period? How could such a digital literary geography renew research and teaching of Norwegian literary history? That is what we try to find out in this project.

ImagiNation aims to comprehensively map the “literary geographies” of Norwegian literature between 1814 and 1905. By literary geographies we simply mean literary descriptions of space and place. Such descriptions are not neutral, but situated in historical and political contexts. Since the National library of Norway has digitized a huge collection of books from the 19th century, we can now use digital tools to get a “birds-eye-view” on the geographical attention of authors throughout this period of intense nation-building.

Starting from an archive of 23 023 digitized books, the project combines quantitative text-mining tools and critical close readings with geographical perspectives and pedagogical experiments to explore the following research questions:

• What do the geographies of Norwegian literature look like from 1814–1905?
• Which historical impulses informed the geographical attention of writers throughout this period?
• How have geographic imaginaries from the period’s literature been passed on and informed processes of national identity production in Norway?
• How can literary geographical teaching strategies benefit our students’ understanding of and identification with our written cultural heritage?

Our goal is to “dig out” a hidden geography from the archive; to identify which conflicts and stereotypes it refers to; and to find out which function it may have had in literary history and national identity production. We will try to identify the historical forces that drove literature’s geographical orientation throughout this period; but we shall also develop a new approach to literary history education in schools, where digital maps and perspectives of literary geography will form exploratory and interdisciplinary teaching strategies.