Dr. Bernhard Schirg

Freigeist-Fellow der Volkswagen-Stiftung

Public History

Anschrift

Universität Hamburg

Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften

Geschichte

Kontakt

E-Mail: bernhard.schirg"AT"uni-hamburg.de

From 2021 to 2025, Bernhard Schirg led the Freigeist-funded project “Reaching for Atlantis” at the University of Hamburg.

The project set out to examine the visual and material culture underlying Olof Rudbeck’s 17th-century interpretation of Sweden as the cradle of myth and civilisation, with a particular focus on the maps, objects, and landscape depictions used to substantiate his claims.

An early outcome was the creation of Reaching for Atlantis, an open visual database documenting several hundred historical illustrations and their function within Rudbeck’s framework.
Fieldwork in Northern Sweden following the rivers and mountains that shaped Rudbeck’s narrative opened a second dimension of the project. Encounters with these landscapes in their present state added an environmental perspective to the historical research.

Supported by the Volkswagen Foundation’s Science Communication Module, Bernhard formed an international team that developed public-oriented storytelling formats under the title Frozen Atlantis. These ranged from essayistic writing to collaborations with artists, filmmakers, musicians, and theatre performers.
This branch of the project resulted in several public-facing outputs, including a touring theatre production for schools in Northern Sweden and the feature-length cinematic essay Frozen Atlantis – Seeking Wonder in Shifting Lands (62 min).
A companion platform to the film, The Notebook, continues to collect illustrated essays on encounters with landscapes and ideas explored along the path towards Frozen Atlantis.
The project has now concluded. For more information see: www.frozen-atlantis.com.

Presentations (selected)

“Humanities for the 21st century. Paths into Public History”. Seminar given at the Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, 23 October 2023.
“The stories that drive us. Gunther Plueschow, the Beagle, and the end of myth in Southern Patagonia”. Paper given as part of the Southern Lives Network Workshop, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, 6–7 December 2021.
“Atlantis in the Anthropocene”. Presentation given in the seminar “Environmental Visual Practice – Extended Ways of Telling” of Tyrone Martinsson. Högskolan för konst och design Valand (Academy of Art and Design Valand) Gothenburg, 18 November 2021.
"Waymarks. Orientations on Swedish glaciers in the Anthropocene". STREAMS - Transformative Environmental Humanities. International Environmental Humanities Conference, Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH), Stockholm, August 3–7 2021.
"Cloudlands: Tracing the Ends of Worlds under the Skies of Southern Patagonia". Environmental Humanities Seminar, Somerville College, University of Oxford, 18 February 2020.
"Faking Swedish antiquity. Forgeries in the service of the Swedish Empire (1650–1720)". International conference "Faking It. Forgery and Fabrication in Early Modern and Late Medieval Culture", University of Gothenburg, 15–17 August 2019.

Printed Publications (selected)

Monographs and Edited Volumes

Boreas rising. Antiquarianism and the building of national narratives in 17th and 18th century Scandinavia, edd. Bernd Roling – Bernhard Schirg, Berlin-Boston (Walter de Gruyter: Transformationen der Antike), 2019.
Apotheosis of the North. The Swedish Appropriation of Classical Antiquity around the Baltic Sea and Beyond (1650 to 1800), edd. Bernd Roling – Stefan Bauhaus – Bernhard Schirg. Berlin-Boston (Walter de Gruyter: Transformationen der Antike), 2017.

Articles and Chapters

"The Northern Face of January. Narratives of early cultural history between Rome and their appropriation in Swedish antiquarianism (Janus, Saturn, Numa)", in: Boreas Rising 2019.
“Phoenix going bananas. The Swedish Appropriation of a Classical Myth, and its Demise in Botanical Scholarship (Engelbert Kaempfer, Carl Linnaeus)”, in: Apotheosis of the North 2017 (see "Edited volumes"), 17–46.
"The Daphnic fate of Camerarius. Olof Rudbeck the Younger's botanical dissertation (1686) revealed as Sweden's first printed emblem book", in: Emblems and the Natural World (1500–1700), edd. Karl A.E. Enenkel - Paul J. Smith, Leiden-Boston (Brill: Intersections), 2017, 227–270.