Visibility: Women in politics, religion and the intellectual sphere, 1400-1800

This website thus functions as a resource database. Its overall purpose is to make it easier to find and gain an overview of handwritten and printed sources relating to women and gender.

While the project will initially focus primarily on Scandinavian materials, the website will, over time, also provide access to several German-language sources.

Some of the sources are available directly on this website, some through links to materials held by the Royal Danish Library, while others are accompanied by bibliographical information that enables users to locate the material through the Royal Danish Library’s online catalogue.

In this way, the project makes a large body of previously unexplored sources accessible to researchers, students, journalists, and anyone with an interest in history. The project therefore responds to the growing interest in women's history and contributes to making women's roles and significance in politics, religion, and intellectual life more visible.

Collection of handwritten sources

A collection of handwritten sources will be available from the site in 2027-28 onwards. This section will provide direct access to image files of the original sources discovered by the researchers, together with corresponding transcriptions, general introductions to the sources as well as bibliographical details.

Guidance to sources in the Royal Danish Library cf. Bibliotheca Danica

In this section, you will find eighteen thematic entry points to source material relevant to women’s history. Within each theme, an overview is provided of works relevant to women’s historical research as recorded in Bibliotheca Danica, a comprehensive bibliography of Danish literature covering the period from 1485 to 1830.

The catalogues are organized into a range of subject categories, and the structure of the present overviews follows the original arrangement of main and subheadings, except in cases where no relevant sources have been identified. The titles of the works are reproduced in their original wording from Bibliotheca Danica, including abbreviations, etc. The selection of sources for the overviews is based on a broad assessment of their potential relevance for research in women’s history. Particular attention has, however, been given to themes such as gender, marriage, sexuality, pregnancy, child-rearing, motherhood, and, importantly, works authored by women.

Bibliotheca Danica was published between 1877 and 1931 and was compiled primarily based on the collections of the Royal Danish Library. Consequently, the majority of the sources listed can still be found at the Royal Danish Library today.

Find the thematic entry points to source material relevant to women’s history (in Danish).

Guidance to women’s history in periodicals

This section is designed to support research into women’s history through Danish periodicals. It features a growing collection of overviews intended to facilitate access to relevant sources, themes, and research materials. 

At present, it includes a source review of Borger-Vennen, one of the most significant Danish journals of the late eighteenth century. The journal served as a central forum for bourgeois public discourse, featuring a wide range of material, from extensive political analyses to folk ballads, anecdotes, and reader contributions resembling letters to the editor. The overview comprises a curated selection of titles from Borger-Vennen published between 1788 and 1820 that are of relevance to women’s history. These include critical discussions of child-rearing and marriage, as well as literary forms such as fairy tales, fables, and anecdotal narratives featuring female protagonists. Each entry is accompanied by a summary of its content.

A curated selection of women's history sources, the journal Borger-Vennen (pdf In Danish)

In addition, the section includes an overview of Danish women’s literature from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Here, the term “women’s literature” is used to denote printed works explicitly addressed to a female readership. The material spans a range of genres, with particular emphasis on periodicals, instructional literature, and literary anthologies. The purpose of this overview is to provide a research tool for students, scholars, and others interested in the historical study of women’s literature in this period.

An overview of Danish women’s literature (pdf in Danish)