Maps have played a central role in our understanding of what and where the north is. At the same time, the northernmost reaches of our world have, for much of history, been difficult to navigate and verify, from the mythical islands on medieval maps to the itineraries of Arctic explorers in the nineteenth century. This has inspired inventive mapping strategies, as well as ongoing struggles to define what constitutes believable cartographic information.

This beautifully illustrated book takes the reader on a journey to examine the rich, and sometimes contentious, history of how mapmakers have understood and processed knowledge about a region they described as ‘the north’. In the process of mapping, the north as a place changed from an inaccessible and vividly imagined unknown to a region claimed and exploited by southern nations. What emerges is a riveting story of exploration, survival and cartographic skill bound up with conceptions of nature, religion and politics extending far beyond the Arctic.

The understanding of what health is and how it can be maintained has changed through history. Questions like who can perform healing? and what sort of bodies are considered healthy?have elicited widely divergent responses in different societies. This volume explores how health was understood and practiced in the early modern Nordic region, with a focus on Sweden, including Finland. The chapters examine topics such as the dyslexia of Charles XI, lay perceptions of bodily and mental variability, and the health benefits attributed to using the sauna. Together, the essays give a holistic view of how practices of health evolved in close symmetry with societal institutions and localised worldviews. As such, the volume is a timely intervention into the social history of medicine, contributing to the historicisation of health as a concept and shedding light on developments in the Nordic world.

This introduction outlines a conceptual framework for analysing the historically situated nature of ‘health.’ While previous historical research has elucidated conceptions of illness as changeable over time, it is our contention that the meaning of health is often taken for granted. We examine the semantic fijield of ‘health’ (Swe. hälsa) and associated terms as they were used in early modern Sweden, showing health as a multifaceted concept with connotations to bodily and mental well-being, prosperity, politics, and religion alike. The individual chapters of the volume are situated in the broader account of early modern medicine, which highlights how a focus on a contextual understanding of health can inform the history of medicine and the broader account of early modern history.

This study examines what was considered healthy and unhealthy in relation to the early modern Swedish sweat bath culture. Health in the bathhouse, or sauna, was far from straight forward. Instead, an array of factors was understood to work together to determine if a particular bath was healthy for a particular body, at a particular time. By mapping out these complexities, the study brings attention to how different interpretative frameworks and practical circumstance interlinked in the day-to-day determination of what was healthy in the early modern period. While health was a signifier of the good life, it was also understood as situation-dependent, tied to body types and to places.