New Paths to the Past. Literary Cultural Heritage as Source Material for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Literature is a unique historical source: it treats and problematizes societal and individual issues through the stagings of the imagination. Literature – primarily prose fiction, but also drama and poetry – thus constitutes a seminal source material relevant not only to literary and linguistic researchers, but also for many other fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences. For its true potential to be realized, this material needs to be digitized and made available for exploration with advanced tools. Internationally, this potential is actively explored, which means that the Swedish material may constitute the foundation for further innovative international collaborations, including entirely new kinds of theoretical and methodological interdisciplinary development.
This project will provide researchers access to a large set of materials, by digitizing the Swedish literary works that were published separately (i.e., not as part of journals and newspapers) during the entire 19th century. This is a century of intense cultural and societal change, and the digitized corpus constitutes a remarkable foundation for the analysis of change and development in a wide number of areas.
The whole material will be made available to research on three web sites providing different novel tools for exploration, and in downloadable form. It will also be available for the public, for schools and libraries, making it possible for all to approach literary cultural heritage in new ways.
Final report
In 2019, the Swedish Literature Bank was granted a grant to establish a corpus of 19th-century separately published works of fiction written in Swedish. The collection was to be made available to researchers and the general public, readable and searchable on litteraturbanken.se, and downloadable for researchers and projects that have access to more sophisticated analysis tools. The funds were to be used until the end of 2023, but the Riksbanken Jubileumsfond approved an extension of one year.
The financial parts of the project are now complete: all deliveries from Uppsala University Library and the Royal Library have been placed and paid for.
The availability in litteraturbanken.se, where each work also receives a permanent ID, is not yet complete: the work with database files and other handling is expected to be completed in early 2026.
The analysis tools, in addition to the Swedish Literature Bank's usual search tools, that have been developed within the project have been made available in a preliminary version at https://littlabb.dh.gu.se. The tools are of two types: one for tracking textual correspondences between different works in the corpus and one for tracking graphic correspondences: book historical elements such as illustrations, initial letters, etc.
The material is also made available in Alvin (alvin.org) for book historical access and in the Swedish Language Bank's KORP, where it is offered with a number of language technology tools. Everything that has been digitized at Uppsala University Library and the National Archives in Fränsta is also available in Alvin. Parts of digitizations made at the Royal Library are also available in Alvin, mainly 19th-century material. The organisations answer for the long-term preservation of the material, and the Swedish Academy guarantees the long-term preservation of the Literature Bank. All material is labelled Public Domain.
The project's cataloguing work has been based on the national database Libris, which was missing many of the records. Libris has therefore been significantly supplemented by the project. Everything digitized through the project will also be available in Libris. Most of it has already been entered.
Outcome against plan
According to the project plan, 8,600 books were to be digitized, mainly through Uppsala University Library and the National Archives' digitization center in Fränsta. It turned out that while a number of books that were not in Libris were found in UUL's collections and could be added, there were a large number of books in Libris that were not in UUL's collections. Most of them could instead be ordered from the Royal Library.
The total number of books has turned out to be somewhat less than estimated. The number of pages per book, which was estimated at an average of 250 per book, turned out to be somewhat lower. The costs for the 19th century were therefore lower than planned. After consultation with RJ, we extended the period to 1789–1912. This means that the project covers almost the entire so-called long 19th century. The rights issue means that the number of works that can be made available decreases towards the end of the period.
Estimated number of books to be digitized: 8,600
Number of books actually digitized within the project: 9,070
Estimated number of books for the 19th century, incl. previously digitized material: 11,200
Actual number of books for the 19th century, incl. previously digitized material: c. 10,500
Number of digitized books 1789–1799: 474
Number of digitized books 1900–1912: c. 2,200
Material made available
In February 2025, 6,233 books from the project had been incorporated into litteraturbanken.se: the remaining ones will be incorporated within a year and only then will the project in its entirety be completed. It is mainly material from 1901–1912 that has not yet been entered into the databases. The distribution of the material by genre is still preliminary as the calculation does not include the material that has not yet been entered, but for the 19th century in particular, the preliminary figures should be largely accurate. Of the material made available so far, c. 5% is children's literature and 6% is Finnish Swedish.
Research
It is not yet possible to use the entire material for limited and comparative studies of the period 1800–1900 – or 1789–1912, but the material has already been useful to many researchers. Major projects that use the material include:
“How fiction made Swedish modern. Fiction prose, authors and language change 1830–1930” (leader David Håkansson, Uppsala University), funded by the Swedish Research Council (https://www.vr.se/swecris.html#/project/2020-02617_VR).
“Language change and non-fiction – a large-scale study of the history of modern Swedish (1800–1950)” (leader Sara Stymne, Uppsala University), funded by the Swedish Research Council (https://www.vr.se/swecris.html#/project/2024-01027_VR).
The RJ program “Change is key!” (leader Nina Tahmasebi, University of Gothenburg, https://www.changeiskey.org) includes a partial study (2026–2027) by Mats Malm based on the late 19th century material.
In a program application under way, led by Jacob Habinek, Linköping University, the 19th century material will be of fundamental importance for the implementation.
As the material is also in the Swedish Language Bank’s research platform KORP (https://spraakbanken.gu.se/korp), linguistic research will be able to carry out analyses of 19th-century language with significantly greater coverage than before.
The material is also used in the newly started Scandinavian-American collaborative project ScanTextS (Scandinavian Text reuSe detection) which is led by Nils Holger Németh Berg, University of Southern Denmark and Tim Tangherlini, Berkeley.
The material also forms the basis for ongoing planning of a Danish-Swedish-Norwegian collaboration around the 19th century.
The financial parts of the project are now complete: all deliveries from Uppsala University Library and the Royal Library have been placed and paid for.
The availability in litteraturbanken.se, where each work also receives a permanent ID, is not yet complete: the work with database files and other handling is expected to be completed in early 2026.
The analysis tools, in addition to the Swedish Literature Bank's usual search tools, that have been developed within the project have been made available in a preliminary version at https://littlabb.dh.gu.se. The tools are of two types: one for tracking textual correspondences between different works in the corpus and one for tracking graphic correspondences: book historical elements such as illustrations, initial letters, etc.
The material is also made available in Alvin (alvin.org) for book historical access and in the Swedish Language Bank's KORP, where it is offered with a number of language technology tools. Everything that has been digitized at Uppsala University Library and the National Archives in Fränsta is also available in Alvin. Parts of digitizations made at the Royal Library are also available in Alvin, mainly 19th-century material. The organisations answer for the long-term preservation of the material, and the Swedish Academy guarantees the long-term preservation of the Literature Bank. All material is labelled Public Domain.
The project's cataloguing work has been based on the national database Libris, which was missing many of the records. Libris has therefore been significantly supplemented by the project. Everything digitized through the project will also be available in Libris. Most of it has already been entered.
Outcome against plan
According to the project plan, 8,600 books were to be digitized, mainly through Uppsala University Library and the National Archives' digitization center in Fränsta. It turned out that while a number of books that were not in Libris were found in UUL's collections and could be added, there were a large number of books in Libris that were not in UUL's collections. Most of them could instead be ordered from the Royal Library.
The total number of books has turned out to be somewhat less than estimated. The number of pages per book, which was estimated at an average of 250 per book, turned out to be somewhat lower. The costs for the 19th century were therefore lower than planned. After consultation with RJ, we extended the period to 1789–1912. This means that the project covers almost the entire so-called long 19th century. The rights issue means that the number of works that can be made available decreases towards the end of the period.
Estimated number of books to be digitized: 8,600
Number of books actually digitized within the project: 9,070
Estimated number of books for the 19th century, incl. previously digitized material: 11,200
Actual number of books for the 19th century, incl. previously digitized material: c. 10,500
Number of digitized books 1789–1799: 474
Number of digitized books 1900–1912: c. 2,200
Material made available
In February 2025, 6,233 books from the project had been incorporated into litteraturbanken.se: the remaining ones will be incorporated within a year and only then will the project in its entirety be completed. It is mainly material from 1901–1912 that has not yet been entered into the databases. The distribution of the material by genre is still preliminary as the calculation does not include the material that has not yet been entered, but for the 19th century in particular, the preliminary figures should be largely accurate. Of the material made available so far, c. 5% is children's literature and 6% is Finnish Swedish.
Research
It is not yet possible to use the entire material for limited and comparative studies of the period 1800–1900 – or 1789–1912, but the material has already been useful to many researchers. Major projects that use the material include:
“How fiction made Swedish modern. Fiction prose, authors and language change 1830–1930” (leader David Håkansson, Uppsala University), funded by the Swedish Research Council (https://www.vr.se/swecris.html#/project/2020-02617_VR).
“Language change and non-fiction – a large-scale study of the history of modern Swedish (1800–1950)” (leader Sara Stymne, Uppsala University), funded by the Swedish Research Council (https://www.vr.se/swecris.html#/project/2024-01027_VR).
The RJ program “Change is key!” (leader Nina Tahmasebi, University of Gothenburg, https://www.changeiskey.org) includes a partial study (2026–2027) by Mats Malm based on the late 19th century material.
In a program application under way, led by Jacob Habinek, Linköping University, the 19th century material will be of fundamental importance for the implementation.
As the material is also in the Swedish Language Bank’s research platform KORP (https://spraakbanken.gu.se/korp), linguistic research will be able to carry out analyses of 19th-century language with significantly greater coverage than before.
The material is also used in the newly started Scandinavian-American collaborative project ScanTextS (Scandinavian Text reuSe detection) which is led by Nils Holger Németh Berg, University of Southern Denmark and Tim Tangherlini, Berkeley.
The material also forms the basis for ongoing planning of a Danish-Swedish-Norwegian collaboration around the 19th century.