Nordic Light mainly comprises Scandinavian contributions to two conferences convened by The International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ISECS) at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2003; and at the Research Center on European Enlightenment at the Martin Luther University of Halle, Germany, in 2005. The theme of the first conference was "Global Eighteenth Century," and that of the second conference was "Religion and Enlightenment." The Enlightenment was nothing if not an age of networking. People travelled in real or imaginary worlds in order to connect, deride, improve, and learn. This was the age when the notion of universality took shape. Ideas travelled because if rights and wrongs are universal, sound ideas must be accessible to all and unsound ones challenged by being exposed to foreign scrutiny. The various contributions show facets of Scandinavian research into the 18th century. The need to see Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish culture and literature in a larger context is a characteristic of recent research, as these essays demonstrate.
