What has ‘Flora Danica’ meant for Denmark as a nation?

‘Flora Danica’. For most Danes, these two words are probably associated with the prestigious and quite expensive tableware from Royal Copenhagen.

In fact, however, the tableware was created on the basis of a book also called ‘Flora Danica’, which was published in the years 1761 to 1883 supported by the Danish state.

»The volumes simply consisted of drawings of plants that were printed and hand-coloured, and which were then circulated both internally in Denmark in the various parishes and dioceses. But also around Europe to different people to whom it was believed that such a gift would serve different strategic purposes,« says Christoffer Basse Eriksen, postdoc at the Centre for Science Studies at Aarhus University.

With a Sapere Aude grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark as support, he will now begin to investigate what role ‘Flora Danica’ played in relation to the assertion of Denmark's sovereignty over the kingdom's territories.

»The primary thing that the project examines is the history of publication. What can we find out about the scientific processes that created the work? How did the work of botanical collection take place? Which kinds of book printing and artistic techniques were involved in drawing, engraving and printing these works? And how did this change over the 120 years?,« Christoffer Basse Eriksen elaborates.

In addition, he and the two other members of the research group, a PhD student and a postdoc, will visit various Northern European libraries. Here they will conduct a census. This means that they examine the libraries' physical copies of the books.

»The reason why we want to do a census is that we want to identify individual copies of the ‘Flora Danica’, where we can see some traces of historical use. That is, we want to see who has owned these books and how they have been read and used. We may be able to see this by looking at marginalia notes, ownership details or other details. We will investigate whether these copies have been coloured in Copenhagen and then shipped to their destination, or whether they have been hand-coloured later. So, we will try to look at what kind of spaces the ‘Flora Danica’ volumes were able to enter, what kind of people have used them, and for what purposes,« Christoffer Basse Eriksen describes.

Started as an attempt to market Copenhagen

When the work of creating ‘Flora Danica’ began in the 1750s, Frederik V was king of Denmark. He was a very party-loving king, so in reality it was his ministers, headed by Adam Gottlob Moltke, who made most of the important decisions in the country.

»What is quite unique about ‘Flora Danica’ is that it was initiated as part of an attempt to turn Copenhagen into a European capital. In other words, to make it a cultural city, which Copenhagen was not at the time,« says Christoffer Basse Eriksen and continues:

»At the same time, it was an attempt by the king and his advisers to establish that it was the state that had authority over knowledge practices in Denmark and knowledge about nature. Therefore, it was also important to publish ‘Flora Danica’ as a magnificent work and show that the king had the resources and intellectual capacity to present himself as an enlightened monarch.«

Over time, there was a greater focus on science

‘Flora Danica’ was produced as a series of booklets, and over time the nature of the work changed. Christoffer Basse Eriksen therefore divides the research into three parts in the form of the early, the middle and the final period of ‘Flora Danica's’ creation.

In the middle period, the work was inspired by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus. He is known as the man who took the initiative for all species to have a scientific name, consisting of a genus name followed by a species name, for example Homo sapiens.

This means that there was an extra focus on science during this period.

In the early 1800s, there were particularly large disputes in Europe. The Napoleonic Wars led to the loss of Norway, and perhaps ‘Flora Danica’ helped to maintain Denmark's foothold in Iceland. In any case, the focus was on including the Icelandic flora. The first six volumes of ‘Flora Danica’ were even sent to the English naturalist and statesman Joseph Banks.

»But especially after the loss of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864, ‘Flora Danica’ became the framework for studies of local flora in Denmark, where the purpose was to identify the overlooked Danish species. Here, ‘Flora Danica’ became part of a project of botanical nationalism, where botanists tried to determine all the native species in Denmark based on the idea that there was something special about Danish nature,« explains Christoffer Basse Eriksen.

Focus on how Europe's states became powerful

Although Flora Danica is well known in Denmark, the work is still more or less unknown within international research on the history of science. Christoffer Basse Eriksen hopes that the four-year project can change that.

»The fact that the work is the result of 120 years of continuous botanical work is quite unique. And the fact that it is state-subsidised is also quite special in the period,« he says, and emphasizes that from the same period there is, among others, a ‘Flora Svecica’, a ‘Flora Graeca’ and a ‘Flora Batava’ to describe the plants in Sweden, Greece and the Netherlands, respectively.

The link to the present is also clear.

»For various reasons, the time is ripe for us to consider the importance of internal territories in European history and how territorial claims and political sovereignty have been made. For many years, the history of science has been concerned with the global, for example how plant knowledge has come into being by virtue of colonial and imperial networks. I would like to use these methods to investigate how the consolidation of the European nation states took place,« says Christoffer Basse Eriksen, adding:

»Here in Denmark, the conversation about what Danish nature really is also enormously pertinent. We are once again talking about what it means to use the land and how we want to divide our territory. This project takes part in that conversation by examining the time when the state began to be able to change the ideas about the landscape and the ideas about the territory through science. ‘Flora Danica’ plays a part in that story.«