Barnaby Cullen (University of St Andrews)
The seventeenth century was one of tremendous development for news industries around the Baltic Sea. The establishment of new postal routes, alongside the growth of news media and printing centres created a vibrant news industry across the region. Many of the news items that circulated the Baltic were imported, but the focus of this paper is on the many texts that were printed locally. These ranged from non-serial news pamphlets and the weekly newspaper, to official print such as state declarations.
Although often overlooked by national bibliographies, these documents were produced in tremendous numbers, with periodicals and ordinances being among the most frequently printed genres in Stockholm and Riga, for instance. These publications were also frequently financed or privileged by local authorities. This made such work invaluable in a region where many printing towns could support only two printers at a time, and which lacked the wealth of publishers and customers to make more than a few genres financially viable. This paper thus demonstrates through analysis of the news output of cities around the Baltic Sea during the seventeenth century, the great importance of news to the printing industries on Europe’s northern periphery.