The Early Modern English polymath Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle never travelled further North than Rotterdam, yet aspects of Scandinavia appear suggestively in her multi-genre published works and biography.

Icebergs freezing wrongdoers to death, compassionate polar bears and the enigmatic nature of the North Pole all feature in her pioneering science fiction novel The Blazing World(1666), which directly influenced Norwegian-American novelist Siri Hustvedt to publish her own version in 2014.

Scandinavian influences also surface in Margaret Cavendish’s biography. As an Early Modern celebrity, among other things she was renowned for cross-dressing.

So, what exactly were her possible interactions with Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689, but only reigned to 1654), who had a very similar reputation? And how did the copies of Cavendish’s published works held in historic libraries in Sweden and Denmark get there?

Professor Gweno Williams is currently a Research Fellow contributing to Margaret Cavendish’s MindLab, a two year…