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How did Tunis and the experience of slavery appear through the eyes of Hans Jochum Schram, a Norwegian sailor from Bergen, and what can we discover by reading his story from different perspectives today?Welcome to a panel discussion at Bergen Maritime Museum, organised in cooperation with SINAS (the Scandinavian Institute of North African Studies).
The panel will feature M’hamed Oualdi, Professor of History at the European University Institute in Florence, and Torbjørn Ødegaard, archival researcher and author. The discussion will be moderated by translator Soumaya Nadia Hedhili.
The panel will reflect on how did Tunis and the experience of slavery appear through the eyes of Hans Jochum Schram, a Norwegian sailor from Bergen, and what can we discover by reading his story from different perspectives today?
On the occasion of the publication of the Arabic translation of Hans Jochum Schram’s memoir, «Jeg manglede intet uden Friheden» – om bergensmatrosen Hans Jochum Schrams slaveri i Tunis (1747–1750) (“I Lacked Nothing but Freedom…”: On the Enslavement of the Bergen Sailor Hans Jochum Schram in Tunis (1747–1750)), we invite you to a panel discussion exploring how this remarkable 18th-century testimony can be read from different perspectives.
Schram was a sailor from Bergen who was captured and enslaved in Tunis between 1747 and 1750. His memoir offers a rare first-hand account of captivity, slavery and life in Tunis at a time of intense encounters across the Mediterranean. Yet the memoir is not simply a record of events: it is also a story told from a particular position, shaped by the narrator’s own experience, language and worldview.
The panel will explore how Schram’s account can be read from Nordic and North African perspectives, and what happens when we move between these perspectives, or consider the many positions and interpretations that emerge in between. At the heart of the discussion is the relationship between the “teller” and those who are “told about”: Who speaks? Who is represented? What does the narrator see and choose to tell, and what might remain outside his account?
The conversation between the archival researcher and editor, Torbjørn Ødegaard, and historian M’hamed Oualdi will bring together different approaches to the memoir and open a dialogue around historical perspective, voice, representation, memory and the ways in which the same historical testimony can be read differently across geographical and cultural contexts.
The panel is organized on the occasion of the publication of the Arabic translation and seeks to create a space where Nordic, North African, Mediterranean and other perspectives can meet, and where the relationship between the person telling the story and those whose stories are being told can be examined anew.
M’hamed Oualdi Bio:
M’hamed Oualdi is a historian of Europe and North Africa in the world in the long 19th century at the European University Institute, Florence. Before joining the EUI, he was a full professor at Sciences Po-Paris, assistant, and then associate professor at Princeton University (2013-2019). He is supervising a European Research Council-funded project about the demise of slavery in the Mediterranean from the mid-18th century to the 1930s.
Torbjørn Ødegaard Bio:
Torbjørn Ødegaard is an archival researcher, non-fiction author, publisher, as well as an international network builder. As the Founding Director and Academic Director of SINAS Norway, a network he created after visiting Algiers in 2004, he has established and led a distinguished platform dedicated to advancing research on the historical connections between Scandinavia and North Africa. His work encompasses documentary production, scholarly publishing, and extensive archival investigation, with a particular emphasis on uncovering, preserving, and disseminating overlooked historical narratives of significance.
Soumaya Nadia Hedhili, translator of the memoir and Programs and Projects Lead at SINAS, will moderate the panel discussion.
Free admission
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Event venue
Bergens Sjøfartsmuseum, Haakon Sheteligs plass 11, 5007 Bergen, Norge, Bergen, Norway
Tickets
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