ABSTRACT During the first half of the seventeenth century, the Danish polyhistor, Ole Worm (1588–1654), established a collection in Copenhagen, the Museum Wormianum, consisting of minerals, plants, animals, and man-made objects. The collection attracted visitors and was renowned throughout Europe; however, Worm also used it as a site for teaching his university students. Even though Worm did not contribute significantly to the history of science with new discoveries, this article argues that he played a role in shaping an intellectual environment founded on international exchange in which discussions took place, methods were enhanced, and talents were supported. In this context, his museum had an important function as a site of attraction and exchange, anticipating social interaction and learning, even when Worm himself could not participate.

Abstract Ole Worm, Professor of Medicine at Copenhagen University 1624–1654, collected natural objects and artefacts with a view to letting students learn through observation and the touch of real things. Among the objects were fossils. Through Worm’s correspondence from 1607 to 1654, his growing understanding of petrifaction and petrifactions (fossilization and fossils) and its circumstantial background in the Nordic Renaissance has been investigated. Worm studied medicine with anatomy, botany and (iatro)chemistry at European universities. He began as Professor Pædagogicus and practising physician in Copenhagen in 1613 and he pursued interests in botany and in Nordic philology supported by King Christian IV. Objects for demonstrative instruction were obtained through his correspondents and were arranged systematically in Worm’s museum. The first fossils were identified chemically as petrified mollusc shells and wood, but without attention to species and original environment. With limited zoological knowledge and little field experience, but well trained in anatomical observation and description, and well read, Worm developed his understanding of fossils. He compared sharks’ teeth and glossopetrae , adding evidence to former comparisons. Christian orthodoxy was a barrier to geological and evolutionary thinking. Worm rejected superstition and prepared the way for the scientific comprehension of fossils in the Nordic cultural sphere.

Abstract For over two millennia, clays with perceived medicinal or alexipharmic properties have been recovered in bulk, processed into small troches or pastilles and stamped with a device or ‘seal’ as an indicator of their origin; this practice lent them their commonly applied name – terra sigillata or sealed earth. The first records are confined to the Mediterranean and Aegean regions, but early in the post-medieval period other sources in central and northern Europe came to be exploited. The history of this process of expansion is traced, the principal products of the major sources are identified by their respective seals, and some assessment is made of the validity of claims made for the effectiveness of such clays.

Abstract Although modern geotourism, as a form of sustainable geoheritage tourism, was only recognized as such in the 1990s, its roots lie in the seventeenth century and the Grand Tour with its domestic equivalents. At that time, a few elite travellers recorded their experiences of landscapes, natural wonders, quarries and mines. Such travellers’ observations were supplemented by those of the antiquarians for much of the eighteenth century; at that century’s close, the first modern geologists were recording their observations. The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion in public interest and engagement with geology, and field excursions were provided by the burgeoning natural history and geology societies. By the close of the nineteenth century, the Romantic movement had successfully promoted wild landscapes to a newly expanding urban population. The development of the Grand Tour and the landscape aesthetic movements, the various influential institutions, key personalities and locations are considered insofar as they provide an overview of the background to historical geotourism. All are underpinned by a theoretical consideration of the geotourism paradigm and how geotourism historical studies can contextualize modern geotourism.

Abstract: Earth science was not taught in schools in the seventeenth century. Geology began in principle with Steno’s Prodromus of 1669, which reflected tendencies in the European curiosity about nature, but had little contemporary impact. As a child in busy Protestant Hamburg, Otto Sperling was influenced by Renaissance ideas in the early 1600s and investigated plants with his family’s encouragement; he continued in pharmacy and later in medicine in Leiden. As a student he visited the relatively strong medicine milieu in Copenhagen and had the opportunity to sail as a participant in King Christian IV’s official visit to Bergen. Venturing into southern Norway’s mountainous landscapes, he studied plants, animals and rocks. Sperling’s nature studies continued on journeys in northern and southern Europe and he graduated as Doctor medicinae in Padova in 1627. En route towards England, his ship was driven to Norway, where the locals persuaded him to settle as a physician. An encounter with the Danish nobleman Corfitz Ulfeldt (1606–64) took Sperling to some of the highest medical posts and later, during Denmark–Norway’s decline, dragged him into the political maelstrom. Sperling’s autobiography, written in his late sixties in a Copenhagen prison, is testimony to the importance of Earth science to Sperling’s philosophy and performance as a doctor.