The 2009 regular issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum offers a remarkable variety of articles, which attest and enrich the interdisciplinary character of our e-journal. Since we accepted our readers' request to be open to a wider array of submissions, we have been receiving many more texts, some of which dealing with topics that do not belong specifically to the Nordic and Mediterranean cultural and geographic areas. Although we would normally decline most submissions that do not fit in the Nordic and Mediterranean typology, two such works have been published hereby because of their outstanding quality and their potential to be of interest to our readers. They are a token of economic analysis of Indian agrarian policies by Dan Pranab, Guhathakurta Kousik and Gupta Shatadru, and an essay on C.S. Peirce's pragmatism by Canadian scholar Hans Bakker.

The other new articles appearing in this regular issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum follow more "traditional" lines of study, as they focus on the historiography of the Italian Renaissance (Colin Pearce), contemporary Scandinavian music (Giuliano D'Amico), Homers Iliad (J.Fred Humphrey), and leading Finnish philosopher Jaakko Hintikkas assessment of French giant Ren Descartes (Nicola Ciprotti).

Analogous considerations apply to the material included in the third section of this issue, i.e. interviews with the creators of Italys Bifrst Project and renown essayist Claudio Magris, and a short outline of Nordic and Mediterranean ties and exchanges via classical Latin and Roman culture by Federico Actite.

Naturally, we are most thankful to all authors above. Similarly, we are most grateful to the reviewers of the books that we collected last year and made available to our readers for evaluation: this year we can boast eleven book reviews. Special thanks should also be paid to EBSCO Publishers, whose formally agreed inclusion of our e-journal in their products will increase its international visibility and accessibility, therefore facilitating our commitment to spreading worldwide the study of Nordic and Mediterranean realities as freely and as extensively as possible.