NOVEMBER 2013  

Issue 8(3) – 2013 Special issue #2

The study group number three of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), called “Towards a New Ethical Imagination. Political and Social Values in a Cosmopolitan World Society”, held its last meeting, in a cycle of six, at the Sunnmøre Folkehøgskule in Ålesund, Norway, from July 29 to August 5, 2013. The special topic chosen for the last meeting was good governance, although the group’s traditional areas of study of the research group — ethics, cosmopolitanism, sustainability — were amply covered as well. Many interesting and useful discussions took place at the summer meeting in Ålesund, for which the organisers are extremely grateful. The present special issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum contains only a selection of the papers presented on the occasion or prepared for the meeting and made available to the participants on a later date. In keeping with the spirit of the journal, most papers published in this special issue are tokens of Nordic scholarship on Mediterranean thinkers and themes, given subjects such as Greece’s 2010 Loan Agreements, the ethics of public administration vis-à-vis the global scourge of corruption, early-modern Continental diplomatic traditions established in Colbertine France, the environemntalist thought of the Israeli War of Independence’s veteran Hans Jonas, and contemporary French and Italian political philosophy. The editorial team of Nordicum-Mediterraneum salutes the NSU study group number three and thanks its members for the fruitful collaboration enjoyed over the past three years.

JUNE 2013 

Issue 8(2) – 2013 Special issue #1

The study group number three of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), called “Towards a New Ethical Imagination. Political and Social Values in a Cosmopolitan World Society”, held its annual Winter meeting at the University of Akureyri, Iceland, March 1-3, 2013. Different topics in the fields of moral, political, economic and social philosophy were discussed, with the addition of a special theme chosen for the occasion, i.e. ethical, political and legal issues in the Arctic region. It was a very fruitful meeting and the group members would like to thank the local organisers and in particular the Icelandic NSU coordinator, Ágúst Þór Árnason, for all the hard work done in Akureyri. In this special issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum the papers accepted and prepared for the Winter meeting have been collected, re-edited and made available to the international academic community, in the hope that the reader may be able to enjoy the same thought-provoking experience as the participants did during the intense days of presentations and discussions that took place at the University of Akureyri.

MARCH 2013

Issue 8(1) – 2013 Regular issue 

This year’s regular issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum opens with two new articles, which have passed the double blind peer-review process of selection for all article-level submissions to our journal. Both of them deal with legal and political issues in the Arctic region. Specifically, Irina Zhilina’s contribution deals with NATO’s presence and security role in the far North, whereas Hjalti Ómar Ágústsson’s and Rachael Lorna Johnstone’s determines whether good governance standards were upheld in the relations between the Icelandic government and the IMF during the latter’s involvement in the country’s financial policies following the 2008 collapse of the nation’s banking sector. Further reflections on the economic crisis are offered in special editor-reviewed contributions that further the journal’s continuing engagement with this particular topic. The journal’s acceptance rate for this regular issue was 33%.

In addition to the new articles and reflections, the current issue contains a rich survey of recent scholarly and scientific literature via two review essays and several book reviews, including two replies by authors of volumes that have been reviewed in our journal, i.e. Herman Salton’s Arctic Host, Icy Visit and Federico Sollazzo’s Totalitarismo, democrazia, etica pubblica. We are particularly grateful for these replies, which allow our journal to serve as a vibrant venue for the exchange of ideas and information on Nordic and Mediterranean matters. A novel, partial English translation of a classic text in medieval Norse literature — Nikulás Bergsson’s Leiðarvísir — concludes the current issue.