User talk:Benedictow

February 2023
Hello, I'm SunDawn. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Black Death in Norway, but you didn't provide a source. I’ve removed it for now, but if you’d like to include a citation to a reliable source and re-add it, please do so! If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. &maltese; SunDawn &maltese;   (contact)   16:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear SunDawn
 * I (Ole J. Benedictow, professor emeritus of the University of Oslo) was in the process of adding references to the important scholarly works in the contribution on the The Black Death in Norway when I, as a novice contributor made a mistake. Suddenly, the article appeared with a conspicuous read warning that i had not identified my references/citations. I tried to make the correction but you took the article away before I managed to find out how to do it. I consider the article I related to a serious matter. I have over the years written several books and long articles on the Black Death in Norway and on the Black Death in general. In the last couple years I have, e.g., published The Complete History of the Black Death, 2021, 2nd edn.,The Boydell Press, pp. 1026, and The Complete History of Plague in Norway, 2022, 2nd edn., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 724. I have also written a doctoral thesis on Plague in the Late Medieval Nordic Countries, 1992 I hold the strong opinion that the Wikipedia article on the Black Death on which I comment is a serious matter and urgently needs serious comments or rather and alternative article.
 * Dear Sundawn, please give me my comments, alternative version back and let my put the finishing touch on it.
 * Best regards, Ole J. Benedictow Benedictow (talk) 17:29, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear SunDawn
 * Please, consider that a Wikipedia article on the Black Death in Norway written by a Swede and based on a few pages in an unfootnoted popular general book on the Black Death must be highly satisfactory. It is highly misleading to pretend that there is nothing referable written by a Norwegian on the Black Death in Norway. All my works are footnoted and testable. I wrote a 1992 doctoral thesis on focused on the Black Death in Norway, I have since written a book on the history of plague in Norway (2002) and a long article in 2006 which also was published in an updated English translation a decade later"The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality as Chapter 3 in my 710 plague book The Black Death and Later Plague Epidemics in the Scandinavian Countries, 2016, Berlin: De Greuter, pp. 182-254. This book also contains several chapters enlarging on aspects of the Black Death in Norway. I published the first holistic account of the Black Death in 2004, containing a full presentation of spread and mortality (also in Norway): The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History, 20024, The Boydell Press, pp. 434. In 2010 appeared my book What Disease was Plague. On the Controversy over the Microbiological Identity of Plague Epidemics of the Past, 2010, Leyden: Brill, pp. 743. In 2021, appeared the 2nd and greatly expanded version of my history of the Black Death, The Complete History of the Black Death, The Boydell Press, pp. 1026. The history of the Black Death in Norway is given on pp. 401-455 (of Sweden on pp. 471-495). In 2022 appeared my book The Complete History of the Black Death in Norway, 1348-1654, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 1-724. The history of the Black Death in Norway has been more intensely studied than for any other country. The present Wikipedia account avoids all these works and falsely pretends that the only work worth mentioning on the  subject i a few unfootnoted pages in a popular general work on the Black Death by an author, Dick Harrrison, who have written quite a number of popular works on diverse historical topics but taken on the great job of reading the excellent medical standard works on plague or the huge body of primary research on plague or even a representative selection of historical works on the Black Death. However, he knows my doctoral thesis, in contrast to the scholar who has written the Wikipedia article who uses Harrison's book as the only source of reference but allegedly does not known even my doctoral thesis. Instead, he inserts in the two-work list of references his own study of the Black Death in Sweden.
 * I have also pointed out in the article that you deleted, that the published map on the Black Death is "stolen" from my 2004 and 2021 books on the history of the Black Death. I have also pointed out that a closer study of the map will show that the assertion that the Black Death raged in Norway in 1349 and 1350 is misleading. The map shows that the Black Death arrived in Oslo in (the autumn of) 1348, and that there was a second introduction in Bergen in 1349, and spread in 1349. There is not a single source showing that the Black Death spread in Norway in 1350. (The last known death occurred on 7 January 1350, and must have been infected at the very end of 1349.)
 * I do not understand that Wikipedia will represent such reprehensible scholarly standards as this grossly misleading article on the Black Death in Norway do. I will appeal to you to pave the ground for a new article on the subject based on primary research and not be represented by an article displaying a strong will to conceal and avoid all source-based studies written by a Norwegian scholar who has published thorough footnoted studies on the topic and also on the Black Death in general.
 * And Please give me my article back. It was my first attempt to write a Wikipedia-article, and I made a technical mistake.
 * Cordially, Ole J. Benedictow Benedictow (talk) 11:05, 11 February 2023 (UTC)