International Association for Scandinavian Studies (IASS). (Appendix: FILLM--history and objectives).

In 1986 Elias Bredsdorff published an early history of the IASS. As this work, The History of IASS (G6teborgs universitet, ISBN 91-86270-13-3), graphically illustrates, the history of the IASS is in fact a history of its Study Conferences which preceded the formal establishment of the Association. This survey of developments until the mid-1980s is substantially indebted to Bredsdorff's work, which contains careful and detailed documentation of the attendance at the conferences and the academic and social events which accompanied them.

The initiative to establish a forum for the growing discipline reflects the postwar optimism of the 1950s which preceded the unprecedented worldwide expansion of the university system reflected in the rapid rise in numbers of participants at the Study Conferences of the 1970s. But the meetings which anticipated the foundation of the IASS seem, in contrast to the later growth of global international conferences, to have all the hallmarks of more exclusive, homely and collegial gatherings of the earlier part of the 20th century. The First International Conference on Scandinavian Studies took place in the University of Cambridge, England, 2-7 July 1956. Invitations had been sent out by the Department of Scandinavian Studies, whose members were Brian W. Downs, Brita Mortensen, Ronald G. Popperwell and Elias Bredsdorff. Harold J. Knight (former head of department) was also a member of the organizing committee, and Ronald Popperwell, who acted as …