Three Scandinavian missionary women and the Armenian Genocide

Based on the lives of three missionary women, this book explores humanitarian aid to Armenians from a Scandinavian angle and discusses the transnational, religious and gendered dimensions of relief work. It addresses religious motivations and missionary practices in humanitarianism and the rolesplayed by women as victims and agents in wars. -- .

This edited volume tells the story of three Scandinavian women missionaries who dedicated their lives to helping Armenian women and children. They became eyewitnesses to the 1915 Armenian genocide and continued to work among Armenian refugees during the ensuing decades in Lebanon, Syria, Greece and Soviet Armenia. On the basis of these women’s transnational lives and narratives, the book explores humanitarian aid to Armenians from a Scandinavian angle, biographical sources, perspectives and methods serving as points of departure. It also investigates the transnational, religious and gendered dimensions of relief work. The importance and the dilemmas of small-scale translocal projects and humanitarian networks are examined; so are religious motivations and missionary practices in humanitarianism as well as the complex role played by women as victims and agents in wars, encompassing their vulnerability and their ‘caring power’. -- .