Closing the Books: Governor Edward Carstensen on Danish Guinea (1842-50)

Tove Storsveen, graduated as cand. mag. at the University of Oslo in 1974, and has worked within the largest publishing houses in Norway, Cappelen and Aschehoug, for most of her professional life. She is a member of UNESCO’s Fredensborg Team, and the translator of Closing the books, Governor Edward Carstensen on Danish Guinea 1842-50. Tove Storsveen, born and bred in Norway, discovered with astonishment the Ghanaian legacy of 200 years of interaction with Denmark-Norway, when she, in 1968, came to Ghana for the first time as a student. The same year, the Danish author Thorkild Hansen, launched his first book on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Danish forts and trading stations along the Coast. The book became a bestseller and an eye opener in Scandinavia. Since in Ghana, she followed in his footsteps, visited the places, and the reality of the account was unfolded for her eyes. That was the beginning of a fascination for the Danish era on the Gold Coast, which for her culminated with the translation of the official reports of the last Danish governor, Edward Carstensen. In 1995 as editor and publisher, she commissioned the book, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, with Leif Svalesen as author, the diver who found the ship as wreck outside the coast of Norway. “Fredensborg” became a sort of trade mark for UNESCO and the 10-years cultural programme “on the slave route”.