In this paper and a second part (to appear in the next issue of Library & Information History), an historical account is provided of the origins and development, since the 11th century, of Nordic systems for library classification — i.e., schemes for the classification of the subjects of books and other library resources, both so that those resources may themselves be arranged in orders that are helpful to readers, and so that the entries and records that describe those resources in catalogues and bibliographies may also be arranged in helpful ways. The focus of the account given in the two papers is on the structure and content of the top level of each system; it is assumed that such structure and content serve as direct evidence, both of the thinking of system constructors about the ways in which fields and disciplines are related to one another, and of the constraints under which library users reach an understanding of the nature and scope of the ‘universe of knowledge’ represented by their library's collections. The history of library classification may thus be treated not only as a central aspect of library and information history, but also as an important branch of both intellectual history and cultural history. In this first part, the history of library classification in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland is outlined; the second part covers Sweden and Finland, and presents a synthesis of findings that focuses on a dichotomy between the plurality of classification schemes existing prior to the ascendance in the 20th century of the American Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and the uniformity that characterizes current conditions.
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