Golden Matrix – Reimagining Denmark’s Golden Age through AI-Driven Cultural Heritage Research

The Golden Matrix project brings together the Golden Array and Golden Imprints initiatives in a joint effort to explore, reconstruct, and critically re-evaluate Denmark’s cultural Golden Age (1750–1930). By developing advanced AI models and creating the most comprehensive corpus of Danish cultural heritage data to date, the project aims to uncover overlooked voices, forgotten works, and marginalized communities from this formative period.

Traditional narratives of Denmark’s Golden Age have primarily focused on a narrow cultural elite centred in Copenhagen. The Golden Matrix project seeks to expand this perspective by exploring neglected sources, forgotten literary works, and regional discourses from across Denmark — including Jutland and the islands. The project aims not only to revisit 19th-century Denmark but also to establish new computational methodologies for studying cultural heritage in other historical and geographical contexts.

The project will compile a large-scale, multi-modal corpus of textual and visual materials from 1750–1930, including literature, newspapers, paintings, music, and periodicals. Using state-of-the-art AI models for language and image analysis, the research team will create so-called 'Golden Arrays' - numerical representations of the cultural material — enabling high-resolution temporal analysis and change detection. This approach will allow researchers to trace developments in public discourse, literary canonicity, and cultural production over time.

Inspired by computational methods used in the analysis of contemporary news streams (e.g., COVID-19 research), the project investigates how information flows shaped public discourse in Denmark’s Golden Age — and how these flows may challenge established historical narratives.

Role of Center for Humanities Computing  

CHC is responsible for:

• Developing specialised machine learning models for language and image analysis
• Training AI foundation models on large-scale Danish cultural heritage data
• Designing algorithms for change detection and temporal analysis
• Building and maintaining the high-performance computing infrastructure needed to process and analyse the extensive corpus
• Supporting researchers in data collection, xprocessing, and exploration of historical materials

Through this work, CHC enables the project to move beyond traditional methods of historical research and to create innovative tools for analysing and reimagining Denmark’s Golden Age — and potentially other historical periods.