Prior to the high Middle Ages, the Baltic Rim was largely 'terra incognita' - but by the late Middle Ages, it was home to diverse small and large communities. But the Baltic Rim was not simply the place those people lived - it was also an imagined space through which they defined themselves and their identities. This book traces the transformation of the Baltic Rim in this period through a focus on the self-image of a number of communities: urban and regional, cultic, missionary, legal, and political. Contributors look at the ways these communities defined themselves in relationship to other groups, how they constructed their identities and customs, and what held them together or tore them apart.
Author(s): Wojtek Jezierski, Lars Hermanson (eds.)
Series: Crossing Boundaries. Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 394
Editors Preface 9
Introduction. Imagined Communities on the Baltic Rim, from the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries / Wojtek Jezierski 11
Visions of Community
Imagining the Baltic. Mental Mapping in the Works of Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, Eleventh – Thirteenth Centuries / Thomas Foerster 37
Discourses of Communion. Abbot William of Æbelholt and Saxo Grammaticus: Imagining the Christian Danish Community, Early Thirteenth Century / Lars Hermanson 59
Envisioning a Political Community. Peasants and Swedish Men in Vernacular Rhyme Chronicles, Late Fifteenth Century / Margaretha Nordquist 89
Cultic and Missionary Communities
Communities of Devotion across the Boundaries. Women and Religious Bonds on the Baltic Rim and in Central Europe, Eleventh – Twelfth Centuries / Grzegorz Pac 123
Risk Societies on the Frontier. Missionary Emotional Communities in the Southern Baltic, Eleventh – Thirteenth Centuries / Wojtek Jezierski 155
Expanding Communities. Henry of Livonia on the Making of a Christian Colony, Early Thirteenth Century / Linda Kaljundi 191
An Imaginary Saint for an Imagined Community. St. Henry and the Creation of Christian Identity in Finland, Thirteenth – Fifteenth Centuries / Tuomas Heikkilä 223
Legal and Urban Communities
The Making of Legal Communities. Royal, Aristocratic, and Local Visions in Sweden and Gotland, Thirteenth – Fourteenth Centuries / Thomas Lindkvist 255
Urban Community and Consensus. Brotherhood and Communalism in Medieval Novgorod / Pavel V. Lukin 279
Urban Community and Social Unrest. Semantics of Conflict in Fourteenth-Century Lübeck / Cordelia Heß 307
The Baltic Rim: A View From Afar
Norway, Sweden, and Novgorod. Scandinavian Perceptions of the Russians, Late Twelfth – Early Fourteenth Centuries / Bjørn Bandlien 331
Transient Borders. The Baltic Viewed from Northern Iceland in the Mid-Fifteenth Century / Hans Jacob Orning 353
Afterword. Imagined Emotions for Imagined Communities / Barbara H. Rosenwein 379
List of Abbreviations 387
General Index 389
List of Figures
Figure 1. Place-names mentioned in the book 8
Figure 2. Marriages of children of Bolesław the Wrymouth and his son, Mieszko III, with members of Scandinavian and Pomeranian ruling houses 126
Figure 3. Familial relations of Inge the Elder and Helena’s daughters 129
Figure 4. Emotion Words in the 'Chronicon Livoniae' 174
Figure 5. Law code provinces in Sweden, fourteenth century 254
