Since the end of the Cold War, the Middle Ages has returned to debates about history, culture, and politics in Northern and Eastern Europe. This volume explores political medievalism in two language areas that are crucial to understanding global medievalism but are, due to language barriers, often inaccessible to the majority of Western scholars and students. The importance of Russian medievalism has been acknowledged, but little analysed until now. Medievalism in Finland and Russia offers a selection of chapters by Russian, Finnish and American scholars covering historiography, presidential speeches, participatory online discussions and the neo-pagan revival in Russia. Finland is currently even more poorly understood than Russia in the discussions about global medievalism. It is usually mentioned only as of the birthplace of the Soldiers of Odin. The street patrol is, however, a marginal phenomenon in Finnish medievalism as this volume demonstrates. Instead of merely adopting the medievalist interpretation of the international alt-right, even the right-wing populists in Finland refer more to the nationalistic medievalist tradition, where crusades do not mark a Western Christian victory over the Muslim East, but a Swedish occupation of Finnish lands. In addition to presenting particular cases of medievalism, the chapters here on Finland challenge and diversify today's prevailing interpretation of shared online medievalism of European and American right-wing populists. This book reveals that while medievalisms in Finland and Russia share many features with the contemporary Anglo-American medievalist imaginations, they also display many original characteristics due to particular political situations and indigenous medievalist traditions. They have their own meta-medievalisms, cumulative core ideas and interpretations about the medieval past that are thoroughly examined here in English for the very first time.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Middle Ages has returned to debates about history, culture, and politics in Northern and Eastern Europe. This volume explores political medievalism in two language areas that are crucial to understanding global medievalism but are, due to language barriers, often inaccessible to the majority of Western scholars and students. The importance of Russian medievalism has been acknowledged, but little analysed until now. Medievalism in Finland and Russia offers a selection of chapters by Russian, Finnish and American scholars covering historiography, presidential speeches, participatory online discussions and the neo-pagan revival in Russia. Finland is currently even more poorly understood than Russia in the discussions about global medievalism. It is usually mentioned only as of the birthplace of the Soldiers of Odin. The street patrol is, however, a marginal phenomenon in Finnish medievalism as this volume demonstrates. Instead of merely adopting the medievalist interpretation of the international alt-right, even the right-wing populists in Finland refer more to the nationalistic medievalist tradition, where crusades do not mark a Western Christian victory over the Muslim East, but a Swedish occupation of Finnish lands. In addition to presenting particular cases of medievalism, the chapters here on Finland challenge and diversify today's prevailing interpretation of shared online medievalism of European and American right-wing populists. This book reveals that while medievalisms in Finland and Russia share many features with the contemporary Anglo-American medievalist imaginations, they also display many original characteristics due to particular political situations and indigenous medievalist traditions. They have their own meta-medievalisms, cumulative core ideas and interpretations about the medieval past that are thoroughly examined here in English for the very first time.

This anthology is about the representations and uses of medieval saints, heroes, and heroic events as elements of popular, local, and national culture during the 19th and 20th centuries in the Baltic Sea region: Scandinavia, Finland, Baltic countries, Northern Germany and North-Western Russia. Authors examine the processes of how medieval saints and heroes have been remembered, commemorated, interpreted, used, and reflected during modernity, and by whom. The focus of the anthology is on "doing" memory as a practice that commemorated the past and shaped spaces and identities in the present. It approaches the memory of saints and heroes, for example, Swedish Saints Birgitta and Eric, Danish Saint Knud, Kyivan Princess Olga, Swedish military leader in Finland Tyrgils Knutsson, Liv/Latvian warrior Imanta and Holsatian count Gerhard III as a shared heritage and as part of national, local and popular culture. The anthology contributes to the understanding of the Baltic Sea region through the study of saints, cults and heroic representations in the longue durée between the Middle Ages and modernity. It also adds nuance to the use of popular concepts of memory studies, particularly an update of Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire.

Essays on the use, and misuse, of the Middle Ages for political aims.

The present study examines the evolution of the image of Aleksandr Nevskiy in close connection with the dynamics of political and cultural history by demonstrating what influence the Life of Aleksandr Nevskiy had on popular historical consciousness in medieval Russia.

An up-to-date political, social and economic history of Finland from medieval times to the present. David Kirby traces the evolution of Finland's distinctive identity and of the Finnish national state from the long centuries under Swedish rule, through self-government within the Russian Empire, to independence in the twentieth century.

This book is a concise and comprehensive narrative history of Russia from 980 to 1584. It covers the history of the realm of the Riurikid dynasty from the reign of Vladimir 1 the Saint, through to the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who sealed the end of his dynasty's rule. Presenting developments in social and economic areas, as well as in political history, foreign relations, religion and culture, Medieval Russia, 980-1584 breaks away from the traditional view of Old Russia as a static, immutable culture, and emphasises the 'dynamic' and changing qualities of Russian society. Janet Martin develops clear lines of argument that lead to conclusions concerning how and why the states and society of the lands of the Rus' assumed the forms and characteristics that they did. Broadly accessible with informative and provocative interpretations, this book provides an up-to-date analysis of medieval Russia.