Wojtek Jezierski
University of Gothenburg, Department of Historical Studies, Faculty Member
- Södertörn University, Institutionen för historia och samtidsstudier, Department MemberUniversity of Oslo, Department of Historical Studies, Archeology and Conservation, Faculty Memberadd
- Derridean Deconstruction, Power (social), Kingship (Medieval History), Hospitality Studies, Early Medieval History, Social Research Methods and Methodology, and 8 moreMonasticism, Medieval History, Central Middle Ages (1000 1250), Ideas of Kingship, Historical Writing, Comparative History, England C. 1066 C. 1272, and Staufen Germanyedit
What anxieties did medieval missionaries and crusaders face and what role did the sense of risk play in their community-building? To what extent did crusaders and Christian colonists empathize with the local populations they set out to... more
What anxieties did medieval missionaries and crusaders face and what role did the sense of risk play in their community-building? To what extent did crusaders and Christian colonists empathize with the local populations they set out to conquer? Who were the hosts and who were the guests during the confrontations with the pagan societies on the Baltic Rim? And how were the uncertainties of the conversion process addressed in concrete encounters and in the accounts of Christian authors?
This book explores emotional bonding as well as practices and discourses of hospitality as uncertain means of evangelization, interaction, and socialization across cultural divides on the Baltic Rim, c. 1000–1300. It focuses on interactions between local populations and missionary communities, as well as crusader frontier societies. By applying tools of historical anthropology to the study of host-guest relations, spaces of hospitality, emotional communities, and empathy on the fronts of Christianization, this book offers fresh insights and approaches to the manner in which missionaries and crusaders reflexively engaged with the groups targeted by Christianization in terms of practice, ethics, and identity.
This book explores emotional bonding as well as practices and discourses of hospitality as uncertain means of evangelization, interaction, and socialization across cultural divides on the Baltic Rim, c. 1000–1300. It focuses on interactions between local populations and missionary communities, as well as crusader frontier societies. By applying tools of historical anthropology to the study of host-guest relations, spaces of hospitality, emotional communities, and empathy on the fronts of Christianization, this book offers fresh insights and approaches to the manner in which missionaries and crusaders reflexively engaged with the groups targeted by Christianization in terms of practice, ethics, and identity.
Research Interests: Baltic Studies, History Of Emotions, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, History of Crusades, Martyrdom, and 15 moreHospitality, Middle High German language and literature, Uncertainty, Pomerania, Teutonic Knights, Risk society, Medieval Livonia, Ambiguity, Christianization in Scandinavia, Medieval Poland, Henry of Livonia, Christianisation and Crusades in Baltic rim, History of the Baltic Sea Region, History of Emotions, and Baltic Crusades
Can we think of a Benedictine cloister around the year 1000 as reminiscent of a modern prison or a mental asylum? Was the monastery a medieval type of Erving Goffman's 'total institution' or Benthanian panopticon thoroughly structuring... more
Can we think of a Benedictine cloister around the year 1000 as reminiscent of a modern prison or a mental asylum? Was the monastery a medieval type of Erving Goffman's 'total institution' or Benthanian panopticon thoroughly structuring the thoughts and practices of its inmates? What did the power relations between the groups of monks in medieval St Gall look like? Wojtek Jezierski's thesis explores and expands the connection between the medieval forms of monastic life and modern social theories. It investigates the patterns of persecution and exclusion, the exercise of power and surveillance, as well as violent conflicts between the conventuals and their abbots. It analyzes also the social components of monastic habitus and subjectivity in the monasteries of St Gall, Fulda, Bury St Edmunds and others. Finally, the study examines the strategies monks used to cope with the demands made on them by the external lay world, i.e. the political, social, and cultural liaisons between claustrum and saeculum. Wojtek Jezierski (b. 1979) studied history and social anthropology the University of Warsaw. He conducts research at the Department of History and the centre for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University. This book is his PhD thesis.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Reflexivity, Personhood as Relational, Michel Foucault, Habitus, and 10 morePierre Bourdieu, Derridean Deconstruction, Erving Goffman, Discipline, Early Medieval Monasticism, Benedictine Monasticism, Stanley Fish, Pierre Bourdieu and symbolic violence, Critical psychology and social constructionist approaches in mental health, paranoia, discourses of surveillance in contemporary culture., and Bury St Edmunds
Reflecting debate around hospitality and the Baltic Sea region, this open access book taps into wider discussions about reception, securitization and xenophobic attitudes towards migrants and strangers. Focusing on coastal and urban... more
Reflecting debate around hospitality and the Baltic Sea region, this open access book taps into wider discussions about reception, securitization and xenophobic attitudes towards migrants and strangers. Focusing on coastal and urban areas, the collection presents an overview of the responses of host communities to guests and strangers in the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, from the early eleventh century to the twentieth. The chapters investigate why and how diverse categories of strangers including migrants, war refugees, prisoners of war, merchants, missionaries and vagrants, were portrayed as threats to local populations or as objects of their charity, shedding light on the current predicament facing many European countries. Emphasizing the Baltic Sea region as a uniquely multi-layered space of intercultural encounter and conflict, this book demonstrates the significance of Northeastern Europe to migration history.
Research Interests: Catholic Missionary History, Hospitality Studies, Refugee Studies, Securitization, Prisoners of War, and 8 moreMigration History, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Merchants (Medieval Studies), Hanseatic League, Christianization in Medieval Europe, Superstition, Germany and Eastern Europe countries, Securitization Theory Copenhagen School, Hostility, and History of the Baltic Sea Region
This book explores the practical and symbolic resources of legitimacy which the elites of medieval Scandinavia employed to establish, justify, and reproduce their social and political standing between the end of the Viking Age and the... more
This book explores the practical and symbolic resources of legitimacy which the elites of medieval Scandinavia employed to establish, justify, and reproduce their social and political standing between the end of the Viking Age and the rise of kingdoms in the thirteenth century. Geographically the chapters cover the Scandinavian realms and Free State Iceland. Thematically the authors cover a wide palette of cultural practices and historical sources: hagiography, historiography, spaces and palaces, literature, and international connections, which rulers, magnates, or ecclesiastics used to compete for status and to reserve haloing glory for themselves. The volume is divided in three sections. The first looks at the sacral, legal, and acclamatory means through which privilege was conferred onto kings and ruling families. Section II explores the spaces such as aristocratic halls, palaces, churches in which the social elevation of elites took place. Section III explores the traditional and novel means of domestic distinction and international cultural capital which different orders of elites-knights, powerful clerics, ruling families, etc.-wrought to assure their dominance and set themselves apart vis-à-vis their peers and subjects. A concluding chapter discusses how the use of symbolic capital in the North compared to wider European contexts.
Research Interests: Legitimacy and Authority, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Medieval Ecclesiastical History, Medieval Archaeology, and 15 morePapacy (Medieval Church History), Political Legitimacy, Medieval Scandinavia, Elites (Political Science), Political Elites, Cultural Capital, Pierre Bourdieu, Scandinavian history, Elites and Society, Charismatic leaders, Distinction, Symbolic Power, Cultural Capital and Habitus Theory, Representation of the Royal Power in the Middle Ages, and Scandinavian Medieval History
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... more
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.
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCESS, AVAILABLE through JSTOR services.
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCESS, AVAILABLE through JSTOR services.
Research Interests: Baltic Studies, Baltic Sea Region Studies, Imagined Community, Baltic Crusade, Imagined Communities, and 9 moreMedieval saints, Benedict Anderson, Christianisation of Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages, Christianisation and Crusades in Baltic rim, Medieval Legal History, Christianisation of Scandinavia, Medieval Conflicts, Medieval Saints Cult, Medieval Religion and Mentality History, Sermon Studies, and Medieval Communities
´This article explores the challenges and opportunities of writing and defending a compilation thesis (composed of several articles and an extensive introduction) in Sweden in the discipline of history, which traditionally leans towards... more
´This article explores the challenges and opportunities of writing and defending a compilation thesis (composed of several articles and an extensive introduction) in Sweden in the discipline of history, which traditionally leans towards monographs. The authors explore PhD education as an interstitial field, combining elements of education and research, that is governed by partially conflicting expectations about forms of academic publication and evaluation. The investigation encompasses challenges and opportunities faced by PhD students during their postgraduate education, self-reported, as perceived by senior scholars, and structural, embedded within PhD education.
Empirically this study builds on two types of data. First, it presents an extensive survey of the literature on the academic quality of compilation theses in several disciplines, with a special focus on history. Second, it builds on in-depth interviews with three former PhD students in history (from the 1990s to the 2020s) who are still active in the field, and their experiences of writing a compilation thesis and its impact on their subsequent careers. The issues they raised ranged from academic independence and control to the resistance they encountered in the discipline and how they dealt with it. The article makes a number of practical recommendations for how postgraduate education in history could address and alleviate some of the challenges of writing a compilation thesis.
Empirically this study builds on two types of data. First, it presents an extensive survey of the literature on the academic quality of compilation theses in several disciplines, with a special focus on history. Second, it builds on in-depth interviews with three former PhD students in history (from the 1990s to the 2020s) who are still active in the field, and their experiences of writing a compilation thesis and its impact on their subsequent careers. The issues they raised ranged from academic independence and control to the resistance they encountered in the discipline and how they dealt with it. The article makes a number of practical recommendations for how postgraduate education in history could address and alleviate some of the challenges of writing a compilation thesis.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Hospitality Studies, Space and Place, Politics, Cannibalism, Securitization, and 15 moreBaltic Sea Region Studies, Asylum, Religious Conversion, Jacques Derrida, Spatiality (Cultural geography), Hospitality, Spatiality, Pomerania, Missionaries, Christianization, Strangers, History of the Baltic Sea Region, St. Adalbert of Prague, Bruno of Querfurt, and Springer Ebooks
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the northeastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By... more
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the northeastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By comparing the examples of holy bishops arriving to Poland and Sweden (St Adalbert, St Sigfrid, St Henry) it studies the episcopal mythopoesis, that is, creation of foundational myths and mythologies as well as their adaptation to specific local needs and changing historical circumstances. The article further probes to what extent these mythopoetic efforts were original or imitative in respect of the Western European episcopal centers and other peripheries. How similarly or differently did the bishops in the “old” and “young” Europe respond to the question: what beginnings do we need today? And what role did the appropriation, commodification, and domestication of holy bishops’ images and body parts play in providing answers to this vital question?
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
There was no holy king in Poland during the Middle Ages. Although the Piast polity belonged to the North-eastern European periphery (East-Central Europe and Scandinavia), where essentially all post- 1000 CE polities boasted dynastic... more
There was no holy king in Poland during the Middle Ages. Although
the Piast polity belonged to the North-eastern European periphery
(East-Central Europe and Scandinavia), where essentially all post-
1000 CE polities boasted dynastic martyred holy rulers of native
origin, the Piasts never elevated a member of their kin to such a
position. The present article takes this puzzling exception as a
point of departure to advance the argument that the episcopal
holy patron of Poland of Bohemian origin – St Adalbert (c. 956–
997) – may in many regards be interpreted as a version of
Marshall Sahlins’s stranger-king. By combining anthropological
theory and comparative evidence, the article explores the locally
produced hagiographical sources from the twelfth to the
fifteenth centuries in order to demonstrate how St Adalbert’s
heroic status and retroactively invented ethnic and sacral
otherness were exploited for the purposes of institutional and
king-like legitimacy vis-à-vis the Polish people. In its conclusions
the article argues that concepts and comparative methods from
political anthropology can help us to reconsider the category of
holy rulers and offer new ways of reading hagiographical sources
as political treatises.
the Piast polity belonged to the North-eastern European periphery
(East-Central Europe and Scandinavia), where essentially all post-
1000 CE polities boasted dynastic martyred holy rulers of native
origin, the Piasts never elevated a member of their kin to such a
position. The present article takes this puzzling exception as a
point of departure to advance the argument that the episcopal
holy patron of Poland of Bohemian origin – St Adalbert (c. 956–
997) – may in many regards be interpreted as a version of
Marshall Sahlins’s stranger-king. By combining anthropological
theory and comparative evidence, the article explores the locally
produced hagiographical sources from the twelfth to the
fifteenth centuries in order to demonstrate how St Adalbert’s
heroic status and retroactively invented ethnic and sacral
otherness were exploited for the purposes of institutional and
king-like legitimacy vis-à-vis the Polish people. In its conclusions
the article argues that concepts and comparative methods from
political anthropology can help us to reconsider the category of
holy rulers and offer new ways of reading hagiographical sources
as political treatises.
Research Interests: Hagiography, Comparative History, Polish History, Medieval Scandinavia, Kingship (Medieval History), and 15 moreComparative Methods (Anthropology), Otherness, Medieval Norway, Marshall Sahlins, Comparative medieval history, Medieval Poland, Aleksander Gieysztor, Sacrality of the Royal Power, St. Adalbert of Prague, David Graeber, Comparative and Historical Methods, Gniezno, Jan Długosz, Xenopolitics, and Anthropology of Kingship
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the north-eastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By... more
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the north-eastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By comparing the examples of holy bishops arriving to Poland and Sweden (St Adalbert, St Sigfrid, St Henry), it studies the episcopal mythopoesis, that is, the creation of foundational myths and mythologies as well as their adaptation to specifi c local needs and changing historical circumstances. The article further probes to what extent these mythopoetic efforts were original or imitative in comparison to the Western European episcopal centres and other peripheries. How similarly or differently did the bishops in the “old” and “young” Europe respond to the question: What beginnings do we need today? And what role did the appropriation, commodifi cation, and domestication of holy bishops’ images and body parts play in building the institutional identiti...
Research Interests: History, Ancient History, Catholic Missionary History, Coevolution, Cult of Saints, and 15 moreHost-parasite Coevolution, Animal domestication, Mythopoesis, Porta Regia of Gniezno, Medieval Sweden, Domestication and Foreignization, Medieval Poland, Relics and Relic Veneration, Latin Medieval Hagiography, Mediaeval Cult of Relics and Saints, Medieval Bishops, Originality and Copy, medieval Finland, originality and Authenticity, and secondary mythologization
The introductory chapter presents the thematic, geographical, and chronological scope of the volume and explicates its guiding questions and conceptual framework. Our focus is on the Baltic Sea region, considered as a multi-layered space... more
The introductory chapter presents the thematic, geographical, and chronological scope of the volume and explicates its guiding questions and conceptual framework. Our focus is on the Baltic Sea region, considered as a multi-layered space of intercultural encounter and conflict and its specific legacy of hospitality. In terms of guiding concepts for the empirical chapters, this introduction combines issues of host–guest relations with the problems of securitization. It is our contention that hospitality in Baltic migration contexts, from the turn of the first millennium until the twentieth century and beyond, triggered security issues both on the part of arriving strangers and receiving host communities. Why and how were multifarious categories of guests and strangers—migrants, war refugees, prisoners of war, merchants, missionaries, vagrants, vagabonds, etc.—portrayed as threats to local populations or as objects of their charity? Under what circumstances did hospitality turn into hostility? How was hospitality practiced and contained spatially? By focusing predominantly on coastal contexts as spaces for meetings and confrontations, we decouple the study of hospitality and migration from state-centered methodology. Instead, we offer a close-up view on hospitality dilemmas and practices of dealing with arriving guests and strangers, which we consider in transhistorical perspective. These conceptual themes and problems are fleshed out in the presentation of the individual chapters.
Research Interests: Hospitality Studies, International Security, Securitization, Baltic Sea Region Studies, Jacques Derrida, and 12 moreImmanuel Kant, Migration History, Spatiality (Cultural geography), Hosting, Adam of Bremen, Transhistorical and cross cultural aesthetics, Hanseatic League, Securitization Theory Copenhagen School, Hostility, History of the Baltic Sea Region, Politics of belonging, and Coastal Landscapes
This chapter studies examples of confrontations between missionary guests and pagan host communities on the Baltic Rim from the late tenth to mid-twelfth centuries to uncover the spatial dynamics and intercultural articulations of... more
This chapter studies examples of confrontations between missionary guests and pagan host communities on the Baltic Rim from the late tenth to mid-twelfth centuries to uncover the spatial dynamics and intercultural articulations of hospitality in Christianization contexts. In terms of method, the chapter focuses on the functional, political, and symbolic mechanisms structuring collective production spaces of hospitality during such encounters. The addressed problems consider how spaces of hospitality were practically and discursively produced and negotiated through such meetings. It delves also into the ways arrival of this special type of Christian strangers and guests was contained in terms of power relations and security measures. And, finally, how these interactions involved and oscillated between hospitable and hostile attitudes. The results point out the deeply ambiguous, volatile, and heavily contested nature of spaces of hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim, both for missionary agents and for the host communities receiving/rejecting them.
Research Interests: Hospitality Studies, Space and Place, Cannibalism, Securitization, Baltic Sea Region Studies, and 12 moreAsylum, Religious Conversion, Jacques Derrida, Spatiality (Cultural geography), Spatiality, Pomerania, Missionaries, Strangers, History of the Baltic Sea Region, St. Adalbert of Prague, Bruno of Querfurt, and St. Otto of Bamberg
The notion of sovereignty remains one of the most scholarly and historically contested concepts. In this article we argue that historians’ absorption of sovereignty’s spatiality needs to be complemented by an investigation of its... more
The notion of sovereignty remains one of the most scholarly and
historically contested concepts. In this article we argue that historians’ absorption of sovereignty’s spatiality needs to be complemented by an investigation of its temporality. By tracing the late medieval and early modern connections between political theology and economic teleology—between the permanence of political incorporation and perpetuation of the administrative apparatus —this article outlines a new research agenda and a novel vantage point for investigating state formation in Sweden. The article scrutinizes the following four areas: (1) The ideas of incorporation and representation of the realm and the Swedish people in late medieval historiography; (2) the transformation of political loyalty from personal oaths of and to the monarchs to popular, national loyalty; (3) the transformation of tax-collection from occasional to perpetual; and (4) the transition from personal debts of monarchs to state debt.
historically contested concepts. In this article we argue that historians’ absorption of sovereignty’s spatiality needs to be complemented by an investigation of its temporality. By tracing the late medieval and early modern connections between political theology and economic teleology—between the permanence of political incorporation and perpetuation of the administrative apparatus —this article outlines a new research agenda and a novel vantage point for investigating state formation in Sweden. The article scrutinizes the following four areas: (1) The ideas of incorporation and representation of the realm and the Swedish people in late medieval historiography; (2) the transformation of political loyalty from personal oaths of and to the monarchs to popular, national loyalty; (3) the transformation of tax-collection from occasional to perpetual; and (4) the transition from personal debts of monarchs to state debt.
Research Interests: Medieval Historiography, Taxation, State Theory, Political Theology, Futures Studies, and 15 moreReinhart Koselleck, Carl Schmitt, Claude Lefort, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Time and Eternity, Public Debt, History of Sweden, Incorporation, Loyalty Oath, Loyalty, State sovereignty, Ernst Kantorowicz, Theory of State and Law, Early modern Sweden, and History of taxation
Research Interests:
The conquest and colonisation of the northeastern Baltic Rim in the 13th century durably shaped religious and ethnic identities of and relations between the native population and the arriving crusaders. This article explores the codes and... more
The conquest and colonisation of the northeastern Baltic Rim in the 13th century durably shaped religious and ethnic identities of and relations between the native population and the arriving crusaders. This article explores the codes and displays of hospitality in the anonymous ‘Livonian Rhymed Chronicle’, which are seen here as ways of conceptualising the relationship and conflicts between the Teutonic Knights and the pagan or apostate people in Livonia. It asks which consequences the framing of the host-guest relations might have had for the self-comprehension of the chronicle’s author and his audience. The analysis of the chronicle is pursued along three lines: the first focuses on the questions of chivalry, courtesy, and conversion; the second explores different renditions of a miracle story of inhospitality from the 1220s; the third focuses on the conceptual metaphors of hospitality as a way in which the Teutonic Knights accommodated their adversaries’ viewpoints. In its conclusions, the article argues how a broad focus on the institutions, concepts, and discourses of hospitality can help account for both confrontational and amicable attitudes between the colonisers and the colonised both on the Baltic frontier and among other European frontier societies.
Research Interests: Hospitality Studies, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Hospitality, Chivalry (Medieval Studies), George Lakoff, and 15 moreTeutonic Knights, Baltic Crusade, Colonization studies, SAUNA, Assymetric warfare, Henry of Livonia, Medieval exiles, prisoners and hostages, Sauna History, Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, Host-Guest Interaction, History of Livonia, Hybridity and Cultural Identity, History of the Baltic Sea Region, Banias, and Der Deutsche Orden in Livland
This introductory chapter presents the geographical, chronological, and thematic scope of the volume and expounds its guiding questions and conceptual framework. By combining Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of symbolic capital and doxa, Giorgio... more
This introductory chapter presents the geographical, chronological, and thematic scope of the volume and expounds its guiding questions and conceptual framework. By combining Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of symbolic capital and doxa, Giorgio Agamben’s examination of medieval economy of gloria, and Max Weber’s threefold model of legitimation of leadership, the chapter discusses how medieval Scandinavian elites fused sacral and practical resources to elevate themselves and convince others of their social and political legitimacy, that is, their deservedness to rule. What is proposed is a dynamic, heterarchic, and practice-oriented model of studying how sociopolitical status and haloing glory were competed for, justified, and reproduced over time. These conceptual themes and problems are fleshed out in the presentation of the individual chapters and the three sections into which the entire volume is divided: Glorifying Kings, Spaces of Elevation, and Elevating Social Orders. In its last section the chapter discusses how the sudden boom in literary production and composition of historical sources on the verge of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries both reflected and was the vehicle of elite competition in Scandinavia.
Research Interests: Legitimacy and Authority, Ideology, Political Legitimacy, Medieval Scandinavia, Giorgio Agamben, and 15 moreElites (Political Science), Political Elites, Cultural Capital, Pierre Bourdieu, History of Elites, Political Ideology, Courts and Elites (History), Max Weber, Symbolic Capital, Franco Moretti, Charismatic leadership, Social Space and Symbolic Power, Distinction, Symbolic Power, and Social Order
Research Interests:
The processes of conversion and colonization of the northeastern Baltic Rim in the thirteenth century durably shaped the relations between the native population and the arriving missionaries, settlers, and crusaders, and formed religious... more
The processes of conversion and colonization of the northeastern Baltic Rim in the thirteenth century durably shaped the relations between the native population and the arriving missionaries, settlers, and crusaders, and formed religious and ethnic identities of both groups. The students of the expansion of Christendom to Livonia have mostly focused on means of evangelization as well as crusader warfare and the formation of identity through conflict, largely overlooking the sociopolitical role of emotions in cohabitation and cultural struggle in the new colony. This chapter studies the representations and attributions of feelings to different social groups in the Chronicon Livoniae and the Livländische Reimchronik. Through primarily quantitative (word statistics) and qualitative analysis this study explores to what extent the different groups of colonizers imaginatively set themselves apart from the native population and what types of feelings they deemed could bridge over the emotional divide between them? Which emotions – according to the viewpoints represented by those chronicles – enabled and which impeded the making of the Livonian society and community between the Christians, neophytes, and pagans in the thirteenth century? In other words, what did the different politics of love and friendship, grief and consolation, joy and fear look like for clerical authors (such as Henry of Livonia) vis-à-vis members of the Teutonic Knights (such as the anonymous author of the LRC)? And how transformative were they considered to be?
Research Interests: Sociology of Emotion, Baltic Sea Region Studies, Compassion, Baptism, Anthropology of emotions, and 15 moreMartha Nussbaum, Historical and Theoretical Conceptions of Empathy, Empathy, History of the Crusades, Baltic Crusade, Franco Moretti, Medieval Livonia, Empathy (discourse), Theory of Mind (ToM) / Empathy / Emotion Recognition., Henry of Livonia, Chronicon Livoniae, Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, History of the Baltic Sea Region, Politics of the Emotions, and Arlie Russell Hochschild
Research Interests: Social Capital, Angelology, Papacy (Medieval Church History), Medieval Scandinavia, Giorgio Agamben, and 15 morePapal Legates, History of Elites, Elites, Sociology of elites, Medieval Livonia, Pierre Bourdieu; Forms of capital and theory of social mobility, Innocent III, Pierre Bourdieu and symbolic violence, Cultural Capital and Habitus Theory, Ernst Kantorowicz, Cultural Hegemony, Skänninge Sweden, Delegations of authority, Elite Networks, and Absalon Archbishop of Lund
This is a work-in-progress and differently structured version of the article: "ST ADALBERTUS DOMESTICUS. PATTERNS OF MISSIONING AND EPISCOPAL POWER IN POLAND AND SCANDINAVIA IN THE ELEVENTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES" Acta Poloniae Historica... more
This is a work-in-progress and differently structured version of the article: "ST ADALBERTUS DOMESTICUS. PATTERNS OF MISSIONING AND EPISCOPAL POWER IN POLAND AND SCANDINAVIA IN THE ELEVENTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES" Acta Poloniae Historica
119, 2019
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the northeastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By comparing the examples of holy bishops arriving to Poland and Sweden (St Adalbert, St Sigfrid, St Henry) it studies the episcopal mythopoesis, that is, creation of foundational myths and mythologies as well as their adaptation to specific local needs and changing historical circumstances. The article further probes to what extent these mythopoetic efforts were original or imitative in respect of the Western European episcopal centers and other peripheries. How similarly or differently did the bishops in the “old” and “young” Europe respond to the question: what beginnings do we need today? And what role did the appropriation, commodification, and domestication of holy bishops’ images and body parts play in providing answers to this vital question?
Keywords: bishops, hagiography, episcopal attributes, relics, mythopoesis, secondary mythologization, domestication, taming, holy husbandry, St Adalbert of Prague, St Sigfrid, St Henry of Finland, Gniezno
119, 2019
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the northeastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By comparing the examples of holy bishops arriving to Poland and Sweden (St Adalbert, St Sigfrid, St Henry) it studies the episcopal mythopoesis, that is, creation of foundational myths and mythologies as well as their adaptation to specific local needs and changing historical circumstances. The article further probes to what extent these mythopoetic efforts were original or imitative in respect of the Western European episcopal centers and other peripheries. How similarly or differently did the bishops in the “old” and “young” Europe respond to the question: what beginnings do we need today? And what role did the appropriation, commodification, and domestication of holy bishops’ images and body parts play in providing answers to this vital question?
Keywords: bishops, hagiography, episcopal attributes, relics, mythopoesis, secondary mythologization, domestication, taming, holy husbandry, St Adalbert of Prague, St Sigfrid, St Henry of Finland, Gniezno
Research Interests:
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the northeastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By... more
This article explores the ways episcopal milieus on the northeastern peripheries of Europe created and renewed their identities and symbols of episcopal authority by domesticating their immigrant saints during the high Middle Ages. By comparing the examples of holy bishops arriving to Poland and Sweden (St Adalbert, St Sigfrid, St Henry), it studies the episcopal mythopoesis, that is, the creation of foundational myths and mythologies as well as their adaptation to specifi c local needs and changing historical circumstances. The article further probes to what extent these mythopoetic efforts were original or imitative in comparison to the Western European episcopal centres and other peripheries. How similarly or differently did the bishops in the "old" and "young" Europe respond to the question: What beginnings do we need today? And what role did the appropriation, commodification, and domestication of holy bishops' images and body parts play in building the institutional identities of bishoprics?
Research Interests: Catholic Missionary History, Coevolution, Cult of Saints, Host-parasite Coevolution, Animal domestication, and 15 moreMythopoesis, Porta Regia of Gniezno, Medieval Sweden, Domestication and Foreignization, Medieval Poland, Stress-Induced Mutagenesis, Relics and Relic Veneration, Latin Medieval Hagiography, Mediaeval Cult of Relics and Saints, Medieval Bishops, Originality and Copy, St. Adalbert of Prague, medieval Finland, originality and Authenticity, and secondary mythologization
Drawing on studies of the history of emotions, trust- and community-formation, and on medieval as well as modern religious violence, this study re-evaluates the predominantly military view of medieval sieges. Instead, this article... more
Drawing on studies of the history of emotions, trust- and community-formation, and on medieval as well as modern religious violence, this study re-evaluates the predominantly military view of medieval sieges. Instead, this article examines sieges as extreme, often purposefully histrionic, and emotionally ambivalent social events, based
on the descriptions of sieges in two Baltic missionary chronicles: Helmold of Bosau’s ‘Chronica Slavorum’ (12th c.) and Henry of Livonia’s ‘Chronicon Livoniae’ (13th c.). By focusing on the means of emotional bonding during sieges in the Baltic Rim, this article argues that emotions expressed and accentuated the social, political, and religious
predicaments of missioning and crusading. Frequently, emotions in sieges were actively deployed and navigated as means of warfare or as the performative fuel of the theatre of war. Often employed as a motivational force, emotions could also serve as a paradoxical method of socialisation within groups of faith and across religious divides.
on the descriptions of sieges in two Baltic missionary chronicles: Helmold of Bosau’s ‘Chronica Slavorum’ (12th c.) and Henry of Livonia’s ‘Chronicon Livoniae’ (13th c.). By focusing on the means of emotional bonding during sieges in the Baltic Rim, this article argues that emotions expressed and accentuated the social, political, and religious
predicaments of missioning and crusading. Frequently, emotions in sieges were actively deployed and navigated as means of warfare or as the performative fuel of the theatre of war. Often employed as a motivational force, emotions could also serve as a paradoxical method of socialisation within groups of faith and across religious divides.
Research Interests: Catholic Missionary History, Baltic Studies, History Of Emotions, Political Violence and Terrorism, History of Crusades, and 15 moreAnthropology of emotions, Carl Schmitt (Political Science), Social Trust, Emotional communites, Sociology of Emotions, Historical Semantics, Political Uses of Fear, Baltic Crusade, Medieval Livonia, Siege Warfare, Henry of Livonia, Neophytes, Paganism and Christianity, Co-occurence Analysis, and Emotional Bonding
Temanummer: Nationen
Research Interests: Early Modern History, Sovereignty, Nationalism, Nationalism And State Building, Political Theology, and 15 moreEschatology, Fiscal History, Swedish History, Theories of Sovereignty, Sovereign Debt, Time and Eternity, Public Debt, Loyalty Oath, Oaths, National debt, State sovereignty, Ernst Kantorowicz, Politics of Time, History of Debt, and Early Medieval Taxation
Temanummer: Nationen
Research Interests: Sovereignty, Nationalism, Nationalism And State Building, Political Theology, Eschatology, and 15 moreFiscal History, Swedish History, Theories of Sovereignty, Sovereign Debt, Time and Eternity, Public Debt, Loyalty Oath, Oaths, National debt, State sovereignty, Ernst Kantorowicz, Politics of Time, Early modern Sweden, History of Debt, and Early Medieval Taxation
Research Interests: History Of Emotions, Monastic Studies, Monasticism, Emotional communites, Charlemagne, and 12 moreEarly Medieval Monasticism, St. Gallen, Emotion, Envy, Existential Emotion, Casus sancti galli, History of Emotions, History of Tears, Medieval Artists, Early Medieval Western Monasticism, Notker Balbulus, Ekkehart IV of St. Gallen, Tuotilo, and medieval public sphere
Full title: ‘Fears, Sights and Slaughter. Expressions of Fright and Disgust in the Baltic Missionary Historiography (11th-13th centuries)’, in: Per Förnegård, Erika Kihlman, Mia Åkestam, Gunnel Engwall (eds.), Tears, Sighs and Laughter.... more
Full title:
‘Fears, Sights and Slaughter. Expressions of Fright and Disgust in the Baltic Missionary Historiography (11th-13th centuries)’, in: Per Förnegård, Erika Kihlman, Mia Åkestam, Gunnel Engwall (eds.), Tears, Sighs and Laughter. Expressions of Emotions in the Middle Ages, Conference Series: 92 (Vitterhetsakadmien: Stockholm 2017), pp. 109-137
‘Fears, Sights and Slaughter. Expressions of Fright and Disgust in the Baltic Missionary Historiography (11th-13th centuries)’, in: Per Förnegård, Erika Kihlman, Mia Åkestam, Gunnel Engwall (eds.), Tears, Sighs and Laughter. Expressions of Emotions in the Middle Ages, Conference Series: 92 (Vitterhetsakadmien: Stockholm 2017), pp. 109-137
Research Interests: History Of Emotions, Missionary History, The Emotion of Disgust, Disgust, Medieval history, history of emotions, political history, and 9 moreBaltic Crusade, Medieval Livonia, Christianization in Scandinavia, Adam of Bremen, Henry of Livonia, Christianisation and Crusades in Baltic rim, Theories of Disgust, Christianization of Baltic Region, and History of Fear
Please observe that this is an early work-in-progress version of a chapter forthcoming in: Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050-1250 Volume II: Strategies and Social Networks, ed. by Hans Jacob Orning, Kim Esmark & Lars Hermanson... more
Please observe that this is an early work-in-progress version of a chapter forthcoming in: Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050-1250 Volume II: Strategies and Social Networks, ed. by Hans Jacob Orning, Kim Esmark & Lars Hermanson (London & New York: Routledge, 2018/19). The English of this article has not been proofread yet and the text may contain typos and mistakes.
Research Interests: Social Capital, Angelology, Medieval Scandinavia, Giorgio Agamben, Papal Legates, and 16 morePierre Bourdieu, Angels, Medieval Aristocracy, Baltic Crusade, Pierre Bourdieu; Forms of capital and theory of social mobility, Papal Diplomacy, Christianisation and Crusades in Baltic rim, Ernst Kantorowicz, Forms of capital, Delegations of authority, Delegation of Power, Pope Honorius III, Absalon Archbishop of Lund, Hvide clan, Birger Jarl Magnusson, and Guilelmus abbas de Sancto Thoma in Paraclito (Aebelholt, Denmark)
Research Interests: Catholic Missionary History, Baltic Studies, History Of Emotions, Emotional Labour, Baltic Sea Region Studies, and 15 moreMissionary History, Emotions (Social Psychology), History of Crusades, Imagined Community, Risk society, Baltic Crusade, Imagined Communities, Adam of Bremen, Henry of Livonia, Baltic States and Scandinavia (Area Studies), Christianisation and Crusades in Baltic rim, Ansgar (Anskar), History of the Baltic Sea Region, Helmold, and Emotionology
Research Interests: Baltic Studies, Baltic Sea Region Studies, Emotional communites, Imagined Community, Interpretive Communities, and 8 moreImagined Communities, Benedict Anderson, Medieval frontiers, History of the Baltic Sea Region, Socio-textual Communities, Medieval Conflicts, Medieval Borders, and Medieval Communities
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Research Interests: Erving Goffman, Paranoia, Early Medieval Monasticism, Benedictine Monasticism, Harold Garfinkel, and 5 moreTotal Institutions, Critical psychology and social constructionist approaches in mental health, paranoia, discourses of surveillance in contemporary culture., Ostracism, Social rejection, ostracism, and Social Deviance
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'Verba Volant, Scripta Manent: Limits of Speech, Power of Silence and Logic of Practice in Some Monastic Conflicts of the High Middle Ages', in: Steven Vanderputten (ed.), Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication (Western Europe, tenth-thirteenth centuries) (USML 21), Turnhout 2011, pp. 23-48more
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Research Interests: European identity, Multilingual Studies, Identity Studies, Border identities, hybridity, multilingualism, poetry, bilingual poetry, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, globalization studies, third culture kids, The role of the European Union in the construction of a European identity., Hybridity and Cultural Identity, Grossraum, and 2 moreHistory of European Culture and European political cultures
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We warmly invite proposals for papers for the conference Ambiguities of Hospitality in the Middle Ages, 1000-1350 to be held at Stockholm University on the 8-9 th September 2022. The conference is open to established and early career... more
We warmly invite proposals for papers for the conference Ambiguities of Hospitality in the Middle Ages, 1000-1350 to be held at Stockholm University on the 8-9 th September 2022. The conference is open to established and early career researchers as well as graduate students, and to scholars of the Middle Ages of all disciplinary backgrounds, including but not limited to historians, archaeologists as well as scholars of literature and art.
Research Interests: Intercultural Communication, Gift Giving (Economic Anthropology), Hospitality, Pilgrimage and travel to the Holy Land, History of the Crusades, and 9 moreMedieval Food, Intercultural Relations, Medieval feasts, Ambiguity, Crosscultural Communication, Hospitality and Literature, Christianisation and Crusades in Baltic rim, High medieval European History, and Hostipitality
For the past millennium the Baltic coastal regions, urban and proto-urban areas, and harbours have functioned as spaces of connectivity and intercultural encounters. This conference and the prospective volume address the tension between... more
For the past millennium the Baltic coastal regions, urban and proto-urban areas, and harbours have functioned as spaces of connectivity and intercultural encounters. This conference and the prospective volume address the tension between hospitality and hostility towards many various guests arriving to those regions from the "discovery" of the Baltic around 1000 until the end of the nineteenth century when modern conventions regulating immigration and rights to asylum began to emerge. The ambition of this conference is to determine how this tension was practically resolved by reception or rejection of strangers and provision of security for the host community. Missionaries, crusaders, merchants, sailors, pirates, stranded or commandeered seamen, groups of people displaced in the wake of war, pestilence, or famine, refugees, soldiers, deserters, vagrants, wayward troops or religious communities, travelling priests and artists, émigrés etc. can all be considered as guests or strangers arriving to different host communities scattered all over the Baltic Sea. By focusing on the social orders established at the land/sea intersection, which were susceptible for disruption by the arrival of others, the goal of this conference is to explore the contingencies of hospitality on the Baltic Rim from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century.
Research Interests: Early Modern History, Refugee Studies, Baltic Studies, Baltic Sea Region Studies, Coastal and Island Archaeology, and 15 moreForced Migration, Migrations (Medieval Studies), Migration History, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), International Refugee Law, Hospitality, Emigration Research, Ports and Harbours, Teutonic Knights, Baltic Crusade, Guest Relations, Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Littoral, Immanuel Kant Perpetual Peace, and Host-Guest Relationships
For the past millennium the Baltic coastal regions, urban and proto-urban areas, and harbours have functioned as spaces of connectivity and intercultural encounters. This conference and the prospective volume address the tension between... more
For the past millennium the Baltic coastal regions, urban and proto-urban areas, and harbours have functioned as spaces of connectivity and intercultural encounters. This conference and the prospective volume address the tension between hospitality and hostility towards many various guests arriving to those regions from the “discovery” of the Baltic around 1000 until the end of the nineteenth century when modern conventions regulating immigration and rights to asylum began to emerge. The ambition of this conference is to determine how this tension was practically resolved by reception or rejection of strangers and provision of security for the host community.