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´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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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?
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
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?
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.
Temanummer: Nationen
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Temanummer: Nationen
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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
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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.
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