Medievalism in Finland and Russia: Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Aspects (New Directions in Medieval Studies)

"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."-- Provided by publisher Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of illustrations 7 Figures 7 Maps 7 Tables 7 Contributors 8 The background and mission of the volume 12 The shared history of Finland and Russia 15 Outline of the book 21 Preface: Medievalism in Finland and Russia and why it matters 11 The background and mission of the volume 12 The shared history of Finland and Russia 15 Outline of the book 21 Acknowledgements 24 Note on bibliography 25 Introduction: Who owns the Middle Ages? Metamedievalism and structural exclusion 26 Introduction 26 Medievalism and the Christchurch shootings 29 Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Victorians 31 Caravans of Gold 35 Historical authority 37 Web 2.0 and techno-utopianism 39 The online subaltern 41 Conclusion 43 Chapter 1: The Middle Ages on the ‘map of memory’ of Russian society 46 Introduction 46 Methodology, terminology and the sources of memory 48 The Middle Ages as the ‘Periphery’ of national memory and Ivan the Terrible as the ‘Name’ of the Russian Middle Ages 53 Heroes of the Russian Middle Ages and the ‘war’ over memory 55 Conclusion 62 Chapter 2: ‘A thousand years of history’: References to the past in the addresses to the Federal Assembly by the president of Russia, 2000–19 64 Introduction 64 Patriotism: ‘Cultural traditions and common historic memory’ 67 Unity as protection against threats: ‘A unique community of peoples’ 70 Justification: ‘Invaluable civilizational and even sacral importance for Russia’ 74 Concluding words 78 Chapter 3: Mapping the pseudohistorical knowledge space in the Russian World Wide Web 82 Introduction 82 Pseudocontents in the network of web medievalism 86 Hyperlinks to the past and from the future 89 Conclusion 96 Chapter 4: A lens most obscured: Western perceptions of contemporary Russian medievalisms 98 Introduction 98 New modes of distribution 100 Access and authority 102 Unintentional coherence: Vikings and Oleg the wise 103 Chapter 5: Memorializing the Finnish medieval past 110 Memory, memorials, collective identity 111 Medieval sites and the Club War remembered in Ostrobothnia 114 Medieval memorials as expressions of militaristic patriotism 115 Memorials in the south of Finland: Porvoo, Naantali, Köyliö 120 Discussion 123 Concluding remarks 127 Chapter 6: The missing Finnish runestones 128 Introduction: Few runes in Finland 128 Authority crisis in Vörå 133 Matts Dreijer, Sund and Birka 136 The vanished runestones of Kökar 138 Jukka Nieminen: Runes as the writing of the ancient Finnish kingdom 140 Other purported runic finds 144 Runes used to write Finnish? 146 Conclusion 147 Chapter 7: Masculine online medievalism in twenty-first-century Finland 150 Introduction 150 Studying masculinity: The manosphere 153 Finnish kings and swords 157 Swedishness and sexuality 158 Conclusion 160 Chapter 8: Particularizing the universal: Medievalist constructions of cultural and religious difference in Crusader Kings II 162 Introduction 162 Digital games and representations of cultures and religions 164 Particularizing cultures and cultural change 166 Representing religions 170 Conclusion 174 Appendix 1 178 Appendix 2 181 Appendix 3 183 Appendix 4 184 Appendix 5 185 Notes 186 Preface 186 Introduction 189 Chapter 1 193 Chapter 2 199 Chapter 3 205 Chapter 4 209 Chapter 5 212 Chapter 6 217 Chapter 7 223 Chapter 8 230 Appendix 2 233 Bibliography 234 Index 258