The Meaning of the Middle Ages: Fans, Authors, and Industry
This was a very enjoyable paper given on the topic of medievalism and the predominance of a European perspective in almost all fantasy literature. Young examined three authors who were moving away from the traditional telling of fantasy by subverting the typical pseudo-medieval narrative or by moving away from European cultures towards embracing Eastern, Aztec and other non-European worlds.
‘Fromm thennes faste he gan avyse/This litel spot of erthe’: GIS and the General Prologue
This paper was given at the Canada Chaucer Seminar on April 27, 2013.
Delivering stability: Primogeniture and autocratic survival in European monarchies 1000-1800
Although the dominating position of primogeniture at the end of the period might seem natural given primogeniture’s many advantages for the monarch and the ruling elite it was first rather late in history that the principle came to dominate Europe.
Russian Pilgrims in Constantinople
If one compares the Russian Anthony text with the original Mercati Anonymus text, the longest and most detailed of the three extant contemporary Western descriptions of the shrines of Constantinople, one finds that the Latin text includes only twenty of the seventy-six religious shrines mentioned by the Russian enumeration.
The Effects of the Mongol Empire on Russia
This paper looks at the Mongol Empire’s impacts on Russia in terms of religion, art, language, government, and the ultimate rise of Moscow.
The Schism that never was: Old Norse views on Byzantium and Russia
It is my contention that, in the general view of Icelanders, the Christian world was united, ’catholic’ in the original meaning of the word. Christianity in the East was thought to have similar roots to Christianity in Iceland and differences between the religions of Nordic and Eastern people were considered insignificant.
A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great
Despite their isolation and poverty, the Slavic plowmen succeeded in settling this unforgiving region, expanding their numbers, and, most importantly, creating the beginnings of a trading network along the many rivers of the region—the western Dvina, the Volkhov, the northern Dvina, and the Dniepr and its tributaries.
The Amber Trail in early medieval Eastern Europe.
The standard method employed in characterization studies of amber, namely infrared spectrography, can discriminate roughly between Baltic amber and amber from other European sources…
The Forgotten Text of Nikolai Golovin: New Light on the Igor Tale
Mann argues that a rare text of the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche comes from an early, fifteenth-century redaction that scholars could never locate—a redaction that is the prototype for all the redactions that have been studied heretofore. He maintains that unique parallels between this redaction and the Slovo o polka Igoreve support the hypothesis that the Igor Tale was an oral epic song in a tradition that actually continued into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when oral tales about the Kulikovo Battle (1380) were composed. He places the new parallels in the context of other evidence for oral composition in the Igor Tale.
The lure of the Kremlin: the court of Ivan the Terrible and global networks in the sixteenth century
This lecture will demonstrate that the court of Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) and other tsars was actually a focus point of exchange in technology, commodities and ideas with both the East and the West,
Reflection of European Sarmatia in Early Cartography
While looking for the origins of the state of Lithuania, it is the study of old maps that helps solve a number of riddles, so far weighing on the history of our nation. Historical data, traced in maps and their images, unrestricted by any political, religious or pseudo- scientific taboos, allow us to cast a broad view on the dim and distant past of our state.
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
Marriage Impediments in Canon Law and Practice: Consanguinity Regulations and the Case of Orthodox-Catholic Intermarriage in Kyivan Rus’, ca. 1000–1241
This paper focused on marriage alliances in Eastern Europe and the issue of canon law and consanguinity.
Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa
On the basis of a 14th-century account by the Genoese Gabriele de’ Mussi, the Black Death is widely believed to have reached Europe from the Crimea as the result of a biological warfare attack.
The Participation of the Kings in the Early Norwegian Sailing to Bjarmeland (Kola Peninsula and Russian Waters) and the Development of a Royal Policy Concerning the Northern Waters in the Middle Ages
The first move of Norwegians into the polar regions was to Finmark. Archaeologists cannot say for certain how early the Fins and the Norwegians came into cultural contact with each other.
Caucasia and the First Byzantine Commonwealth: Christianization in the Context of Regional Coherence
Since at least the Iron Age, and perhaps much earlier, Caucasia has been a cohesive yet diverse zone of cross-cultural encounter and shared historical experience. Despite their linkage by a web of interconnections which was as dense as it was durable, the peoples inhabiting the isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas have seldom exhibited a conscious regional identity in their oral, written, and visual monuments.
The Squirrel Fur Trade in 14th Century Novgorod
In the early part of the 14th century, high-quality, brilliantly-colored woolen fabrics became available in Western Europe. It was discovered that lush, gray-white, northern squirrel fur was an ideal complement to this type of cloth.
Slavic Paganism
Before the advent of Christianity, the European population practiced various forms of paganism. Pagan beliefs were not centralized or codified; they exhibited specific regional characteristics that developed within relatively small territories (Afanas’ev). Slavic cities had differing pantheons comprised of deities whom the inhabitants considered to be most important.
The Christianization of Kieven Rus’ and Piast Poland
Although both came from pagan and ethnically Slavic backgrounds, the leaders diverged in the branch of Christianity each chose, although, both conversions took place each region within a similar time frame.
The Scandinavians in Poland: a re-evaluation of perceptions of the Vikings
Mentioning Poland in a publication dealing with Viking identities, diaspora and reception might be surprising.
Confronting the End: The Interpretation of the Last Judgment in a Novgorod Wisdom Icon
A large Novgorod icon, dated in the mid-fifteenth or early sixteenth century, has been called a Last Judgment composition by scholarship.
The Infrastructure of the Novgorodian Fur Trade in the Pre-Mongol Era (ca. 900-ca. 1240)
The urge to find additional supplies of pelts and better-quality furs drove not only the Novgorodian traders and tribute collectors to cross the Urals during the Middle Ages, but later the Muscovites to colonize Siberia and even later the Russian Empire to explore and establish control over the Russian Far East and Alaska.
Novgorod the Great and the Hanseatic League
Novgorod played a significant role in the complex maritime networks that connected Russia with Northern and Western Europe during this period, the most important of which being the Hanseatic League, and developed into a thriving cosmopolitan society while most major Russian cities were still struggling to rebuild and adjust after the Mongol invasion.
Folk narratives and legends as sources of widespread idioms: Toward a Lexicon of Common Figurative Units
On the one hand, stories (particularly fables) have been de- rived from already existing proverbs, from antiquity up to early modern times. On the other hand, a story in its summarised form can live on in a proverb or an idiom, even if the knowledge of this story has been forgotten for a long time.