The Image of the Baltic : a Festschrift for Nils Blomkvist

When the time-honored leader of the Baltic Rim seminar, Professor Nils Blomkvist, had his 65th birthday in 2008 a “celebration conference” under the title The Image of the Baltic – a Thousand-Years’ Perspective was arranged within the permanent Baltic Rim seminar series at Gotland University. Consequently, many of his old scholarly friends from the Baltic Rim fields of study – and some new ones – had gathered in order to highlight this chronological landmark and to discuss the role of images in the historical disciplines. The participants came from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, not to mention the many Gotlanders among the Swedes. In 2010 Nils Blomkvist finally retired from his professorship in Medieval History at Gotland University.Now a selection of the papers that were presented at the Baltic Rim seminar have been converted into a Festschrift, including Nils Blomkvist’s own lecture Peter of Dacia and the Urban Revolution, which he gave at the closure of the conference. This anthology is his colleagues’ way of honoring him.Contents: Preface.The Colours of the Middle ages: The Baltic on the mental map of the Old Russian annalist / Elena Melnikova. Livonia and the Holy See in 13th – Early 15th Centuries: Centre and Periphery of Christendom / Eva Eihmane. Architetonische und künstlerische Verbindungen zwischen Visby und Riga im 13 Jahrhundert / Elita Grosmane. Between Wolin and Truso: the Southern part of the Baltic Rim at the time of Rise of the Polish State (an archaeological perspective) / Andrzej Buko. Models of Settlements Formation in Polatsk Region / Marat V Klimau.Images of History: Störtebeker : Die Karriere eines Geschichtsbildes / Robert Bohn. Auf den Spuren der Ritter und Zaren : Reval im Blick russischer Touristen unter Nikolaj I / Karsten Brüggeman. Der Beginn der Neuzeit in der Geschichte Lettlands : zu Problemen des Dialogs mit der Vergangenheit in der lettischen Historiographie / Valda Kļava. The Face of the Enemy? : The Image of the GDR in the Danish Media / Thomas Wegener Friis, Marius Hansen, Jesper C. M. Henriksen, Jesper Thestrup Henriksen, Frank Jensen, Rune E. H. Smidt. The Medieval in the Modern : The Cathedral and the Skyscraper in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis / Erik Tängerstad. Von Schweden über die Ostsee in das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation : „Der Löwe aus Mitternacht” als Retter des evangelischen Glaubens in Deutschland / Jens E. Olesen.Gotland – the Pearl of the Baltic: Peter of Dacia and the Urban Revolution / Nils Blomkvist. The Conception of an Egalitarian Gotlandic Peasant Society / Tryggve Siltberg. Frustration and Revenge? : Gotland strikes back – during the long 15th Century, 1390’s–1525 / Hain Rebas. Multiple visions from a Baltic shoreline – Richard Berghs quest for a school of Swedish painting in Vision, scene from Visby / Lars Wängdahl. Das deutsche Konsulat in Visby im zweiten Weltkrieg. Ein Archivbericht / Michael F. Scholz. Nils Blomkvist’s scholarly production. Authors