Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000-1300

In many countries in Northern and Eastern Europe, the period after 1000 saw the emergence of new Christian kingdoms. This process was soon reflected in works of historiography that traced the foundation and development of the new polities. Many of these texts had a lasting impact on the formation of political, ethnic, and religious identities of these states and peoples.

This volume deals with some of these earliest histories narrating the past of the new polities that had emerged after 1000 in Northern, East Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Adriatic regions. They have often been understood as ‘national histories’, but a closer look brings out the differences in their aims and construction. One question addressed here is to what extent these historians built on models of identification developed in earlier historiography. The volume provides an overview of several fundamental texts in which identities in the new Christian kingdoms were negotiated, and of recent research on these texts.

Introduction: The Historiography of New Peoples and Polities in Northern and Eastern Europe— WALTER POHL and VERONIKA WIESER

Scandinavian and Baltic Origins
Adam of Bremen’s Use of Earlier History
IAN WOOD
National Identity in Scandinavian Chronicles (Saxo and Snorri)
SVERRE BAGGE
Orkney, Óláfr Tryggvason, and the Conversion to Christianity
ROSALIND BONTÉ
Biblical Motifs and the Shaping of Ethnic Categories in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia
STEFAN DONECKER and PETER FRAUNDORFER

Cosmas of Prague, the Gesta principum Polonorum, and their Western Contexts
The Legenda Christiani, the Chronica Bohemorum, and the Bohemian Slavs
PAVLÍNA RYCHTEROVÁ
Space and Identity in the Chronica Bohemorum of Cosmas of Prague
JAN HASIL
Helmold of Bosau and our Reading of his Chronica Slavorum
JAN KLÁPŠTĚ
Creating Dynastic Identity: Gallus Anonymus’s Chronicle
ZBIGNIEW DALEWSKI
‘By the Crown of My Empire! The Things I Behold Are Greater than I Had Been Led to Believe!’: The Narrative Pattern Sheba Visits Salomon in Medieval Narratives (Gallus’s Chronicle, Chronicon Salernitanum, and Pèlerinage de Charlemagne)
JACEK BANASZKIEWICZ

Hungarian Origins and their Political Uses
Hungarian Origins and Carolingian Politics in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle
MAXIMILIAN DIESENBERGER
Us and Them: The Description of Foreigners and Indigenous Peoples in Master P.’s and Simon of Kéza’s Gesta (Thirteenth Century)
DÁNIEL BAGI
Christian Identity versus Heathendom: Hungarian Chroniclers Facing the Pagan/Nomadic Past and the Present
LÁSZLÓ VESZPRÉMY

Histories of Origins from the Adriatic and the Balkans
Circles of Identity: The Narratives of Thomas of Split and Domnius de Cranchis of Brač
NEVEN BUDAK
Grado as Aquileia Nova and Split as Salona Nova? Local Historiography and Local Identity
PETER ŠTIH
Patria Venecia: John the Deacon’s Search for Venetian Origins
FRANCESCO BORRI
The ‘Dioclean Tradition’ in Serbian Literature of the Early Thirteenth Century
ALEKSANDAR UZELAC

The Rus’ Primary Chronicle, the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Background
The Debate over Authorship of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle: Compilations, Redactions, and Urtexts
DONALD OSTROWSKI
Creating Time, Forging Identity, Building a State:
The Primary Chronicle of Rus’
OLEKSIY TOLOCHKO
Historiography of the New Europe: Comparative Perspectives
WALTER POHL

Index