Memory, State, and Past Remembering in East Central and Northern Europe

Interdisciplinary Studies in Medieval Culture, Volume I

Piotr Pranke, Łukasz Różycki, Marcin Lisiecki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040678039
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

Analyzing the mechanisms that led to the formation of early state forms, this book defines the role of gifts, religious belief systems, prestige, and reciprocity within segmentary and chiefdom societies in eastern Europe.

Volume I explores the functioning of early medieval cultural phenomena, memory, and power. The development in East Central and Northern Europe has long fascinated scholars interested in the cultural implications of the renewed Empire's influence on these regions. The text provides various scholarly perspectives, with each contribution reflecting a distinct methodological approach, contributing to a multifaceted discourse on how these cultural phenomena were shaped, contested, and remembered in the medieval context.

This book provides an interdisciplinary study of medieval material culture and memory across medieval Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Bohemia, and Rus, and is an ideal resource for students.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 Henri Pirenne and the Early Medieval Clash of Civilizations
• 2 Funerary Symbols and Social Status in the Early Medieval Bohemia (8th–10th Centuries)
• 3 A Hold Into His Majesty: A Sovereign Ritual in 10th-Century Prague Castle
• 4 Manco?: What in the Early Piast State Should Exist but We Can’t Find It (and Why?)
• 5 The Lost Art of the Piast State: A Preliminary Study of the Animal Style in Early Medieval Poland
• 6 The Institutional Memory and Institutional Oblivion in Early Medieval Poland (10th–11th Centuries)
• 7 Did Information Exchange Create Piast State?: Early Piast Rulers and the Empire (c. 960–1034)
• 8 Bolesława the Brave in the Narration of the Anonymus Cronicae Et Gesta Ducum Sive Principum Polonorum
• 9 Preliminaries on Liturgy in Early and High Medieval Poland: Manuscript Evidence, Scholarship Overview, and Postulates for Future Research
• 10 From East to West: The Foundation of the Hungarian Medieval State and the Shift in Hungarian Warfare Ideologies in the Early Middle Ages
• 11 Early Medieval Hungary: The Main Features of Hungarian National Identity: From Medieval Hungarus to Modern National Identity
• 12 Beyond the Grave: The Burial Sites of the Árpádian Rulers in Relation to Their Foundations of Episcopal Sees
• 13 Money and Power in Viking Age Norway: Haraldr Sigurðarson’s Return from Byzantium in the Medieval Scandinavian Historiography
• 14 Jarls of Hlaðir: Condemned Rulers of Early Medieval Norway
• 15 Ways of Remembering in Medieval Scandinavia: Preliminary Study
• 16 Rusian Medieval Historiographic Sources about Polovtsian (Kuman) Elites (11th–13th Century)
• Index