Baltic Hospitality from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century: Receiving Strangers in Northeastern Europe [Paperback]

Reflecting debate around hospitality and the Baltic Sea region, this open access book taps into wider discussions about reception, securitization and xenophobic attitudes towards migrants and strangers. Focusing on coastal and urban areas, the collection presents an overview of the responses of host communities to guests and strangers in the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, from the early eleventh century to the twentieth. The chapters investigate why and how diverse categories of strangers including migrants, war refugees, prisoners of war, merchants, missionaries and vagrants, were portrayed as threats to local populations or as objects of their charity, shedding light on the current predicament facing many European countries. Emphasizing the Baltic Sea region as a uniquely multi-layered space of intercultural encounter and conflict, this book demonstrates the significance of Northeastern Europe to migration history.

1. Introduction: Baltic Hospitality, 10001900; Wojtek Jezierski, Sari Nauman, Christina Reimann, Leif Runefelt.- Part I: Medieval Hospitalities.- 2. Spaces of Hospitality on the Missionary Baltic Rim, TenthTwelfth Centuries; Wojtek Jezierski.- 3. Ladoga as a Gateway on the Road from the Varangians to the Greeks: Icelandic Sagas on Security Measures, EleventhThirteenth Centuries; Tatjana N. Jackson.- 4. Merchants as Guests: Laws and Conditions of Baltic Trade Hospitality, TwelfthFourteenth Centuries; Tobias Boestad.- 5. German Merchants in Novgorod: Hospitality and Hostility, TwelfthFifteenth Centuries; Pavel V. Lukin.- 6. Guests or Strangers? The Reception of Visiting Merchants in the Towns of the Baltic Rim, Sixteenth Century; Lovisa Olsson.- Part II: Early Modern Hospitalities.- 7. Ritualized Hospitality: The Negotiations of the Riga Capitulation and the Adventus of Boris Sheremetev in July 1710; Doroth?e Goetze.- 8. Receiving the Enemy: Involuntl3.