Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe's Last Pagan Peoples [Hardcover]

A masterful new history of Europe's last, and sometimes forgotten, unchristianised peoples  from Fennoscandia to the Baltic and European Russia.A masterful new history of Europe's last unchristianised peoples in the period between 1387 and 1900, from the S?mi of northern Fennoscandia to the Balts and the Finno-Ugric peoples of European Russia, exploring the reasons for their late adoption of Christianity and their creative religious responses to encounters with missionaries.A masterful new history of Europe's last unchristianised peoples in the period between 1387 and 1900, from the S?mi of northern Fennoscandia to the Balts and the Finno-Ugric peoples of European Russia, exploring the reasons for their late adoption of Christianity and their creative religious responses to encounters with missionaries.The formal conversion to Christianity in 1387 of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seemingly marked the end of Europe's last 'pagan' peoples. But the reality was different. At the margins, often under the radar, around the dusky edgelands, pre-Christian religions endured and indeed continued to flourish for an astonishing five centuries. Silence of the Gods tells, for the first time, the remarkable story of these forgotten peoples: belated adopters of Christian belief on the outer periphery of Christendom, from the S?mi of the frozen north to the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians around the Baltic, as well as the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia's Volga-Ural Plain. These communities, Dr Young reveals, responded creatively to Christianity's challenge, but for centuries stopped short of embracing it. His book addresses why this was so, uncovering stories of fierce resistance, unlikely survival and considerable ingenuity. He revolutionises understandings of the lost religions of the last pagans.Introduction; 1. Europe's unchristianised edge: who were the 'Pagans'?; 2. Mere Christianisation: curiosity and ethnography in the fifteenth century; 3. (Counter-)reformation in unchrilóØ