Jukka Korpela Livres

The Baptist of Russia, Vladimir, is a key figure of the today’s Nationalistic policy and culture of the country. Our actual knowledge about the prince who governed from 978-1015 in Kiev is however extremely little. Our views are based on the texts, which were written down a long time after his death and contain political, religious and national interpretations with which rulers of different periods sought to justify publicly their own policy with reference to the Baptist of Russia. For the first time the figure of the St. Vladimir occurred, as the religious east west contrast around the turn from the 13th to 14th Century in Europe was finally fixed. With the posthumous interpretation of the lifework Vladimirs conquests of the ascending Muscovite empire from the 14th to 16th Century were justified. The veneration of St. Vladimir returned with the Muscovites conquest and the Russification of the Ukraine in the 17th to 19th Century into the homeland of the prince, to Kiev.

This book focuses on Medieval and Early Modern state formation in the north-eastern periphery of Europe, challenging the traditional view of an East-West conflict between Sweden and Novgorod over the late medieval colonization of northern forest areas. Contrary to the belief that the East Fennoscandian boreal forest was uninhabited, it was actually home to diverse hunting and fishing populations with distinct cultures. The lifestyles of these groups can be explored through a range of palaeoecological, palaeobotanic, genetic, meteorological, folkloristic, philological, and archaeological data. Traditional written sources were limited in this region, primarily reflecting the expansion of European Christian culture and power from both Russia and Sweden. The increase in documentation and population, along with the shift from a semi-nomadic economy to agriculture, indicates a transformation of the existing economic system rather than true colonization. The local populations, once marginalized, gradually emerged in historical records. Although the East Fennoscandian boreal forest was a European periphery during the Viking Age, it was linked to European trade routes that introduced early Christian influences. However, the 14th-century economic crisis led to its exclusion from late medieval state formation, making it a target for Muscovite and Swedish interests only after the 15th century, resulting in the establishment of parishes, l