BiblioVault - Books about Europe, Northern

Beowulf and the North before the Vikings

Tom Shippey

Arc Humanities Press, 2022

Ever since Tolkien’s famous lecture in 1936, it has been generally accepted that the poem Beowulf is a fantasy, and of no use as a witness to real history. This book challenges that view, and argues that the poem provides a plausible, detailed, and consistent vision of pre-Viking history which is most unlikely to have been the poet’s invention, and which has moreover received strong corroboration from archaeology in recent years. Using the poem as a starting point, historical, archaeological, and legendary sources are combined to form a picture of events in the North in the fifth and sixth centuries: at once a Dark and a Heroic Age, and the time of the formation of nations. Among other things, this helps answer two long-unasked questions: why did the Vikings come as such a shock? And what caused the previous 250 years of security from raiders from the sea?

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Journalism Re-examined

Digital Challenges and Professional Orientations (Lessons from Northern Europe)

Edited by Martin Eide, Helle Sjøvaag, and Leif Ove Larsen

Intellect Books, 2016

The digital era has posed innumerable challenges to the business and practice of journalism. Journalism Re-examined sets out an institutional theoretical framework for exploring the journalistic institution in the digital age and analyzes how it has responded to those profound changes in its social and professional practices, norms, and values. Building their analysis around the concept of these changes as reorientations, the contributors present a number of case studies, with a particular emphasis on journalism in the Nordic countries. They explore not just straight news and investigative journalism, but also delve into lifestyle and documentary coverage, all with the aim of understanding the reorientations facing journalism and the ways they might present a sustainable future path.

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Multilingualism, Nationhood, and Cultural Identity

Northern Europe, 16th-19th Centuries

Edited by Willem Frijhoff, Marie-Christine Kok Escalle, and Karène Sanchez-Summerer

Amsterdam University Press, 2017

Before the modern nation-state became a stable, widespread phenomenon throughout northern Europe, multilingualism-the use of multiple languages in one geographical area-was common throughout the region. This book brings together historians and linguists, who apply their respective analytic tools to offer an interdisciplinary interpretation of the functions of multilingualism in identity-building in the period, and, from that, draw valuable lessons for understanding today's cosmopolitan societies.

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Reading History Sideways

The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life

Arland Thornton

University of Chicago Press, 2005

European and American scholars from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries thought that all societies passed through the same developmental stages, from primitive to advanced. Implicit in this developmental paradigm—one that has affected generations of thought on societal development—was the assumption that one could "read history sideways." That is, one could see what the earlier stages of a modern Western society looked like by examining contemporaneous so-called primitive societies in other parts of the world.

In Reading History Sideways, leading family scholar Arland Thornton demonstrates how this approach, though long since discredited, has permeated Western ideas and values about the family. Further, its domination of social science for centuries caused the misinterpretation of Western trends in family structure, marriage, fertility, and parent-child relations. Revisiting the "developmental fallacy," Thornton here traces its central role in changes in the Western world, from marriage to gender roles to adolescent sexuality. Through public policies, aid programs, and colonialism, it continues to reshape families in non-Western societies as well.

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Re-forming Texts, Music, and Church Art in the Early Modern North

Edited by Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen and Linda Kaljundi

Amsterdam University Press, 2016

Our historical understanding of the Reformation in northern Europe has tended to privilege the idea of disruption and innovation over continuity - yet even the most powerful reformation movements drew on and exchanged ideas with earlier cultural and religious practices. This volume attempts to right the balance, bringing together a roster of experts to trace the continuities between the medieval and early modern period in the Nordic realm, while enabling us to see the Reformation and its changes in a new light.

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Settling in a Changing World

Villa Development in the Northern Provinces of the Roman Empire

Diederick Habermehl

Amsterdam University Press, 2013

Offering a broad analysis of the complex developments in rural habitation of the northern provinces of the Roman Empire, Settling in a Changing World reconstructs the colonial villa from social and economic perspectives to create a broad geographical and chronological framework that sheds light on both local and regional patterns. Considering data from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France, Diederick Habermehl analyzes, visualizes, and reconstructs the developments in settlement space and architecture. Applying theoretical concepts from both archaeology and cultural studies, this groundbreaking book ultimately offers a new perspective on the Roman villa as an architectural and cultural phenomenon.

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Strategic Challenges in the Baltic Sea Region

Russia, Deterrence, and Reassurance

Ann-Sofie Dahl, Editor

Georgetown University Press

How should the countries in the Baltic Sea region and their allies meet the strategic challenges posed by an openly aggressive and expansionist Russia? NATO and the nonaligned states in the region are now more concerned about an external threat than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Russia has been probing air space, maritime boundaries, and even land borders from the Baltic republics to Sweden. Russia's undermining of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea worries former Soviet republics with Russian minority populations, nonaligned Sweden and Finland are enhancing their cooperation with NATO, and the Trump presidency has created some doubt about America's willingness to follow through on NATO's collective defense commitment.

Ann-Sofie Dahl brings together an international group of experts to examine Baltic security issues on a state-by-state basis and to contemplate what is needed to deter Russia in the region. The contributors analyze ways to strengthen regional cooperation, and to ensure that security in the region stays at the top of the agenda at a time of many competing strategic perspectives in the transatlantic community. This book will be of great interest to foreign policy and defense practitioners in the US and Europe as well as scholars and students of international relations.

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Villa Landscapes in the Roman North

Economy, Culture and Lifestyles

Edited by Nico Roymans and Ton Derks

Amsterdam University Press, 2012

This edited volume presents a synthesis of recent research on villas and villa landscapes in the northern provinces of the Roman world. It offers an original, multi-dimensional perspective on the social, economic and cultural functioning of villas within the context of the Roman empire. Themes discussed include the economic basis of villa dominated landscapes, rural slavery, town-country dynamics, the role of monumental burials in villa landscapes, and self-representation and lifestyle of villa owners. This study offers a major contribution to the comparative research of villa landscapes and the phenomenon of regionality in Roman rural landscapes.Amsterdam Archaeological Studies is a series devoted to the study of past human societies from the prehistory up into modern times, primarily based on the study of archaeological remains. The series will include excavation reports of modern fieldwork; studies of categories of material culture; and synthesising studies with broader images of past societies, thereby contributing to the theoretical and methodological debates in archaeology.

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Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities

Martha C. Howell

University of Chicago Press, 1986

In this bold reinterpretation of Women's changing labor status during the late medieval and early modern period, Martha C. Howell argues that women's work was the product of the intersection of two systems, one cultural and one economic. Howell shows forcefully that patriarchal family structure, not capitalist development per se, was a decisive factor in determining women's work. Women could enjoy high labor status if they worked within a family production unit or if their labor did not interfere with their domestic responsibilities or threaten male control of a craft or trade.

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