The book Medievalism in Finland and Russia aims to contribute to international medievalist studies with less researched national cases to help establish medievalist studies in these two countries. The relevance of this book is not limited to the selected regional focus, since amateur historians exploring lost unique greatness in their national roots, often enabled by the Web 2.0, and politically motivated, is a global phenomenon. Moreover, a historical empire and its small neighbor, with national narratives about itself “as a borderland between the East and the West,” is relatable elsewhere as well. Case examples from both countries present an interesting mix of originalities and universalities in manifestations of medievalism while demonstrating how contemporary societal issues reflect on representations of the Middle Ages.
Composed of eight chapters, an introduction, and preface by twelve authors, this volume has three Finnish-centric and Russian-centric chapters, with the other three with a more ambiguous or wider regional focus in the global north. Despite the relatively small number of chapters, the volume provides a comprehensive representation of interdisciplinary medievalism studies through contributing scholars from the fields of archaeology, history, gender, media, and cultural and language studies. This interdisciplinarity reflects the number of used academic styles, lengths, and methodologies, but they are all written in a generally understandable form.
This mixture is brought together in Reima Välimäki's preface and particularly in Andrew B. R. Elliott's introductory chapter, which articulates the main theoretical contribution of this book in “metamedievalism,” a concept that is referred to and further explored through the volume. Accordingly, metamedievalism refers to the discussion about the Middle Ages where a new layer of medievalist manifestations refers to the earlier, more direct and banal form of medievalism. This is highlighted, but not limited to the historical Web 2.0 context. Based on Cultural Studies of Birmingham and Stuart Hall in particular, metamedievalism relates to epistemic inclusions and exclusions in institutions of knowledge, participatory culture and historicism. Elliott himself demonstrates this through reflections on previous research, reflections on this volume, and three example cases from the global north.
In his chapter, Evgenii Rostovtsev reviews historical trends in references to the “pre-Petrine” era, that is, the Russian discourse of the Middle Ages. Rostovtsev examines references to personalities and events from an impressive range of empirical data from polls, historiography, Wikipedia entries, Russian language websites, and others collected in a long-term project on historical memory in Russian society. Rostovtsev concludes that medieval symbols function as consolidated consensus objects of national cultural memory despite the era's otherwise peripheral cultural position. Similar conclusions are drawn from other case studies of this volume as well. Among them, Kati Parppei's study provides a thorough analysis of presidential speeches to the Federal Assembly, pointing out several long-term developments and (dis-)continuities in Russian history and identity politics.
Evan Wallace takes another perspective on Vladimir Putin's speeches, particularly the repetition of his medievalisms by western news media without contextualizing criticism. As a popular culture case from a similar issue, Wallace examines Reddit fan communities of the TV show The Vikings, where a historical narrative about Kyivan Rus΄ being based on the pseudohistorical New Chronology went unnoticed. This chapter is the shortest of the volume, and it would have benefitted from further argumentative and theoretical discussion and the chapter's self-explaining metatext. However, Wallace makes an important argument about the digital media ecology favoring the dissemination of propagandistic misinformation, whereas academic information is often behind paywalls and accessible only to the decreasing number of regional studies scholars.
Similarly, I would have hoped to get more conceptual and theoretical discussion in Jere Kyyrö's research case of popular culture—the cultural and religious particularizations in the game Crusader Kings II. Still, Kyyrö's chapter comes recommended due to its insights into the relevant (ludo)-narratives and technical affordances. Another interesting technology scrutinizing perspective on metamedievalism is in the article of Mila Oiva and Anna Ristilä, where the authors utilize computational methods to examine hyperlink networks of the Russian language medievalist web. Oiva and Ristilä examine out-going hyperlinks of these websites as indication of intended cultural context among peers with similarly extreme claims and worldviews, and the out-going hyperlinks as indications of external recognition and interest. The authors also introduce a few related pseudohistorical theories circulated in these networks.
The chapters with Finnish case studies all utilize qualitative approaches. The chapters of Sirpa Aalto, Timo Ylimaunu, and Kendra Willson present regional and local peculiarities in Finnish and Swedish medievalisms outside the Web 2.0 context. Prior knowledge of the related contexts is not required from the reader here, but as usual with case studies, it helps to better understand many references. Aalto and Ylimaunu analyze the historical contexts where memorials of Finland's medieval past have been constructed and originally presented. Finns found the usability of the Middle Ages in promoting patriotism prior to independence and even during the post-WWII context, where expressions of patriotism were suppressed to appease the USSR. In a similar vein, Willson reviews discussions of the existence of runestones. Particularly interesting in Willson's chapter is the contextualization of prominent amateur historians.
Heta Aali's approach to “muscular medievalisms” in online discussions about past Finnish kings provides another relevant addition to the volume. Accordingly, the gender aspects of metamedievalism reveal several typical “manosphere” characteristics, including anti-feminism, racism, and a general discussion atmosphere with mixed encouragement and discouragement among peers. Here, like in most of the book's chapters, the essentiality of national otherness and enemy images is highlighted. Instead of the most known Finnish national Othering of Russians, however, this case demonstrates Swedish speakers as the other.
The rich mix of different perspectives on medievalism in this volume offers something for most scholars, albeit more advanced medievalist scholars might miss more methodological discussion in some of the chapters. I recommend this book particularly due to its conceptualization of metamedievalism, insightful case studies, and comprehensive perspective toward medievalist studies.
