Memory, State, and Past Remembering in East Central and Northern Europe

Analysing the mechanisms that led to the formation of early state forms, this book defines the role of gifts, religious belief systems, prestige, and reciprocity within segmentary and chiefdom societies in East and Northern Europe.

Volume II explores the concept and the idea of memory, commemoration, and material culture related to the power of memory and functioning of medieval state observed in sources. This book discusses how gift and elite exchange gained significant importance over the early and high middle ages and encompassed, at the level of symbolic communication, the Christian perspective on power rituals as well as the sacred dimension of its legitimisation and manifestation.

This book provides an interdisciplinary study of medieval elites, Saints, and Kings through material culture and memory across medieval Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Bohemia and Rus'. An ideal resource for students of medieval East Central and Northern Europe, medieval material culture, and memory more broadly.

Piotr Pranke is an assistant professor who deals with the history of medieval Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe, and is a member of the Faculty of Historical Sciences at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. His scientifc interests include the history of trade in the Viking era and the history of the Ottonian Empire and its infuence on the shaping of the areas of East Central and Northern Europe.

Łukasz Różycki is Professor of History at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. His main research interests include the study of Roman and Byzantine theory of warfare, with a particular focus on military treatises.

Marcin Lisiecki is Professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń; works at the Faculty of Humanities of the Nicolaus Copernicus University; his scientific interests focus, among others, on around popular culture, animated film and research on myths.