Islands of Identity of Islands
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Islands of Identity Gotland, Åland, Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Bornholm are fve island regions in the Baltic Sea which constitute, or have until recently constituted, provinces or counties of their own. Combining perspectives from two disparate academic felds, uses of history and island studies, this book investigates how regional history writing has contributed to the formation of regional identity on these islands since the year 1800. Te special geographic situation of the islands—somewhat secluded from the mainland but also connected to important waterways—has provided their inhabitants with shared historical experiences. Due to varying geographic and historical circumstances, the relationship between regional and national identity is Islands however diferent on each island. While regional history writing has in most cases aimed at integrating the island into the nation state, it has on Åland in the second half of Identity of the 20th century been used to portray its inhabitants History-writing and identity formation as a separate nation. Dramatic political upheavals as the in fve island regions in the Baltic Sea World Wars has also caused shifs in how regional history writing has represented the relationship to the mainland nation state, and has sometimes also resulted in altered Edquist & Holmén national loyalties. Samuel Edquist & Janne Holmén Distribution: Södertörns högskola Library www.sh.se/publications SE-141 89 Huddinge [email protected] Islands of Identity History-writing and identity formation in fve island regions in the Baltic Sea Samuel Edquist & Janne Holmén ©The Authors Södertörn University SE-141 89 Huddinge www.sh.se/publications Cover Photo: Jonas Mathiasson Cover Design: Jonathan Robson Layout: Per Lindblom & Jonathan Robson Printed by Elanders, Stockholm 2015 Södertörn Academic Studies 59 ISSN 1650-433X ISBN 978-91-86069-98-8 (print) ISBN 978-91-86069-99-5 (digital) Contents Preface 7 History-writing and identity formation in five island regions in the Baltic Sea JANNE HOLMÉN 9 The islands 10 Identities and islands 14 History-writing and identity 22 The Baltic islands as regions 25 The geography of history 28 Strange exceptions or illustrative examples? 29 Research questions and primary sources 31 Works cited 36 In the shadow of the Middle Ages? Tendencies in Gotland’s history-writing, 1850–2010 SAMUEL EDQUIST 39 The questions and the literature 43 Methods and primary sources 44 Gotland history-writing analysed 57 The medieval narrative, c.1850–1975 59 Cession to Sweden 83 The folklore narrative, c.1850–1975 89 Nature and history united 94 Modern history-writing, c.1975 onwards 94 The two dominant narratives 111 The third narrative 120 The implications of the dominant medieval narrative 124 References 126 Åland—navigating between possible identities, 1852–2012 JANNE HOLMÉN 143 Methods, sources and earlier research 144 The character of Åland 160 Prehistory and the early Middle Ages 182 Swedish rule, Russian rule 197 Autonomy 213 The development of Ålandic history-writing 232 References 236 Saaremaa and Hiiumaa—revolutionizing identities in Baltic German, national Estonian, and Soviet histories, 1827–2012 JANNE HOLMÉN 243 Earlier research 245 The character of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa 255 Ancient and medieval history 266 The Danish, Swedish, and Russian periods 275 The tumultuous twentieth century 287 The Saaremaa uprising in 1919 287 Conclusions 302 References 307 Bornholmian history-writing JANNE HOLMÉN 313 Earlier research on Bornholmian history-writing 315 Methods and sources 319 Authors and funders 320 The character of the Bornholmians 324 Ancient and medieval history 346 Early modern Bornholm 355 Isolation, integration, alienation 364 Conclusions 378 References 383 Comparative conclusions—general lessons regarding islandness and collective identities JANNE HOLMÉN 387 The rise of regional history, 1804–2013 387 Wars and uprisings 390 The Baltic as a front line 392 Security as the root of identity 393 The social roots of regional identity 394 Geography and identity 395 Differences and divisions within the islands 397 Free and egalitarian islanders? 400 Regional identity, a threat to national unity? 401 The complementarity of islandness 403 Common heritage, invented traditions— or geography? 405 The relationship between islandness and regional identity on the Baltic islands 411 Works cited 412 Preface The project Islands of Identity was started on 1 January 2009 by Samuel Edquist, Janne Holmén, and Erik Axelsson. Our initial plan was to divide the work of the project equally, but as Samuel and Erik were simultaneously engaged in other projects, Janne gradually took over a larger part. In the finished book, Janne has written the introduction, the conclusion, and the sections on Åland, Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and Bornholm. Samuel has written the section about Gotland, while Erik Axelsson has been project leader and initiated a survey of Bornholmian sources that turned out to be a highly valuable basis for Janne’s continued research about the island. All three of us have read and commented upon the draft book in its entirety. We—Samuel and Janne—would like to thank Erik for his contributions and enthusiastic companionship. In the course of the project we have received invaluable help from many scholars, librarians, and others knowledgeable about regional history, of whom we can mention only a few by name. Kenneth Gustavs- son and Dan Nordman have given valuable comments on the essay on Ålandic history-writing. Professor Nils Erik Villstrand contributed with insights into the general state of regional history-writing in Finland. Katrin Aar at the Archival Library in Kuressaare was of great help in finding sources from Saaremaa, and Olavi Pesti and Marika Mägi have commented on the essay about Saaremaa. Geltmar von Buxhöwden was of help in unravelling the biographical and genealogical information about the history writers and historical figures from the Buxhöwden family. The director of Hiiumaa museum, Helgi Põllo, has been of great help in many ways, and Vello Kaskor has also read the essay about Hiiumaa. Ann Vibeke Knudsen, former director of Bornholm’s museum, was of great help in the project’s initial stages. The Bornholmian archaeologist Finn Ole Sonne Nielsen provided valuable input regarding Bornholm’s 7 ISLANDS OF IDENTITY older history. Karin Larsen at the Centre for Regional and Tourism Research has also read the essay about Bornholm, and honoured us with an invitation to publish an article about our project in the anthology From One Island to Another. Olof Hansson and Lars Hermanson are to be thanked for their valuable comments on the Gotland essay. Professor Torkel Jansson in Uppsala has given valuable feedback on large portions of the manuscript. Parts of the manuscript have been presented at seminars at the Institute of Contemporary History at Södertörn University and at the Department of History at Uppsala University. The Publication Commit- tee at Södertörn University has also been of great help in seeing the book to print. The project has been represented at several seminars, conferences, and workshops: ‘Katoaako kansallinen identiteetti’ in Helsinki in 2009; ‘Islands of the world’ on Bornholm in 2010; ‘Shared past—conflicting histories’ in Turku in 2011; ‘Öande och öighet’, arranged by Owe Ronström in Stockholm in 2012; and the Swedish History Days confer- ence in Mariehamn in 2012. Ålands kulturstiftelse provided financial support for Janne’s initial studies on Åland. Finally, we would like to thank the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, which has financed our research project and has dis- played great flexibility in accommodating the changes we have been forced to make in the project’s original timetable. 8 History-writing and identity formation in five island regions in the Baltic Sea Janne Holmén The sea creates distance to the mainland, providing islands with ‘natural boundaries’; simultaneously, it functions as a route of communication with foreign shores. Political changes may shift the balance between the separating and the connecting properties of the sea. For example, the collapse of the Iron Curtain after 1989 helped the Baltic Sea regain its position as a link between peoples instead of a moat separating them. Our aim is to investigate how the geographic situation of islands—isolation in combination with potentially far-reaching waterway connections—af- fects the formation of identities in interplay with political changes and cultural processes. We investigate if and how a regional island identity is expressed in regional history-writing from the large islands in the Baltic Sea during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular focus on how it related to other sub-national, national, and regional identities. History-writing is strongly linked to the formulation of collective iden- tities. Quite a lot of historiographical research has been committed to asking how historians, by writing about ‘their’ past, have constructed national identities, but thus far the emergence of regional identities has been less studied. In this research project, we have chosen historical works produced or initiated on Baltic islands, in the assumption that the islanders in those books are making a statement about where they come from, who they are, where they have their loyalties, and with what historical periods, peoples, and realms they identify. It must be emphasized that the views on history and identity that are revealed in these sources are the ones held by a regional intellectual elite, who were attempting to influence popular sentiment on the islands. Thus we do not attempt to investigate views of 9 ISLANDS OF IDENTITY history at the grassroots level, for which ethnological or folkloric sources would have been more appropriate, or to describe the progress of the academic discourse about the islands’ history. That said, the regional history-writing which we investigate has of course developed in interplay with both popular and academic understandings of history, and often these categories are to some extent amalgamated. The islands selected for the studies are Gotland, the Åland Islands, Hiiumaa, Saaremaa, and Bornholm.