Islands of Identity

420 Pages·2015·13.41 MB·English

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Gotland, Åland, Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Bornholm are
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five island regions in the Baltic Sea which constitute, or
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have until recently constituted, provinces or counties of

their own. Combining perspectives from two disparate I
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academic fields, uses of history and island studies, this book
investigates how regional history writing has contributed e
to the formation of regional identity on these islands n
since the year 1800. The special geographic situation of
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the islands—somewhat secluded from the mainland but i
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also connected to important waterways—has provided
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their inhabitants with shared historical experiences. Due
to varying geographic and historical circumstances, the Islands
relationship between regional and national identity is
however different on each island. While regional history
of Identity
writing has in most cases aimed at integrating the island
into the nation state, it has on Åland in the second half
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 five island regions in the Baltic Sea
World Wars has also caused shifts in how regional history
writing has represented the relationship to the mainland
nation state, and has sometimes also resulted in altered
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national loyalties.
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Samuel Edquist & Janne Holmén
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Distribution: é
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Södertörns högskola

Library www.sh.se/publications
SE-141 89 Huddinge [email protected]
Islands
of Identity
History-writing and identity formation
in five 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