Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75 Geburtstag ed. by Mati Laur, Enn Küng, und Stig Örjan Ohlsson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75 Geburtstaged. by Mati Laur, Enn Küng, und Stig Örjan Ohlsson Francesco La Rocca (bio) Mati Laur, Enn Küng, und Stig Örjan Ohlsson (Hgs.). Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75. Geburtstag. Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2005. 564 S. ISBN: 9949-13-208-8. Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte. 2007. Bd. 2 / Hg. von Mati Laur und Karsten Brüggemann. 309 S. ISSN: 1736-4132. Helmut Piirimäe is professor emeritus at the University of Tartu and one of the most respected researchers of the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century relationships between Sweden and Estonia. His work has enjoyed a most positive reception both in Estonia and in Sweden, to the point that in 1998 he was chosen to accompany then-president Lennart Meri during his official visit to Stockholm in his capacity as expert in Swedish–Estonian relationships. To mark the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, in 2005 he received a Festschrift edited by his fellow professors at the University of Tartu, Mati Laur and Enn Küng, in cooperation with Stig Örjan Ohlsson, titled Die baltischen Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirimäe zum 75. Geburtstag. The volume, containing twenty-three contributions plus a bibliography of Piirimäe’s works, pays tribute to the Estonian scholar by expanding on various aspects of his mayor research topic, namely, the interaction between Nordic and Baltic lands in the Modern Age. The first chapter serves as the introduction without actually being labeled as such, as it consists of personal memories of Piirimäe by Ohlsson. The Swedish scholar first met him in 1994 upon his arrival in Tartu as a lecturer of Swedish. The chapter is basically a collection of anecdotes that flesh out Piirimäe’s personality and the relevance of his activity in the life of his university. The chapter’s title, “Den förste estniske bonden som har sovit i kungliga slotten i Stockholm,” comes from the above-mentioned 1998 Estonian presidential visit to Sweden. On that occasion, Piirimäe proudly claimed to have been the first Estonian farmer to have spent a night in the royal castle in Stockholm, thus stressing his attachment to his peasant roots and his people, as well as a good degree of self-irony. The next chapter may come as a surprise to the reader, for it has nothing to do with Baltic or Swedish history, but is instead a reflection on the idea of the mask in ancient Mesopotamian cultures. Its author, Thomas Richard Kämmerer, attempts to apply the idea of the mask, here understood as an inner dissociation, to textual representation of gods and heroes, claiming that ritual invocations [End Page 455]were actually playing the same role played by a mask, for through the masked language (“maskierte Sprache”) the priest was able to act as a divine stand-in. Ancient Mesopotamian culture is well beyond the reviewer’s competence, and it also has no connection whatsoever with the book’s main topic. Despite being a quite interesting reading per se (although the correlation between actual masks and ritual language is far from convincingly argued by Kämmerer), I fail to see the point of including such a contribution in a Festschrift titled Die baltischen Länder und der Norden. The following chapter, “Die baltischen Länder im europäischen Kraftfeld,” is an overall narrative of the geopolitical history of Estonia and Latvia from the Viking Age to the end of the Soviet rule. It was written by the Heinz von zur Mühlen, who passed away in the same year of this Festschrift’s publication (2005). His contribution does not offer any new arguments or sources, but it nonetheless provides an effective recap of a thousand years of Baltic political and military history. Ivar Leimus introduces the very first actual research paper of the book. His “Einige Beiträge zur Münzgeschichte Livlands am Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts” expands on the discovery of medieval coins near Tallinn in 2004. Leimus accurately describes the coins and compares them...