Editor’s Foreword

Abstract

This issue of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice [The Romanian Journal of Baltic and Nordic Studies, RRSBN] carries selected papers presented in approximately half of the panels of the second international conference for Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania entitled Black Sea and Baltic Sea Regions: Confluences, influences and crosscurrents in the modern and contemporary ages. The general aim of this conference was to investigate the encounters between the Baltic and the Black Sea regions’ societies since the Middle Ages. The goal was to unearth the complexity of these bonds not only at state level (political, diplomatic, military, trade relations), but also the encounters, forms of syncretism or networks of a commercial, social, cultural, religious nature which are beyond or beneath the state relations and are presumably not only richer, but more interesting and challenging for a researcher as well. Additionally, parallels between the two regions as two buffer zones situated in-between the great empires or great powers of modernity were also assessed. Papers dealing with the effects of world wars, totalitarianism and the Cold War either as comparative approach or in terms of relations, confluences and influences were also invited. Furthermore, the conference also welcomed research results dealing with diasporas, émigré communities or individual destinies in the frame of the general theme of the conference. As such, this conference constituted a real change of research paradigm, relatively little having been previously achieved in this respect. The results of the conference as the two issues of our review will prove were notable.