Peace or conflict? Past cultural relations between the Nordic countries, Russia and the Romanian area (17th – 19th Centuries)

Abstract

During the modern period, Europe was affected by a series of military conflicts, which periodically rebalanced and reshaped political, social and cultural relations between the states involved in them. The wars in which the Nordic countries, the Russian Empire and/or the Romanian area took part thus resulted in temporary or more constant alterations of the bilateral and multilateral connections between them. Although not always accurate when put into the perspective of the subsequent events, contemporary accounts regarding these conflicts and the shape of the political and cultural relations surrounding them represent extremely important sources of information for researchers interested in establishing the reasons that caused certain international developments of the 20th century. Having this in view, the present study’s aim is twofold. Firstly, it intends to reveal the value of the written accounts pertaining to Nordic and Russian travellers through the Romanian area in the modern period and, secondly, to bring to light some rather hidden aspects of the cultural relations between these three geographically and culturally distinct spaces. As cultural interactions are closely connected to political developments, a fact particularly relevant during the modern period, these two types of interstate contacts can only be analysed jointly and this general observation was either intrinsic to or made explicit in most of the analysed travel accounts. Moreover, the conclusion that must be drawn after evaluating the relations between the Nordic countries, Russia and the Romanians during the 17th-19th centuries is that sometimes political conflicts, even when they took the form of wars, could stimulate, not hinder, cultural contacts between the parties involved.