Dear readers,
Our hopes for a swift return to productive international cooperation have not materialized and only continue to dissipate. This issue of the Nordic and Baltic Studies Review comes out with a significantly reduced editorial board as almost all of its international members have decided to put their collaboration with Petrozavodsk State University on hold. We understand their choice; we are all hostages of the current situation and forced to comply with our respective national governments that react to international political tensions. Yet despite these challenging conditions, we consider it necessary to continue the work of promoting Nordic studies in Russia and advancing research in the fields of history, economics, culture, politics, and international relations in the Northern European and Baltic regions. Otherwise, in the future, when peacetime eventually comes, we will have to start everything anew. The loss of academic schools is as detrimental to the successful development of humanity as military operations.
Most materials in this issue have been prepared by young scholars. We decided not only to publish the results of their independent research but also to tell you about the work of the Council of Young Scholars at the Institute of Language, Literature, and History, Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Additionally, we are introducing a new section, Doctoral Theses Reviews, where we publish reviews of three dissertations defended in 2023. We believe that timely information about such significant forms of dissemination of academic knowledge is crucial for scholars.
Materials on innovative academic outreach, connecting professional historians with local historians, the community, teachers, and students, offer new interesting perspectives. The section Publications introduces new annotated translations of medieval Scandinavian sources.
Meanwhile, the theme of the section Bibliography has temporarily changed. Thirty years ago, in 1993, Petrozavodsk State University launched a new undergraduate program with student enrollment in the history of the Scandinavian countries and Finland. In 2003, the Department of the History of Nordic Europe — the first and only in Russian universities — was established. It was unfortunately closed as a result of university optimization in 2013, but specialized education in Nordic studies is still available at Petrozavodsk State University, and we found it appropriate to provide a overview of educational, methodological, and scholarly publications of the faculty who have been teaching in the field of Nordic studies throughout these years.
Today, it is challenging to predict with any certainty how events will unfold, and the future of the Review is also uncertain. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the delicate yet robust horizontal links of camaraderie and international collaboration among scholars should not be at the mercy of political ambitions because sine doctrina vita quasi mortis imago. We will do our best to preserve the journal and remain true to ourselves, to science, and to our readers.
Irina Takala
Alexander Tolstikov
Petrozavodsk, December 28, 2023
