Dead, But Not Forgotten: Commemoration in Medieval Livonia

What did commemoration of the dead look like in Medieval Livonia and how did memoria shape group identities in the region? Dr. Gustavs Strenga shares insights into his research and parallels with modern-day memory wars.
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Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia
Transcript
Indra Ekmanis: Hello, and welcome to Baltic Ways, a podcast bringing you interviews and insights from the world of Baltic studies.
I'm your host Indra Ekmanis, and today we're speaking with Gustavs Strenga, senior researcher at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies at the Latvian Academy of Culture and recently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of In Germany. Today, he speaks with us about his recent book, Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia, and what parallels that might have for us today in the modern Baltic states. Stay tuned.
Dr. Gustavs Strenga, thank you so much for joining us on Baltic Ways. Perhaps we can start, you can tell us a little bit about your background and how you came into this field of study.
Gustavs Strenga: First of all, thank you for inviting me. Well, my background is I'm Latvian. I was born in Riga and I began my studies in Riga, in Latvia, and I studied history at the University of Latvia. And since high school, I had an interest in the history of the Catholic Church, partially because I went to a Catholic school. And during my studies, when I began studying at the end of the last century, beginning of this century, I understood that I'm interested into medieval history. I wrote my bachelor thesis and also later my MA about Dominicans. It's a mendicant order founded in the 13th century and they also had their priories in the Baltics, like in Riga and Tallinn. I spent, during my studies, a year in Lublin at the Catholic University of Lublin. I had a wonderful Erasmus semester in Kiel, in Germany. And I really understood that I want to do medieval history. In Riga, I had really two good professors who were teaching medieval history, but I understood that it's not enough, so I went to Budapest, the Central European University now located in Vienna, and I studied medieval studies there.
And later, I had a chance to study at the University of Queen Mary in London, and I was supervised by Mary Rubin. And there, my interest in medieval commemoration began.
And during my studies in London - it was a wonderful time - but I had a problem. I didn't have funding. So I moved to Germany to the University of Freiburg where I was writing - continuing writing my doctoral thesis on medieval commemoration and memory in Livonia. And after that, I had a chance to work at the National Library of Latvia, and also very exciting and interesting postdoctoral projects at the universities of Tallinn and Greifswald.
IE: Wonderful. So that's interesting that your early experience in a Catholic school has brought you all the way into studying commemoration in medieval Livonia. Thanks. Thank you for sharing that.
So, as I mentioned, you are the author of Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia, which came out in November of 2023 and was also awarded the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies book publication subvention.
It's also one of two recent monographs by Latvian historians to really be published internationally. And our colleague Una Bergmane, who also recently spoke on this podcast, published, published the other. The book examines the practices of remembering, and how those practices have influenced or had their impact on medieval Livonia, now modern day Latvia and Estonia. But I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about that book. I gather it comes from your doctoral research - tell us a little bit more about the research that informs that work.
GS: Yes, so this book, as you said, is a transformed version of my doctoral dissertation, which had a bit different title, and which I defended in 2013. And, after I finished writing the thesis, I understood, yes, I want to transform it into a book, but maybe with a bit different structure, so it took me quite a lot of time to restructure it.
Though medieval commemoration of the dead had, of course, religious aims - for example, to lessen the suffering of the deceased in purgatory - I wanted to pursue the idea that the medieval commemoration of the dead was both a form of collective memory and also a social practice. As a form of collective memory, it created group self awareness of the past and thus shaped their identities.
As a social practice,...