Post-doctoral fellowship (2004-2007)

Project title: Communication of Authority on the Carolingian Frontier

Project Summary:
My project concentrates on the initial stage of “The Formation of Western Christendom” in the ninth century, when the Carolingian realm came to a close contact with the frontier periphery along its northern and eastern borders. While traditional interpretations see this contact as one-way dissemination of political values, norms, and principles from the center to the periphery, I prefer to see this process as mutual adjustment of both sides to each other’s political practices. My project focuses on the analysis of the Nordic frontier society in the ninth and early tenth centuries. The dual aim of the project is, on the one hand, to analyze the role of the Carolingian center in the process of political “Europeanization” of the frontier society and, on the other hand, to explore how the political culture of the periphery modified and transformed the impulses coming from the center.