The Baltic as a multicultural world: sea, region and peoples

The end of the Cold War brought the Baltic Sea area into the limelight of political and cultural cooperation. Since then, the Baltic Sea area has gained a powerful position as a dynamic European sub-region. Still, like other similar kinds of areas defined by a sea or a river - the Mediterranean world, the Black Sea, or the Danube - the Baltic Sea area is hard to define and it has as many definitions as there are map-makers. The sea itself plays a central role but its influence is vague and always contingent. This book has sought to introduce multiple insights for focusing on the Baltic. All the contributions examine the question of the essence of the Baltic and the source of its unity and, in particular, concentrate on multi-culturality and multi-nationality in the Baltic context. Some of the contributions survey the whole Baltic Sea area, while others concentrate on the Baltic countries and some of them have found the Baltic in the limited environment of parish and town. The Baltic is comprehended as a label that opens stimulating possibilities for replacing nation-centrism with narratives of another kind extending beyond the current nation-states. This understanding provides opportunities for defining a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural region and the diversity of identities that has existed.