The book under review is an edited volume presenting the outcomes of a collaborative research project that brought together medievalists from the University of Warsaw and the University of Oslo in order to examine processes and mechanisms of legitimation in high medieval Poland and Norway from a comparative perspective. Conducted between 2014 and 2021, the project resulted in two collected volumes of essays. In the present volume, the editors—Wojtek Jezierski, Hans Jacob Orning, and Grzegorz Pac—collected papers that explain the rationale and objectives of the project in a well-structured and lucid manner. The contributions pursue two principal aims. The first is an empirical investigation of the means and uses of symbolic power among the regional political elites of Poland and Norway in their efforts to assert legitimacy and dominance. The second is to identify new ways of understanding the conditions and factors that shaped elite behaviour in both societies. The research is framed within the broader question of the relationship between centre and periphery, categories to which both Poland and Norway belonged during the High Middle Ages.
These objectives are pursued through several interconnected lines of inquiry. One major goal is to outline conceptual tools for the study of elites and their symbolic means of legitimation, particularly through the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital. Another is to reassess and challenge the centrality of the medieval state, a framework frequently employed in current scholarship. The volume also seeks to question and deconstruct the model of Europeanization formulated by Robert Bartlett in The Making of Europe, which, according to the contributors, overemphasizes the unilateral and asymmetrical export of Western and Central European cultural models to the continent’s peripheries. Instead, the editors and contributors favour concepts such as “Younger Europe” (J. Kłoczowski) and “Outer Europe” (C. Wickham), which are less concerned with demonstrating asymmetrical processes of acculturation.
A further aim of the volume is to establish the methodological foundations for a comparative framework of analysis. Poland and Norway, despite representing distinct forms of medieval peripheries, provide particularly fruitful material for comparative examination. Such an approach, the editors argue, may serve as an effective tool for challenging Bartlett’s diffusionist model of cultural change. To achieve this, the contributors employ a “contrast-of-contexts” comparative method focused on problem-oriented research questions. As both the Introduction and the individual chapters demonstrate, there were as many similarities as differences between Poland and Norway from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. Historians have examined issues such as conversion to Christianity (c. 966 in Poland and c. 1024 in Norway), the establishment of independent ecclesiastical provinces (1000 in Poland and 1152/1153 in Norway), and the introduction and elite appropriation of national saint cults (Saint Adalbert and Saint Olaf). At the same time, divergent aspects must also be taken into account. The most prominent among these are the geographical settings of the two realms—flat, land-based Poland versus the maritime and coastal environment of Norway—as well as differences in the survival of vernacular written sources and in the continuity of pre-Christian political and cultural traditions.
Particularly striking in many of the contributions is the discrepancy between the Polish and Norwegian source material in terms of quantity, chronology, genre, and content. The editors rightly remind the reader that the predominantly “high-fi but low-resolution” character of the Polish sources and the “low-fi but high-resolution” quality of the Norwegian sources (with notable exceptions) should encourage caution in historical interpretation, since many apparent contrasts may ultimately be source-related rather than reflective of historical reality itself.
The individual contributions are divided into three thematic sections. Each chapter is authored collaboratively by two or more scholars and adopts a comparative perspective encompassing both the Polish and Norwegian contexts.
The first section addresses narratives of legitimation among Polish and Norwegian elites, asking what kinds of stories were employed to legitimize political and social status. The opening chapter by Grzegorz Bartusik, Rafał Rutkowski, and Wojtek Jezierski examines the use of the ancient past as a means of symbolic legitimation of royal and ducal power in Poland and Norway, focusing in particular on Biblical and Trojan genealogies. These traditions are analysed within the context of high medieval relations between the Holy Roman Empire and the two kingdoms. The second chapter, authored by Wojtek Jezierski and Roman Michałowski, explores the practical and symbolic consequences of conversion to Christianity and the subsequent Christianization of political culture among local elites. The process is illustrated through the examples of missionary figures, early rulers, and saints in both Poland and Norway. The authors demonstrate how tools such as religious violence and the cult of saints contributed to the legitimation of newly established dynasties. The third chapter in this section, written by Ben Allport and Paweł Żmudzki, investigates the transformation of traditional warrior culture into a chivalric one. By tracing the development of the milites in contemporary sources, the authors show how military retinues—the Norwegian hird and the Polish drużyna—evolved into fully developed chivalric social group by the late thirteenth century.
The second section focuses on the spatial dimensions of legitimation, both symbolic and physical. In their contribution, Anna A. Dryblak and Steffen Hope examine the role of powerful families and individuals in shaping the sacred topography of Poland and Norway through a comparative analysis of selected nunneries, namely Strzelno and Gimsøy. Founded by aristocratic families, these institutions functioned as forms of symbolic capital that reinforced political and social status within local landscapes. The following chapter by Grzegorz Pac and Steffen Hope investigates how the cults of saints were used to legitimize episcopal authority in Poland and Norway through an examination of patterns of saintly patronage before 1200. The authors analyse differences in both the means and functions of saintly cults in the legitimation strategies of secular and ecclesiastical elites. Mika Boros, in her contribution, explores coins and coin iconography as instruments of legitimacy. Through a detailed study of coinage and coin design, she demonstrates how these material media served to consolidate the authority of secular elites in both countries, despite the considerably slower development of a stable national coinage in Poland compared to Norway. The next chapter, co-authored by Steffen Hope, Mateusz Bogucki, and Svein Harald Gullbekk, addresses the appearance of national saints on local coinage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and concludes that significant differences existed between the Polish and Norwegian contexts.
The third section brings together studies devoted to struggles for legitimacy in medieval Poland and Norway. In the opening chapter, Zbigniew Dalewski and Hans Jacob Orning provide a persuasive analysis of the differences between the ideology and practice of rulership in the two peripheral kingdoms, both theoretically grounded in the notion of a sole ruler—king or duke. The authors demonstrate, however, that political power in practice was frequently divided and shared among members of the elite. The subsequent chapter by Jerzy Pysiak and Krzysztof Skwierczyński examines struggles for ecclesiastical independence and the implementation of Gregorian reform principles in Norway and Poland. These processes are illustrated through case studies of two prominent prelates, Eystein Erlendsson in Norway and Henryk Kietlicz in Poland. The study clearly demonstrates that although bishops in both realms sought to promote Gregorian ideals during periods of political crisis, the processes differed substantially in terms of cooperation with secular rulers and elites. The final two chapters address the nature of dynastic conflict in Poland and Norway (Hans Jacob Orning and Marcin R. Pauk) and the role of women in dynastic legitimation (Anna A. Dryblak and Benjamin Husvik), emphasizing the differing status and involvement of rulers’ wives in the origin narratives of the two kingdoms. The volume concludes with an afterword by Alice Taylor, who situates the questions raised throughout the collection within a broader comparative European framework.
Legitimation of the Elites in High Medieval Poland and Norway: Comparative Studies provides a solid overview of current scholarship on political legitimation and the use of symbolic power on the peripheries of Latin Christendom. The volume raises stimulating questions and suggests promising avenues for further research while offering broader conceptual tools and comparative frameworks. Although the chapters vary somewhat in the depth of their analysis, all contribute a valuable comparative perspective. The contributors consistently engage with shared research questions and employ broadly similar methodological approaches. As such, the volume will be of considerable interest to scholars and students concerned with comparative studies of secular and ecclesiastical elites and their strategies of legitimation in regions that have often remained understudied in mainstream Anglophone medieval scholarship.