Due to the scarcity of sources regarding actual Jewish and Muslim communities and settlements, there has until now been little work on either the perception of or encounters with Muslims and Jews in medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region. The volume provides the reader with the possibility to appreciate and understand the complexity of Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the medieval North. The contributions cover topics such as cultural and economic exchange between Christians and members of other religions; evidence of actual Jews and Muslims in the Baltic Rim; images and stereotypes of the Other.

The volume thus presents a previously neglected field of research that will help nuance the overall picture of interreligious relations in medieval Europe.

Contents

Introduction

1. Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß: Encounters and Fantasies: Muslims, Jews and Christians in the North

I. Contact

2. Bjørn Bandlien: Trading with Muslims and the Sámi in Medieval Norway

3. Christian Etheridge: The Evidence for Islamic Scientific Works in Medieval Iceland

4. Kay Peter Jankrift: Fire-Worshipping Magicians of the North: Muslim Perceptions of Scandinavia and the Norsemen

5. Stefan Schröder: The Encounter with Islam Between Doctrinal Image and Life Writing: Ambrosius Zeebout’s Report of Joos van Ghistele’s Travels to the East 1481–1485

II. Settlement

6. Cordelia Heß: Jews and the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Prussia: A Search for Traces

7. Michalina Duda: Jewish Physicians in the Teutonic Order’s Prussian State in the Late Middle Ages

8. Krzysztof Kwiatkowski: The Muslim People of Desht-i Qipchaq in Fifteenth-Century Prussia

9. Veronika Klimova: Karaite Settlement in Medieval Lithuania

III. Images and Stereotypes: Scandinavia

10. Yvonne Friedman: Christian Hatred of the Other: Theological Rhetoric vs. Political

Reality

11. Jonathan Adams: The Life of the Prophet Muḥammad in East Norse

12. Richard Cole: Kyn / Fólk / Þjóð / Ætt: Proto-Racial Thinking and its Application to Jews in Old Norse Literature

IV. Images and Stereotypes: Baltic Region

13. Sarit Cofman-Simhon: Missionary Theatre on the Baltic Frontier: Negotiating the Imagined Jew in the Riga Ludus Prophetarum

14. Elina Räsänen: Advocating, Converting, and Torturing: Images of Jews (and Muslimized Pagans) in the Kalanti Altarpiece

15. Shlomo Lotan: The Teutonic Knights and their Attitude about Muslims: Saracens in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and in the Baltic Region

16. Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė: The Image of the Infidelis in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: A Comparison of the Trends in the Creation of Anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim Stereotypes

17. Madis Maasing: Infidel Turks and Schismatic Russians in Late Medieval Livonia