Baltic studies in Romania: sources, beginnings and perspectives

This article analyses the beginnings, development and prospect of Baltic studies in Romania. The article stands on three pillars. It starts with an investigation on the main sources of Romanian knowledge of the Baltic region and sorts out the way they have been represented in the Romanian mental images. Throughout the analysis, knowledge of each other is bonded to the concepts of memory and history based on the assumption that the largest part of our knowledge derives from remembering, this being applicable even in the high sphere of international relations. This theoretical framework is sampled to the case-study of Romania’s knowledge of Baltic area assessing the medieval, modern and 20th century legacy of the Romanian encounters with the Baltic States discovering that, although the distance between Suceava, the medieval capital of Moldova, and Vilnius is less than 1,000 km. (or 600 miles) and the Principality of Moldova of Stephen the Great neighbored the state of Jagiellonians, in most cases, the legacy of the relations between Romanians and Baltic nations played little role in feeding a sense of solidarity or complementarity between these nations. This pattern is now challenged by courses on Baltic and Nordic studies taught at Valahia University of Târgoviște and the activity of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies, which joins the efforts of scholars from various Romanian institutes and universities, especially from Iași, Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest, Constanța and Târgoviște. The analysis of these endeavors, the other two pillars of this article, brings forth educational, scholarly, editorial and dissemination efforts designed to change the perspective of the Romanian public in this respect.