Preface Contributors Introduction: Looking across the Baltic Sea and over linguistic fences Frog, Kendra Willson, and Maths Bertell Section 1: Mental maps Chapter 1. The northern part of the Ocean in the eyes of ancient geographers Aleksandr Podossinov Chapter 2. Austmarr on the mental map of medieval Scandinavians Tatjana Jackson Chapter 3. The connection between geographical space and collective memory in Jómsvíkinga saga Sirpa Aalto Section 2: Mobility Chapter 4. Rune carvers traversing Austmarr? Laila Kitzler Åhfeldt Chapter 5. Polish noble families and noblemen of Scandinavian origin in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The case of the Awdancy family: by which route did they come to Poland and why? Leszek Slupecki Chapter 6. A medieval trade in female slaves from the north along the Volga Jukka Korpela Section 3: Language Chapter 7. Ahti on the Nydam strap-ring? On the possibility of Finnic elements in runic inscriptions Kendra Willson Chapter 8. Low German and Finnish revisited Mikko Bentlin Section 4: Mythology and religion formations Chapter 9. Mythic logic and meta-discursive practice in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions Lauri Harvilahti Chapter 10. The artificial maiden on both sides of the Gulf of Finland: The Golden Maiden in Finno-Karelian and Estonian folk poetry Karolina Kouvola Chapter 11. Local Sámi bear ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic perspective Maths Bertell Chapter 12. Mythologies in transformation: Symbolic transfer, hybridization, and creolization in the Circum-Baltic arena (illustrated through the changing roles of *Tiwaz, *Ilma, and Ô¿inn, the fishing adventure of the Thunder-God, and a Finno-Karelian creolization of North Germanic religion) Frog Index of persons Index of places General index