This interesting and intellectually ambitious anthology focuses on the Reformations of the early modern period as they played out in the domains of the Swedish Crown in the eastern Baltic, including present-day Finland, Karelia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As such, it is a most welcome contribution to Anglophone historiography, where there is still a marked tendency to ignore the Scandinavian and Eastern European facets of early modern Protestantism. At the same time, and as the two editors rightly note, in these northern and eastern contexts the Reformations have often been understood in rigidly national (even nationalist) terms, a problem which is helpfully interrogated in their introduction and in virtually every essay in the volume.

In keeping with such intellectual ambitions, the approach is resolutely and commendably interdisciplinary, ranging across historical, economic, linguistic, literary, musical, art-historical, historiographical and folkloristic approaches. At the same time, the editors are determined to address the Reformations of the eastern Baltic as an example of what they term ‘cultural transfer’, a concept borrowed from modern history (p. 25). Unfortunately they do not divulge much more about this term. Why, for example, has it been left in the singular and why was it chosen instead of, for example, ‘cultural exchanges’? The latter evokes more multi-lateral and complex processes. This would have helped the general argument considerably, especially given the pains the editors take to articulate ‘the question of whether these frontier lands were merely the passive recipients of the dominant Western Christian culture, or rather were active participants in the adaptation process’ (p. 25).

From this follows another problem: the editors’ perception of the inner Baltic as a ‘frontier’ or ‘periphery’ in relation to Western Christianity. Now, the few who extracted a hard-won living in the northernmost reaches of the regions in question may perhaps have considered themselves peripheral, surviving, as they did, in a most challenging climate. But I am not convinced that this is how the citizens of Riga, Königsberg/Kaliningrad and Tallinn/Reval saw themselves, living, as they did, in well-connected and affluent Hanseatic cities. Instead they probably understood their homes as vital points of connectivity within far-flung trading networks. Certainly this is what is implied in Stefan Donecker's excellent contribution to the volume, where he shows how certain tropes from colonialist discourses were deployed by early modern historiographers in Riga when describing the relationship between locals and Hanseatic settlers.

So, despite the undoubted scholarly riches contained in this volume, it raises but fails to engage significantly with the questions of how, why and by whose authority any given geographical, linguistic, religious or cultural entity comes to be defined as somehow ‘central’ or ‘peripheral’. This is important from a methodological point of view because such definitions both constitute and perpetuate a number of power-relations, whether in the early modern world or now. It is surely problematic to leave these unaddressed.

On a more specific level, it would have been helpful to attend to one important if rather unstable border: that between Western and Orthodox Christianity. How did those on either side perceive each other – both in terms of discourses and practices – before and after the religious ructions of the sixteenth century? Were there any noteworthy moments of cultural exchange? This lacuna is all the more regrettable given Antti Kujala's important recent article on Swedish activities in Ingria and Kexholm on the easternmost reaches of the Baltic, an area annexed from Muscovy in 1617.Footnote ¹ Here a toxic mixture of Lutheran zeal and governmental incompetence allowed migrating Finns and Swedes to colonise land belonging to Russian Orthodox owners; on the collapse of Swedish authority in the area in the 1670s nearly all those of Orthodox faith had left. In this context, those defined in the anthology as more or less passive receivers of ‘cultural transfer’ were in fact its active, even aggressive agents. Equally, there was a small but still significant number of Jews in the eastern Baltic – a point tantalisingly raised in the anthology but only in relation to present-day Ukraine in Marco Mostert's elegant essay on language and writing. What role did Jews play in local religious practices and discourses before and after the Reformations of the sixteenth century? These lacunae are a pity because they would have complemented and rendered more nuanced the helpful interrogations in this anthology of local religious practices derided by Lutheran divines as ‘superstitious’ relics of Roman Catholicism or paganism (see, inter alia, the essays by Martin Berntson, Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, Linda Kaljundi, Irma-Riita Järvinen and Aivar Põldvee).

It may seem churlish to raise such questions given the interesting, thoughtful and almost invariably deeply researched nature of the essays collected in this anthology. Indeed, it is probably only reviewers who read anthologies cover to cover, so it may not matter. On the other hand, the very fact that this volume triggers such methodological reflections is indicative of its scholarly quality. For example, Ilkka Leskelä’s wonderful essay on Finnish pastors’ involvement in cross-Baltic trade is a timely reminder that early modern men of the cloth could also be skippers or merchants. Equally interesting is the thorough analysis by Jorma Hannikainen and Erkki Tuppurainen of how Gregorian chant patterns were adapted to support vernacular worship in Finnish, a thought-provoking example of how change and continuity can barely be disentangled in the Reformations of north-eastern Europe. Amongst the art-historical essays there are outstanding contributions by Merike Kurisoo and Hanna Pirinen, who demonstrate the often seamless continuation of pre-Reformation artistic traditions in the furnishing of Lutheran churches. There were only four true innovations: pews, font surrounds, much more extensive lighting and, finally, epitaphs, which replaced side-altars.

In short, anyone interested in the cultural facets of European Protestantism in the early modern period would undoubtedly benefit from dipping into this useful anthology.