Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic

Sixteenth-century ethnographic accounts of Baltic paganism in English translation for the first time. With a critical introduction placing these texts in the contexts of early modern ethnography, Baltic history, and Reformation religious polemic.

Francis Young is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author of fourteen books.

The book Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic by Dr. Francis Young is a collection of translations into English of 16th century (the time limit has been somewhat extended by the author) documents dealing with non-Christian beliefs found on the Baltic territory.[...]

The texts themselves are known to scholars, though modern researchers cannot easily read the Letto-Preussische Götterlehre by Wilhelm Mannhardt, where these and most other texts relevant to the Baltic mythology are quoted and commented, as Mannhardt published all texts in the original language. The same texts (and many more) have been published by Norbertas Vėlius with Lithuanian translations in 1990s. The English translation of these is the novel aspect here, which is of no small importance, as research and sources usable for the study of the Baltic mythology in English are hard to come upon – previously, most of this has been written either in the local languages, or German, or Russian.

Francis Young refrains from evaluating the usability of the texts for recon- struction of the ancestral belief systems, indicating the shortcomings of the authors of the original texts, along with aspects that might have influenced their texts. However, Dr. Young suggests that with “utmost caution” it can still be done. He states that his task has been to provide the texts and put them in the historical context. This task appears to be quite satisfactorily completed.

Ronald Hutton:

Scholarly but very readable [...]. A good edition and translation of texts never before obtainable in English which are the key sources for a little-known and significant episode in European history.