Conceptualizing Russian Sovereignty of the Kola Peninsula in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

• In Event: Uncertain Boundaries: Border Issues in Early Modern Russia

Abstract

At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, Russia and Denmark-Norway vied for the Kola Peninsula. Moscow and Copenhagen almost exclusively discussed this conflict in peaceful negotiation. However, they hotly debated their justifications for rule over both the territory and its indigenous Sámi populations. In the process, Russian tsars, from Ivan IV to Boris Godunov, conceptualized their rights to Kola in various and intriguing ways, providing insight into Muscovite evolving concepts of territorial sovereignty.

Author

• Earl Joshua Hodil, Pomona College