Gotland : the pearl of the Baltic Sea : center of commerce and culture in the Baltic Sea region for over 2000 years

Gotland med sitt läge mitt i Östersjön var sedan bronsåldern centrum för handel och kultur i denna del av världen och först 1679 blev det en del av Sverige. Dess historia förstås bäst om den berättas åtskild från den svenska historien. För att förstå Gotlands unika historia måste man fullt inse att Gotland sedan urminnes tider var en oberoende handelsrepublik och var navet i Östersjöområdet som haft sina relationer främst öster- och söderut. I denna bok skriven på engelska berättas Gotlands och Östersjöområdets tidiga historia av historikern Tore Gannholm utifrån ett perspektiv skilt från den svenska historiens vinklingar. Gotland with its location in the middle of the Baltic Sea was since the Bronze Age the center for trade and culture in this part of the world. We still suffer badly from earlier generations Swedish – centered historical research. History was always written by the victors. The ’history’ of the defeated and that of conquered territories is usually being ignored or even misinterpreted. This is true not only for Gotland but for all those landscapes which were conquered in the 1600s and also mutatis mutandis for those parts of the old Sweden which were lost. Who now knows anything about the Middle Ages of Karelia or of Ingemanland or for that matter of Finland? When Gotland was annexed by Sweden in 1679 it was the winners history that became ruling. Gotlandic history became irrelevant. To understand the history of Gotland one must fully realize that Gotland was an independent Merchant Farmers’ Republic and the hub of the Baltic Sea region which from time immemorial had its relations mainly east and south. The Gotlandic history is misleading and difficult to understand if it is bundled with the Swedish history which so far has been done. They both have their separate history. The historian Tore Gannholm with this book presents an understandable picture of the history of the Baltic Sea region and the Gotlandic history. Tore Gannholm had gathered a lot of research material and published a new edition of the Gotlandic history in the Swedish language in 1994. In 1996 he published abook with additional material in the German language. He continued to read everything he could find about Gotland and surrounding areas and scanned and saved it on his computer. It never struck him that there wassuch an enormous amount of unsorted material on the history of Gotland that he had on his computer until he got an external impulse to go through this material. At the end of the 700’ when the Islamic Caliphate discovered rich silver deposits in the east the Gotlanders went on the Russian rivers all the way to the Volga river and the Caspian Sea and perhaps all the way to Bagdad. The Gotlandic Merchants were in the Arabic sources on the Russian rivers called al-Rus’ and Wareng.