Abstract
This article explores translocal practices of German merchants settled in the late medieval town of Kalmar, Sweden. It focuses on the dual life of migrants, their simultaneous attachments to their places of origin and residence, and the significance of this splitting for the internal dynamics of diaspora. This case study also illustrates the importance of engagement with the material world for maintaining such dual relationships and prompts general exploration of the importance of material culture in diasporic and translocal lives. It discusses how things are used to fill the spaces of physical absence in the nodal points of translocal movement.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Cecilia Ring and Birgit Körge from Kalmar Museum in Kalmar and Jonas Nordin from National Historical Museum in Stockholm for their help in my museum research. I am grateful to James Barrett, David Gaimster and Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz for their valuable comments on the drafts of the article.
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Naum, M. Premodern Translocals: German Merchant Diaspora Between Kalmar and Northern German Towns (1250–1500). Int J Histor Archaeol 17, 376–400 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-013-0226-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-013-0226-1