Gdańsk-Danzig-Gduńsk within the Baltic Borderlands

Because of its genius location – Gdańsk is a perfect space to sample intercultural encounters, offering lessons of coexistence and conflict, of diversity and exclusion. For centuries the language spoken in Gdańsk was German, the city grew on the border and in relationship to various cultures (not only Polish, German, but also Dutch, Scandinavian, and English too).  Gdańsk, in essence, is the Borderland – with cultures coming into contact: Slavic-German, Polish, Prussian, Polish-Kashubian-German, Polish-Russian, Scandinavian-Pomeranian, from Teutonic Knights to Mennonites, and the Baltic Sea region itself. Gdańsk as a nodal point for a network of contacts, cultural, political and economic links going beyond the nation state – overcoming the framework of the nation state as the unit of scholarly reflection – borderland approach as a more productive framework, bringing out the multiple overlapping identities.