Vendel
Vendel is a parish in the Swedish province of Uppland. The village overlooks a long inland stretch of water, Vendelsjön, near which the Vendel river has its confluence with the river Fyris; the church was established in 1310. Vendel is the site of an ancient royal estate, part of Uppsala öd, a network of royal estates meant to provide income for the medieval Swedish kings. In 1881 to 1883, several excavations by Hjalmar Stolpe revealed 14 graves in and just beyond the south-east corner of the churchyard. Several of the burials were contained in boats up to 9 m long, they were richly furnished with arrangements of weapons, helmets and chains, shields, tools etc; the helmets from Graves 1, 12 and 14 bear close comparison to the helmet from the early 7th century ship-burial, at Sutton Hoo, England, with die-stamped plaques depicting scenes of warriors. The shield from Grave 12 at Vendel is very comparable to the Sutton Hoo shield, has a stamped metal strip mount, die-linked to an equivalent piece at Sutton Hoo.
The Vendel boats were identified by the presence of many ship-rivets, accompanied by many animal sacrifices within the burials. A grave contained an important set of bridle-mounts for a horse; these graves date between the 6th to 8th centuries. At Husby near Vendel there is a large mound which local tradition calls Ottarshögen from Ottar known as Ohthere and hög, meaning mound or barrow. Ohthere is associated with the person of that same name in the epic Beowulf. An excavation in 1917 revealed the remains of a powerful man, buried at the beginning of the 6th century, the time of Ohthere. Other graves of similar date, associated with Ohthere's family, are at Old Uppsala. Vendel has given its name to a period in the Scandinavian Iron Age, to the corresponding style in Art, it has been suggested that the Germanic Vandals, or at least their kings or rulers, were connected to the site. In this it is coupled with the name of a companion site at Valsgärde in the same region; the close comparisons with the 27-metre ship burial at Sutton Hoo show a direct connection between the armourers producing work found at the two sites, a connection central to the understanding of both.
The Sutton Hoo burial is associated with King Raedwald of East Anglia, who in his reign was most powerful among the rulers of the English kingdoms. Hyenstrand Å. Lejonet, draken och korset. Sverige 500-1000. Lund, 2001. S. 92-102. H. Stolpe and T. J. Arne, La Necropole de Vendel, Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitetsakademien
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal, that belongs to group 8 of the periodic table, it is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust. Pure iron is rare on the Earth's crust being limited to meteorites. Iron ores are quite abundant, but extracting usable metal from them requires kilns or furnaces capable of reaching 1500 °C or higher, about 500 °C higher than what is enough to smelt copper. Humans started to dominate that process in Eurasia only about 2000 BCE, iron began to displace copper alloys for tools and weapons, in some regions, only around 1200 BCE; that event is considered the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Iron alloys, such as steel and special steels are now by far the most common industrial metals, because of their mechanical properties and their low cost. Pristine and smooth pure iron surfaces are mirror-like silvery-gray. However, iron reacts with oxygen and water to give brown to black hydrated iron oxides known as rust.
Unlike the oxides of some other metals, that form passivating layers, rust occupies more volume than the metal and thus flakes off, exposing fresh surfaces for corrosion. The body of an adult human contains about 3 to 5 grams of elemental iron in hemoglobin and myoglobin; these two proteins play essential roles in vertebrate metabolism oxygen transport by blood and oxygen storage in muscles. To maintain the necessary levels, human iron metabolism requires a minimum of iron in the diet. Iron is the metal at the active site of many important redox enzymes dealing with cellular respiration and oxidation and reduction in plants and animals. Chemically, the most common oxidation states of iron are +2 and +3. Iron shares many properties of other transition metals, including the other group 8 elements and osmium. Iron forms compounds in a wide range of oxidation states, −2 to +7. Iron forms many coordination compounds. At least four allotropes of iron are known, conventionally denoted α, γ, δ, ε; the first three forms are observed at ordinary pressures.
As molten iron cools past its freezing point of 1538 °C, it crystallizes into its δ allotrope, which has a body-centered cubic crystal structure. As it cools further to 1394 °C, it changes to its γ-iron allotrope, a face-centered cubic crystal structure, or austenite. At 912 °C and below, the crystal structure again becomes the bcc α-iron allotrope; the physical properties of iron at high pressures and temperatures have been studied extensively, because of their relevance to theories about the cores of the Earth and other planets. Above 10 GPa and temperatures of a few hundred kelvin or less, α-iron changes into another hexagonal close-packed structure, known as ε-iron; the higher-temperature γ-phase changes into ε-iron, but does so at higher pressure. Some controversial experimental evidence exists for a stable β phase at pressures above 50 GPa and temperatures of at least 1500 K, it is supposed to have a double hcp structure. The inner core of the Earth is presumed to consist of an iron-nickel alloy with ε structure.
The melting and boiling points of iron, along with its enthalpy of atomization, are lower than those of the earlier 3d elements from scandium to chromium, showing the lessened contribution of the 3d electrons to metallic bonding as they are attracted more and more into the inert core by the nucleus. This same trend appears for ruthenium but not osmium; the melting point of iron is experimentally well defined for pressures less than 50 GPa. For greater pressures, published data still varies by tens of gigapascals and over a thousand kelvin. Below its Curie point of 770 °C, α-iron changes from paramagnetic to ferromagnetic: the spins of the two unpaired electrons in each atom align with the spins of its neighbors, creating an overall magnetic field; this happens because the orbitals of those two electrons do not point toward neighboring atoms in the lattice, therefore are not involved in metallic bonding. In the absence of an external source of magnetic field, the atoms get spontaneously partitioned into magnetic domains, about 10 micrometres across, such that the atoms in each domain have parallel spins, but different domains have other orientations.
Thus a macroscopic piece of iron will have a nearly zero overall magnetic field. Application of an external magnetic field causes the domains that are magnetized in the same general direction to grow at the expense of adjacent ones that point in other directions, reinforcing the external field; this effect is exploited in devices that needs to channel magnetic fields, such as electrical transformers, magnetic recording heads, electric motors. Impurities, lattice defects, or grain and particle boundaries can "pin" the domains in the new positions, so that the effect persists after the external field is removed -- thus turning the iron object into a magnet. Similar behavior is exhibited by some iron compounds, such as the fer
Merovingian dynasty
The Merovingians were a Salian Frankish dynasty that ruled the Franks for three centuries in a region known as Francia in Latin, beginning in the middle of the 5th century. Their territory corresponded to ancient Gaul and the Roman provinces of Raetia, Germania Superior and the southern part of Germania; the semi legendary Merovech was supposed to have founded the Merovingian dynasty, but it was his famous grandson Clovis I who united all of Gaul under Merovingian rule. After the death of Clovis, there were frequent clashes between different branches of the family, but when threatened by its neighbours the Merovingians presented a strong united front. During the final century of Merovingian rule, the kings were pushed into a ceremonial role; the Merovingian rule ended in March 752 when Pope Zachary formally deposed Childeric III. Zachary's successor, Pope Stephen II, confirmed and anointed Pepin the Short in 754, beginning the Carolingian monarchy; the Merovingian ruling family were sometimes referred to as the "long-haired kings" by contemporaries, as their long hair distinguished them among the Franks, who cut their hair short.
The term "Merovingian" comes from medieval Latin Merovingi or Merohingi, an alteration of an unattested Old Dutch form, akin to their dynasty's Old English name Merewīowing, with the final -ing being a typical patronymic suffix. The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to the semi-legendary Merovech, leader of the Salian Franks; the victories of his son Childeric I against the Visigoths and Alemanni established the basis of Merovingian land. Childeric's son Clovis I went on to unite most of Gaul north of the Loire under his control around 486, when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler in those parts, he won the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alemanni in 496, at which time, according to Gregory of Tours, Clovis adopted his wife Clotilda's Orthodox Christian faith. He subsequently went on to decisively defeat the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in the Battle of Vouillé in 507. After Clovis's death, his kingdom was partitioned among his four sons; this tradition of partition continued over the next century.
When several Merovingian kings ruled their own realms, the kingdom—not unlike the late Roman Empire—was conceived of as a single entity ruled collectively by these several kings among whom a turn of events could result in the reunification of the whole kingdom under a single ruler. Leadership among the early Merovingians was based on mythical descent and alleged divine patronage, expressed in terms of continued military success. In 1906, the British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie suggested that the Marvingi recorded by Ptolemy as living near the Rhine were the ancestors of the Merovingian dynasty. Upon Clovis's death in 511, the Merovingian kingdom included all of Gaul except Burgundy and all of Germania magna except Saxony. To the outside, the kingdom when divided under different kings, maintained unity and conquered Burgundy in 534. After the fall of the Ostrogoths, the Franks conquered Provence. After this their borders with Italy and Visigothic Septimania remained stable. Internally, the kingdom was divided among Clovis's sons and among his grandsons and saw war between the different kings, who allied among themselves and against one another.
The death of one king created conflict between the surviving brothers and the deceased's sons, with differing outcomes. Conflicts were intensified by the personal feud around Brunhilda. However, yearly warfare did not constitute general devastation but took on an ritual character, with established'rules' and norms. Clotaire II in 613 reunited the entire Frankish realm under one ruler. Divisions produced the stable units of Austrasia, Neustria and Aquitania; the frequent wars had weakened royal power, while the aristocracy had made great gains and procured enormous concessions from the kings in return for their support. These concessions saw the considerable power of the king parcelled out and retained by leading comites and duces. Little is in fact known about the course of the 7th century due to a scarcity of sources, but Merovingians remained in power until the 8th century. Clotaire's son Dagobert I, who sent troops to Spain and pagan Slavic territories in the east, is seen as the last powerful Merovingian King.
Kings are known as rois fainéants, despite the fact that only the last two kings did nothing. The kings strong-willed men like Dagobert II and Chilperic II, were not the main agents of political conflicts, leaving this role to their mayors of the palace, who substituted their own interest for their king's. Many kings came to the throne at a young age and died in the prime of life, weakening royal power further; the conflict between mayors was ended when the Austrasians under Pepin the Middle triumphed in 687 in the Battle of Tertry. After this, though not a king, was the political ruler of the Frankish kingdom and left this position as a heritage to his sons, it was now the sons of the mayor that divided the realm among each other under the rule of a single king. After Pepin's long rule, his son Charles Martel assumed power, fighting against nobles and his own stepmother, his reputation for ruthlessness further undermined the king's position. Under Charles Martel's leadership, the Franks defeated the Moors at the Battle of Tours in 732.
After the victory of 718 of the Bulgarian Khan Ter
Viking Age
The Viking Age is a period in European history Northern European and Scandinavian history, following the Germanic Iron Age. It is the period of history when Scandinavian Norsemen explored Europe by its seas and rivers for trade, raids and conquest. In this period, the Norsemen settled in Norse Greenland and present-day Faroe Islands, Norway, Normandy, England, Ireland, Isle of Man, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Russia and Italy. Viking travellers and colonists were seen at many points in history as brutal raiders. Many historical documents suggest that their invasion of other countries was retaliation in response to the encroachment upon tribal lands by Christian missionaries, by the Saxon Wars prosecuted by Charlemagne and his kin to the south, or were motivated by overpopulation, trade inequities, the lack of viable farmland in their homeland. Information about the Viking Age is drawn from what was written about the Vikings by their enemies, primary sources of archaeology, supplemented with secondary sources such as the Icelandic Sagas.
In England, the beginning of the Viking Age is dated to 8 June 793, when Vikings destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, a centre of learning on an island off the northeast coast of England in Northumberland. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures, giving rise to the traditional prayer—A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine, "Free us from the fury of the Northmen, Lord."Three Viking ships had beached in Weymouth Bay four years earlier, but that incursion may have been a trading expedition that went wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different; the Viking devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island was reported by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York, who wrote: "Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared". Vikings were portrayed as wholly bloodthirsty by their enemies. In medieval English chronicles, they are described as "wolves among sheep"; the first challenges to the many anti-Viking images in Britain emerged in the 17th century.
Pioneering scholarly works on the Viking Age reached a small readership in Britain. Linguistics traced the Viking Age origins of rural proverbs. New dictionaries of the Old Norse language enabled more Victorians to read the Icelandic Sagas. In Scandinavia, the 17th-century Danish scholars Thomas Bartholin and Ole Worm and Swedish scholar Olaus Rudbeck were the first to use runic inscriptions and Icelandic Sagas as primary historical sources. During the Enlightenment and Nordic Renaissance, historians such as the Icelandic-Norwegian Thormodus Torfæus, Danish-Norwegian Ludvig Holberg, Swedish Olof von Dalin developed a more "rational" and "pragmatic" approach to historical scholarship. By the latter half of the 18th century, while the Icelandic sagas were still used as important historical sources, the Viking Age had again come to be regarded as a barbaric and uncivilised period in the history of the Nordic countries. Scholars outside Scandinavia did not begin to extensively reassess the achievements of the Vikings until the 1890s, recognising their artistry, technological skills, seamanship.
Until the history of the Viking Age had been based on Icelandic Sagas, the history of the Danes written by Saxo Grammaticus, the Kievan Rus's Primary Chronicle, Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib. Today, most scholars take these texts as sources not to be understood and are relying more on concrete archaeological findings and other direct scientific disciplines and methods; the Vikings who invaded western and eastern Europe were pagans from the same area as present-day Denmark and Sweden. They settled in the Faroe Islands, Iceland, peripheral Scotland and Canada, their North Germanic language, Old Norse, became the mother-tongue of present-day Scandinavian languages. By 801, a strong central authority appears to have been established in Jutland, the Danes were beginning to look beyond their own territory for land and plunder. In Norway, mountainous terrain and fjords formed strong natural boundaries. Communities remained independent of each other, unlike the situation in lowland Denmark. By 800, some 30 small kingdoms existed in Norway.
The sea was the easiest way of communication between the outside world. In the eighth century, Scandinavians began to build ships of war and send them on raiding expeditions which started the Viking Age; the North Sea rovers were traders, colonisers and plunderers. Many theories are posited for the cause of the Viking invasions. At the time, England and Ireland were vulnerable to attack, being divided into many different warring kingdoms in a state of internal disarray, while the Franks were well defended. Overpopulation near the Scandes, was influential. Technological advance like the use of iron, or a shortage of women due to selective female infanticide had an impact. Tensions caused by Frankish expansion to the south of Scandinavia, their subsequent attacks upon the Viking peoples, may have played a role in Viking pillaging. Harald I of Norway had displaced many peoples; as a result, these people sought for new bases to launch counter-raids against Harald. Vikings would plant crops after the winter and go raiding as soon as the ice melted on the sea return
Swedish History Museum
The Swedish History Museum is a museum located in Stockholm, that covers Swedish archaeology and cultural history from the Mesolithic period to present day. Founded in 1866, it operates as a government agency and is tasked with preserving Swedish historical items as well as making knowledge about history available to the public; the origin of the museum is the collections of art and historical objects gathered by Swedish monarchs since the 16th century. It has a number of permanent exhibitions and annually hosts special exhibitions tied to current events; the History Museum is part of a central museum agency called the Statens historiska museer. Other institutions under the aegis of this agency are the Royal Coin Cabinet, the Tumba Papermill Museum and the Swedish Archaeology Commission; the museum is one of five so called ansvarsmuseum in Sweden. It is tasked with coordinating activities between museums, assist other museums and develop contacts between museums and other parts of the Swedish community.
The foundation for what was to become the History Museum and the Nationalmuseum, was King Gustav Vasa's 16th century art collection at Gripsholm Castle. The collection grew through acquisitions and spoils of war during the time of the Swedish Empire; some of the collections were lost during the fire in the Tre Kronor castle. During the part of the 18th century and antiquities were bought by ambassadors and members of the royal family and collected at Stockholm Palace. After the death of King Gustaf III in 1792, the collections were turned over to the Swedish government; that same year the Royal Museum opened in the palace. It was one of the first public museums in the world. In 1846–47, the museum moved from the palace to the Ridderstolp House at Skeppsbron where it resided until 1865 and the move to Nationalmuseum. Swedish archaeologist Stig Welinder argues that the History Museum was in fact founded with its establishment in the Ridderstolp House in 1847; the present-day museum was founded in 1866 by Bror Emil Hildebrand, director of its predecessor both at Stockholm Palace and Ridderstolp House.
The collections of the museum were exhibited on the ground floor of the built Nationalmuseum. The premises soon became too small for both museums; when plans for the new Nordic Museum building were made in 1876, it was suggested that the building should include the History Museum's collections. The debate about housing for the History Museum continued for decades until Sigurd Curman became Custodian of Ancient Monuments and head of the Swedish National Heritage Board on 3 July 1923, he moved the issue forward to a more permanent solution. The main objective for a new and sufficiently large building for the museum was to bring order to the collections called "The Chaos" while the unpublished research papers were referred to as "the corf". In 1929, the Swedish government suggested that the former military barracks and stables at Storgatan in the city block known as the Krubban, could be allocated to the museum. An architectural competition was held in 1930, for the proposed conversion of the block into suitable accommodation for the museum.
No winner was declared, instead it was elements from the runner-up suggestion, made by architects Bengt Romare and George Scherman with engineer Gösta Nilsson, that became the starting point for the remodeling of the area. They developed the design for the new museum in cooperation with Curman, the National Property Board and the National Heritage Board. In 1932, the Swedish government granted funds for construction of official buildings to create jobs during the depression; some of these were used to build the museum in 1934–39. The plans for the museum were not finalized until 1936; the main building, designed by Romare and Scherman 1935–1940, reflects an ambivalence between the predominant modern style of the era and the historical context given not only by the context requirements, but the 19th century barracks and stables south of the museum designed by Fredrik Blom and built in stages in 1805–1818, starting one year after the land had been appropriated by the government. The barracks are neoclassicist in style and the repetitive façades used to be exposed to Ladugårdslandsviken, part of Stockholm's main harbor up until the 19th century, while the main building forms a compact block taking a step backwards from the street to leave space for a forecourt.
The museum consists of four two- and three-story block-like buildings surrounding an inner courtyard, giving it the appearance of a fortress. The façade is austere and decorated with sculptures made by Bror Marklund and reliefs by artist Robert Nilsson. In the courtyard by a pool is a sculpture called Näcken by Carl Frisendahl. Most of the decorations of the museum were selected through a series of competitions. In 1938, Marklund won the competition for creating the main entrance to the museum; the doors, called The Gates of History, took him thirteen years to make. They were finished and inaugurated in 1952; the doors were financed by philanthropist Eva Bonnier's foundation. The doors weighs about 1 t each. Made of bronze, they were first cast at the Herman Bergman foundry and chased by Marklund. Through a series of ten fields, the doors depict the history of Sweden from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages; the left door represents the Pagan era with Odin as a central figure, while the right door depicts Ansgar and the Christian era.
A noted deviation from the historical theme, is the depiction of a standard
Stirrup
A stirrup is a light frame or ring that holds the foot of a rider, attached to the saddle by a strap called a stirrup leather. Stirrups are paired and are used to aid in mounting and as a support while using a riding animal, they increase the rider's ability to stay in the saddle and control the mount, increasing the animal's usefulness to humans in areas such as communication and warfare. In antiquity, the earliest foot supports consisted of riders placing their feet under a girth or using a simple toe loop. A single stirrup was used as a mounting aid, paired stirrups appeared after the invention of the treed saddle; the stirrup appeared in China in the first few centuries AD and spread westward through the nomadic peoples of Central Eurasia. The use of paired stirrups is credited to the Chinese Jin Dynasty and came to Europe during the Middle Ages; some argue that the stirrup was one of the basic tools used to create and spread modern civilization as important as the wheel or printing press.
The English word "stirrup" stems from Old English stirap, Middle English stirop, styrope, i.e. a mounting or climbing-rope. Compare Old English stīgan "to ascend" and rap "rope, cord"; the stirrup, which gives greater stability to a rider, has been described as one of the most significant inventions in the history of warfare, prior to gunpowder. As a tool allowing expanded use of horses in warfare, the stirrup is called the third revolutionary step in equipment, after the chariot and the saddle; the basic tactics of mounted warfare were altered by the stirrup. A rider supported by stirrups was less to fall off while fighting, could deliver a blow with a weapon that more employed the weight and momentum of horse and rider. Among other advantages, stirrups provided greater balance and support to the rider, which allowed the knight to use a sword more efficiently without falling against infantry adversaries. Contrary to common modern belief, however, it has been asserted that stirrups did not enable the horseman to use a lance more though the cantled saddle did.
The invention of the stirrup occurred late in history, considering that horses were domesticated in 4500 BC, the earliest known saddle-like equipment were fringed cloths or pads with breast pads and cruppers used by Assyrian cavalry around 700 BCThe earliest manifestation of the stirrup was a toe loop that held the big toe and was used in India late in the second century BC, though may have appeared as early as 500 BC. This ancient foot support consisted of a looped rope for the big toe, at the bottom of a saddle made of fibre or leather; such a configuration was suitable for the warm climate of south and central India where people used to ride horses barefoot. A pair of megalithic double bent iron bars with curvature at each end, excavated in Junapani in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have been regarded as stirrups although they could as well be something else. Buddhist carvings in the temples of Sanchi and the Bhaja caves dating back between the 1st and 2nd century BC figure horsemen riding with elaborate saddles with feet slipped under girths.
In this regard archaeologist John Marshall described the Sanchi relief as "the earliest example by some five centuries of the use of stirrups in any part of the world". Some credit the nomadic Central Asian group known as the Sarmatians as developing the first stirrups; the invention of the solid saddle tree allowed development of the true stirrup. Without a solid tree, the rider's weight in the stirrups creates abnormal pressure points and make the horse's back sore. Modern thermography studies on "treeless" and flexible-tree saddle designs have found that there is considerable friction across the center line of a horse's back. A coin of Quintus Labienus, in service of Parthia, minted circa 39 BC depicts on its reverse a saddled horse with hanging objects. Smith suggests they are pendant cloths, while Thayer suggests that, considering the fact that the Parthians were famous for their mounted archery, the objects are stirrups, but adds that it is difficult to imagine why the Romans would never have adopted the technology.
In Asia, early solid-treed saddles were made of felt. These designs date to 200 BC One of the earliest solid-treed saddles in the west was first used by the Romans as early as the 1st century BC, but this design did not have stirrups, it is speculated. Stirrups were used in China at the latest by the early 4th century AD. A funerary figurine depicting a stirrup dated AD 302 was unearthed from a Western Jin dynasty tomb near Changsha; the stirrup depicted is a mounting stirrup, only placed on one side of the horse, too short for riding. The earliest reliable representation of a full-length, double-sided riding stirrup was unearthed from a Jin tomb, this time near Nanjing, dating to the Eastern Jin period, AD 322; the earliest extant double stirrups were discovered in the tomb of a Northern Yan noble, Feng Sufu, who died in AD 415. Stirrups have been found in Goguryeo tombs dating to the 4th and 5th centuries AD, but these do not contain any specific date; the stirrup appeared to be in widespread use across China by AD 477.
The appearance of the stirrup in China coincided with the rise of armoured cavalry in the region. Dated to 357 AD, the tomb of Dong Shou shows armoured riders as well as horses. References to "iron cavalry"
Balkans
The Balkans known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian-Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast; the Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined; the highest point of the Balkans is 2,925 metres, in the Rila mountain range. The concept of the Balkan peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea; the term of Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey in the 19th century, the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe.
It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan peninsula's natural borders do not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula and hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan peninsula, while scholars discuss the Balkans as a region; the term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization, hence the rather used alternative term for the region is Southeast Europe. The word Balkan comes from Ottoman Turkish balkan'chain of wooded mountains'; the origin of the Turkic word is obscure. From classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains were called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon,'mountain ridge'.
A third possibility is that "Haemus" derives from the Greek word "haema" meaning'blood'. The myth relates to a fight between the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name; the earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus mountains are referred to as Balkan. The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist and diplomat; the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had settled in or were passing through the Peninsula. There is a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion; the word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, Ungurus-Balkani̊, but it was applied to the Haemus mountain.
The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. English traveler John Morritt introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea; the concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered it as the dominant central mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term"; the term was not used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because then scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part South of the Balkan Mountains can be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula".
Other prominent geographers who didn't agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn in 1869 for the same territory used the term Südostereuropäische Halbinsel. Another reason it was not accepted as the definition of European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin there was a political need for a new term and the Balkans was revitalized, but in the maps the northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro without Greece, while Yugoslavian maps included Croatia and Bosnia; the term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces. The usage of the term changed in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century when was embraced by Serbian geographers, most prominently by Jovan Cvijić, it was done with political reasoning as affirmation for Serbian nationalism on the whole territory of the South Slavs, included anthropological and ethnological studies of the South Slavs through which were claimed various nationalistic and racistic theories.
Through such policies and Yugoslavian maps the term was elevated to the modern status of
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