Earl Hodil

I’m a sixth-year PhD candidate focusing on early modern Russian history. Before entering the History program, I earned a BA in History and Russian from the University of Florida, as well as an MA from the European and Russian Studies program at Yale. In particular I am interested in Muscovite relationships with Scandinavia and Northern Europe. My dissertation examines the attempts to marry two Danish princes to the daughters of Russian tsars. Christian IV of Denmark offered his younger brother, Johan, to wed the daughter of Boris Godunov, Ksenia, in 1602. Christian later sent his son, Valdemar Christian, to seek the hand of Irina, the daughter of Mikhail I Romanov, in the 1640s. Both of these affairs offer a window into the political, economic, and cultural ties (as well as friction points) between Moscow and Copenhagen in the early Seventeenth Century.

 

The Yale MacMillan Center and Russian Studies program kindly funded my archival research at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) in 2016-17. My work at the Danish National Archive (Rigsarkivet) in 2018 was funded by a generous grant from the American Scandinavian Foundation. While in Copenhagen, I was also able to visit the National Archive of Norway (Riksarkivet) as well as the Landesarchiv Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. Combining these sources, I hope to contribute a new perspective on this period of history in both Russia and Denmark.