Estonia

In the course of the Baltic Crusades of the early thirteenth century, Danish and German forces conquered the land known in the later Middle Ages as Livonia, corresponding to modern Estonia and northern Latvia. The northernmost parts of Livonia (i. e., mod. northern Estonia) became a duchy belonging to the Danish Crown until the king of Denmark sold it to the Teutonic Order in 1346.

North Estonia before the Crusades

Those areas that later came under Danish rule were the provinces of Harria, Jerwia, Revele, and Vironia (Ger. Wier-land), situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. They were bounded in the east by the River Narva and Lake Peipus (mod. Peipsi Jarv, Estonia, Chudskoe Ozero, Russia) and extended as far as the Baltic Sea in the west, and included the two large Baltic islands of Osel (mod. Saaremaa) and Dago (mod. Hiumaa). The area consisted mainly of bogs and wetlands densely wooded with pine and birch and with rocky cliffs lining the northern shores. It was inhabited by Finno-Ugrian-speaking peoples, who were overwhelmingly pagan Estonians. Organized under leaders known as elders, these tribes took an extensive part in the trading and raiding activities that had been elements of the economy of the Baltic region since the Viking age.

The earliest, but apparently ineffective, missionary efforts by Christian powers in Estonia is reported to have come from Sigtuna in Sweden in 1120. However, it was not until sometime before 1171 that Eskil, archbishop of Lund, appointed a French monk, Fulco, as missionary bishop of Estonia, whose work was supported by letters from Pope Alexander III. In 1171/1172 Alexander permitted Fulco to be accompanied in his mission by a certain Nicholas, who seems to have been a converted Estonian living in a Norwegian monastery. It remains uncertain, however, whether Fulco and Nicholas ever reached Estonia.

Written sources mention several clashes between Estonians and Scandinavians in the last third of the twelfth century. However, reliable details of these incidents are often hard to establish. A joint Danish-Norwegian raid against Estonia may have taken place in the late 1180s. Danish sources mention a naval raid against the Estonians in 1184, and Norwegian sources report a son of the Norwegian king raiding in 1185 or 1188. Swedish annals mention a pirate raid in 1187, undertaken either by Estonians or Karelians, on the merchant settlement of Sigtuna and the archiepiscopal fortress in Uppsala, during which the Swedish archbishop Stephen was supposedly killed. A late source mentions a Danish raid against Estonia by King Knud VI in 1196/1197.

The Crusader Conquest

Pope Celestine III (1191-1198) granted indulgences to crusaders who went to the eastern Baltic region. This boosted the German mission in Livonia and may have renewed a Christian interest in Estonia. The chronicler Henry of Livonia tells of an attack by Valdemar II, king of Denmark, in 1206, in response to an Estonian raid on the Danish province of Blekinge in 1203. Henry’s account of the Danish expedition remains doubtful, however, since other sources state that the expedition was led by the archbishop of Lund, and at the time in question the king was known to have been waging war in northern Germany. According to Henry, the Danes arrived with a large army on Osel and immediately erected a wooden fortress as their military base. However, they soon realized the futility of their endeavour, burnt down the fortress, and returned home. The Danish archbishop, however, proceeded to Riga. As a result of this visit, the bishop of Riga, Albert of Buxhovden, and the Order of the Sword Brethren turned its attention to Estonia.

In 1208 the Sword Brethren waged war in the southern provinces of Estonia following unsuccessful negotiations with the Estonians; it is possible that the Danes also organized an expedition to the area around Fellin (mod. Viljandi) in 1208, perhaps as part of a joint operation with the order. During the campaign of the Sword Brethren, the pagan fortress at Odenpah was burned down, but retaliation followed, with an attack on Livonia by a large army of united Estonian tribes. These events were the opening of a series of wars, which around 1218 resulted in the submission of the southern Estonian provinces to the Christians.

The northern parts of Estonia still resisted conversion. Strife and competition between the Christian powers aided their resistance. The Estonians often allied themselves with the Russians of Novgorod against the Livonian church; at times, however, these alliances simply seem to have been attempts to hinder simultaneous Russian and Rigan attacks on Estonia.

Danish attempts to conquer the region were buttressed by papal letters, which in 1212 granted legatine powers to the Danish archbishop to oversee the mission in the Baltic region. In 1213 he was allowed to erect a bishopric in Sakkala and Ugaunia. In December 1215 Pope Innocent III ordered all the faithful in Denmark to go on crusade against those who persecuted the Christians in Livonia. Accordingly, Count Albert of Orlamunde, a vassal of the Danish king, in 1217 went to Livonia to support Bishop Albert of Riga in his continuing struggle to conquer the northern provinces. Pope Honorius III commuted the crusade vows of ten of Count Albert’s men and allowed them to do service in Livonia instead of the Holy Land.

In June 1219 King Valdemar II of Denmark landed on the shores of northern Estonia, near Reval (mod. Tallinn). He had obtained a papal privilege recognizing him as the rightful ruler of all the lands he would conquer. The Danish crusade followed a plea for Danish assistance made to Valde-mar II by Albert of Riga in 1218. A new royal fortress in Reval became the point of departure for the Danish conquest in the years following a lucky victory over the Estonians in the battle of Lyndanis (15 June 1219). Valdemar II maintained that both Estonia and Livonia had been promised to Denmark by Bishop Albert and exerted pressure on him by blockading the harbour of Lubeck, the main point of embarkation for crusaders going to Livonia. However, Albert and his allies refused to give in. Following the Danish conquest of Osel, negotiations between Valdemar, Albert, and the Sword Brethren in 1222 made the Danish king restore Livonia to Albert, and all parties agreed on a territorial division of Estonia.

The Estonians of Osel, however, soon revolted against the Danes, and the rebellion spread to the mainland, with the effect that all the regions conquered by the Danes except for Reval were recaptured. The Sword Brethren, nevertheless, soon suppressed the rebellion. At the same time Valdemar II was taken prisoner in Denmark by one of his North German vassals. This incident effectively brought Danish expansionist politics in the Baltic region to a halt. In 1225, perhaps at the instigation of the Sword Brethren, German vassals from Odenpah entered Vironia and expelled the Danes from the province. The papal legate William of Modena intervened in the dispute between the Christian powers and confiscated the contested provinces of Vironia, Jerwia, Harria, and Wiek, which had all hitherto been held by the Danes. In 1226, however, Harria was returned to Danish rule. Realizing that the Danish king was occupied in northern Germany, in 1227 the

Sword Brethren were able to capture the fortress at Reval from the Danes and were subsequently given the administration of the confiscated provinces by the papal vice-legate. A new papal legate, Baldwin of Aulne, did not succeed in bringing peace to the region, and was later removed by Pope Gregory IX.

Valdemar II fought to regain the northern Estonian provinces, and through another blockade of Lubeck in 1234 and letters of complaint to Gregory IX he managed to gain the upper hand in the struggle with the Sword Brethren. The Danish cause was helped by a papal ruling of 1236 in Valde-mar’s favour, as well as the crushing defeat of the order by the Lithuanians at the battle of Saule (1237): the Sword Brethren suffered major losses and their surviving members were absorbed into the Teutonic Order.

North Estonia as a Danish Duchy (1238-1346)

A treaty between the Teutonic Order and the Danish king at Stensby in 1238 reestablished Danish rule over North Estonia. The Order returned the provinces of Harria, Revele, and Vironia to Valdemar II. Jerwia was granted to the Teutonic Knights in perpetuity, on the specific condition that the order not build any fortifications there without the consent of the Danish king. Functioning as a buffer zone, Jerwia came under the temporal rule of the order, but in ecclesiastical terms it belonged to the Danish bishopric of Reval. The treaty envisaged that the Danish kings, in cooperation with the Teutonic Order, would participate in the expansion of the Christian faith. It was therefore stipulated that when the two powers together conquered land from the pagans, two-thirds should be allotted to the Danish king and one-third to the order.

The Danish possessions in Estonia became a duchy under the Crown. The Danish king’s representative, the viceroy or captain of Reval (Lat. capitaneus Revalie) governed the lands, often in cooperation with the Council of Vassals. He was in charge of the royal fortresses and military command; he collected taxes, oversaw the mint, and exercised judicial powers. Frequent contact between the Estonian provinces and Denmark was maintained through regular visits to Denmark by the captain of Reval, the bishop of Reval, and the vassals.

Soon after the return of the Estonian provinces to the Danish king, the king enfeoffed the greater part of the land to vassals. According to a list of vassals in the royal cadastral work, the Liber Censum Daniae (compiled around 1240), the majority at this time were Germans. However, some Danes and a few Estonians also received fiefs. Relations between king and vassals were regulated in 1252 when vassals were granted the German feudal code, and again in 1315 with the so-called Valdemar-Erikian Feudal Code. Vassals were obliged to travel to court to do homage to the king in person on the accession of a new monarch, or when a new vassal inherited a fief. The vassals had to do service in army and at court; in return they held their land as hereditary fiefs, received tithes from their fiefs, and had full jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases in the first instance. They also came to enjoy great political influence through the Council of Vassals.

The bishop of Reval was a suffragan of the Danish archbishop of Lund. Unlike other bishops in the eastern Baltic region, he had no territorial powers. The kings of Denmark initially claimed the right to appoint the bishop, and this procedure, although in direct violation of canon law, was allowed to continue for long periods during the Danish administration, thus strengthening the king’s hold over the provinces. An ecclesiastical organization was set up during the thirteenth century, as the land was divided into parishes where the building of churches soon began. Religious orders, including Dominicans and Cistercians, established houses in Reval and in the surrounding countryside.

The towns in Estonia served as centers of trade and administration. During the Sword Brethren’s rule of Reval, the trading community there was expanded by the settlement of merchants from Gotland who were invited in by the order in 1230. In 1248 the Danish king granted Reval the town law code of Lubeck, presumably in order to further the town’s ties with the Hanseatic merchants. The same law code was later also granted to the other two towns in the Danish lands, Wesenberg in 1302 and Narva in 1345. German merchants settled in Reval, and the town became an important port of transit on the Hanseatic trade route from Novgorod to the West. All three towns in Estonia included a royal fortress under the command of a royal bailiff (Lat. advocatus).

The popes were keen to ensure the expansion and safeguarding of Latin Christendom against the Orthodox faith. Letters from both Gregory IX (1240) and Innocent IV (1245) authorized crusades in defence of the neophytes (converts) in Estonia, who were reportedly threatened by nearby barbarians and idolaters. These letters offered participants an indulgence equivalent to that offered to crusaders going to the Holy Land. In 1245 King Erik IV of Denmark planned an expedition against the pagans and received not only papal authorization for this project, but also financial support in the form of part of the tithe collected in the church province of Lund; nothing, however, came of this. Yet Danish military forces, including vassals from the Estonian provinces, several times engaged in warfare against the Russians or the pagan peoples of the region, often in cooperation with the Teutonic Order.

On St. George’s day (23 April) 1343 the peasants of Har-ria rose up in rebellion against their foreign masters. The Danish hold over the Estonian provinces had been weakened by an interregnum of several years in Denmark (1332-1340), and there were already plans to sell off the duchy. The position of King Valdemar IV had been further undermined by the abduction of the captain of Reval by the Teutonic Order earlier in 1343. The Teutonic Knights in Livonia intervened, but the rebellion spread, and it was finally put down only in early 1345. Unable to secure his Estonian lands and in need of resources and allies to gain control of his Danish lands, Valdemar IV sold the Estonian provinces to the Teutonic Order in 1346.

The former Danish possessions in Estonia at first came under the formal rule of the grand master of the Teutonic Order, based in Prussia. In 1347 the grand master transferred the governance of the two provinces to the master of the Livonian branch of the order, under whose rule they remained until its secularization in 1561-1562.

-Iben Fonnesberg Schmidt Torben K. Nielsen

See also: Baltic Crusades; Castles: The Baltic Region; Denmark; Livonia

Bibliography

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