Reval

Reval (mod. Tallinn, Estonia) was the second-largest town in medieval Livonia after Riga. The name Revalia (Est. Ravala) originally designated the surrounding province.

At the beginning of the Baltic Crusades, the castle hill in Reval was an Estonian fortification adjoining a small port. In 1219 Danish crusaders, led by King Valdemar II, landed in Reval and started to build a castle; the modern Estonian name of the town probably derives from Taani linn, “the fortress or town of the Danes.” On 15 June that year the Danes defeated a large Estonian army and subjected the surrounding country. The Order of the Sword Brethren captured Reval in 1227 but was forced to return it to Denmark in 1238 according to the Treaty of Stensby.

A town grew up at the foot of the castle hill, its development stimulated by Danish royal privileges. By the end of the thirteenth century, it had fortifications (which were later extended), two parish churches, a Dominican friary, and a Cistercian nunnery. The town was established as a corporation with an independent jurisdiction and was separate from the castle hill, which contained the castle of the bishops and the castle of the royal governor.

In 1346 Reval was sold together with the rest of North Estonia to the Teutonic Order. The royal castle was converted into a commandery of the order. German merchants and artisans dominated the legal and cultural life of the town. Although subject to the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, Reval was administered by a town council according to the Lubeck town law; its members normally belonged to the Great Guild of merchants. The local Estonian inhabitants, who constituted up to half of the population, participated actively in the economic life of the town and were prominent in some of the crafts and trades, such as stonebreaking and transport. The wealth of Reval derived from the great trade between Novgorod and the West. From the 1280s Reval belonged to the Hanseatic League, which dominated this commerce, and was able to prevent its eastern rival, Narva, from joining the league.

From the end of the fifteenth century Reval encountered many problems. The station of the German merchants in Novgorod was closed after its subjection by Muscovy in 1494, which adversely affected the Revalian economy. There were tensions with the nobility of Harria and Vironia over the migration of peasants to the town and increasing ethnic and social conflict between German and non-German segments of the urban population. As in other Hanseatic towns, the council expanded its power, suppressing the ambitions of the craft guilds to participate in government. In the 1520s the Reformation reached Reval; the town became Lutheran, but the castle district belonging to the bishop of Reval remained Roman Catholic until 1561. In that year, the town of Reval and the nobility of northern Estonia subjected themselves to Swedish rule.

-Juhan Kreem

Bibliography

Johansen, Paul, Nordische Mission, Revals Grundung und die Schwedenansiedlung in Estland (Stockholm: Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1951).

Johansen, Paul, and Heinz von zur Muhlen, Deutsch und Undeutsch im mittelalterlichen und fruhneuzeitlichen Reval (Koln: Bohlau, 1973).

Kala, Tiina, Lubeck Law and Tallinn (Tallinn: Tallinna Linnaarhiiv, 1998).

-, “Tallinna tekkeloo peegeldumine kirjalikes allikates,”

In Keskus-Tagamaa-Aareala: Uurimusi asustushierarhia ja voimukeskuste kujunemisestEestis, ed. Valter Lang (Tallinn: Ajalo Instituut, Tartu Ulikool, 2002), pp.

391-408.

Kreem, Juhan, “The Teutonic Order as a Secular Ruler in Livonia: The Privileges and Oath of Reval,” in Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier, 1150-1500, ed. Alan V. Murray (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 215-234.

-, The Town and Its Lord: Reval and the Teutonic Order

(in the Fifteenth Century) (Tallinn: Tallinna Linnaarhiiv, 2002).

Muhlen, Heinz von zur, “Zur wissenschaftlichen Diskussion uber den Ursprung Revals,” Zeitschrift fur Ostforschung 33 (1984), 626-673.

Nottbeck, Eugen von, and Wilhelm Neumann, Geschichte und Kunstdenkmaler der Stadt Reval, 2 vols. (Reval: Kluge, 1904).

Ritscher, Alfred, Reval an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit, vol. 1: 1510-1535 (Bonn: Kulturstiftung der Deutschen Vertriebenen, 1998).

Tallinna ajalugu 1860-ndate aastateni, ed. Raimo Pullat (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1976).