From the 12th century up to the 16th century the Eastern Baltic region was Northern Europe’s cultural frontier. Conquest and colonisation by Catholic crusaders from Western Europe, the most important of which was the Teutonic Order, forced the foundations of a Christian, urban society upon one previously composed of diverse pagan tribes. The profound legacy left by the Crusaders, socially, politically and environmentally, forms the subject of a new multi-disciplinary research programme led by archaeologists from Britain’s Reading University:The Ecology of Crusading.
In a 1st February presentation at the Estonian Embassy in London, the project’s principal investigator and lecturer in archaeology at Reading University, Aleks Pluskowski, observed that the former tribal lands were reorganised into territories held by bishops and the Teutonic Order. However, there are few surface traces of the colonisation process outside of the main features, the Crusader castles. What was the impact of the construction of castles, their associated vast settlements and towns on the ecology this region? How did the introduction of Christianity, monasteries and parishes change the pagan spiritual society? Did the incomers adapt to the existing society?
Climate Deterioration
The study will combine the talents of archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, paleobotanists, geophysicists and historians from Britain, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian and Hungary. They will examine plant microfossils, vertebrate bones, timber, charcoal and the geochemistry of buried soils, as well as assessing the written historical documents. The overall aim is to build up an interpretative framework which could be applied to the study of cultural and environmental impacts of colonisation in other regions.
The period under study is one of climatic deterioration in Europe. A three- century warm era, known as the Medieval Warm Period, had ended by 1250-1300 and was followed by a cold era, the Little Ice Age, which lasted until the second half of the 19th century. Western European societies which had experienced population and economic growth during the times of plenty were torn by political conflicts, social unrest and famine.
Multiple Military Excursions
The Baltic Crusades were a series of military incursions starting with Pope Eugene III’s (1145-53) proclamation of a crusade against pagan Slavs, the Wends, inhabiting the southern Baltic coast. These onslaughts were organised by a number of north German and Polish princes but brought little success for the invaders. More successful expeditions were organised by Danish and Swedish kings aimed at converting Estonians, Pomeranians and Finns. German bishops later established missions in Livonia, corresponding roughly to today’s Central and Northern Latvia and Southern Estonia. These were followed by German merchants, and later by ships and soldiers following proclamations of future crusades against the Balts by Popes Alexander III (1159-81), Celestine III (1191-98), Innocent III (1198-1216) and Honorius III (1216-27).
A Livonian military order, the Swordbrothers, was established in the region until it merged with the Teutonic Knights in 1237. The Teutonic Knights, a mostly, though not entirely, German military order created in Jerusalem, led subsequent military excursions against the Estonians, Latgallians, Letts, Lithuanians and Baltic Prussians. Their campaign against the Christian Orthodox Novgorod Republic ended in defeat at the 1242 Battle on the Ice on Lake Peipus, today the Russian – Estonian border. The Teutonic Order experienced its worst defeat at the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, or Zalgiris, by a combined army of Lithuanians, Poles, Tatars, Czechs, Belarusians and Wallachians.
One of the first written reports of these campaigns was the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia. The writer was a 12th century German Catholic priest, possibly born in Saxony. The Chronicle notes that that the Baltic Crusades were not a straightforward pilgrimage of Catholic knights aimed and converting pagans. The Balts formed highly militaristic societies mired by tribal conflicts. Although tribal resistance to the invaders was fierce initially, they later formed a series of shifting alliances with them in the hope of defeating their tribal enemies. Some of the tribes such as the Baltic Prussians were wiped out, leaving later German princedoms to appropriate the name “Prussia”. The process of survival, defeat or compromise with the Crusaders created the foundations of later nationalism in the Baltic States.
Environmental Impact
Alex Pluskowski noted in his presentation that the environmental impact of the crusades in the Baltic region was never as dramatic as that of the European colonisation of the Americas, and was also much subtler than that of the Vikings on the Atlantic coasts. Initially, the study will investigate the environment around three major Crusader castles: Malbork (German: Marienburg) in northern Poland, Klapeida (German: Memel) in Lithuania, and Viljandi (German: Fellin) in Estonia. From information gathered to date, these castles established frontier economies and relied on local food sources, including woodland animals. Animal husbandry, mainly pigs and cattle, developed slowly. In Klapeida there was no settled agricultural development until the 16th century.
Trade and natural resources were the ultimate prizes for the crusaders. The region became Europe’s principal timber and fur exporter. According to Reading University’s Alex Brown, a paleobotanist, major quantities of Baltic timber were exported to Britain. Tree-felling in Britain began in about 2000 BCE during the Bronze Age. By the 13th century forests in the British Isles were sparser than today. Already in the 13th century, coniferous plantations were replacing the deciduous forests. Baltic oak, beech and pine provided England with the raw material for cathedrals, major buildings and ships.
Spirituality
Archaeological studies to date have indicated that the pre-Christian Baltic societies were obsessed with horses. Horse burial sites, sometimes with humans, sometimes not, are common throughout the Eastern Baltic regions. The horse was regarded as a symbol of vital force and fertility. In addition to its military significance, horses were seen as mediators between the living and the dead, as well as with the gods. Horse flesh was not consumed. According to Pluskowski, the northern borders of Livonia were the limit of horse burials and no such sites are found in Northern Estonia.
Baltic spirituality was embedded into the landscape and suffered its first big blow only in the 17th century, Pluskowski says. Visitors to the Baltic region today, especially in early winter as the locals prepare to feast with the spirits of their ancestors, may conclude that this spiritual tradition is something that neither the Crusaders, nor subsequent invaders, managed to obliterate.
References
The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, translated by James A. Brundage. 2004. Columbia University Press.
Audrone Bliujiene and Donatas Butkas, 2009. Burials with Horses and Equestrian Equipment on the Lithuanian and Latvian Littorals and Hinterlands (from the Fifth to the Eighth Centuries). Archaeologica Baltica, v. 11, pp. 149-163.
Maria Kielmas - Maria Kielmas
