Talk:Northern Crusades

message: I expanded the section on Estonians/Livonians and tried to make the result a better fit with previous data relating to other aspects but the result is not a fully coherent article.  Someone with detailed period knowledge should work up the existing article into a coherent whole. Ehaver.
Matsuhito, are you questioning that the assertions below are fact? "The Teutonic attempts to conquer Orthodox Russia (particulary Pskov and Novgorod), an enterprise ordered by the Pope [citation needed], can also be considered as a part of the Northern Crusades. Christians of other denominations who were not subordinated to Rome were put on the same level as heathens by the conquerors [citation needed]" .  I do not know whether they are fact or not, I did not write them, but in my piece for example I have the pope declaring (a) that the crusades against the Baltic heathen were of equal status to a crusade in the Holy Land and (b) dedicating the Baltic Lands to the Virgin Mary.  I agree that every assertion should be verifiable but if we are to support every idea with a quotation then Wikipedia will grow 1,000 times bigger.  I suggest that if your research tells you the assertions are wrong you delete them, otherwise let them stand as they were. Ehaver 09.02.2006
well, it talks here about against orthodox crusades, not ones against pagan balts. such information indeed needs to be verified. Matsuhito 17:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthodox 

message: Someone seems to keep adding "Russians" to the phrase "Between 1030 and 1197 pagan Estonia was attacked no fewer than thirteen times by Sweden and Denmark.". I'd like to see a reference to how Russia figures in this count. Also what is "Russia" in this context? The Kievan Rus'? And if they did attack, was it really a northern crusade, given that that term is for Western countries' forceful christianization of eastern ones? (Without more information, I suspect this edit is just Estonian anti-Russian POV-pushing) --BluePlatypus 18:35, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not "conquered" but "founded". A big difference. --Ghirla -трёп- 07:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Where did I say something about 1192? Yaroslav (Christian name: Yuri) made a raid into Estonia and founded a fort which he named Yuriev after himself. This has been discussed ad nauseum before. Quite irrelevant in this article, however. --Ghirla -трёп- 13:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Russians were as much victims of the Crusades as the Estonians. To call the East Slavic expansion into Estonia "a crusade" is not proper, as there was no religious motivation behind it. If you feel that the subject is important, write an article about Early East Slavic colonization of Estonia. Just don't call their occasional raids "a crusade". Wikipedia doesn't need original research, you should know it. --Ghirla -трёп- 13:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not a Northern Crusade...that's just a war. Adam Bishop 17:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russians? 

message: Regarding the inclusion of the wars against Novgorod as Northern Crusades, I would like to note that these wars are far from always included as a part of Northern Crusades (in fact, I have yet to read a single book that would claim that these wars were a part of the Northern Crusades (if you know any, give me the name of it) - these wars are usually explained in the books about the Northern Crusades as they are related, but not *because* they are part of the Northern Crusades). The crusades were (officially) against the pagans (to christianise them). Attacks on the Orthodox lands were largely related to the will of the attacking nations to expand their territories. As it says in the article, " can also be considered as a part of the Northern Crusades". "Can be considered" and "are considered" are two different things; minor theories should not be included in the introduction. Therefore, I will edit the introduction. Burann 18:33, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Salutations, Burann! Eric Christiansen's The Northern Crusades (Amazon), one of the more regarded books on the topic (in North America, at least), definitely includes the campaigns against Novgorod by Sweden and the Teutonic Knights as part of the Northern Crusades. From the back cover, "Inspired by the Pope's call for a Holy War, Scandinavian rulers and German military monks conquered and settled Finland, Estonia and Prussia, before turning on the eastern empires of Orthodox Novgorod and pagan Lithuania. These 'Northern Crusades' are less celebrated than those in the Middle East, but they were also far more successful." While you may be right in that in traditional historiography the Northern Crusades were restricted to the activities of the German knights, the campaigns against Orthodoxy are now sometimes included (Christiansen, Urban). Any objections if I include a phrase such as "...southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. Swedish and German campaigns against Orthodox Russian principalities are also sometimes considered part of the Northern Crusades."? Olessi 20:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for providing the information, I haven't read the Christiansen's book. Ok, you can add it indeed. Also it would be good then if you would write in parenthesis the name of the particular book because, as you and I have said, in traditional historiography only the German Orders' conquests (the Orders were purposefully created for the crusades, unlike states like Sweden which were ordinary states) are considered to be Northern Crusades. Burann 20:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I recommend picking up a copy of Christiansen's book, if possible. His work seems balanced and comprehensive to me, and is not written in a dry style. Olessi 20:48, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I remember reading the first edition of Christiansen´s book several years ago. I recall it had a lot of errors and mistakes.217.112.242.181 11:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From the introduction to his second edition: "The work on which the first edition of this book was based was composed in haste over twenty years ago, and the author has had time to repent of the many errors and misconceptions which it contained. The flowering of Baltic and Northern medieval research since then has made it necessary not only to correct mistakes, but to revise almost every conclusion from the evidence. The very notion of 'crusade', as it existed in the 1970s, has been largely discredited, and dark areas of Lithuanian and North Russian history are being continually lit. These developments have resulted in a fuller section of further reading at the end of the book; although work published in English or French is still scarce" (p. 5). Olessi 14:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanation to Olessi

message: The timeline says, that in 1410's Battle of Grunwald - Lithuanian forces led by Grand Duke Vytautas with a combined army of Russians, Tatars, Poles and Czechs defeated the Teutonic Knights. That is true, but most of the allied forces were Polish and led by the Polish king (who was... :) Lithuanian). I think the sentence should be rephrased somehow, so it wouldn't seem like the Polish knights were just part of the army that was fighting together with Lithuanians and second to last in significance judging by the order in which the nations are mentioned. Of course Lithuanians are most relevant to this article and probably Russians as well (although I guess these Russians might have been actually Ruthenians). I don't know how to rephrase this sentence, but it these little subtleties that make the truth in history go wander. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xyzzer (talk • contribs) 
:Thank you for pointing that out. Looking into the situation more closely, the information has been copied directly from this external link. With Wikipedia:Copyright problems in mind, I will remove the text from the article. The actual information, of course, is accessible through the page history or through the external link itself. Olessi 17:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Battle of Grunwald 

message: Should we add the Norwegian expedition to Finland, the attack of the (then young) Norwegian 
Christian king Olaf who became later the "Saint Olaf"? He was already Christian during the attack and became later widely known and worshipped (of course, not only because of taking part in the attack). Not only is he depicted in Medieval Scandinavian church paintings as sailing to pagan Finland but even in Finland there are surviving paintings of him in the walls of the Medieval church buildings. While his attack is not usually attributed as being crusade in nature, the connection to attacking then pagan Finland is extremely clear. The exact year is not clear but sometimes it is placed in the year 1008.
For some odd reason this whole matter is almost never mentioned in English-language sources, I believe many have not even heard about this before, but it's a well known thing amongst historians in Finland. For example there is nothing mentioned about this in Wikipedia's article on him (Olaf II Haraldsson) which is strange considering that both the Nordic sagas and church wall paintings agree on this matter.
:The Northern Crusades is systematic warfare in the 12-13 century. The one Norwegian attack in 1008 doesn't fit in really. It belongs to Early Finnish wars and that's where the facts including Battle at Herdaler are listed. --Termer (talk) 02:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Norwegians, too 

message: Spelling:bacame==>became You can help Aclayartist (talk) 17:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: There's a whole section in this page on the Livonian Crusade, and there's a full page on the Livonian Crusade, but the content between these two is either redundant or not coherent. For instance, the subsection titles are not always the same, and when they are, maybe their dates don't fit. "Campaign against the Livonians (1198–1212)" <-> "War against Livs and Latgalians (1198–1209)", "Wars against the Curonians and Semigallians (1201–90)" <-> "Wars against Curonians and Semigallians (1219–1290)". NazcaHand (talk) 01:52, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differences with Livonian Crusade page 

message: What pope ordered this crusades? (if no Pope ordered , then this article is not science but marxism)
Razzham (talk) 05:38, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Pope?