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  • The Swedish Expeditions (‘Crusades’) Towards Finland Reconsidered

  • Edited by Kirsi Salonen, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
  • Book:
    Church and Belief in the Middle Ages
    Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    11 December 2020
    Print publication:
    25 July 2016, pp 251-268

  • Summary

    For hundreds of years at the beginning of the Christian era, it was possible for pilgrims from Europe to undertake visits to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The expressions ‘peregrinus’ and ‘peregrinatio’, as Christian Krötzl has pointed out, have roots in the pre-Christian period and they underwent a strong change of meaning during the Middle Ages. With the expansion of the Islamic world in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, the travels and journeys of the pilgrims became more and more difficult and dangerous. Thus the pilgrims started to carry weapons or were protected by military units so that they could safely reach Jerusalem and travel back again. At the end of the eleventh century, the possibilities of travel to the Holy Land were strongly reduced as a result of the Arab conquests and soon in reality terminated. For this reason, Pope Urban II gave his famous speech at the Council of Clermont in November 1095 demanding the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The speech was welcomed with great enthusiasm (Deus lo vult, ‘God wills it’); numerous French and German princes and noblemen in particular were inspired for a crusade and started to prepare themselves. After several difficulties and internal rivalry among the crusaders, Jerusalem was liberated in July 1099 and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded. The European crusade movement towards the Holy Land lasted until the second half of the thirteenth century, leaving many traces in the written sources.

    After some decades, the concept of crusades, which started as campaigns against non-Christianized people in the Holy Land, spread also outside the territory of Palestine. In the Kingdom of Portugal against the Moors and in the Baltic Region against Slavs and Balts, crusades and military operations were realized with the consent and understanding of Rome. Some Scandinavians visited the Holy Sepulchre and, like the Norwegian King Sigurd Jorsalfar (d. 1130), fought in the Holy Land (1107-1111). According to written sources, Jerusalem was the most visited long-distance destination among Scandinavian pilgrims in the thirteenth century, although the number of sources are scarce and do not allow a reconstruction of the actual number of pilgrims from northern Europe.

The Cambridge History of Scandinavia
  • Volume 2, 1520–1870
  • Edited by E. I. Kouri, Jens E. Olesen
  • Published online:
    05 July 2016
    Print publication:
    24 March 2016
  • Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Scandinavia provides a comprehensive and authoritative account of the Scandinavian countries from the close of the Middle Ages through to the formation of the nation states in the mid-nineteenth century. Beginning in 1520, the opening chapters of the volume discuss the reformation of the Nordic states and the enormous impact this had on the social structures, cultural identities and traditions of individual countries. With contributions from 38 leading historians, the book charts the major developments that unfolded within this crucial period of Scandinavian history. Chapters address topics such as material growth and the centralisation of power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as the evolution of trade, foreign policy and client states in the eighteenth century. Volume 2 concludes by discussing the new economic and social orders of the nineteenth century in connection with the emergence of the nation states.

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