Crusades were a series of religious wars
covering the period of approximately 200
years in the Middle Ages. Their main
theme was the Catholics trying to
recover the Holy Land from the Muslims
chanting deus vult along the way.
What you may not
know however is that Sweden boasts its
own set of Crusades to pagan Finland.
Today we'll cover the first one, the most
legendary one, involving King Erik the Saint and Bishop Henrik of Uppsala. So
let's get on. In the 12th century
Finnish pirates began to emerge along
the Swedish coast wrecking havoc upon
Swedish settlements. The Swedish king,
Eric de Saint, decided to set out on a
mission to put an end to the to those
pillages. Accompanied by the Bishop of
Uppsala Henrik he sailed to Finland and
invited the locals to embrace the faith
of Christ. When they rejected the offer
he went on to preach the Word of God
with sword and fire. The first swedish
crusade was on. A great bow ensued but
Eric defeated the Finnish heathens. Oddly
enough, instead of celebrating he got
distressed and retreated to pray. When
people asked him why he wasn't happy, he
said "sure we won but how much better
would it have been if they had embraced
the Christian faith." So as you can see
Eric was a fully fledged Saint and now
that he had won he didn't persecute the
local pagans. Instead, he sent out
missionaries and built churches. He also
left the bishop Henrik de to establish a
local Christian community. However it
wasn't meant to be. After just a year in
Finland Henrik was murdered by a peasant
called Lalli. The story is that Henrik
visited Lalli's house when the peasant
was away. Henrik took some food, beer and fodder for his horse and then departed
without paying for those things.
This kind of abusing one's hospitality by
bishops and soldiers was actually
commonplace in medieval Sweden and is
called "våldgästning", violent guesting.
Anyway, when Lalli came home and his
wife told him what had happened
he got all worked up. He immediately
put his skis on, chased the bishop and in
true medieval fashion cut his head off.
Soon afterwards, the bishop became a
martyr and the patron saint of Finland.
That is what many generations of Swedish
and Finnish kids learned in school.
However today we know that the story was
quite different.
Modern research shows that Eric the
Saint well wasn't much of a saint and he
never led a crusade to Finland.
A legitimate crusade is decided on by
the College of Cardinals and there is
not a single document in Rome indicating
that such a crusade took place. Actually,
there is only one contemporary document
mentioning King Erik and it is about his
conflict with some monks. As far as
bishop Henrik is concerned, he might have
never even existed. The legend of him and
Erik was written in the 13th century, a
hundred years after the events it
allegedly describes, I'm sorry,
had taken place, so there were not any
eyewitnesses left by then. As a matter of
fact, there aren't any contemporary
writings mentioning a bishop named Eric
in Uppsala at the time. Moreover, in the
12th century Sweden was a weak
decentralized country and it's kings
basically couldn't summon sufficient
resources to start a real crusade. On the
other hand, it's perfectly possible that
King Erik conducted raids along this
Finnish coast,
but it's not certain either. What we do
know, however, is that Erik's son, Knut
Eriksson was a relatively strong king
for those vehement times and he lobbied
for his father to be declared a saint.
This is when the story of the glorious
crusade might have been invented. Now,
even though this crusade never took
place
we shouldn't totally reject it because
of its significance for the Finnish
history. In many centuries henrik or
Heikki was the most popular male name in
Finland and even Lalli, the peasant who
supposedly killed Henrik was the symbol
for Finnish struggle for independence
in the 18th and 19th century. And to do
the Swedish warriors of cross
justice, the second Swedish crusade
actually did take place and I hope to
cover it in the future. But for now, thank
you for listening
