Finnish Crusades ⟶

This was the real war. Sweden and Novgorod had been competing for control of Karelia (eastern Finland) and the lucrative fur trade routes. In 1293, Marshal Torkel Knutsson led a large Swedish force across the frozen Gulf of Finland. He stormed the Novgorodian outpost at Ladoga, but more decisively, he built a formidable stone castle at Vyborg (Viipuri).

The story is a vivid one. King Eric IX of Sweden, urged by the Papacy to expand Christendom, sails across the Gulf of Bothnia with Bishop Henry. They defeat the Finns in battle, baptize them en masse, and establish a church hierarchy. The king returns to Sweden, only to be martyred. Bishop Henry remains, is later killed by a Finnish peasant named Lalli on the ice of Lake Köyliö, and becomes the patron saint of Finland. finnish crusades

Vyborg became the eastern sword-point of the Swedish kingdom. The campaign of 1293, explicitly called a crusade by papal bulls issued to justify it, was a brutal frontier war. The Swedish army fought Novgorodians and their Karelian allies, baptizing captured Karelians by force. The conflict was not resolved until the Treaty of Nöteborg (1323), which formally divided Finland and Karelia between the two powers. The border drawn then would separate Western and Eastern Christianity—and later, Sweden and Russia—for over six centuries. This was the real war

This is where history begins to solidify. The Papal curia had, in 1237, authorized a crusade to defend the fledgling Finnish church against "barbarians"—likely the pagan Tavastians, who were rebelling. But the real strategic push came from Birger Jarl, the de facto ruler of Sweden. He stormed the Novgorodian outpost at Ladoga, but