Northern Crusades 1147 – Roughly 1290

Many are familiar with the Crusades in which Christian forces clashed with Muslim forces in an effort to regain access to Christian holy sites around Jerusalem. However at the same time Crusades were underway in the Holy Land, the Northern Crusades were occurring in Scandinavia. In these Crusades, the goal was to eliminate the various pagan groups and their followers.
The Northern Crusades began with the Wendish Crusade in 1147. The Kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden, the Teutonic Order, and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword (the latter two being religious military orders) invaded what is now northeast Germany in an effort to subdue the region’s pagan peoples. Following this military success, Pope Celestine III officially called for a crusade against the pagans in 1195. The Northern Crusades lasted into the late 1200s and resulted in the military conquest of north Germany and the Baltic States and the spread of Christianity to these lands.