In June 1219 Danish crusaders fought a vicious battle against local pagan warriors at the place in northern Estonia where Tallinn now lies. The battle—known then as the Battle of Lyndanise—was a narrow victory for the crusaders and eventually turned out to be a pivotal event in the national histories of both Denmark and Estonia as a milestone in the overall military conquest of the entire region by (mostly) western military powers. The main scope of this book is to present a study of this military conquest of Estonia around 1200 with a special focus on the Scandinavian involvement, enabling us to better understand the intense political, military, and religious changes that came to influence the region and its many people from the early high medieval period onwards.

Carsten Selch Jensen is a professor and dean at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. He has published extensively on the Baltic Crusades.

Introduction: Holy War in the Baltic and the Battle of Lyndanise 1219
Chapter 1: Foreign Shores—Foreign People: the Medieval Baltic and its People
Chapter 2: Fighting God’s War: Papal Crusading Politics in the Baltic from the Early 1100s until the Early 1200s
Chapter 3: A Society Organized for War: Denmark at the Beginning of the Thirteenth Century
Chapter 4: Competing Powers: the German Mission in Livonia and the Initial Quest for Estonia
Chapter 5: Waging War in the Wilderness: Western Military Traditions Meets Baltic Traditions
Chapter 6: The Danish Expedition to Estonian in 1219 and the Battle of Lyndanise
Chapter 7: Conquering Hearts and Minds: the Aftermath of the Battle
Conclusion: A Penny in the Box: How Estonia came to Save Denmark—a Sort of Conclusion