The Golden One - August 20, 2019


Swedish History - The Crusades in the Holy Land and Across the Baltic


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

130.91238

Word count

1,013

Sentence count

51

Harmful content

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Swedish crusaders went to the Holy Land with the Crusaders. Why did they go? What was their purpose? And why did they do it? In this episode, I discuss the Swedish crusades from a Scandinavian perspective.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Greetings and welcome back to the Swedish history series.
00:00:20.440 Last episode I talked a bit about how and why Sweden became Christian
00:00:24.720 and today I thought to talk a bit about the Crusades from a Scandinavian perspective.
00:00:32.500 Near to here we have a runestone erected in the memory of Östen who went to Jerusalem, Jursalir,
00:00:40.880 for a pilgrimage and died in Greece, Grekland, in the Byzantine Empire.
00:00:46.800 And although Sweden's primary target for its Holy Wrath went east to Finland, Baltics and Russia, 0.84
00:00:56.100 there was also a contingent who went down to fight in the Holy Land along the Crusaders.
00:01:03.900 The most famous one is actually a fictive character called Ahn
00:01:07.720 and for the record one of the greatest reading experiences I've had was when I was 13
00:01:14.440 and read the trilogy of Ahn, the Templar by Jean Guillaume.
00:01:19.540 Now of course I might have had a different opinion on the series if I read it today
00:01:23.580 but then it was a really inspiring series that really got me interested in history.
00:01:29.700 Now you might wonder why would Swedish or Scandinavian crusaders go with Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen 0.84
00:01:38.600 to retake the Holy Land?
00:01:41.440 Well as I said in previous episodes it was still the allure of gold and glory
00:01:46.660 in addition to of course geopolitical and religious reasons.
00:01:50.640 So if we're talking about the religious reasons you could get absolved of sins if you partook in a crusade
00:01:58.780 but a great reason in my opinion at least and I'm not the first one to say this
00:02:04.900 is that there was the promise of land, gold and glory to be had if you partook in a crusade.
00:02:12.740 Now of course the majority of the fighting done by Scandinavians in the Middle East at the time
00:02:19.300 was via the Varindian Guard, the elite regiment of the Byzantine Emperor
00:02:25.600 which were primarily made out of Scandinavian Vikings but also of some Anglo-Saxons and some Slavic people.
00:02:33.720 And a note here as well is that after William the Conqueror, the Norman, I talked about the Normans in the last episode,
00:02:40.340 when they took over England a lot of Anglo-Saxons fled to the Byzantine Empire and became recruited in the Varindian Guard.
00:02:49.400 So a lot of things were going on in medieval Europe and of course the crusades took place over numerous centuries
00:02:56.440 and the crusades to Jerusalem were a bit earlier than the crusades to the East.
00:03:03.400 And the crusades to the East, to Finland, was done for two reasons.
00:03:07.180 If we believe the Christian or Swedish sources from the time it was due to pagan aggression from the Finnish coast.
00:03:14.720 So basically Finnish Vikings raiding Sweden, Sweden retaliates via conquering Finland
00:03:20.780 and Christian argument to convert them to Christianity was of course used not only by the Swedish crusaders at the time
00:03:28.740 but for other powers as well.
00:03:33.060 What I just said is an oversimplification of the situation in Finland and Sweden at this time.
00:03:40.360 The majority of people living along the coasts of Finland at this time were also Swedes.
00:03:46.400 And when the Swedes of today's Sweden commenced their crusades against Finland 0.93
00:03:52.040 many of the Swedes and Finns who lived in Finland were already Christian.
00:03:56.600 So you can imagine the awkward moment when they came to the other side of the Baltic Sea
00:04:02.180 to convert people who were already good Christians.
00:04:05.380 So this story is not black and white but it has a lot of nuance to it.
00:04:11.660 So I just thought to clarify that in the context of Swedish crusades.
00:04:16.360 And when we talk about crusades it is often a story of spirituality combined with geopolitical interests.
00:04:26.200 So Sweden saw this as a great opportunity to expand eastward.
00:04:30.720 Which would later bring them into contact and conflict with Russia.
00:04:35.540 But that will be a topic for a later video.
00:04:39.140 Swedish crusaders weren't the only ones who went east.
00:04:42.480 You also had the infamous Teotonic order who waged a rather bloody crusade against the pagans in Lithuania.
00:04:50.540 Lithuania being the country in Europe who stayed pagan the longest. 0.92
00:04:54.020 So the crusades weren't only conducted in order to meet Islamic aggression. 0.65
00:05:01.420 Although the crusades were a very late response to Islamic aggression.
00:05:06.400 If we're understanding the quest to retake the Holy Land.
00:05:11.060 We must also discuss the general geopolitical situation in the Middle East at the time.
00:05:15.960 The Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire had blooded itself against its long-time rival Persia.
00:05:24.160 And when they had blooded themselves against each other for numerous centuries a new aggressive and expansive power.
00:05:31.620 Namely the Arabs who made huge land gains in formerly Persian territory and the formerly Christian North Africa.
00:05:39.600 They also managed to conquer the formerly Visigothic Spain and Portugal.
00:05:45.340 Leaving one bit of Christian land in Asturias in north of the Iberian Peninsula.
00:05:51.660 The Arabs got as far north as Tours where they got resoundingly defeated by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.
00:06:03.580 So the crusades was a very late response to Islamic aggression. 0.78
00:06:08.160 Now the crusades is a topic of its own and I would need a much longer video to explain all of the details concerning those.
00:06:17.900 But in regards to Sweden it was also a way to participate in a greater Christian community.
00:06:25.820 And of course as I said the allure of gold and glory and fame and recognition among the powers of Europe in the community of Christendom so to speak.
00:06:36.340 So that could be said to be the Swedish involvement in the crusades.
00:06:41.080 A minor contingent going with the larger crusades instigated by the Pope and the larger powers.
00:06:47.480 You had crusades going eastwards for Sweden's own geopolitical reasons for conquest simply put.
00:06:54.340 So that is the Swedish involvement in the crusades.
00:06:58.940 The very short story one might say.
00:07:04.000 So thank you for watching.
00:07:05.940 I hope that was somewhat informative.
00:07:07.800 And of course you can read up on all of this yourself.
00:07:10.080 And I would definitely encourage you to read up more about the crusades.
00:07:14.300 And of course you can read up on all of this yourself.