The Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were Christianization campaigns undertaken by Catholic Christian military orders and kingdoms, primarily against the pagan Baltic, Finnic and West Slavic peoples around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, and also against Orthodox Christian East Slavs.
Henry was a medieval English clergyman. He came to Sweden with Cardinal Nicholas Breakspeare in 1153 and was most likely designated to be the new Archbishop of Uppsala, but the independent church province of Sweden could only be established in 1164 after the civil war, and Henry would have been sent to organize the Church in Finland, where Christians had already existed for two centuries.
Lalli is an apocryphal character from Finnish history. According to the legend, he killed Bishop Henry on the ice of Köyliönjärvi on 20 January 1156.
Sund is a municipality of Åland. It is an autonomous territory of Finland, and one of the official 27 national landscapes of Finland.
Eric IX, also called Eric the Holy, Saint Eric, and Eric the Lawgiver, was a Swedish king in the 12th century, c. 1156–1160. The Roman Martyrology of the Catholic Church names him as a saint memorialized on 18 May. He was the founder of the House of Eric, which ruled Sweden with interruptions from c. 1156 to 1250.
The Battle of the Neva was fought between the Novgorod Republic, along with Karelians, and the Kingdom of Sweden, including Norwegian, Finnish and Tavastian forces, on the Neva River, near the settlement of Ust-Izhora, on 15 July 1240. The battle is mentioned only in Russian sources, and it remains unclear whether it was a major invasion or a small-scale raid. In Russian historiography, it has become an event of massive scale and importance.
The Archbishop of Uppsala has been the primate of Sweden in an unbroken succession since 1164, first during the Catholic era, and from the 1530s and onward under the Lutheran church.
Finnish literature refers to literature written in Finland. During the European early Middle Ages, the earliest text in a Finnic language is the unique thirteenth-century Birch bark letter no. 292 from Novgorod. The text was written in Cyrillic and represented a dialect of Finnic language spoken in Russian Olonets region. The earliest texts in Finland were written in Swedish or Latin during the Finnish Middle Age. Finnish-language literature was slowly developing from the 16th century onwards, after written Finnish was established by the Bishop and Finnish Lutheran reformer Mikael Agricola (1510–1557). He translated the New Testament into Finnish in 1548.
The Catholic Church in Finland is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome.
The Swedish–Novgorodian Wars were a series of conflicts in the 12th and 13th centuries between the Novgorod Republic and medieval Sweden over control of the Gulf of Finland, an area vital to the Hanseatic League and part of the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks. The Swedish attacks against Orthodox Russians had religious overtones, but before the 14th century there is no knowledge of official crusade bulls issued by the pope.
The Third Swedish Crusade to Finland was a Swedish military expedition against the pagan Karelians from 1293 to 1295 in which the Swedes successfully expanded their borders eastwards and gained further control of their lands in Finland.
The Second Swedish Crusade was a military expedition by the Kingdom of Sweden into Tavastia c. 1249–1250 as described by the Erikskrönikan. As described by the Erikskrönikan, the Swedes defeated the Tavastians under the leadership of Birger Jarl.
There are scattered descriptions of early Finnish wars, conflicts involving the Finnish people, some of which took place before the Middle Ages. The earliest historical accounts of conflicts involving Finnish tribes, such as Tavastians, Karelians, Finns proper and Kvens, have survived in Icelandic sagas and in German, Norwegian, Danish and Russian chronicles as well as in Swedish legends and in Birch bark manuscripts. The most important sources are Novgorod First Chronicle, Primary Chronicle and Eric Chronicles.
Thomas is the first known bishop of Finland. Only a few facts are known about his life. He resigned in 1245 and died in Visby three years later.
Fulco was the first known missionary Bishop of Estonia. He was appointed in 1165 by Eskil, the Danish Archbishop of Lund. Before his appointment, Fulco was a Benedictine monk in the abbey of Moutier-la-Celle, near Troyes in France. His nationality is not known.
The Finnish–Novgorodian wars were a series of conflicts between Finnic tribes in eastern Fennoscandia and the Republic of Novgorod from the 11th or 12th century to the early 13th century.
St. Henry's Chapel is a neogothic style brick chapel in the town of Kokemäki, Finland. The chapel was built in 1857 to cover a medieval wooden granary which was used by St. Henry, the first bishop of Finland. The chapel is located by the river Kokemäenjoki, one kilometre east of the town center of Kokemäki.
Karl Håkan Einar Lindahl was a Finnish architect of Swedish origin.
St. Henry's Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral in Helsinki, Finland, dedicated in honor of Bishop Henrik, a 12th-century Bishop of Turku. It is the cathedral church of the Diocese of Helsinki. In terms of membership, the cathedral is the largest in Finland, with approximately 5,000 members.
