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| Baltic Slavic piracy | |||||||
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 Map showingSlavic raids on Scandinavia in the mid-12th century | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Kingdom of Denmark Kingdom of Sweden Kingdom of Norway | |||||||
Baltic Slavic piracy is a term for military campaigns in theBaltic Sea carried out by pirates ofSlavic origin from the 8th to 13th centuries.
The Slavic pirates were most active fromc. 1050, with reputation for bringing terror to the Scandinavian coasts for over a hundred years.[1]
Baltic Slavs, whose agriculture was not highly developed in early 7th century, were in dire need of resources since the dry islets of southwestern Baltic were the only ones capable of cultivation and cattle were scarce.[2]Flax could be grown, and was turned intolinen or canvas for cloth and used as a form of currency.
At this time the Baltic Slavs were also known for bee-keeping, trading their honey and wax to the Germans for use in church candles and in sealing documents.[3] Once trade began, the German form of currency circulated amongst the group. After this point information on specifics of the trade between Germans and Slavs is unknown through the ninth century.
During this time period[clarification needed] it is known that the Slavs crossed paths with theDanes. The Slavs of the Baltic had engaged in piratical activity before, while the Danes felt that trade and piracy went hand in hand.[4]
Baltic Slavs soon became interested in expanding, attempting to get a hold of the rivers in Denmark in order to control the Wendish trade. The Danes would not stand for this, causing war to arise between the two groups. With the decline of Danish power after the death of their leader in 1035 fueling the Saxon Germans to fight for the possession of the rivers the Baltic Slavs were originally fighting for, the bloodshed raged on and it was not until theWendish Crusade of 1147 that the Slavs were finally sent beyond the point of recovery, ending their 100-year campaign and therefore fixing German domination over the Baltic rivers and Wendish trade.[5]
In 1135,Duke Ratibor I commanded a force of 1,000–1,500Pomeranian raiders on 50–70 boats during amajor raid on the Norwegian city of Kungahälla.[6]
In a successful raid onKungahälla, Pomeranians enslaved thousands.[7]Snorri Sturluson wrote that Kungahälla never recovered from the raid.[8] However, this raid became one of the last successful actions of the Pomeranians on this scale.[7]
Thepillage of Sigtuna was the raid of theSwedish town ofSigtuna bypagans from theEastern Baltic in 1187, leading to its destruction.[9]
One of the activities of the Baltic pirates was to capture people for theBaltic slave trade, which was mainly involved in trafficking slaves to the Southeast to theBlack Sea slave trade.
When the NorseVikings became Christian and ended their piracy in the 11th century, they were succeeded by Pagan pirates from the Baltics, who raided the coasts of the Baltic Sea, such as the now Christian Sweden and Finland, for slaves.[10] When the Viking slave trade stopped in the mid 11th century, the old slave trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea and Central Asia via the Russian rivers was upheld by Pagan Baltic slave traders, who sold slaves viaDaugava to the Black Sea and East, which was now the only remaining slave trade in Europe after the slave market in Western Europe had died out in the 12th century.[11]In the 13th century, the Latvian reportedly had found slave trade to be so lucrative that many used it has their main income.[12] The island ofSaaremaa was a base for the Baltic pirates, who were noted for selling women captives to the slave trade.[13] In 1226, the pagan Baltic pirates from Saaremaa conducted a slave raid toward now Christian Sweden, where they captured many Swedish women and girls with the purpose to sell as slaves.[10]
The Baltic slave trade ended afterconquest of the Baltic by theTeutonic order during the 13th century.
