Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier 1100-1525. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 1980
This is an exhaustive introduction to the Northern Crusades, the centuries when the Teutonic Knights and others fought for control of the land, and occasionally souls of the southern Baltic region, modern Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, Finland, Poland and probably parts of Belarus. It's a massive topic, and Christiansen provides a lively introduction, though occasionally scattered: it's mostly chronological, but not quite always. The text occasionally falls to "look how clever I am", i.e. "Like Nicholas I, they put their trust in generals Janvier and Fevrier" (p. 165), but not enough to be off-putting. His command of small, bizarrely amusing, details is excellent, "The terrible Johann von Gilberstedt of Halle had been so vigorous in secular life that even after receiving the last rites he had been moved to rape his nurse" (p. 85). Overall, it's a slow read, but an interesting one, and provides even the most ignorant of readers (as I was), a coherent introduction to an important and mostly ignored phase of the Crusades.
One piece of advice, if you're thinking of reading the book, make photo-copies of the various maps at the front. I was not at all familiar with the geography, either topological or political, of the area and found myself having to flip over to the maps quite often
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