Episode Details

In this episode, we begin our series on the High Medieval Empire by focusing first on its northeastern frontier, where many factors would coalesce into a sudden, and permanent, push to the east by Saxons and Danes into the lands of the Slavic Wends. The whole phenomenon has been summarized into the "Wendish Crusade", despite the crusade only lasting a single season of a many decades long process. Over the course of these momentous decades, warring forest tribes would transfer into a vast amount of pluralistic, though German, identities, including the rising Hanseatic League.

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Sources

Intro: Zachary Wheeler and Nathaniel Scarborough, "Hej, Sokoły" folk tune

Outro: Antonín Dvořák, Serenade for Strings, Op. 22 (London Symphony Orchestra 1960)

Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades: Second Edition. Penguin Books, 1998.

Haverkamp, Alfred. Medieval Germany 1056-1273. Oxford University Press, 1988.

Davies, Norman. Europe: A History. Oxford Press, 1996.

Schildhauer, Johannes. The Hansa: History and Culture. Dorset Press, 1988.

Wilson, Peter H. Heart of Europe. Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University, 2020.