The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen

Ob, took a fort, and camped by another settlement to wait for the submission of the Yugrians; but one of Yadrei’s men, Savko, conspired with the Yugra chief, and the captain was persuaded not to attack.
    ‘We are gathering silver, and sables, and other precious goods: do not ruin your serfs and your tribute,’ said the Yugra, but in fact they were collecting an army. Then they said, ‘Select your bigger men and come into the town.’ And the captain went into the town taking with him a priest and Ivanko Legen, and other bigger men; and they cut them down on the eve of St Barbara; and they sent out again and they took thirty of the bigger men; and these they cut to pieces, and then fifty, and did the same to these.
     
    Then more were killed, at Savko’s own request, and the weak and exhausted remnant was cut to pieces by an attack from the fort; eighty men got back to Novgorod the following spring, but misfortune had turned them against each other:
    Their own fellow-travellers killed Sbyshko Volosovits and Zavid Negochevits and Moislav Popovits, and others bought themselves off with money; for they thought they had held counsel with the Yugra people against their brothers, but that is for God to judge. 22
     
    On the Baltic and its coastlands there was a no-less-deadly state of war brought about by competition between the elite slavers and tradersof Denmark, Sweden, Curonia, Slavia and Estonia. In the period 1100 to 1250 this was to escalate into a series of full-scale wars involving the whole military resources of these countries and the permanent subjugation of peoples. The reason for this escalation is not altogether clear, but in the case of the Danes and the Wends an unequal distribution of resources between the nations appears to have much to do with it. The Slavs were increasing in numbers, as the size of their cities testifies, and therefore needed either more abundant crops or larger territories; but their soils were for the most part markedly poorer than those of lowland Scandinavia, and their land boundaries could be neither held nor pushed back without constant exhausting warfare against Saxons and Poles. To bring more land under cultivation they needed the cheapest form of labour – prisoners of war; to increase the supply of foodstuffs to their towns they needed the profits of trade and pillage, which included cattle, sheep and grain as well as bullion and slaves. Moreover, they had to fill the gaps in their own herds and workforce left by Danish raiders. More and more, the Slavs were compelled to keep their economies going by overseas raiding; while the Danes, who had better land and a population more evenly distributed over it, were finding that the balance of power was turning against them. Danish traders could compete successfully with Wends in the market, but they could not defend their coasts; this needed concerted action by king and landowners, preferably with the assistance of the Saxons, and required a greater degree of political cohesion than they possessed in 1100.
    Thus trade was leading to a new kind of war; but war was an old story in the Northern region, and at all times it tended to follow a pattern, even rules. This pattern must be examined as the second most important interaction between the peoples.
    Like trade, it was the pursuit of elites, and in its simplest forms could be merely an extension to a family feud. In the early 1040s an Abotrite prince sent his sons on a raid to Denmark; they were captured and killed. To avenge them, he collected a large army and marched overland to devastate Jutland. The invaders happened to be intercepted by the Danish king Magnus the Good, and were destroyed in their thousands on Lürschau Heath, north of Schleswig. In the 1120s another Abotrite prince, Henry, had a son killed by the Rugians. He marched to avenge them with a force of Slavs and Saxons, but there was no fighting: the Rugians paid compensation and the army marched home. In 1152 theSwedish