At the time, Estonia was apparently covered by a network of small private churches, which points to the existence of a local Christian population even before the crusades.

"The process of Christianization in Estonia was much more similar to, for example, Scandinavia or the rest of Europe than we once thought. Until now, the prevailing view has been that we were Christianized violently," says Marika Mägi, senior research fellow in archaeology at Tallinn University.

She is not alone in reaching this conclusion — research by other scholars points in the same direction. According to Mägi, both archaeological material and written sources indicate the presence of Christians in Estonia.

As Mägi described in a recent conference presentation, she herself has studied the issue on the basis of older cemeteries in coastal areas—namely northern and western Estonia and Saaremaa. In her work, she draws on the typology of grave goods, radiocarbon (C‑14) dating, and written sources.

As part of her project, she is reassessing the age of objects found in cemeteries. "When you really start looking, these aren't 12th‑century objects, but rather 13th‑century ones," she points out.

The church network may have been denser

Inhumation burials in coastal Estonia have previously been dated mainly to the 12th century and, because of the objects buried with the dead, considered pagan. The last assessments of their age were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s, and one of Mägi's goals is to refine those evaluations.

As a result, much of the material has turned out to be slightly later than previously thought. "The difference in dating raises the question of whether we are talking about Christians during a pagan period, or Christians during a Christian period," the senior researcher reflects.

In the past, burials with grave goods were generally considered pagan. According to Mägi, scholars have now largely abandoned that conclusion. "Village cemeteries also contain grave goods, and that is not an indicator in itself," she notes.

Previous studies show that throughout Europe, including Northern Europe, the landscape in the 12th and 13th centuries was densely filled with churches. "There were a great many small churches. The parish system and church financing systems, such as the payment of tithes, were relatively loosely regulated, so they didn't really function," Mägi states. Decisions strengthening the parish church system were only made at church councils in the mid‑13th century, and it took time for them to be implemented.

Before that, one could say figuratively that every Christian landowner had a small church on their estate. According to Mägi, this was a way of displaying prestige, a practice that in some places continued into the 20th century: wealthy merchants built private churches even later. Once the parish system became firmly established, people were effectively "tied" to their parish and had to pay church tax there. "Having a private church wasn't forbidden, but in practice it became so materially burdensome that they simply faded away," Mägi observes.

In Estonia, the picture was likely the same, in the senior researcher's view. "When I looked at our immediate neighbors, such as Finland and Latvia, it turned out that researchers there have noted exactly the same thing. They also have a great many small churches that disappear by the end of the 13th century," she explains. With some exaggeration, she suggests that as many as eight out of ten churches may have vanished.

Today, the only evidence of those former small churches is the surrounding cemeteries—the small wooden churches themselves have perished, and archaeologists can study only the churchyards, that is, those buried in consecrated ground. In Scandinavia, Christians of the period were buried without grave goods. In Eastern Europe, however, according to Mägi, it is regionally characteristic that objects were still placed in graves. "I argue that all of these burials should be treated as Christian," she says.

A church in the middle of an estate

As another topic, Marika Mägi described when such burials began. Archaeologists usually rely here on radiocarbon (C‑14) dating. In practice, however, different laboratories may give different results for the same site, according to the senior researcher.

For that reason, Mägi always considers C‑14 dates together with the classical typology of grave goods. "Then it turns out that almost everywhere in these small burial places there are burials dating, cautiously speaking, to around the year 1200 plus or minus. They could well be from the early 13th century, but are more likely from the period before we were officially Christianized," she points out.

Sources and finds show that some such burial sites later developed into actual churches. Of others, only the cemetery has survived. "In some of these burial sites there is a clearly empty space between graves. Elsewhere in the world, this is interpreted as meaning that a wooden church or chapel probably stood there," Mägi reasons. Although only a small number of these sites have so far been excavated in Estonia, the same phenomenon must therefore also have existed here.

A third telling aspect, according to the senior researcher, is the location of these early Christian burial sites. "It turns out that these early cemeteries are located almost in the courtyards of major manors or very close to them," she explains. They were usually found in the middle of manorial lands or at harbor sites. In the case of Pada, such a burial site is found next to a hillfort.

According to Mägi, the logic of their placement in the landscape differs from that of earlier burial grounds. Because they were located in important centers, their founders must have belonged to the elite of society at the time, or been nobles. They were also quite numerous in their day. "They are often located in later tax‑collection centers and in the most important manors of parishes. Therefore, we must conclude that we probably had a fairly significant proportion of nobles who had accepted Christianity already at the time described by Henry of Latvia," the senior researcher notes.

How Christian was Estonia?

Finds aside, Marika Mägi cautions that calling pre‑crusade Estonia fully Christian would be the opposite extreme. Rather, one can simply say that Christianity was much more widespread here than previously believed. "Written sources have been saying this all along," she observes.

For example, it is known that Estonia already had its own bishop appointed in the late 12th century. Historians have so far interpreted this as meaning that it must have been a missionary bishop who was only just beginning to form a community. "Quite a few people have also asked: but why? A bishop is usually appointed to a place where Christians already exist. Written sources likewise mention Christians in Estonia," Mägi states.

Similarly, crusades were historically always justified by at least some ostensibly fair pretext. One such justification was that Christians already lived in the land in question and were being persecuted by pagans—so crusaders had to come to their aid. According to Mägi, this need not have been the case in Estonia, but the archaeological material now tilts toward supporting such an assumption. "I don't want to say that Estonian Christians were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the crusaders, but that they existed may well be true," she says.

Nobles of multiple faiths

In her presentation, Marika Mägi also introduced DNA analyses she has so far conducted on cemeteries in Saaremaa. It was previously thought that people buried in such cemeteries had been interred by family. It now turns out, however, that unlike burial sites in inland Estonia, there are not many close relatives buried together there. "As far as the analyses conducted so far show, some of the buried individuals are more distantly related, though not all. This is not a family, but a community," the senior researcher explains.

For comparison, she also discussed stone‑cist graves from the pre‑crusade period. These graves contain cremations, where the remains of the dead appear to have been deliberately mixed. The burned remains, together with burned objects, were scattered over a relatively wide area.

According to Mägi, there is a certain overlap in grave goods with later inhumation burials. Thus, stone‑cist graves may also contain finds from the 13th century. "I am essentially showing that there was probably at least a 50‑year period, or even longer, when some people were buried in stone graves and others in churchyards, that is, in consecrated ground. Exactly how long this lasted, I cannot say," she explains.

Scholars are of the view that those buried in stone‑cist graves must also have belonged to the elite of their society. There are simply too few such graves for everyone to have been buried there. Although Christian cemeteries did not contain only nobles, their elite character was confirmed by their location. "In short, we can talk about an elite on one side and an elite on the other," Mägi reflects.

Marika Mägi delivered her presentation, "Who Is Pagan and Who Is Christian? 13th‑Century Transformation Period Reflected in the Burial Customs of Coastal Estonia," at the international conference "The Baltic Sea Region in the 12th–14th Centuries: Local Societies, Cultures, and Traditions in a Time of Change," held in Tartu on April 18.

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