The First Swedish Crusade was a possibly mythical military expedition in the 1150s to Southwestern Finland by Swedish King Eric IX and English Bishop Henry of Uppsala.
The earliest written sources of the crusade are from the late 13th century. The main sources of the crusade, the legend of Saint Erik and the legend of Saint Henry, describe the crusade as caused by the multiple raids of pagan Finns on Sweden.
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Henry (Finnish: Henrik; Swedish: Henrik; Latin: Henricus; died c. 20 January 1156) was a medieval English clergyman. He came to Sweden with Cardinal Nicholas Breakspeare in 1153 and was most likely designated to be the new Archbishop of Uppsala, but the independent church province of Sweden could only be established in 1164 after the civil war, and Henry would have been sent to organize the Church in Finland, where Christians had already existed for two centuries.
According to legend, he entered Finland during the First Crusade together with the king, Saint Eric of Sweden, and died as a martyr, becoming the patron saint of the Catholic Church in Finland. However, the authenticity of the accounts of his life and ministry are widely disputed and there are no historical records of his birth, death, or even his existence.
Finland was an integral part of Sweden from the Middle Ages until 1809. The starting point of Swedish rule is uncertain and controversial. It is traditionally linked to the First Swedish Crusade in the mid-12th century. Historical evidence of the establishment of Swedish rule in Finland exists from the middle of the 13th century onwards.
Swedish rule ended in 1721 in most of so-called Old Finland, the south-eastern part of the Finnish territories, as a result of the Great Northern War. Sweden ceded the remainder of Old Finland in 1743, following the Hats' War. Swedish rule over the rest of Finland ended on 17 September 1809, when the signing of the Treaty of Hamina ended the Finnish War. As a result, the eastern third of Sweden was ceded to the Russian Empire and became established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.
The Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were military campaigns undertaken by Catholic Christian military orders and kingdoms in an effort to Christianize the pagan Baltic, Finnic, and West Slavic peoples around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. In some cases, such as with the Wendish Crusade, the campaign was partly motivated to control the rich resources found in the lands.
The most notable of these campaigns were the Livonian and Prussian Crusades. Some of these wars were explicitly regarded, during the Middle Ages, as crusades; for example, the military venture against the Estonians—and the "other pagans in those parts"—authorized by Pope Alexander III's 1171 crusade bull, Non parum animus noster. However, others—such as the (possibly mythical) 12th-century First Swedish Crusade and several subsequent incursions, undertaken by Scandinavian Christians against the then-pagan Finns—were dubbed "crusades" only in the 19th century, by romantic nationalist historians.