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Estonian pirates, AKA Estonian vikings appear in history and legends. Although the eastern shores of the Baltic sea during the era were referred to as Estland in general by the Scandinavians and others. Estland that also is the modern national name of Estonia in Germanic languages, the Vikings from Estonia (Norwegian:Vikinger fra Estland) originated mainly from Kurland (Modern Latvia) and Saaremaa (Modern Estonia).
Snorri Sturluson relates in his Ynglinga saga that the Swedish king Ingvar (7th century), the son of Östen, was a great warrior who had to spend time patrolling the shores of his kingdom fighting Estonian pirates.
According to Heimskringla sagas in the year 967 the Norwegian Queen Astrid with her son Olaf Tryggvason escaped from her homeland to her brother Sigurd, who lived in an honoured position in Novgorod at the court of Prince Vladimir. On their way, Estonian vikings robbed the ship, killing some, taking others into slavery. Six years later when Sigurd Eirikson traveled to Estonia to collect taxes on behalf of Valdemar, he spotted Olaf on a market and bought him out from slavery.
A battle between Estonian and Icelandic vikings in Saaremaa is described in Njál's saga to have occurred in 972.
About 1008 AD Olaf the Holy, who later became the king of Norway, landed on Saaremaa. The Osilians, taken by surprise, had at first agreed to pay the tax he demanded but then gathered an army at the time of the negotiations and attacked the Norwegians. Olaf nevertheless won the battle.
Around the year 1030 a Swedish Viking chief called Fröger was killed in a battle on Saaremaa.
Varyag Ulf (Uleb) from Novgorod was crushed by Estonians in a sea battle at the proximity of Tallinn in 1032 according to the Novgorod Chronicle.
Since the 12th century, chroniclers' descriptions of Estonian, Osilian and Couronian raids to the coasts of Sweden and Denmark have become more frequent.
The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia describes a fleet of sixteen ships and five hundred Osilians ravaging the area that is now southern Sweden, then belonging to Denmark. In the XIV book of Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus describes a battle on Öland that took place in 1170, where the Danish king Valdemar I had to gather his entire fleet in order to curb the incursions of the Couronian and Estonian pirates.
In 1187, the Swedish town of Sigtuna was attacked by Baltic-Finnic raiders from Karelia, Couronia or Estonia. Among the casualties of this raid was the Swedish archbishop Johannes. It remained occupied for some time. This contributed to the diminishing of its commercial importance in the 13th century, in favor of Uppsala, Visby, Kalmar and Stockholm.
It is indited in the Livonian Chronicle that the Estonians had two kinds of ships – piratica and liburna. The aforementioned was a battleship, the latter mainly a merchant ship. Piratica could carry approximately 30 men. It had a high prow shaped like a dragon or a snakehead and a quadrangular sail.
Notes
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