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Revision as of 10:10, 2 July 2007 by Berig (talk | contribs) (rv, you don't move pages this way)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Estonian pirates appear at least twice in history and legend.
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 occured in 972.
Since the 12th century, chroniclers' descriptions of Estonian, Osilian and Couronian raids to the coasts of Sweden and Denmark have become more frequent. In the XIV book of Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus describes a battle on Öland that took place in 1170, where the Danish king Valdemar fought with 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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