ABSTRACT
In 2005 Swedish medievalist Sven Ekdahl presented an overview of the historio - graphy of the Crusades and the processes of colonization in the Baltic from the age of Enlightenment until around 2000, saying ‘Historical research is never independent; as a humanistic science it is not capable of obtaining absolute “truth”. Each historian has a starting point in his or her own political, religious, social and cultural millieux, which each either follows or escapes’.1 His statement recognized the multilayered approaches to and appropriation of the medieval Crusades in the Baltic Region by scholars and ordinary persons alike in various historical and national milieus within the past three centuries. Acknowledging this fundamental truth, this chapter presents some examples of how the Baltic Crusades have been appropriated by different milieux in what are now the independent nations of Latvia and Estonia covering the centuries from around 1700 until the present day. It is hardly a surprise that the history of the Crusades has in fact had a profound impact on the construction of specific national narratives within these two nations during the last 300 years. In fact the appropriation of the crusading past proved itself to be a very powerful tool in the creation of specific new national (and even nationalistic) identities especially in times of national crises as will be seen in this chapter.
