ABSTRACT
Taking the land in possession When the crusaders extended Christendom, they moved the frontier between Christendom and heathenism further and further into heathen territory. The frontier was not a fixed line but a zone, an area with constant wars and mixed populations, and the crusades rarely consisted of a large, unified military expedition, which determined in a single battle whether the area was to be heathen or Christian. Such battles did take place, but that was only one form of a crusade amongst many other initiatives. It is easy to get lost in a barren and very technical discussion concerning when it is possible to consider the wars real crusades and when they were some other type of war. The most important thing, however, is that all the struggles in the frontier regions were perceived, in one way or the other, in religious terms. They were all part of the common Christian duty to disseminate the cross, even though the individual wars were fought differently.
