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FOLLOW YOUR CURIOSITY

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Northern Crusades

Mission, power and resistance.

The Balts Were Not Primitive Pagans

How could people win battles and still lose their homes? Saule, Garoza and the departure of some Semigallians reveal what a victory could—and could not—protect.

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The Book They Had to Smuggle

A child’s reading lesson could arrive as contraband. Under the Lithuanian press ban, keeping words in print depended on people willing to carry them across a border.

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The Livonians Who Tried to Wash Away Their Baptism

After baptism under military pressure, Henry of Livonia describes Livonians using Daugava water to reject their new faith. What did conversion mean when the soldiers had gone?

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The Other Shore of the Viking Age

The ship is only one side of the story. Salme’s burials, a Curonian victory and Egil’s capture reveal Baltic shores with interests and choices of their own.

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What Rome Paid for Amber

A tiny amber figure could cost more than a person in the Roman market described by Pliny. Follow a northern material into a world of craftsmanship, luxury and unsettling prices.

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