The Christianization of the pagan Baltic, Finno-Ugrian and Turkic peoples in the vast area between the Vistula, the Urals, and the Arctic Ocean is mostly known to students of history in the context of the twin processes of crusade and mission that took place between the later twelfth century and the formal acceptance of Christianity by the grand duchy of Lithuania (the last pagan polity in Europe) in 1387. While most research to date has concentrated on the Christian actors in this process, Francis Young’s study takes the perspective of the pagan peoples themselves. His aim is not to attempt any reconstruction of the pagan belief systems (which he regards as an impossible undertaking) but rather to assess how the indigenous peoples’ religious practices responded and developed in the face of continual pressure from the Christian secular and ecclesiastical authorities. His investigation takes in two great arcs of different ethnicities. The first comprises the Sámi, Finns, Karelians, Votians, Izhorians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Prussians, most of whom are reasonably familiar to Western historians as a result of their interactions with Catholic powers in the medieval period. The second comprises the much less well-known Nenets, Komis, Mordvins, Chuvashes, Maris, and Udmurts inhabiting a long strip west of the Urals from the Arctic Ocean as far south as the Volga, whose external contacts were almost exclusively with the Russian-speaking, Orthodox world. Young’s approach to the subject matter is innovative. The first chapter (by far the longest) surveys what is known of the pre-Christian religions in the period up to the conversion of Lithuania, but the remaining five chapters investigate their fate from that point up to the nineteenth century, a period which many readers might assume had seen the demise of the mostly animist faiths. This is no straightforward undertaking; almost all the written evidence available comes from Christian writers who were largely indifferent or more often hostile to paganism, or in the case of humanists, intent on pursuing antiquarian agendas which would link the indigenous religions with Greco-Roman paganism.

From the many texts analysed it is clear that some of the Christian writers were not above fabrication, or were carried away by particular enthusiasms (a fascination with werewolves being a case in point), but Young assembles enough evidence to show that many pre-Christian practices, such as the veneration of sacred trees, snakes or natural forces such as thunder, were central to the cults of Lithuanians, Estonians and others and remained so over for centuries after the formal imposition of Christianity. The earliest Christian writers tended to regard objects of pagan devotion as idolatrous manifestations of the Devil, but the arrival of the Protestant Reformation changed this binary opposition into one of multifaceted competition and confusion (with suspicions of witchcraft emerging as an additional complication) in which each Christian denomination accused the others of failure to fully convert the neophytes over whom they had jurisdiction. However, the most problematic factor was probably the inability or unwillingness of the Christian churches to fully understand the nature of paganism. Poorly trained parish priests may have insisted that Estonian peasants cut down their sacred oaks, but often had difficulty in distinguishing between pagan religious rituals and purely folkloric practices whose parallels might easily have been found in contemporary France or England. They also tended to insist on Christian observances while failing to instil the key tenets of the faith in their charges. One of Young’s most important arguments is that paganism did not remain static in character, but developed in response to Christianity in often creative ways that could preserve familiar and comforting practices in the face of hostility. His most convincing argument is that in the absence of adequate religious teaching, the indigenous peoples formulated their own versions of Christianity, which he terms ‘religious creolisation’. Thus some pagans reverted to only half-understood pre-Christian (or even Catholic) practices out of desperation rather than conscious rejection of the new faith, or conflated new with old, such as by venerating St Anthony as a kind of household spirit inherited from ancestral belief. Some survivals of Catholic (or ‘sub-Catholic’) practices aroused the suspicion and ire of Protestant authorities, as in the case of popular Estonian observances of St John’s Eve, in which recognisably Catholic rituals were celebrated alongside veneration of a sacred stone and lighting of a sacred fire, although there is no evidence that such rites were carried out in a manner antagonistic to Christianity. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the book is the well-argued finding that pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived well into the eighteenth century in the Baltic and northern Scandinavian lands, and even longer in the Ural-Volga region, where some of the ancestral faiths evidently gained a new resilience by developing features reminiscent of the state-supported Orthodox Christianity. At the same time, some Enlightenment thinkers came to dismiss notions of idolatry and witchcraft, regarding the long-dead pagans as representatives of polytheistic or even deist monotheistic beliefs which they regarded as the original religion of humankind. There is much more here than can be surveyed in the course of a review, and many of the texts cited deserve further investigation. This is a fascinating and inspiring study which will provide much material for further thought, research and debate.