Turku 1000
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1318

Novgorod raiders burn Turku

In July 1318 raiders from Novgorod sail along the coast and burn the young town. The castle holds out. Five years later the first border is drawn across Finland.

High Middle Ages · Gothic

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The raid of 1318 in 29 seconds.Drawn with code for this site. A schematic view, not to scale; the order of events follows the text below, but the number of boats, the landing places and the look of the town and the castle are invented.
The big story

Fire from the east

Sweden had pushed east into Karelia, right into the lands where Novgorod collected its tribute. In the summer of 1318 Novgorod struck back. Its target was the heart of Swedish Finland: Turku.

Two powers, one frontier

  • Novgorod was a rich Orthodox trading republic in the east. It controlled the river routes to the Baltic and collected tribute in fur from the Karelians Well documented.
  • Sweden pushes east. In 1293 a Swedish expedition builds Vyborg Castle in Karelia. In 1300 the Swedes build Landskrona where the Neva meets the sea, on Novgorod’s main trade route. Novgorod destroys it the next year Well documented.
  • Tit for tat. In 1317 a Swedish force raids near Lake Ladoga. It was probably one more reason for what came next Likely.

The raid of 1318

  • Along the coast. In the summer of 1318 a Novgorodian force sails west along the Finnish coast Well documented.
  • 11 July. The defenders of Turku are overwhelmed, and the town is burned and plundered Well documented.
  • Kuusisto. The bishop’s manor at Kuusisto, southeast of Turku, is captured and burned. The bishop’s archives are said to have burned with it, and with them much of Finland’s earliest written history Likely.
  • The castle holds. The castle commander Lyder van Kyren, a knight from Holstein, defends the castle. Unable to take it, the Novgorodians withdraw Well documented.
  • And the cathedral? The parish history says the cathedral burned and stayed in poor shape for decades. Other accounts mention only the town and Kuusisto Debated.

Peace at Nöteborg

  • After a few more years of fighting both sides were exhausted. On 12 August 1323 Sweden and Novgorod made peace at Nöteborg, an island fortress where the Neva flows out of Lake Ladoga. Hanseatic merchants, who wanted safe trade, pushed for the peace Well documented.
  • The first border. For the first time a border was drawn through Finland. In the south its course is clear: across the Karelian Isthmus. Further north it is vague, and for centuries the two sides read it in their own favour Debated.
  • West and east. West of the line, Finland followed Swedish law and the Catholic Church. East of it, Karelia looked to Novgorod and Orthodox Christianity. The line shaped Finland for centuries.
How do we know?

The raid is known from a few short entries in medieval chronicles and from later accounts. They agree on the outline: the town burned and the castle held. They disagree on details, such as whether the cathedral burned. The burned archive at Kuusisto is one reason why so few documents survive from Finland before the 1300s.

SWEDENFINLANDKARELIAESTONIAGulf of FinlandGulf of BothniaLake Ladoga? course unclear ?TurkuKuusistoStockholmHäme CastleVyborgLandskronaNöteborgNovgorod
The road to 1318 and the peace of 1323. Click the five steps; step 4 plays the raid.Schematic map. Coastlines are simplified, and the northern course of the 1323 border is uncertain.
Why it matters

The raid showed that the castle could hold but the town could not. Turku would burn many more times, and its people kept rebuilding on the ashes, which is why its soil is full of finds (see the next topic). The Treaty of Nöteborg drew the first line between the Swedish West and the Russian East across Finland. Its echo can be heard in borders, languages and churches to this day.

On the lighter side

Lost and found: shoes, games and keys from medieval mud

Medieval Turku dropped things, lost things and threw things away. The town burned and was rebuilt on top of the ruins, again and again. The wet clay kept it all.

  • Layer on layer. Each fire and each rebuilding left a new layer of soil. In the centre of Turku, these cultural layers stack up like pages in a book: the deeper, the older Well documented.
  • Why leather survives. Much of the medieval town lies in wet clay with little oxygen. Without oxygen, rot cannot set in, so leather, wood and even cloth survive Well documented.
  • Finland’s shoe capital. Turku has the most numerous and best-preserved medieval shoe finds in Finland. The oldest come from the late 1200s, when the town was founded; most from the 1300s and 1400s Well documented.
  • Everyday things. Pots and glass, knife sheaths, locks and keys, needles, buckles, game pieces, fish-hooks, net floats, stove tiles and coins Well documented.
  • Rare finds. Pilgrim badges and wax-tablet cases are very rare in Finland, and Turku has both Well documented.
  • Found by building. Many finds came to light when new houses were built, not in planned digs. The site of the Åbo Akademi main building alone produced most of the known shoes Likely.
Visit the medieval town

Under the Aboa Vetus museum by the river you can walk along a real medieval street and between the walls of medieval houses. The ruins came to light when the Ars Nova art museum was being built. They were left where they lay, and the museum opened in 1995 Well documented.

How archaeologists date mud

Coins carry dates. Pottery styles changed over time. Wooden beams have tree rings that can show the year the tree was cut down. A black fire layer works like a bookmark: everything below it is older than the fire.

fire layertoday1700s–1800s1500s–1600s1400s1300slate 1200snatural clay

Drag the slider to dig, then click the finds.

Dig down through Turku. Drag the slider to dig and click what you find.Schematic cross-section. Layer thicknesses and find positions are illustrative.

Sources and further reading

  1. Attack on Åbo (1318) — overview with references.
  2. Turku Parishes — History of Turku Cathedral, 14th century.
  3. Turku Castle — overview with the list of castle commanders.
  4. History of Turku (in Finnish) — the Middle Ages.
  5. Lamberg, M. (2023). The Sack of Turku in 1509: Recovering from a Catastrophe. Zapiski Historyczne 88(2), 97–123.
  6. City of Turku — archaeological collection, historic finds.
  7. Harjula, J. (2008). Before the Heels. Archaeologia Medii Aevi Finlandiae XV.
  8. Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova — museum history.
  9. Meer (2018) — Aboa Vetus, Old Turku.

Spotted a mistake? Know more?

This site is open and free. Corrections and additions are welcome — every page lists its sources so you can check them.