In medieval historiography, the Baltic region is best known as the place where, from the thirteenth century to the first half of the fifteenth century, the Teutonic Order carried out its military expansion, forcibly baptizing Prussians, Livonians, Lithuanians, Samogitians, and other pagan Baltic tribes. It was the place of intersection for two different cultures and societies: the European Christian world and the old pagan one. This was manifested through the crusades of European knights against the Baltic peoples. The Balts had to choose between being conquered and resisting and withstanding the enormous military pressure of the European knights.This phenomenon of the late Middle Ages has intrigued many historians. The surviving sources of Baltic history provide good insight into the religion, customs, and worldview of the ancient barbarian societies. It was an integral part of the fringe of medieval Europe.In 2025, British historian and folklorist Francis Young published Pre-Christian Baltic Religion and Belief: Past Imperfect. In its foreword, he stated that the purpose of this book was to provide a concentrated overview of the pre-Christian religion of the medieval Baltic peoples for the English-speaking audience, as they were among the last societies in Europe to be converted to Christianity. This publication is a companion to the author’s previous award-winning book, Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic (2022), which was a translation of the most important sources of Baltic religion into English, whereas the current volume focuses on interpretation. It consists of the introduction, three chapters, and the coda. In the introduction, the author offers the historiographical definition of the “Baltic states,” which today include three countries—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. However, the academic concept of “the Balts” designates the “historical Balts,” that is, only Lithuanians and Latvians (and old Prussians), but does not include Estonians, who are of Finno-Ugric origin.The book deals with the religion and worldview of the ethnic Balts. Young argues that although the surviving early historical sources on Baltic religion and mythology are sparse, by linking them to the later folklore and ethnographic legacy, it is possible to retrospectively retrieve much more information about the archaic Baltic worldview, relics of which are recognizable even in the twentieth-century Latvian and Lithuanian tradition. Shaping the object of his study, the author relies on the research of Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994).Overall, however, Young’s book is intended to introduce the study of Baltic religion into the wider English-speaking scholarly circulation. He believes that the available data on Baltic religion, customs, and worldview are valuable sources that broaden the knowledge of other pre-Christian European societies. Methodologically, the author prefers a culturological approach to research rather than a historical research strategy: in search of connecting cultural, mental, and philological strands, he brings together sources from different centuries.The first chapter of the book deals with the Baltic gods and spirits and raises the fundamental question: was there a pantheon of Baltic gods? In searching for the answer, the author lays out the positions of two scholarly camps. Young more widely relies on the interpretations of Gintaras Beresnevičius, a scholar of Baltic religion, whose ideas have been taken up by other scholars leaning more toward the established pantheon.The second chapter of the book focuses on the sacred places (alkai in Lithuanian) that existed in the Baltic religion: sacred groves, water bodies, fields, mountains, and large natural objects—trees or stones—that were believed to be the incarnations of spirits. In this chapter, the author, for the most part, relates the results of the research of Lithuanian archaeologist Vykintas Vaitkevičius.The third chapter of the book analyzes Baltic religious rituals (including magic and divination practices). Four methodological approaches are distinguished, revealing the forms and meanings of ceremonial rituals—sacrificial practices and the persons who performed them, the practice of oath-taking, the burial of the dead, and the rituals of feeding the dead, used for birth and marriage. At the same time, the chapter dwells on the fortune-telling and magic of Baltic beliefs, including the distinctive Latvian belief in werewolves.The book ends with a coda, which is better described as a summary, followed by summaries in Latvian and Lithuanian. A list of sources and references concludes the work. Unfortunately, there is no index of proper names, place names, or subjects.Indeed, as stated in the introduction, the book mostly presents the results of previous research, illustrated with examples from certain sources. Young did not set out to comprehensively reassemble, assimilate, and rethink the data from the sources of Baltic religion and mythology, nor to debate with other scholars. As a result, this book, as an overview for the English-speaking readership, is a successful endeavor. On the other hand, for historians, mythologists, and Baltic scholars, it has little new to offer. It would certainly have been beneficial for the author to have collected and reviewed more of the existing research on Baltic religion and mythology, which would have enriched the book and presented the historiography and achievements in the field to the English-speaking audience.The completeness and credibility of any study depend on the number of sources relevant to the research because the more sources we have, the more valid and convincing the claims are. The existing source base on Baltic religion is undoubtedly rich and informative, with scholars constantly discovering new information and clues. This makes research on this topic increasingly viable, all the more so because research into Baltic pagan society and its worldview helps us understand old barbarian Europe, whose people in medieval times formed the basis of the new Christian world on the continent.
Tomas Čelkis (Fri,) studied this question.