Livonia

Livonia was the name medieval Europe gave to the lands at the eastern end of the Baltic, conquered by German crusaders and named after the Livs, a Finnic people whose language has all but vanished. For three centuries it was a patchwork of church states and knightly domains known as Terra Mariana, the Land of Mary, and afterward the prize in a long contest among Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, and Russia. Its Hanseatic towns, above all Riga and Tartu, still look westward in brick and spire. The name dropped off the political map after 1918, when the border between independent Latvia and Estonia was drawn straight across it, cutting one Livonian town in two.

In its widest medieval sense, Livonia covered almost all of present-day Latvia and Estonia. In the narrower sense used from the 17th century until 1918, it meant the province later called the Governorate of Livonia, about 47,000 square kilometers stretching north from the Daugava River and Riga to Tartu and Lake Peipus. This is low, glacier-shaped country of forests, bogs, lakes, and gentle uplands, crossed by the Gauja and Emajõgi rivers. Today its northern half lies in Estonia, in the counties around Tartu, Pärnu, Viljandi, Valga, and Võru. Its southern half lies in Latvia, where it largely matches Vidzeme, one of the historical lands recognized by Latvian law since 2021. The twin towns of Valga in Estonia and Valka in Latvia sit on the dividing line.

German merchants and missionaries reached the Daugava in the late 12th century, Bishop Albert founded Riga in 1201, and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, later a branch of the Teutonic Order, subdued the Livs, Latvians, and Estonians. In 1418 the region's bishoprics and the Order formed the Livonian Confederation. The Livonian War of 1558 to 1583, begun by Ivan IV of Russia, destroyed it, and the land was divided: Courland became a separate duchy, Sweden took northern Estonia, and Poland-Lithuania took Livonia proper. Sweden won most of that in the 1620s, and Russia took Swedish Livonia in the Great Northern War, confirmed by the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. After the Russian Empire collapsed, Latvia and Estonia fought for independence and divided Livonia between them in 1920.

• The Russian Empire
  The tsarist state that stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific and, for a time, into North America formerly part of
• The Baltic States
  Three small nations on Europe's most closely watched frontier located in
• Baltic Sea
  Northern Europe's brackish, ice-fringed inland sea located on
• Courland
  The western Latvian duchy that once held colonies in Africa and the Caribbean succeeded in part by
• Estonia
  The digital pioneer of the Baltic, half land and half forest today part of
• Latvia
  The Baltic middle land of forests, rivers, and Art Nouveau today part of