Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Oeselians" in English language version.
Henry's chronicle includes quotations ascribed to the Oeselians, such as Laula! Laula, pappi! ['Sing! Sing, priest!'] (HCL XVIII.8). The expression is unambiguously Finnic and supports the identification of Oeselians as a Finnic language group. This is further corroborated by the Finnic toponymy that does not seem to include substantial earlier substrate layers (at least in the light of research today; cf. Kallasmaa 1996–2000)
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)In the early 13th century, the residents of Oesel, as Saaremaa was then known, were notorious for pirating Baltic churches. They were, indeed, the very last pagan holdouts in the region; by the year 1227, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, crusaders who originated in Germany, had forced every other tribe and town in what now are Estonia and Latvia to submit to baptism or the sword. On Jan. 6, 1227, a huge army of crusading Germans, Rigans, Letts and Estonians gathered on the mainland parallel to Oesel. They and their horses marched across the frozen Baltic to the tiny island of Mona, attached by causeway to Oesel's northeastern tip. Deprived of a maritime defense, the Oeselians were finally forced to succumb.
For centuries Swedish raiders pillaged along the Baltic's eastern shores, but there they faced rivals such as the Kurs and the piratical Saarlased, or Oeselians, from the Estonian island of Saaremaa. Saaremaa's current coat of arms pictures a longboat, and Viking images thrive in Latvian and Estonian legends, jewelry, and folk dress. "Saarlased were the Vikings of the Baltics," said Bruno Pao, a marine historian on Saaremaa. "We have found stone ship settings, burial mounds, silver hoards. The pagan era here lasted until the 13th century."