At the origins of the written history of the eastern Baltic lands stands Henry's Chronicle of Livonia, a text recorded in Latin in c. 1224-1227. If there is any single old historical text about the Baltic region that might correspond to modern concepts such as metanarrative, that grand récit of medieval Baltic history would doubtless be Henry's chronicle. It would be impossible to imagine the beginning of the recorded history of modern Latvia and Estonia without Henry's chronicle, in view of its rich treasury of information about the way of life of the native peoples, the Christian mission, bloody conquests, names of persons and places, topoethnonyms, etc. The facts, events, and people – named and unnamed – that live on the chronicle's pages have been so deeply sedimented into the canon of the early history of the Baltic peoples that it would be unseemly to cast doubt on them, even in scholarly writings. Yet the backbone of Henry's chronicle is a deep conflict: on the one hand, there are those who are being baptized, conquered, and killed; on the other, those who baptize, conquer, and kill. As is typical of metanarratives, there are more than two sides involved, and the resultant oppositions are nowhere near as clear as those in the trenches of the Great War of the twentieth century. Thus, in a medieval text, making distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ can often be difficult.

When analysing Henry's ethnonyms, we have observed that in addition to the extensive catalogue of names of peoples and tribes and the principal actors referred to by name, the narrative of the chronicle is held together by several other general concepts such as Christians and pagans, warriors, pilgrims, merchants, neophytes, etc. The main field of discussion of this chapter is focused on the question of how Henry recorded and constructed the history and image of the new Christian society conquered, claimed, and ruled by Germans at the edge of the Latin world.