Karelia is bitterly contested by the Swedes and the Novgorod Republic for a period starting in the thirteenth century during the Swedish-Novgorodian Wars.
The Novgorod Republic takes Karelia in 1220.
The city state controls most of Europe's northeast, from lands east of today's Estonia to the Ural Mountains, making it one of the largest states in medieval Europe, although much of the territory north and east of Lakes Ladoga and Onega is sparsely populated and never organized politically.
