Surviving sources suggest the invading coalition, particularly bishop Henry of Ösel, was primarily interested in converting the local Finnic tribespeople from their forms of paganism to Christianity, as well as acquiring more territory to be divided amongst the Livonian gentry (the former Sword Brothers).

[3] By 1240,[citation needed] Denmark under Valdemar II, Sweden under Birger Jarl, as well as the Livonian Order, were resolved to initiate a crusade against Votia and Novgorod.

[9][6][page needed] The primary motive seems to have been that the Livonian Order regarded Votia as a pagan territory to be conquered and converted, unlike Novgorod, which they appeared to have no military or religious designs against.

[11][12] The 1241 treaty between bishop Henry of Ösel-Wiek and the Teutonic Order established legal and economic regulations in the newly acquired area, and mentions that campaign participants were given fiefdoms and other benefits in Votia.

[13] In late 1241, Aleksandr Yaroslavich of Suzdal returned to Novgorod, leading an army into Votia that defeated the Livonian troops, taking some captive while releasing others.

[2] The following year, 1242, the NPL narrates that "German" envoys travelled to Novgorod (when Aleksandr was absent), agreeing to withdraw from "the land of the Vod people, of Luga, Pleskov, and Lotygola".

[7][page needed] In response, the Crusaders raised an army in Livonia and Estonia, under Hermann von Buxhoevden, and met the Russians at the Battle on the Ice.

[20] According to an older, influential historiographic tradition, the Oeselian–Livonian–Votian alliance should be regarded as part of a wider, co-ordinated effort that deliberately sought to attack and conquer the Novgorod Republic and the rest of Kievan Rus' in order to convert its population from Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism.

[21] This tradition emerged from a local cult of veneration in Vladimir at the end of the 13th century, which centred on the role of Aleksandr Yaroslav in the Novgorodian conflicts of the early 1240s.

[22] In 1928 and 1929, Finnish historians Jalmari Jaakkola and especially Gustav Donner [fi; se] expanded on this Nevskian hagiographic tradition by promoting the theory of co-ordination between various "Catholic" countries and military orders, organised by papal legate William of Modena, of having a well-prepared plan to conquer and convert all of Rus' to Catholicism in the 1230s and 1240s.

'[26] Historians such as John Fennell (1983)[27] and Evgeniya Nazarova (2001)[28] concluded that if the Neva battle happened, it should be regarded as part of the Swedish–Novgorodian Wars for control of Finland and Karelia, rather than that the Swedes collaborates with the Danes and Germans in Livonia.