Cross and Scepter

by Bagge, Sverre

  The dynastic conflict in 1357–1359, when King Magnus’ eldest son Erik rebelled against his father, may possibly be interpreted as a result of aristocratic discontent with the king, for which the young Erik—aged eighteen—was only an instrument. This discontent persisted after Erik’s sudden death in 1359 and King Magnus’s replacement by Albrecht of Mecklenburg in 1364. Albrecht gave Swedish len to nobles from Mecklenburg, which provoked the Swedish aristocracy. In 1371, however, the aristocracy exploited an attempt by Magnus’ son Håkon to bring back the old dynasty and forced Albrecht to leave control of the len to the council of the realm. Albrecht now became king in name only, but in 1386, he saw an opportunity to regain power. The occasion for this was the death of the most powerful man in Sweden, Bo Jonsson Grip, who held the largest number of len in the country. Albrecht attempted to take control of them and distribute them to his adherents. Although Bo had made an elaborate testament calculated to keep the len for his relatives and other Swedish aristocrats, Albrecht found an ally in Bo’s widow, who was from Mecklenburg, while at the same time concluding an alliance with a number of German princes. This made the Swedish aristocracy turn to Margrete and conclude an alliance with her in Dalaborg early in 1388. Here they not only elected her their ruler, but also accepted royal control of the len, although on the condition that they be given to Swedes. To some extent, they thus agreed in what they had rebelled against Albrecht to prevent. They found themselves in a difficult situation and chose the lesser evil.

  A Danish army invaded Sweden, defeated Albrecht, and took him captive in the battle of Åsle in 1389. The war continued with the Mecklenburgers still in control of Stockholm and their allies plundering the coasts of the Scandinavian countries, until a temporary peace was concluded in 1395, which became permanent three years later, resulting in Margrete gaining control of Stockholm and Albrecht in effect giving up his claim on the Swedish throne. A union of the three Scandinavian countries was established in Kalmar in 1397.

  Figure 20. Queen Margrete, from her alabaster funeral monument in Roskilde Cathedral (Denmark), 1423. National Museum, Danmark. Margrete is portrayed as a young woman, despite the fact that she was fifty-nine years old at her death. There is less of royal majesty here than in the portrait of Christoffer II; the monument rather expresses the dead queen’s piety and humility. Margrete was originally buried in Sorø, like her son, father and grandfather, but King Erik moved her to Roskilde and built the magnificent sarcophagus, which was finished in 1423. Photo: Nationalmuseet, Danmark.

  The Kalmar Union

  The Kalmar Union has been the subject of much discussion among Scandinavian historians. The national revival in the nineteenth century led to a negative view of the union in Sweden and Norway: it was a Danish project aimed at conquering the neighboring countries. This view received scholarly sanction from the Danish historian Kristian Erslev, who did not seek a specifically Danish interpretation of the union, but on the basis of his examination of the sources concluded that this was the most likely interpretation. Erslev was challenged by the Swedish historian Erik Lönnroth in 1934. According to Lönnroth, the lines of division during the conflicts over the Kalmar Union were not between nations but between monarchy and aristocracy, represented by political ideologies—the monarchical regimen regale (royal government) versus the aristocratic regimen politicum (government by the people). This was expressed already in the founding documents of the union and remained the main issue throughout the union period.

  Two documents have been preserved from the meeting in Kalmar, usually referred to as the Coronation Charter and the Union letter. In the former, a number of prelates and noblemen, listed according to rank, regardless of country, acclaim Erik as king of all three countries, without adding any specific provisions about the form that the government should take or the relationship between the countries. This charter is issued on parchment and with pendant seals, in the manner of formal charters. The second document gives detailed provisions for a permanent union between the three countries. It is written on paper and issued by seventeen men, only ten of whom impressed their seals on it, but it refers to more formal charters to be issued in the future. The relationship between the two documents and the interpretation of the Union letter have been the subject of considerable controversy. Some scholars regard the latter as only a draft, while others claim that it was regarded as valid in at least some circles and point to some later evidence in support of this position. According to the national interpretation, the Union letter was an attempt by Margrete to link the three kingdoms more strongly together. Lönnroth disagreed, regarding the Coronation Charter as the expression of regimen regale and the Union letter as the expression of regimen politicum. Margrete did not want to include in the Charter any hard and fast rules about the government, which Lönnroth interprets as an expression of regimen regale, giving the ruler maximum freedom, whereas the aristocracy wanted a union that would grant greater influence to the council of the realm and limit royal power. As Margrete did not want the latter, she managed to prevent the Union letter from being formally issued. Lönnroth dismissed the importance of national considerations, regarding the relationship between monarchy and aristocracy as the only issue.

  Although Lönnroth may be right in perceiving different attitudes toward the monarchy in the two documents, he most probably exaggerates this difference. The opposition between regimen regale and regimen politicum was hardly as pronounced as Lönnroth assumes and, more to the point, it is difficult to find a consistent and well-developed theory of the former in the terse and vague wording of the Coronation Charter. Moreover, whatever the importance of constitutional matters, the documents show a clear contrast between a loose union, consisting only in the election of a common king, and a tight union, intended to last forever and with specific conditions, including the obligation that each country aid the others in war. It may well have been a divisive issue, either alone or together with the opposition between monarchy and aristocracy. It may also be objected that most of the men who issued the Union letter are known to have been Margrete’s adherents. There is today growing sentiment against Lönnroth’s interpretation for rejecting the national issue, not only in his interpretation of the Kalmar documents but also in his account of the following period.

  The fundamental factors explaining the Kalmar Union are the dynastic development and the revival of the Danish monarchy. When the marriage between Håkon and Margrete resulted in a son who was heir to all the Scandinavian kingdoms, it became obvious policy for the Danish monarchy to seek his election in all of them, and, after his death, to secure a replacement for him. There was a good chance that this policy would succeed, for Margrete and her father Valdemar IV had revived the Danish monarchy and reconquered or otherwise regained lost provinces, rights, and estates, including a substantial part of the royal lands appropriated by members of the aristocracy in the previous period. Moreover, although such a policy may not have been entirely in the interests of the Danish aristocracy, neither was the previous interregnum or the mortgage of the country to the king’s German creditors. In addition, both Valdemar and Margrete, particularly the latter, were skillful and efficient rulers, who contrived to gain support through the right mixture of promises, threats, concessions, and privileges. When Denmark, the strongest of the three Scandinavian countries, had overcome its internal weakness and, for the first time since the Viking Age, defined the other Scandinavian countries as its main field of interest, a Scandinavian union seemed a likely result. There was at the time much to be said in favor of such a union, for the Mecklenburgers were in alliance with German pirates who plundered the coasts of all three countries.

  The Struggle over the Kalmar Union, 1434–1523

  The poor people who lived in Dalarna suffered much from their bailiff. He tormented them greatly and forced them to pay most of what they had in taxes. He let peasants be hanged up in smoke—so much did he hurt them. Their women did he treat very badly. They were harnessed to hay-loads, to d
rag them, and thus fell into such misery that they gave birth to dead children.

  With these words, the verse chronicle of Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson explains the origins of the rebellion that broke out in Sweden in 1434. The people of Dalarna, the iron-producing highland region in northern Sweden, complained about their bailiff, the Danish nobleman Jøsse Eriksen, and Engelbrekt, a man of the lower nobility, brought their complaints before the king and the council of the realm. When this proved in vain, he became the leader of a rebellion and in a short time gained control over most of Sweden. After some hesitation, the aristocracy joined the rebels, and together they deposed King Erik, first in Denmark and Sweden (1439) and finally in Norway (1442).

  The chronicle gives a vivid picture of the dramatic course of events, presenting Engelbrekt as a great hero and celebrating his and his followers’ triumph over the tyrannical bailiffs and his success in forcing the reluctant Swedish aristocracy to join the rebellion. We see Engelbrekt entering Vadstena, where a number of councilors and leading men are assembled, proclaiming, “All of you should now join the kingdom if you want to live longer. I now intend to win the freedom of the realm.” When they refuse, Engelbrekt grasps one of the bishops around the throat and threatens to throw him and his colleagues to the rebel army outside, after which he dictates a letter of deposition to the king, which he forces the assembled lords to seal. Jøsse Eriksson’s fate is described with considerable glee in the somewhat later Karl’s Chronicle:

  In the hall of the convent Jøsse was taken

  And dragged down the stairs after his feet

  He was hauled like a beast for slaughter

  And his neck beat against the steps.

  He was tied to the sledge like a pig

  …

  They placed him on the nearest stock

  And cut his head from his body.

  In traditional Swedish historiography, as expressed in Erik Gustaf Gejer’s early-nineteenth-century interpretation, Engelbrekt was the great hero who saved his country from Danish tyranny and took the first steps towards the dissolution of the Kalmar Union. This interpretation also receives considerable support from the many and vivid verse chronicles of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which depict Margrete and her successors as tyrants and their Swedish opponents as heroes fighting for the freedom of their country. As already mentioned, Erik Lönnroth rejected this interpretation in an influential book, published in 1934, five hundred years after Engelbrekt’s rebellion. He dismissed the stories of Jøsse Eriksson as propaganda and identified the real reason for the Swedish rebellion as King Erik’s war against Lübeck, which created problems for the export of iron from Dalarna. Thus, for Lönnroth, far from being a national hero, Engelbrekt becomes an instrument for German mercantile interests in Sweden—a role not likely to endear him to the liberal circles in 1930s Sweden to which Lönnroth belonged! Above all, Lönnroth attached greater importance to the role of the aristocracy in reacting against King Erik’s authoritarian regime, thereby pointing to class interests rather than national sentiment. He found support for his constitutionalist interpretation of the conflict in the fact that Erik was deposed by the Danish as well as the Swedish aristocracy and that the union was reestablished afterwards, through the election of Christoffer of Bavaria, Erik’s sister’s son, as king in Denmark in 1440, in Sweden in 1441, and in Norway in 1442.

  No doubt, there were conflicts of interest between the king and the aristocracy over the government of the countries, and the many complexities of the Kalmar Union prevent a simple return to the national interpretations of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Lönnroth’s dismissal of the national—as well as the social—issue is facile. Lönnroth rejects not only the stories referred to above (or at least their importance), but also the account of the popular rebellion referred to in the Engelbrekt Chronicle, on the ground that it is a late invention. This chronicle survives only as a part of the Karl Chronicle, which was probably composed in the 1460s. In Lönnroth’s opinion the Engelbrekt Chronicle was totally rewritten at about this time, roughly thirty years after the 1430s conflict that it depicts but now interprets as a popular rebellion rather than what it actually was—a conflict between a part of the aristocracy and the king. However, later research has largely succeeded in reconstructing the original Engelbrekt Chronicle and given strong arguments that its account of the popular rebellion, including the story of Jøsse, is almost contemporary. Although this is not necessarily proof of its historical accuracy, it at least makes it likely that Jøsse’s behavior was one of the motives for the rebellion. Above all, it makes it difficult to dismiss the importance of Engelbrekt and the popular movement under his leadership. More generally, the national propaganda in the chronicles—also recognized by Lönnroth—becomes difficult to understand unless there really were national sentiments at the time. Foreign influence might easily be resented. Swedish and Norwegian peasants enjoyed a freer status than their Danish counterparts and tolerated less from their superiors, an attitude that is consistent with rebelliousness and demands that they be governed by their countrymen—although there are also examples of reactions against the latter. The lay and ecclesiastical aristocracy wanted to keep offices in their country for themselves and reacted against foreigners. A conflict over the archbishopric of Uppsala at about the same time as Engelbrekt’s rebellion may have contributed to the aristocracy’s willingness to join it at the second stage. Finally, later research has found little evidence to support Lönnroth’s thesis that the main interest of the rebels was to secure trade with Lübeck. After the temporary peace of 1432, the Hanseatic blockade had been relaxed, and besides, it is difficult to explain why problems with the export of iron from Dalarna would lead to a rebellion that involved the whole of Sweden.

  Apart from people like Jøsse Eriksson, what did the rebels react against in the 1430s, and why did the Swedish rebellion eventually lead to the deposition of King Erik? Erik’s foreign policy was not doubt an important factor, not (at least not mainly) because his conflict with the Hanseatic League created problems for the export of iron, but because of the extra taxes needed to finance the prolonged war he waged against the count of Holstein in order to conquer Schleswig. Another important factor is the character of Margrete and Erik’s regime, which is commonly depicted as a regimen regale. The three countries were governed from a union chancery in Denmark, after 1417 increasingly located in Copenhagen, and the traditional offices in the central administration held by members of the high nobility were vacant. The council of the realm was rarely summoned to meetings, with some exceptions for Denmark; instead, the ruler sought advice from individual councilors. The principles underlying this form of government are aptly expressed in Queen Margrete’s instructions to King Erik on his first visit to Norway in 1405. He should be pleasant to everybody he meets, but never give any exact promises. In particular, he should avoid promising anything in writing. If forced to do so, he should not issue charters in the most solemn and binding form, on parchment and with the great seal pendant from the document, but preferably on paper with a signet stamped on the back. He should speak to the councilors individually but not summon any meeting of the council as a whole. Apart from the frequent admonition not to take any decision himself without consulting his “mother,” “because we know more about this than he does,” this advice corresponds perfectly to Margrete’s own political practice, which made her one of the most successful rulers at the time and one of the great politicians of the later Middle Ages. Unfortunately, however, Erik did not follow her advice. He had the same aims as his “mother” but pursued them stubbornly and undiplomatically, which eventually led to his fall.

  Margrete’s advice is thus not only evidence of her political skill but also of the restrictions facing an ambitious ruler at the time. Regimen regale might work, but only if it was carefully disguised. The king had limited resources. He had no standing army and tax revenues were insufficient for any major enterprise and had to be supplemented with extra c
ontributions, which needed the consent of either the council of the realm or of popular assemblies. Nor was there any class that could counterbalance the aristocracy. It was thus not possible to challenge this class a whole, though a monarch might gain considerable independence by playing its members off against one another. Margrete succeeded in this, whereas Erik did not. So far, Erik’s fall can be explained by a too direct and provocative regimen regale. However, this policy was not equally provocative in all three countries, which means that we also have to consider the national issue.

  Erik’s regime was most constitutional in Denmark. Here he often consulted with the council of the realm and normally appointed Danish nobles as castellans; this in some contrast to Margrete who had made more use of low-ranking Germans and had more rarely summoned the council. In Norway, both Margrete and Erik ruled through a few select nobles, mostly Norwegian, in addition to a few Danish ones, in particular the bishop of Oslo. The council of the realm was rarely summoned. In Sweden, it is no coincidence that the rebellion was sparked by complaints against a Danish official. While few foreigners held royal office in Denmark, a number of Danes held office in Sweden, which provoked not only the peasants but also the Swedish nobles. Although the rebellion started as a peasant rebellion and the nobles were in the beginning reluctant to join in, eventually the nobles took over and finally broke with Erik. Engelbrekt was dead already in May 1436. Although his killing was the result of a private feud, there had already been tension between him and some of the nobles, notably Karl Knutsson who now took over as the leader of the movement.

  Admittedly, however, Erik was deposed by the Danish aristocracy, even before he was deposed in Sweden, a fact that would seem to support Lönnroth’s interpretation. At a meeting in Kalmar in 1436, the Danish council mediated between King Erik and the Swedes and made him accept their demand to rule in cooperation with the council of the realm and according to Swedish law and to respect the privileges of the aristocracy. The councilors also used the opportunity to gain similar rights for themselves as those of their Swedish counterparts. However, the king left for Gotland and did nothing to fulfill his promises, apparently believing that his absence would result in chaos and that he would be invited to return on his own conditions. Rather than trying to placate the councils, he pressured both the Danes and the Swedes to accept his cousin, Duke Boleslaw of Pomerania, as his successor. The principles of regimen regale and regimen politicum were thus clearly articulated from both sides, and both the Danes and the Swedes wanted to preserve the union. However, the members of the Danish council did not act solely out of solidarity with their Swedish counterparts. They were provoked by Erik’s plan for the succession and by his refusal to return to Denmark and deal with the problems there, including a peasant rebellion that broke out in summer 1438. In these circumstances, they found it better to cut their losses, get rid of Erik, and replace him with someone who could deal with the problems. They invited Christoffer to Denmark late in 1438, elected him protector of the realm in the following year and king in 1440. The fact that the Swedes also elected Christoffer shows that the union had its adherents in both countries, but is not evidence that the aristocracies thought exclusively in constitutional rather than in national terms.