Although the Engelbrekt rebellion was not necessarily directed against the union, which was actually restored after Erik’s deposition, Christoffer’s death marked the end of the period when all three kingdoms were united for any significant period of time. When Christoffer died childless in 1448, the nobleman Karl Knutsson managed to be elected king in Sweden, whereas the Danes after some searching and negotiation chose Count Christian of Oldenburg, whose successors in the direct line would rule the country until the mid-nineteenth century. The 1448 Swedish election was not necessarily intended as a break with the Kalmar Union, although it was contrary to earlier agreements about a joint election by representatives from all three countries. However, the Danes had broken this agreement previously by electing Christoffer. Although the circumstances are not quite clear, Karl may have hoped that his election in Sweden would lead to his acceptance in the other countries as well, or he may have convinced the Swedish assembly that this would happen. There was no obvious heir, and Karl or his electors may have believed that the fact that he had estates and connections in Denmark might make him acceptable to the Danish aristocracy. Both kings later tried to gain Norway, but Christian won, and a treaty establishing a permanent union between Norway and Denmark was concluded in 1450.
Christian also managed to gain Sweden in 1457, but he lost it again to Karl in 1464. The rebellion against Christian in 1464 marked the start of a chaotic period, during which Karl was reelected, deposed, and reelected again, without ever managing to take control of the kingdom. His death in 1470 would seem to have presented an opportunity for Christian to get hold of Sweden once more, but he was defeated by Karl’s successor Sten Sture in the battle of Brunkeberg outside Stockholm in 1471. Sten Sture turned out to be a more clever politician than Karl and managed to keep the country under his control and outside the union until his death in 1503, with the exception of the period between 1497 and 1501. He was succeeded by Svante Nilsson Sture (1504–1512) and Sten Svantesson Sture (1512–1520). None of these rulers claimed the kingship but used instead the title “protector of the realm.” They based their power on an alliance between a considerable part of the aristocracy and the free peasants and miners in other parts of Sweden, notably Dalarna in the north. The faction held together thanks to skillful propaganda in the form of letters, speeches, and a number of verse chronicles clearly intended for oral performance, which celebrated the Swedish nation, blackened the Danes, and stamped the opponents of the faction as traitors. One piece of their propaganda is still to been seen: the magnificent statue of St. George and the Dragon in the Great Church in Stockholm, which was erected as an allegory of Sten’s victory over the Danes at Brunkeberg.
During most of this period, the protectors of the realm managed to hold on to power by skillful maneuvering, but there were tensions within the aristocracy that could be exploited by the Danish kings. In 1497, open conflict broke out between Sten and some other magnates, including his later successor Svante Nilsson, which gave King Hans the opportunity to invade Sweden. After some defeats, Sten decided to come to terms while he still had something to offer in the negotiations. The result was a loose union that left the Swedish council and aristocracy a considerable amount of control and Sten an impressive assembly of len. When in the following period Hans broke his promises and sought to increase his control of Sweden, his former enemies joined in a new rebellion (1501), which led to a prolonged conflict between the two countries, interrupted by periods of armistice. Finally, Hans’s son and successor Christian II invaded Sweden with a large army in January 1520 and defeated Sten Sture the Younger in a battle where the protector himself was killed. Once more, the Swedes decided to come to terms. Sten had made many enemies—including the archbishop, Gustaf Trolle—some of whom wanted an agreement with the Danes. Like his father, Christian also promised to respect the council of the realm and the privileges of the Church and the aristocracy. He was crowned in Stockholm in November to great festivities, which, however, were suddenly broken off on the third day. A number of prominent men were accused of heresy because of their support for Sten Sture in his previous conflict with the archbishop, whom he had imprisoned and whose castle he had pulled down. Altogether nearly a hundred men—bishops, noblemen, burghers, and others—were executed in the great square in Stockholm, either beheaded or hanged, depending upon their status. Their blood flooded the streets in the rain and the event came to be known as the “Bloodbath of Stockholm.” Similar massacres took place in other parts of the country.
Christian apparently believed that he had secured his hold of Sweden and prevented a setback such as his father had experienced, but the opposite happened. A new rebellion soon broke out under the leadership of Gustaf Eriksson Vasa, who belonged to one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in the country. Gustaf concluded an alliance with Lübeck and soon conquered most of Sweden. He was elected king on June 6, 1523. Meanwhile, the Danish aristocracy rebelled against Christian and elected his uncle, Duke Frederik of Schleswig-Holstein, to replace him.
Why Was the Union Dissolved?
The brief summary above represents a considerable simplification. It leaves out a bewildering number of people and events—the formation and breaking of alliances, war and peace. Lönnroth managed to create order from this chaos, but at the cost of too great a simplification. His account needs to be supplemented with a least two main observations. The first is that there was a distinction between collective and individual aristocratic interests. The aristocracy was not always united, either nationally or across borders. Nor would it be possible to conduct a monarchic policy without aristocratic support; no other class was strong enough to compete with the aristocracy. Individual interests among the aristocrats are therefore as important as shared class interests. The aristocrats competed for royal favor; and those who succeeded in gaining it had no desire to join their equals in attempts to limit the king’s power. Thus, it might be suggested that regimen politicum was for hungry aristocrats, while regimen regale was suited to well-fed ones. Attitudes also depended on circumstances. It was usually easy to present a common aristocratic front in support of the best possible conditions for the aristocracy during negotiations over election charters, but far more difficult to maintain this front in the daily running of government, when the king was able to secure allies through favors and privileges and play individual aristocrats off against one another.
The second observation, as already pointed out, concerns the national issue, or, perhaps more adequately, the connection between this issue and the constitutional one. We are not dealing with a union king versus a union aristocracy but with a union king versus national aristocracies. Whereas it is relatively easy to imagine a royal power common to the three kingdoms, it is very difficult to imagine the three aristocracies embracing a similar commonality. The aristocracy’s main instrument was the council of the realm, consisting of the bishops and some other clerics and the most prominent members of the lay aristocracy. It was difficult enough for each country to arrange regular meetings of this assembly. It was almost impossible to bring all three together. Although such joint meetings did occasionally take place, most often in connection with royal elections, it would have been impossible to conduct the on-going government of the countries in this way. Consequently, the only way for the aristocracy to retain its influence was to insist on the prerogatives of the national council of the realm. In this way, aristocratic and national interests tended to coincide. Characteristically, Christoffer of Bavaria had to promise in his Swedish election charter of 1441 that the country during the king’s absence would be governed by indigenous court officials together with the council of the realm.
This also means that the many examples scholars have found of aristocrats pursuing their own private interests rather than national ones are of only limited interest. The great Swedish leader in the late fifteenth century, Sten Sture the Elder, may well have been a cynical power politician who cared for his own interests rather than those of the Swedi
sh nation. The point, however, is that most of the time he found his interests better served by Swedish independence than by submission to the Danish king, as did the majority of the Swedish aristocrats most of the time.
From the king’s point of view, the need to accommodate national demands meant that he had either to travel regularly between the countries—which was a usual requirement specified in the election charters—or to delegate most matters to the national council of the realm. Neither alternative was very attractive. The same applies to an experiment attempted in Erik of Pomerania’s reign, when a union council was set up that consisted of a few members of the council of each country. It was not continued in the following period. It is doubtful whether such a council would prove sufficiently representative to replace the national ones. Although the king traditionally had traveled quite a lot within his own country, the required distances increased enormously as a consequence of the union, which covered the largest territory of any political unit in Europe at the time. On the other hand, leaving most decisions to the council meant being a king in name only. Nor was the council of the realm suited to form a permanent government, the more so as government now became increasingly bureaucratic. Delegation to the council would in practice equate to establishing a permanent chancery with wide powers of decision in each country, which would reduce the king’s power even more. The greater distances also meant less personal contact between the king and the aristocracy than before. Only the Danish aristocracy continued to have a regular relationship to the king, although young aristocrats from Norway and Sweden might spend some time at court. The Sture Chronicle even hints that Sten Sture the Elder had been a page at Christian I’s court.
Regimen politicum thus in practice meant national government, whereas regimen regale meant a strong union. This is also evident in its actual history. The first union, between Norway and Sweden when the king was a minor, illustrates well the aristocratic ideal. The countries were governed by the councils, partly under the leadership of a regent, and links between them were kept to a minimum. A similar practice was introduced during the short reign of Christoffer of Bavaria (1439/42–1448). By contrast, Margrete and Erik built up a union administration in Denmark, after the acquisition of Copenhagen in 1417 increasingly centered in that city, and governed the other countries from there. They managed to increase their control of local administrations by appointing men they could trust to most of the larger and more important len, notably those with a castle. They also imposed stricter conditions on the lenholders, requiring that they render account for their administrative expenses and leave the surplus to the king instead of keeping the whole in return for services. Christian I and his successors practiced the same kind of central administration as Margrete and Erik, but, except for Christian II (1513–1523), were somewhat more cautious regarding the local administration.
To the king, loyal men meant men dependent on him, either lowborn or foreigners or both. In Sweden and Norway, noble foreigners, Danes or Germans, might serve the purpose equally as well as lowborn men, which had the additional advantage of satisfying the aristocracy nearest at hand. In Denmark, lowborn men and Germans might be used as a counterweight against the Danish aristocracy, but, on the other hand, it was easier to rule in cooperation with the council of the realm in the country that was the king’s main residence. Moreover, the career opportunities the union offered Danish aristocrats were incentives for cooperation with the king and would make some amount of regimen regale palatable to them. Despite the common front that the Danish and Swedish aristocracies eventually formed against Erik of Pomerania, the Danish council of the realm normally sided with the king during union conflicts, and its members showed no solidarity with their Norwegian counterparts when the Norwegian council was abolished in 1536.
Another issue of national relevance was foreign policy. As we have seen, the three countries had widely different interests in this field, but the union monarchs normally pursued the traditional Danish aim of expansion in Northern Germany. This was a particularly prominent concern under Erik of Pomerania, whose main aim was to get hold of the Duchy of Schleswig, the southern part of the country that had been given as a fief to a sideline of the dynasty in the thirteenth century and whose duke was now the count of the neighboring area of Holstein, a fief under the emperor. Erik carried out a prolonged and costly war in these areas, which was financed by increased taxation in all three countries, and which contributed to the resentment against him in Sweden. Christian I in 1460 managed to get control not only of Schleswig but also of Holstein, against the payment of 30,000 marks silver, almost as much as the sum Magnus Eriksson had paid for Scania (above p. 244). To finance this, he imposed a tax in Sweden that led to his deposition four years later.
Increased taxation was normally resented by the common people, but it might be supported by the elites if they found that it served their interests. However, the Swedish and Norwegian elites would hardly be interested in Danish conquest in Northern Germany. In the case of Sweden, there was the additional problem that the Danish kings’ policy in Germany often brought them into conflict with the Hanseatic League, on which the Swedes depended for their export of iron. Such conflicts might also create problems for the Norwegians, although there were more varied attitudes to the Hansa in that country. Otherwise, the Norwegians were as uninterested in Danish expansion in Germany as the Swedes, whereas the Danish king for his part showed little interest in the traditional Norwegian possessions in the Atlantic Islands. Thus, when Christian I married his daughter to the King of Scotland in 1468, he mortgaged the Orkneys and Shetland in order to pay her dowry, which resulted in the islands being permanently ceded to Scotland. This was probably also Christian’s intention; he preferred a good relationship with Scotland to some distant islands that probably produced little profit. The Norwegian council of the realm was offended, however, and Christian’s successors had to promise in their election charters that they would redeem the islands, a promise that they never kept.
The incompatible aims of Danish and Swedish foreign policy were revealed in a drastic way around 1500. To put pressure on the Swedes before the 1497 invasion, King Hans had concluded an alliance against Sweden with the Russian Grand Prince Ivan III (1493), who shortly before (1471) had taken control of Novgorod. The Russians launched a massive attack against Finland and almost managed to storm Viborg, but were defeated and had to conclude a six-year peace agreement in 1497. When Russian envoys arrived in Sweden in 1501 to complain that the Swedes were not fulfilling the agreement, they revealed the previous arrangement with the Danes, which contributed to the new rebellion in Sweden in the same year.
The main argument in favor of the union for the Norwegian and Swedish aristocracies was peace. The union would eliminate rivalry between the countries, whereas the Swedes’ cession from it provoked Danish attempts to force them back. It also worked in the interests of aristocrats with lands in more than one country, notably as the result of Scandinavian intermarriage, which became more frequent during the union period. Thus, the union king could often rely on the support of the aristocracy in the border region between Denmark and Sweden. In most cases, however, such aristocrats had one country as their main residence and often exchanged lands so as to concentrate most of their possession in one country. Men who established themselves in a country other than their fatherland would most often identify their interests with those of their new country. Provisions about reserving offices for the aristocracy of one country normally included such men. The majority of at least Norwegian and Swedish aristocrats were therefore more likely to prefer having len and offices in their home country reserved for themselves over opening up the whole of Scandinavia for competition between aristocrats from all three countries.
At least from a Swedish point of view, the arguments against the union would seem to outweigh those in its favor. In Norway, the weakest of the three countries, the peace argument seems to have been strongest. The Norwegian aristocracy remained loyal to Er
ik of Pomerania longer than its Danish and Swedish counterparts did, and there were no serious attempts to elect a separate Norwegian king. The Norwegian alternative to the union with Denmark was therefore a union with Sweden. Karl Knutsson had considerable support in Norway in 1448–1450 but finally had to give up. The most serious rebellion in Norway, which started in 1501, was closely connected with that in Sweden and, if successful, would probably have led to some kind of union with Sweden.
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