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This article is part of the History of Sweden series. |
| Early Kingdoms |
| Unification - The 12th century to 1523. |
| The Modern Sweden |
| Rise as a Great Power |
| The Swedish Empire |
| The Great War |
| Absolute Monarchy |
| The Union with Norway |
| Modernization |
| Industrialization |
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Realm of Sweden List of Swedish monarchs List of Swedish wars |
Unification
The joining together of modern Sweden occured under King Sverker I of Sweden (1134-1155), the grandson of Blotsweyn, who permanently amalgamated Svealand and Götaland, with each of the two nations supplying the common king alternately for the next hundred years. Sweden, as a nation, began to feel the advantage of a centralized monarchical government. Eric the Saint (1150-1160) organized the Church of Sweden on the model prevalent elsewhere, and undertook a crusade against the heathen Finlanders, marking the beginning of Sweden’s overseas endeavors. Under Charles VII (whom popular history, knowing of six Charleses of legend, always considered the seventh, although not necessarily so), the archbishopric of Uppsala was founded, in 1164. But the greatest medieval statesman of Sweden, and one of the principal architects of its rise as a nation, was the Earl Birger, who practicaly ruled the land from 1248 to 1266. He is, amongst other accomplishments, attributed to the foundation of Stockholm; but he is best known as a legislator, and his wise reforms prepared the way for the abolition of serfdom. The increased respect - and power - which the royals owed to the Earl Birger was still further extended by King Magnus Ladulås (1275-1290). Both these rulers, by the institution of separate and almost independent duchies, attempted to introduce into Sweden a feudal system similar to that already established elsewhere in Europe; the danger of thus weakening the realm by partition was averted, though not without violent and tragic complications. Finally, in 1319, the severed portions of Sweden were once more reunited.
The formation of separate orders, or estates, was promoted by Magnus Ladulås, who extended the privileges of the clergy and founded a hereditary nobility (Ordinance of Alsnö, 1280). In connection with this institution we now hear of a heavily armed cavalry as the kernel of the national army. The knights (new nobles and Burghers) became distinguishable from the higher nobility. To this period belongs the rise of a prominent burgess class, as the towns now began to acquire charters. At the end of the 13th century, and the beginning of the 14th, provincial codes of laws appear and the king and his council executed legislative functions.
The first union of Sweden and Norway
The first union between Sweden and Norway occurred in 1319 when the three-year-old Magnus, son of the Swedish royal Duke Eric and of the Norwegian princess Ingeborg, inherited the throne of Norway from his grandfather Haakon V and in the same year was elected King of Sweden, by the Convention of Oslo. The boy king's long minority weakened the royal influence in both countries, and Magnus lost both his kingdoms before his death. The Swedes, irritated by his misrule, superseded him by his nephew, Albert of Mecklenburg in 1365. In Sweden, Magnus’s partialities and necessities led directly to the rise of a powerful landed aristocracy, and, indirectly, to the growth of popular liberties. Forced by the unruliness of the magnates to lean upon the middle classes, in 1359 the king summoned the first Swedish Riksdag, on which occasion representatives from the towns were invited to appear along with the nobles and clergy. His successor, Albert, was forced to go a step farther and, in 1371, to take the first coronation oath.
In 1388, at the request of the Swedes themselves, Albert was driven out by Queen Margaret of Denmark and at a convention of the representatives of the three Scandinavian kingdoms (held at Kalmar in 1397), Margaret’s great-nephew, Eric of Pomerania, was elected the common king, although the liberties of each of the three realms were expressly reserved and confirmed. The union was to be a personal, not a political union.
Neither Margaret herself nor her successors observed the stipulation that in each of the three kingdoms only natives should hold land and high office, and the efforts first of Denmark (at that time by far the strongest member of the union) to impose her will on the Union's weaker kingdoms soon produced a rupture, or rather a series of semi-ruptures. The Swedes first broke away from it in 1434 under the popular leader Engelbrecht, and after his murder they elected Karl Knutsson Bonde their king under the title of Charles VIII, 1436. In 1441 Charles VIII had to abdicate in favour of Christopher of Bavaria, who was already king of Denmark and Norway; however, upon the death of Christopher in 1448, a state of confusion ensued in the course of which Charles VIII was twice reinstated and twice expelled again. Finally, on his death in 1470, the three kingdoms were reunited under Christian II of Denmark, the prelates and higher nobility of Sweden being favourable to the union, though the great majority of the Swedish people always detested it as a foreign usurpation. The national party was represented by the three great Riksföreståndare, or Viceroyalty, of the Sture family who, with brief intervals, successively defended the independence of Sweden against the Danish kings from 1470 to 1520 and thusly kept the nation's spirit alive. But the viceroyalty was too casual and anomalous an institution to rally the nation around it permanently, and when the tyranny of Christian II became intolerable the Swedish people elected Gustavus Eriksson Vasa, who as viceroy had already driven out the Danes, king of Sweden at Strängnäs on June 6, 1523.
See also: Provinces of Sweden, History of Finland, History of Norway, History of DenmarkKalmar Union
See also: Kalmar Union