Scandinavia’s history in its broad outline was in many ways similar to that of central Europe: Christianization and the formation of polities roughly coincided from the tenth century onwards. Yet the development of the Scandinavian kingdoms significantly diverged even from each other. Scandinavian Vikings raided in many parts of Europe between the ninth and eleventh centuries; at the same time settlements in or links to the British Isles, Francia, and the Empire also led to cultural borrowing, partly via missions. Early eleventh-century voyages to and settlement in North America did not last. The Christian kingdoms emerged through warfare between various claimants to each throne as well as between rulers of different territories; many areas changed hands frequently—for example, the lands around Oslo Fjord. None of these kingdoms covered the same areas as the modern states with identical names. Scandinavian kings initially had limited powers. They increased royal authority based on their landholdings with rights to labour service and fines, their personal guard, the monopoly to summon naval power for war, and often through Christianization. They also held a monopoly over building fortified places until the thirteenth century (in Norway even longer). Local rulers entered into royal service. The first recorded coronation, an ecclesiastical contribution to royal power, took place in Norway in 1163-4, in Denmark in 1170, and in Sweden in 1210.
The Danish kingdom, based on naval power and trade, existed by the late eighth century, but underwent numerous drastic territorial changes. In the second half of the tenth century Harald Bluetooth and his successor ordered the construction of forts, probably in order to subjugate the local population. Danish royal power increasingly centred on Lund and Roskilde, and under Sven Forkbeard (d. 1014) and Cnut the Great (d. 1035) Danish overlordship was extended to a large part of Scandinavia and England. With the disintegration of this empire, other Scandinavian kingdoms emerged. Denmark, through its contacts to England and western Europe, borrowed most from the West. The growth of monarchical power did not put an end to rivalry for the throne or to civil wars in the first half of the twelfth century. Indeed, some of the parties turned to the German emperor for aid in return for paying homage to him. In the second half of the century, a royal court and administration, including the chancery, were established. Nonetheless, laws, written down from the middle of the thirteenth century, were regional rather than unified for the entire kingdom. Norway briefly came under Danish rule in the early eleventh century, and rivalries for the throne were rife. Royal power increased substantially during Harald Hardrada’s reign through the subjugation of chieftains and the growing importance of the administration of royal domains. Civil wars for succession were so violent that between 1130 and 1162 none of the eight kings of Norway died natural deaths. By the mid-thirteenth century, however, Norway was the most stable Scandinavian kingdom. This was partly due to luck; after 1227 most Norwegian kings left only one legitimate son as heir. In the late thirteenth century rules of succession were laid down. Yet another crucial factor contributed to stability: because of their relative poverty, Norwegian magnates were unable to challenge royal power. Instead, they became royal agents in order to achieve prestige and wealth, thus strengthening the king’s authority. In the late thirteenth century territorial changes reshaped the kingdom. In 1266 King Magnus VI of Norway gave the overlordship of the Isle of Man and Hebrides to the Scottish king in return for payment and the recognition of Norwegian sovereignty over Orkney and Shetland. From 1262 Iceland started to pay a tax to the Norwegian king, as had Greenland, similarly organized, some years previously; in the 1260s Iceland formed a personal union with Norway. As with Christianization, political consolidation took longest in Sweden. Between the mideleventh and mid-thirteenth centuries, the rivalry of two powerful families for the throne often culminated in civil war and murders, and impeded the development of central monarchical power. This enabled provinces to retain their local autonomy into the thirteenth century. Provincial law codes were recorded in writing during the thirteenth century. Then nobles and the king’s chief minister (jarl) dominated political life and opposed the royal officials’ participation in local affairs.
Local assemblies (thing) were distinctive features of Scandinavian society. They included free farmers, and were the main institutions of government. They initially had political, social, and religious roles, then by the thirteenth century a legal one with royal agents gaining influence in them. These public meetings became representative institutions. A successful candidate to the throne had to be recognized in public assemblies. From the thirteenth century, political assemblies for entire countries arose, as well as councils dominated by the aristocracy that began to take on several of the assemblies’ functions. In Norway centralized monarchy replaced the authority of local assemblies in law, jurisdiction, and administration. The Norwegian King’s Mirror (c.1250) stated that rulership was determined by inheritance and the king ruled by divine right as God’s representative. Iceland throughout the period retained a political system based on public assemblies that made political and judicial decisions. No king ruled over a society of freemen, although by the thirteenth century a few families held power as chieftains.
Early Scandinavian society consisted of slaves, freedmen, tenants, and landowning freemen. A farming and pastoral economy predominated, with many isolated farms. Denmark was the most fertile Scandinavian land, favourable to agriculture. Villages grew in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in areas of open plains, where landlords formed large estates. At the same time, the proportion of free but dependent tenants increased. An aristocracy also emerged as a distinct military class of armoured knights, in Denmark in the second half of the twelfth century, in Sweden in the late thirteenth century. Taxation was introduced, but nobles were exempt because they provided military service; the legal differentiation of freemen thus began in the thirteenth century. Urbanization was well under way in Denmark by 1000, in Norway during the eleventh century, and in Sweden from the twelfth century. Many Scandinavian towns had a role in the Baltic trade, which from the thirteenth century was dominated by German merchants, exporting fish, fur, iron, walrus tusk (ivory), and falcons among other goods.
The rest of northern Europe, although frequented by missionaries and German merchants, became a fighting ground between the various powers set to conquer it. During the twelfth century, the Obod-rites were conquered by the Saxons; Pomerania came under Polish suzerainty and was converted; West Pomerania under its own Slav dynasty became increasingly Germanized. Saxons and Danes participated in the Wendish crusade. Germans and Scandinavians launched a ‘perpetual crusade’ in the Baltic, which was indistinguishable from warfare for conquest. The main targets until around 1230 were Livonia and Estonia; then Finland (for the Swedes) and Prussia, where a state was eventually organized by the Teutonic Order. Following missions to the Livonians on the Dvina, crusaders from Germany led by the Order of the Sword Brothers, founded in 1202 by Albert of Bux-hovden, bishop of Livonia, conquered Livonia by 1230. The local inhabitants were subjugated, and the order (which became a branch of the Teutonic Order in 1237) and the bishop divided the revenues, resisting papal pressure to establish the direct dependence of the area on the papacy. The Danes attacked Finland, Estonia, Saaremaa (Osel), and Prussia at the end of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. King Valdemar II (1202-41) briefly occupied Holstein and Hamburg in the early thirteenth century and in 1219 invaded northern Estonia and established a stronghold at Tallinn (Reval). This led to conflict with the Germans, but King Valdemar achieved the recognition of Danish control over Estonia, even though most settlers were Germans. The Teutonic Order became involved in the region when Conrad of Mazovia invited them in 1226 to defend his territories against raids by the pagan Prussians (Pruthenians), and to convert them. Having received imperial and papal protection, they quickly took on the task of conquering Prussian territories. Despite Prussian revolts (1242, 1260s), the Order subjugated or killed the local inhabitants and created their own state, founded towns, and settled German burghers. The Order’s further territorial expansion eastwards at the expense of the principality of Novgorod was checked by Alexander Nevsky in 1242. The Cours (of Western Latvia) and their neighbours the Semi-gallians were conquered in the late thirteenth century. By the end of the period most of northern Europe was subjugated by force and Christianized, with Germans settling throughout the region. The exception was Lithuania. It successfully resisted Christianization despite a brief period between its ruler Mindaugas’s conversion and his turning against Christians (1251-61), and it defended itself against the Teutonic Knights. Pagan Lithuania became a highly organized and powerful political entity with an organized pagan religion, proving that political structure rather than religion was the key to survival.
World History
