The Kalmar Union was a royal and political union which united the thrones of Denmark, Norway and Sweden under the rule of Eric of Pomerania in 1397. He had already ascended as King of Norway in 1389 when the Queen of Norway, Margaret I, his great-aunt, made him her co-ruler. Margaret was also the Queen of Denmark, though there was no formal union between the two crowns of Denmark and Norway yet at that stage, albeit several monarchs going back to the eleventh century had ruled over the two kingdoms as distinct entities. Margaret engineered the process whereby Eric was accepted as her successor in Denmark and Norway and the arrangement was then extended to Sweden in 1397. The union was formalized when Eric was crowned as King of Denmark and Sweden in the town of Kalmar in southern Sweden on the 17th of June 1397. The union of the three crowns together was intended to strengthen the Scandinavian kingdoms after a period of decline in which the Hanseatic League of trading cities had come to dominate the trade of the Baltic Sea and newly emergent powers like the Poles, Lithuanians and various Russian principalities further east. The agreement was never fully accepted by large sections of the powerful Swedish nobility and the Swedes broke away in 1523 under the new royal House of Vasa. Denmark and Norway remained in a union dominated by the Danes until the Napoleonic Wars, following which Norway achieved its independence.[1]
Kalmar Union chronology of eventsKalmar Union chronology of events
In the Early Middle Ages there were no discernible kingdoms within Scandinavia. Evidently there were local warlords who controlled distinct regions, but the concept of the nations of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland which we know today did not exist. These gradually evolved as the Norse migrations to Britain, Ireland, northern France, Iceland and Eastern Europe were occurring in the ninth and tenth centuries. For instance, Harald Fairhair was reputedly the first King of Norway from 872 onwards, though he is a quasi-legendary character.[2] Eric the Victorious is believed to have emerged as a king of a united Sweden after many petty kingdoms there had merged under one ruler around the year 970. By the eleventh century the idea of a unitary Norse world that might be ruled by one king had started to develop. King Cnut the Great, for instance, ruled over what is sometimes termed the North Sea Empire. This included a brief period in which he ruled Denmark, Norway and England, the latter of which had been substantially settled by Danish war parties in the second half of the ninth century.[3]
The situation continued to fluctuate repeatedly throughout the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. What changed the the political landscape and provided the incentive for full Scandinavian union was the relative decline of the Norse powers in the North Sea and Baltic Sea and the rise of the Hanseatic League of North German trading cities like Lubeck and Bremen. With their military and commercial power threatened by the Germans, there was a growing incentive for the Norse kingdoms of Scandinavia to make common cause.[4] This was further augmented when Margaret of Denmark rose to become Queen of both Denmark and Norway in 1387 and 1388. Although she was an immensely capable woman, she was also trying to exercise control over two kingdoms at the time when there was still a lot of resistance to female monarchy across Europe. She consequently began orchestrating the ascent of her great-nephew, Eric of Pomerania, as both her co-heir and as ruler of the united Scandinavian kingdoms.[5]
While Eric was accepted relatively quickly as King of Norway, war followed to ensure that the Danes and in particular the Swedes would accept him as their sovereign. This arrangement required the Swedish aristocracy to effectively accept Danish overlordship to a degree. The fight was ultimately successful. Margaret and Eric were broadly successful because a section of the Swedish nobility simply preferred their claim to that of Albert of Mecklenburg, a north German lord who had claimed the Swedish throne back in the mid-1360s by right of his Swedish mother’s claim to it. Hence, in the 1380s and 1390s, the Swedish lords were faced with deciding between two forms of foreign rule, one broadly German, the only largely Danish. They chose Margaret and Eric and in 1397 the Kalmar Union was completed when Eric was crowned as King of Sweden at Kalmar in south-eastern Sweden south of Stockholm.[6]
The Kalmar Union lasted for 126 years. Eric of Pomerania had been a teenager when his great-aunt engineered his coronation as ruler of all three kingdoms and he lived down to 1459. He was, however, overthrown in the early 1440s and the three kingdoms entered into a period of internal instability. The Kalmar Union was maintained only on paper at times over the next half a century as powerful Swedish noble families like the Vasas and Oxenstiernas expressed a desire to end their kingdom's political dominance by the Danes. These internecine conflicts continued into the early sixteenth century. Christian II of Denmark and Norway appeared to have unified the three kingdoms again in 1520 when he captured Stockholm and was crowned there. Days after he was crowned he executed 82 supporters of the former Swedish upstart, Sten Sture the Younger. This caused a backlash and a new revolt by the Vasas resulted in Gustav I Vasa establishing himself as King of Sweden in 1523, ending the Kalmar Union in the process.[7]
Denmark and Norway remained united until 1814, with Denmark dominating Norway. That royal union was only sundered because of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Norway then immediately came under royal domination by Sweden.[8] In the end it was 1905 before a truly independent Kingdom of Norway re-emerged. Centuries of domination had left the country poor and many Norwegians migrated to the Americas and settled in places like the Dakota Territory and Utah in the second half of the nineteenth century.[9]
Extent of migration and demographic impact of the Kalmar UnionExtent of migration and demographic impact of the Kalmar Union
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The Union of Kalmar did not result in any massive exodus of individuals from any of the constituent kingdoms or any kind of major migration of this kind. However, it did facilitate greater movement within and between Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Because of the general dominance of the Union by the Danes, for instance, Danish officials, merchants and so forth began to become more of a presence in Sweden, particular in the southern part of the country in the Skane region that lies just a few kilometers away from Copenhagen and the eastern islands of the Danish archipelago. The same applied to movement between major Scandinavian trading cities and towns like Oslo, Stockholm and Trondheim under the Kalmar Union. The strengthened union between the three Scandinavian kingdoms also facilitated greater colonization of the Norse territories in the Faroe Islands and Iceland which the Norwegians and Danes had settled hundreds of years earlier. Finally, the era of the Kalmar Union also led to increased Swedish colonization of Finland, a part of Scandinavia that had a different ethnic landscape and which had been gradually conquered by the Swedes from the twelfth century onwards.[10]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Kalmar UnionExplore more about the Kalmar Union
- Denmark Church Records, 1576-1919 records collection on MyHeritage
- Denmark, Baptisms, 1618-1923 records collection on MyHeritage
- Denmark, Marriages, 1635-1916 records collection on MyHeritage
- Denmark Burials, 1640-1917 records collection on MyHeritage
- Sweden Household Examination Books records collection on MyHeritage
- Sweden, Baptisms, 1611-1920 records collection on MyHeritage
- Sweden, Marriages, 1630-1920 records collection on MyHeritage
- Sweden Burials, 1649-1920 records collection on MyHeritage
- Norway, Baptisms, 1634-1927 records collection on MyHeritage
- Norway, Marriages, 1660-1926 records collection on MyHeritage
- Norway Burials, 1666-1927 records collection on MyHeritage
- Sweden Research with Online Records at MyHeritage and Beyond at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Norway Research with Online Records at MyHeritage and Beyond at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Explore Millions of Norwegian Historical Records at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Find the Right Historical Jurisdiction in Denmark Using the Website DigDag at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ Harald Gustafsson, ‘A State that Failed?: On the Union of Kalmar, Especially its Dissolution’, in Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 31 (2006), pp. 205–220.
- ↑ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harald-I-king-of-Norway
- ↑ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/King-Cnut-The-Great/
- ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/hanseatic-league
- ↑ https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/kalmar-union
- ↑ Markus Hedemann, ‘The royal programme, the Union document of 1397, and the Schleswig war’, in Scandia, Vol. 77 (2011), pp. 38–71.
- ↑ https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/kalmar-union
- ↑ https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/battles/1814/c_norway1814.html
- ↑ O. M. Norlie, History of the Norwegian People in America (Minneapolis, 1925).
- ↑ https://www.norden.org/en/information/history-nordic-region