Scandinavian history
All Norwegian schoolchildren learn that Norway was unified by Harald Finehair at the Battle of Hafrsfjord in the year 872.
People started to migrate into the area about 13.000 years ago.
Parts of Sweden were known as Scania, hence the name Scandinavia for the broader region. The idea of Scandinavian unity was born early, but was for hundreds of years an utter failure, only to be realized to a limited degree late in the twentieth century.
The Scandinavians are mainly Germanic peoples.
The Sami in Norway number between 40.000 and 60.000. In Sweden it is about 20.000.
The first Scandinavian historian, the thirteenth-century Dane Saxo Gramaticus wrote to glorify our fatherland.
Into the Europe
The Osberg Ship is a Viking vessel built around 820 and found in 1903. If we have to give the Viking Age a beginning date it would be when they adopted the sail, around 750.
The Vikings
To the east incursions into Russia – Gardariki started from Sweden. Around 800. The advances into Russia were a continuation of establish trades in the Baltic Sea and along Europe’s northern shores. Fur from Sweden was a prized luxury in Constantinople.
Kiev and Novogord were established in that time. The mixed population was known as the Rus. They were the fathers of Russia.
Gange-Rolv, Rolf the Walker, in the French chronicles he was given the silly name Rollo. He was the maker of Normandy. The Norwegians have claimed him for himself. He has a statue in the town of Alesund. But he may well have been Danish. He died in 930. The Normans take England in 1066 under William the Conqueror and they also took some territories in Italy and Mediterranean territories from Arab Muslims.
Siege of Paris in 885 and 886 and again in 911 were all done by the Norsemen.
Bjorn Ironside was raiding along both the African and European coasts, up the Rhone, across the Balearic Islands and possibly laying siege to the city of Pisa.
On 8 June 793 Lindisfarne in UK, a monastery of the Celtic Church, was attacked by Norsemen. The Scandinavian were in England to stay. They settled in Northumbria in 876. The area which became known as Danelaw. A lasting Viking influence in England was the creation of England itself. By 920, most of the Danelaw south of the Humber was back in English control, by 954 the rest of it up to York.
From 980 to 1016 Vikings were again raiding the south of England. The leading duo was Svend Forkbeard and Knud. Svend attacked in 1013 and declared himself King of England. He died in 1013 and Knud was King. Knud was defeated by Aethelred, but he returned to take up battle again, assisted by Olav Haraldsson of Norway, the future St. Olav. He was again unsuccessful.
In 1015 he again came to England and this time he strike an agreement with Edmund. After Edmund death he became King of England.
Danegeld – Danish money. In 991, Olav Tryggvason took the first in a regular series of payments from the England.
Knud died in 1035. This was the summit of Viking power.
In 1066 Harald Hardrade or Norway invaded England. On 25 September English won at Stamford Bridge. But they lost the battle of Hastings on 14 October against Willam of Normandy.
It was said that Vikings founded Dublin. In 836 Turgeis occupied the settlement. In 902 an alliance of Gaelic lords attacked Dublin and expelled the last Norseman pretending to be king, one Ivar.
Ingolfr Arnarson landed in the bay which was to become Reykjavik in 874. From Iceland, the migration continued west to Grenland, under leadership of Eirik the Red, and from there on to America under Leif Eirikson.
The oldest known Scandinavian manuscript of any kind is a letter of 1085, in Latin, from Knud the Holy. The Sagas were from the 1100s, there were 700 of them. What the Scandinavians of the time themselves left in writing is on rune-stones, raised stones with brief inscriptions. Upward of 100 survive in Norway, 400 in Denmark and 2000 in Sweden.
Saxo Grammaticus was the Danish historian whose history, Gest Danorum was completed around 1215, about twenty years before Snorri finished Kringla Heimsins.
Vikings didn’t call themselves Vikings. They were two kinds: kings and chiefs and freelancers. They were cruel. It did help that they came out of cultures that celebrated violence and were shallow in empathy. They had good ships, good weapons and organizational ability. From Denmark or southern Norway to eastern England was about a week sailing, from the west Norway to the Shetlands could be twenty-four hours.
Shield-maidens are prominent in the mythologies, but only there.
Slaves were used as labour and as commodities. The very word slave originates from Slav, which was used in Moorish Spain as a term meaning slaves of European origin, as opposed to African.
A thing was an assembly of free men, men of some significant property.
The early kings may not have known much about statecraft, but they knew about taxation.
Fortification along Denmark’s southern border with Germany, known as Danevirke, was first built in the eighth century.
In Scandinavian stories about cosmos the first beings were a giant and a cow. The giant is killed and from his body nine worlds are created. Asgard for gods, Midgard for giants, dwarfs and elves, Hel as the underworld. The cosmos moves through time, from the creation to the Ragnarok.
There are twelve gods. Odin, Thor, Freyr, Heidmall, Tyr, Loki, Balder, Freyja.
Valhalla is where the dead heroes reside. Giants live in the Jotunheim.
The First Modernizations
Where there head been a Scandinavia of warriors, there would be a Scandinavia of Church and kingship.
Late Viking Age coins typically had a Christian cross on one side and Thor’s hammer on the other.
Christianity came slowly to Scandinavia, paganism’s final outpost in Europe (along with the Viking playgrounds in the Baltic and Russia).
Uppsala in Sweden was the most enduring centre of the old cult.
The first Christian king in Norway was Hakon the Good from around 935. The final conversion was finished around 1000. In Denmark Christianity was the official religion from 965. Olof Skotkonung was converted around 990 in Sweden. By the end of the next century Sweden had become predominantly Christian.
It was the partnership of State and Church that enabled the revival of learning in Europe. In 789 Charlemagne decreed that cathedrals and monasteries establish schools. The first cathedral school in Scandinavia opened in Lund in 1085.
With Gudfred in Denmark, kingdoms and nations started in Scandinavia. The urge to glory was one of many motivations driving first the Vikings and in later centuries Danish and Swedish kings to play the game of being big powers in Europe. Today those claims of eminence are based on being a model of good governance, peace-making and welfare state excellence.
Gorm the Old claimed title from about 936 to 958. His soon was Harald Bluetooth. He was followed by Sven Forkbeard who defeated Olav Tryggvason in the Battle of Svolder. Next was Knud the Great and after him Hardeknud, who died in 1042 and with him the royal line from Gorm died out.
In Norway Harald Finchair won a Battle of Hafrsfjord around 872 and he proclaimed himself king of all Norway. He ruled until 931. His son Eirik, know as Bloodaxe was next. Then Hakon the Good. Eirik’s son Harald was next, but he did not control the whole Norway. Harald Bluetooth from Denmark also claimed Norway for himself, installing proxy ruler Hakon Sigurdsson. Olav Tryggvason was leading a rebellion and was defeated by Sven. Olav Haraldsson was the next Norwegian fighting Danes – Knud. Knud landed in Norway on 1028. Olav fled to Novgorod to Yaroslav the Wise. He then come back to Norway try again but was defeated at the Battle of Stiklestad. It was Harald Hardrade, who was fighting in Constantinople in the elite Varangian Guard, who took the throne in 1047, that he bought with his money from Byzantium time. He fought at Stamford Bridge in 1066.
Olof’s reign in Sweden was from about 995 to 1022. Danish territory in south Sweden comprised roughly three counties what are now Skane, Halland and Blekinge. The core regions in the early version of Sweden were lands of the Svear and Gotar. Olof Skotkonung was the first king to control both those lands. After Olof came his sons Anund and Edmund.
In those early times trading towns were important. Hedeby in Denmark and Ribe. In Sweden it was Birka. Visby in Gotland was important for Baltic trade. Kaupang in Norway.
Excursion Neighbors West and East
On 21 April 1971, a Danish naval ship arrived in the port of Reykjavik in Iceland. It was carrying a cargo of manuscripts, the original vellums of the Codex Regius and the Book of Flatery.
Iceland was first put under Norway supremacy and later under Denmark, when it absorbed Norway. It was WWII that enabled Iceland to break free.
Iceland had almost no immigration so they developed their own population. The standard second name ends in -son or -dottir and denotes the parentage of the person.
Eirik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder, this was around the year 982. He sailed to Greenland. Denmark started to take interest in Greenland and in 1931 Norway tried to occupy a slice of eastern Greenland. After the WWII Truman offered to buy Greenland from Denmark. In 1953, Denmark ended Greenland’s status as a colony.
The Shetland and the Orkney Islands became Norwegian possession in Viking’s age. In 1469 Christian I of Denmark pawned them to James III of Scotland on the marriage to him of his daughter.
The Faroes are part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but not part of EU and with an extensive local autonomy.
Finland was under Swedish dominance from the Viking age. Russia held it from 1714 to 1721. In the War of Finland in 1808-9 the Swedish era came to an end. Russia take it over and until 1919 rule it. In 1919 they got their independence.
Progress, Death and Restoration
The Great Transformation
In the next two or three centuries from 1200, the Hanseatic League became fourth power around the three Norse Kingdom.
Land became valuable. The Church, the barons and the Crown secured its ownership. With new property relations came new class divisions. The Church became the biggest owner.
By around 1300, the agricultural revolution had transformed Scandinavian society.
The Church’s monopoly on schooling was challenged by city schools. The first in Stockholm dates from 1315.
Hanseatic League operated from around 1200, branching out from Lubeck embracing Visby on Gotland and setting up offices in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bergen, Novgorod, Bruges and London. The Bergen office survived the League and continued to trade until around 1760. The premises were destroyed in a city fire in 1702 (the Brygge – harbour).
The hereditary principle was accepted in theory in Denmark by the mid-twelfth century and in Norway by the mid-thirteenth century (in Sweden only later).
The Scandinavian quest for nationhood had started in Denmark. The Valdemar period – under Valdemar until 1182, his son Knud VI until 1202 and a second son Valdemar II until 1241. Two important documents: Kong Valdemars Jordebog – Census Book and Kong Valdemars Lovbog – Code of Jylland. The Lovbog was the first comprehensive written code of law in Scandinavia.
Magnus Erikson, already king of Sweden and Norway, declared himself to be also King of Skane and hence to be the carrier of three crowns, since when Tre Kronor has been the Swedish national symbol. But the three crowns would also be the symbol of the later Danish-dominated Kalmar Union of all three kingdoms.
Hakon Hakonsson and Magnus Lawmender were the only two kings in all of Norway’s history to have exercised royal rule in any real sense. After 1280 the kingdom still remained in good order under two more kings, Erik and another Hakon. But when the crown past to Magnus Eriksson, who was Swede, that was the first step for Norway to be reduced to a union-kingdom.
Swede entered the high Middle Ages in chaos. Sverker the Old came to throne in 1130. And then until 1389 there was a lot of changes, civil wars and weak rulers.
Big Death, Slow Resurrection
The plaque arrived in Europe in 1347. We know it today as the Black Death. It has devasted effect on population of Scandinavia.
Someone had to shoulder the blame. All over Europe, the Jews were a prime target.
On 17 June 1397, a Danish-Norwegian-Swedish congress, meeting in the town of Kalmar in Sweden, agreed a treaty union for the three kingdoms, and oversaw the crowning of Erik of Pomerania, the son of a German duke, as a three-country king. But he was king in name only, the boss was Margrete, his aunt (known in history as Queen Margrete I..
Margarete was the daughter of Valdemar. When he died in 1375, she came back to Denmark. In 1380 her husband Hakon died in Norway. Margaret’s son ruled Denmark (where he was called Olaf) and Norway (where he was called Olav (Olav V)). Margaret ruled in his name. He died in 1387. In Sweden baron asked for her help in fight with King Albrekt. She won. Margaret died in 1413 and was brought to Roskilde.
The Union survived on paper but not in reality. In 1439 Erik took refuge in Gotland and then in Pomerania.
Christian II. decided to disciplined Swedes. On Sunday, 4 November 1520, he was crowned as King of Sweden. There was a feast in the palace. But the feast quickly turned into execution and is known as The Bloodbath of Stockholm.
Reformation
The Church was rich, the Crown were poor. But power was shifting, from Church to Crown.
Christian II of Denmark wanted subservient Church. His successor Frederik I, king from 1523, was supporter of reformation. On his death in 1533 the succession disintegrated into a messy civil war – Catholic against Lutherans.
By 1533, the Church was national and independent of Rome, but only in 1536 was it Luteran. In Norway it was imposed as the official religion by decree from Copenhagen. In Sweden the formal reformation was conducted under Gustav Vasa.
The Cities
Cities emerged in Scandinavia as part of the post-Viking-Age Great Transformation.
Cities can be set up on king’s orders. But their growth comes from trade. Dominant cities were Copenhagen, Bergen and Stockholm.
Copenhagen started as a fort in 1176. It became a royal possession during the reign of King Valdemar Atterdag.
Stockholm sits at the estuary of Lake Malaren. Beyond it are the Bay of Bothnia and the Baltic Sea. From early on it had a strong German presence.
Oslo was founded as city in 1048 by Harald Hardrade.
Bergen rose to prominence in the thirteenth century under Hakon Hakonsson and Magnus Lawmender. The Crown moved to Oslo under King Hakon V.
The Age of Perpetual War
Gustav Vasa rode into Stockholm in 1523. Vasaloppet is an event held in memory of the legend that Vasa (during rebellion) fled skiing through Dalarna, from Mora to Salen (90 km). The event runs in the other direction.
Two New Kingdoms
Around 1500, the herring abandoned Danish waters to move north up the Swedsih and Norwegian coasts and relocate deep into the North. The Dutch and English tried to took Hansa position. Now Denmark and Sweden (after Hansa was gone) took the lead.
Christian III was the winner of Danish civil war in 1536. Norway was ruled by Danes for the next three centuries. The elimination of Norway was illegal.
The evolution towards stronger, eventually absolutist, kingship was assisted by a duality of theories. The understanding of economies, later to be called mercantilism, was that economic activity should serve the State. The theory of estates helped to vindicate the claim of obedience from the top down.
The first book produced in Denmark was issued in Odense in 1482.
Tyge (Tycho) Brahe was a famous astronomer. He detected a star that moved across the sky – 1572.
The first Scandinavian banks was in Sweden, known as Stockholm Banco, established in 1657 by a Dutch immigrant Johan Wittmacher Palmstruch. The bank was the first in Europe to issue paper money.
Gustav Vasa ruled for thirty-seven years. He was a tyrant. He owned a lot of money to Hansa. He stands in history as the king who made the Swedish rike and is up there with Birger Jarl in shaping the nation’s destiny. He was succeeded by his son Erik XIV in 1560.
Christian III died in 1559 and was succeeded by his son Frederik II.
Erik and Christin went into seven years war (not the famous one) and dragged Norway into it. This war saw the birth of national hatred in Scandinavia. Sweden won. Erik also inherited a Livonian war with Russia. The war lasted until 1583 and Sweden won.
Imperialism
The 1500 onward became a period of migration. There is a substantial Swedish population in present day Estonia. From Finland there was a migration to the north Norway.
Absolutism lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. The Danish kings of the period were alternately Christian and Frederik, up to Christian VII who departed in 1808. Nine kings in Denmark and fifteen in Sweden in this period.
Christian IV was a big king, big in body, big in appetites, big in ambition and big in action. He failed as a warrior king. But he added magnificent buildings to Copenhagen. He wanted colonies. He spent much time in Norway. The Thirty Years War broke him.
Next kings were less successful.
In Sweden Gustav Adolf (Gustav Adolphus) son of Karl who regent from 1599 and king from 1604, was important. He modernized Sweden economically. He ruled until 1632. His daughter Kristina was queen at eighteen. She finished the Thirty-Year War. She plunder the Prague in 1648.
During the reign of Gustav IV, Sweden lost Finland to Russia.
In the wars of 1657-60, Danish possession in southern Sweden – Skane and the coastal lands up to present-day Norway – passed to Sweden.
In Napoleonic Wars, Norway was lost to Denmark into a union with Sweden.
Sweden in the Livonia War got Estonia. And was in control of Bay of Finland. Until 1710 Russia took back the control over Baltic part. And in 1713 it also occupied Finland.
During seventeenth century Sweden and Denmark were involved in a few wars between each other.
A Taste of Colonialism
Christian IV set up the Danish East India Company in 1616. Majority of settlers in Danish West Indies were Dutch. A West India Company was chartered in Copenhagen in 1671.
The Swedish East India Company was set up in 1731.
The Danish slave trade from Africa was abolished in 1803. Slavery itself in 1848. In 1853 The Danish Parliament in 1853 decided to award slave-owners compensation. From the 1660s to 1806, 111.000 African slaves were shipped from the Gold Coast on Danish ships, in a mainly State-organized trade.
A central personality in the Danish colonial economy was the landowner and statesman Ernst von Schimmelmann (1747-1831).
Into the Modern World
The Invention of Society
To Scandinavia came, from 1720 and on, peace.
The border between Norway and Sweden is Europe’s longest land border. In the north there is Sami area. The border was established in 1751. Finland was lost to Sweden in 1809.
With the upturn in demand for timber in Europe, Norway experienced a bonanza.
Whaling emerged as an industry.
In Denmark, with its rich agricultural economy, reform came in the shape of land restructuring.
Danish and Norwegian shipping prospered.
Schools were established. Roads were built. Easily in Denmark, feasibly in Sweden and as an art of extreme difficulty in Norway.
The great intellect of the age was Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754).
With the coming of peace, the absolutist grip on political power was relaxed. In Sweden after Karel XII in Denmark after Frederik V and Christian VII.
After the French revolution Europe was again involved in fighting. Sweden sign up with France for protection against Russia. Denmark wanted to stay neutral, but British aggression forced her to align with France.
One of Napoleon’s general Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte was adopted as king in Sweden. He took the name Karl Johan.
Since Denmark stayed with France until the end, the Peace of Kiel on 15 January 1814, between Denmark and Sweden, underwritten by Austra, Britain, Russia and Prussia, gave Norway to Sweden. Norway wanted independence. They even elected Christian Frederik as king on 17 May 1814, but Kral Johan marched in Norway with his army.
The Golden, and Not So Golden Age
The Gota Canal in Sweden, 190 km, opened in 1831. It was designed by Thomas Telford, who also designed Caledonian Canal in Scotland.
The canal company in town of Motala set up their own mechanical plant. The spin off are now Bolinder, Kockum, Husqwarna.
Lars Magnus Ericsson (1846-1926) learned instrument making in Germany, while working for Siemens. He returned home in 1876 and established Ericsson.
Nobel with his dynamite, was also by-product of canal.
But for Denmark and Norway the economic prosperity was not that high.
By 1909, more than third of ownership of Norwegian industry was in foreign hands, particularly Swedish, spearheaded by the Wallenbergs.
Obligatory schooling was introduced in Denmark in 1814. In Norway in 1827. Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundrvig (1783-1872) was intellectual force behind folkebojskoler – folk high schools.
The Schleswig-Holstein question was still not resolved. When the German Confederation was established in 1815, the idea that Denmark hold Holstein was not accepted by Germans. In two Prussian wars, around 1850, Denmark was the weaker power.
Migrations in that times brought Scandinavians to America. Mainly around the Midwest – Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas and some to Canada.
It was Norway, the least-industrialized economy, that radical labour organization first reared its head in a serious way. Marcus Thrane, young editor was by 1850 at the head of a movement of 30.000 people.
The first socialist party was established in Denmark in 1871. In Norway in 1887 and in Sweden in 1889.
A political Left was born to give representation to country farmers and city burghers in Norway. The Norwegians took pride in their constitution. From 1871, the Storting met annually. The election in 1882 gave the Left a landslide victory.
In Denmark a new constitution was agreed and sanctioned on 5 June 1849. National assembly Rigsdag was now elected. Elections in early 1901 were a victory for the Left.
If the economic story of Sweden was industrialism, the political story was militarism. Sweden was a militaristic state. It was a reform in 1866 that established Riksdag of two chambers. In 1917 the Left won an election in the lower chamber.
The union between Sweden and Norway was not made to last. On 7 June 1905 the union had ceased to function. A Danish prince Carl was invited to accept the crown. He took the name Haakon VII. He became the first exclusive King of Norway in 525 years.
Wars and Progress
Scandinavia is an invention of the twentieth century.
At the outbreak of the WWI, the Scandinavians declared themselves neutral. Neutrals can trade with all sides. Business was good.
In 1906, Jacob Christian Ellehammer of Denmark was the first European to fly an aeroplane.
It was an age of exploration. Fritjof Nansen (1861-1930) was crossing Greenland on skis in 1888 and almost reaching the North Pole in 1890 expedition with his ship Fram. Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) was the first to take an expedition to the South Pole.
The extremist rightists party were created towards the end of twentieth and into the twenty-first century. A Progressive Party in Norway, a Danish People’s Party in Denmark and a Sweden Democrats’ party in Sweden.
In WWII, Germans attacked both Denmark – on 9 April 1940 and Norway. In Denmark the resistance was weak, and even during the war it was until the late phase when some active resistance was established. In Norway local Nazis was represented by Vidkun Quisling. Sweden managed to do what Denmark and Norway had wanted, to stay neutral. After the war both countries faced the difficult matter of dealing with occupation collaborators.
Norway and Denmark joined Nato. Together with Sweden they participated in the Marshall Plan from 1848. Denmark joined European Community in 1961.
Norway reluctance for union with both Scandinavia and Europe is not surprising. They had only won full independence in 1905. It also started to find itself rich, due to the petroleum under the North Sea.
Social democracy was the strongest in Scandinavia. Some great politicians were: Thorvald Stauning, Hjalmar Branting, Albin Hanson. Tage Erlander, Olof Palme, Einar Gerhardsen, Gro Harlem Bruntland.
In 1944, the Social Democratic Party in Sweden adopted manifesto with three main components: full employment, fair distribution, industrial democracy, in the later the socialization of capital being a core component.
The Danish and Norwegian social democrats were against nationalization, they supported regulation.
Rudolf Meidner and Gosta Rehn, created an active labour market policy model now known as Rehn-Meidner model. Collective benefits for workers in exchange for wage moderation.
The Sami question and assimilation was still active. In 1852 a Sami riot erupted in Kautokeino in northern Norway. Both Sweden and Norway were trying to find a proper way of dealing with it. In 2006 state lands in Finnmark, the Norwegian county were transferred to local community.
The hard 1930s lifted the Scandinavians into a new political culture. There was deal-making, compromise and collaboration. There was State activism, economic management and social reform.
We Scandinavians are so tolerated, so open, so advanced, so informed, so international, so solidaristic. But that’s also the way we have to be. We are all one big standard mainstream.
Scandinavia Today
Francis Fukuyama has coined the term Getting to Denmark in this The Origins of Political Order. He was referring to what he thought liberal democratic capitalism should be about.
Scandinavia is the ultimate periphery. The Scandinavians were finding an answer to their old question of how to be European: don’t worry about it, know yourself, get your own house in order.
