SVT & Natt och Dag Presents Nostra Mare - History of Sweden.
narrated by Alf Åberg.
It was in this castle in Tavestahus, Finland, during summer of 1519, that a group of young nobles gathered to discuss the situation of Sweden. They were Gustav Eriksson, Jakob Bagge, Berendt von Mehlen, Johan Eskilsson Tre Rosor and brothers Gustav & Erik Knutson of the Brahe family.
Of course they did not know it at the time, but their meeting would change how the maps of Northern Europe would be drawn, drastically. In 1519, Scandinavia was very different from how it looks today. In name, it was called Denmark-Sweden. In reality, it was Denmark.
In 1483, the Danish king Hans married Maria, the daughter and only child of Sweden’s king, Erik XIII. Twenty years prior, his father, Christian I had done a similar thing to gain the Norwegian crown, he married the widow queen of Norway, Margarethe. The three royal lines of Scandinavia merged into one, and it ruled from Köpenhamn.
The Norwegian populace did not have a problem with this, as both Hans and his father Eric VII ruled the country with great skill. It did also help that Norway did not have an unruly noble crowd with royal ambitions. Sweden, however, was much more difficult. During the 14th and 15th centuries, Sweden’s kings had come from several different noble families, it can be noted that both Gustav Eriksson and Johan Eskilsson Tre Rosor were of royal blood. Other nobles that had ruled Sweden had been Folkungarna, Natt och Dag and the Grip families.
As all these had claims on the throne, it was very difficult for Hans to rule Sweden, because of all the royal wannabes. For an 8 year period, 1499-1507, Johan Eskilsson’s father Eskil Gustavsson ruled Sweden. He had gained power through a successful rebellion started by the peasants in Småland and Bergslagen.
In 1513, Christian II arose on the Danish throne, and he had the favour of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Sweden’s he had gotten from his successful overthrowing of Eskil Gustavsson, who had earned the title “the ruthless”. He did not do it entirely by himself, however, he had the help of the same people that had put Eskil on the throne, the peasants. As concessions to them, he had to abandon the plans to completely incorporate Sweden into Denmark, what they demanded was that Sweden was to be a separate kingdom. If it weren’t for the fact that France had just declared war on Denmark, he would perhaps not have given in, but now he did. And it was most likely a good thing for Christian, as he needed Sweden’s help in 1519, because of Denmark’s eager ambitions in the north of the Holy Roman Empire, he found himself at war with war with the Electorates Brandenburg, Mainz, Cologne, Münster, Friesland and Saxony.
Now things started to look bad for Christian, to get the money he needed he started raising taxes in Sweden aswell. Because of this, he grew impopular. And once again, Sweden was reduced to a mere servant of Denmark.
It was also at this time that Henry VIII, king of England and Scotland, Duke of Brittany and lord protector of Eire, Gustav Eriksson’s uncle-in-law, and Christian II’s mother’s cousin, took an interest in the wars of Denmark-Sweden. He began to pour money into the emptied coffers in Köpenhamn, Gustav Eriksson’s personal treasury was also generously filled. He then declared war on France, effectively splitting the country in two with the occupation of Bourgogne, former lands of the Dukes of Burgundy. By keeping the French armies at home, he did Denmark-Sweden a huge service, enabling them to concentrate on the Empire’s armies.
Henry VIII kept sending money to the Baltic, but he was beginning to tire of Christian II’s inability to stop the war where no side got the upper hand but was slowly emptying the lands of men, crops and creatures.
Europe in 1524
The Baltic in 1524
