At the southern end of the peninsula Sweden was cut off from the sea by Danish Scania. Three provinces made up this part of Denmark occupying the mainland: Halland, Blekinge (with its close family and trade ties to Småland) and rich, grain producing Skåne. Only a narrow strip of Swedish territory touched the North Sea and that was along the Göta Älv River between Danish Halland and Norwegian Viken. At the mouth was the port of Lödöse, protected by the Swedish fortress of Älvsborg. There were three passages from the Baltic to the North Sea, the two straits (the Belts) and the Sound between Zealand and Skåne. In ancient times east-west trade had passed across Jutland at Hedeby, but as boats improved, the route shifted to the Little Belt. With bigger boats, the Great Belt had become the main waterway. But the larger cogs needed the deep channel of the Sound to travel back and forth between the Baltic and North seas. The Danish crown derived a great deal of revenue from fees and tariffs charged merchant ships passing through these waterways, money the king used to finance his armies and navies. He could even stop traffic from a country or port altogether if it served his purpose.
Sweden was, therefore, locked out of access to the west except for the single port of Lödöse and it was not connected by water highways to her major export areas. Sweden, quite literally, faced east, not west. Even here Danish control of Bornholm and German rule of Gotland gave them the ability to disrupt and harass Swedish maritime trade. Gustav’s options were severely limited and none available without a price. Although Frederick had given up, at least temporarily, his claim to the Swedish throne, the Danish nobility still looked upon Sweden as a Danish possession and there was Christian II lurking about in the courts of Europe pressing for help in regaining his Scandinavian empire.
Sweden of the Middle Ages never fully implemented the feudal system, certainly not to the extent that its more southerly European neighbors had. In England, France, Germany and even Denmark, this hierarchy of fealties built on a foundation of an almost slavelike serf population was pervasive. But in Sweden over half the peasants owned their own land, paying no rent to lords, only taxes to the crown. Still many of the trappings of feudalism had been adopted.
At the top of the pyramid was the king, although the position was not hereditary. By tradition, approval, even selection, was made by the Råd, the Council of Nobles. The king held his position, if not by consent of the people, at least by consent of the aristocracy.
Next in line were the great magnates (län på tjänst) who owned many estates scattered about Sweden and often in Denmark and Norway as well. Thus, they protected themselves from crop failures in any one region, solidifying their family’s hold on their social and economic positions. The Vasas, Oxenstiernas, and Posses belonged to this class. These families moved from estate to estate so as not to place too much burden on any one of their holdings. They were members of the Råd and actively involved in national politics as a way to look after their interests. By carefully husbanding their resources, they could build considerable surpluses in the form of butter, hides, grain and, if holding lands in or adjacent to the Bergslag, osmund iron. A share of these surpluses was traded for family and estate needs, cloth, spices and arms. Materials of war were needed to defend their own lands and to answer the call of the king for as much as a company of men-at-arms. The remainder of their surpluses was invested in land.
Earlier monarchs had built and maintained fortress castles at strategic locations around the country. The development and steady improvement of artillery increased the cost of maintaining defensible castles and fortresses to the point that their administration was often turned over to these great nobles in exchange for rights to the associated fief lands. The very largest of these grand nobles, perhaps a half dozen, even had their own ships with which to carry goods, mostly to the markets of Danzig and Reval.
In 1396 all agricultural land was designated as either frälse (free of taxes) or ofrälse (tax paying land). A petty nobleman might get his land redefined as frälse land if he supplied the king with an armed horseman in time of war, but for the most part, land retained its designation. Since peasants working ofrälse land were already paying a tax to the king, the noble landowner could not levy much of a rent on the peasant. These terms were established by law. If the noble used his own servants to work the land, then he had to pay the taxes on the land. Peasants on frälse land, on the other hand, paid the noble a full rent. Thus, frälse land was much more desirable than ofrälse, as far as the landowner was concerned. There was bitter competition for this land when it came up for sale, not only amongst the nobility, but also between the nobility and the church. If the real estate was in a city, particularly Stockholm, burghers were added to the mix, making the acquisition of municipal land a three-way contest. Land was wealth and its pursuit was creating conflict between segments of Swedish society, particularly the nobility and the church.
Below the great magnates were the rest of the nobility with land holdings ranging from a single estate to a few in number. Some were members of the Råd. Many acted as judges at the provincial landsting or the county häradsting.
Barring confiscation of property by the king, as happened to the Vasas, or some catastrophic general series of disasters like war, famine and plague, the great magnates were fairly secure. This was not the case, however, for the general nobility. The dividing of family lands among sons over and over could reduce holdings, removing the noble to the status of petty noble or even peasant. A series of crop failures or devastation due to war might have the same effect, forcing a noble to sell land in order to sustain the family or meet his rusttjänst (levy of armed horsemen to the king). Thus, social mobility was another unfeudal-like characteristic of Medieval Sweden.
Below the true nobility were the petty nobles or gentry (kngar). The dividing line might be the rusttjänst and the holding of frälse lands. Petty nobles would not contribute the armed horseman, but did pay taxes, though this line was often blurred. With astute management and good fortune a petty noble might rise to the rank of true nobility, acquiring frälse property or building surpluses to the point where he could provide rusttjänst. It was from the gentry that the king usually obtained his local representatives, his bailiffs.
The distinction between petty nobles and taxpaying peasants was even more ill defined and often changed from generation to generation. These peasants were masters of their own land, which generally met their family’s needs for sustenance and to pay the taxes. Taxes were usually paid in kind: butter, grain, cattle, furs, or the osmund of the Bergslag. Agricultural production was often supplemented by hunting, fishing, trapping or logging, products of the ubiquitous forests, lakes and streams of early Renaissance Sweden.
Finally, at the bottom of the social scale were the rent paying peasants. But even these tenant farmers had certain rights by law, making their lot better than the true serfs of central and southern Europe.
Paralleling the secular social-political structure was an ecclesiastic hierarchy. The Catholic Church in Sweden was headed by an archbishop appointed by the pope. In some cases nominations were made by the Swedish crown. However, the archbishop generally operated completely independent of the head of state and at times the two were at odds, as witness the Gustav Trolle scrap.
In Sweden, unlike most of Europe, bishops were to be chosen from recommendations from the crown and priests were to be selected by parish or county officials.
The church owned over one-fifth of the arable land in Sweden, more than the nobles, and was constantly buying more property in competition with the gentry and nobility. Once acquired by the church this land almost never came back on the market. In addition to rents and surplus products, the church also received tithings. Though much of this money from the people went to the Holy See in Rome, a sufficient amount was kept by the church in Sweden so there was seldom the resource squeeze that forced secular landowners to sell their property.
In some ways the archbishop, bishops, and abbots operated like the nobility, living in fortified
monasteries and rectories, maintaining armed servants to guard their property and escort excursions through the countryside. There was the Bishop’s Cavalry that gave the church a military option in resolving certain types of problems. This company of men-at-arms, last commanded by Bishop Hans Brask of Linköping, often ranged the countryside requiring maintenance from the peasantry. In terms of real estate, gold and silver, the church had more wealth than either the nobility or the crown. Much of the gold and particularly the silver was in the form of church and cathedral decorations, candlesticks, communion pieces and other church devices that the parishioners considered theirs, as part of the parish.
At the same time there were the priests, friars, monks and nuns at the base of the church hierarchy. For the most part these were hard working, sincere clergy with their devout flocks, parishioners who donated the tithes and offerings that built the churches and decorated them with paintings, tapestry, silver and gold objects. Parish churches in Sweden, by the end of the Middle Ages, were mostly constructed of stone or brick, replacing the earlier wooden structures that were subject to incineration every few years. They tended to be small and of unremarkable construction. Likewise, the interiors were usually simple, perhaps reflecting a simple, unpretentious congregation who, nevertheless, prized what decorations and precious items they were able to furnish their churches with.
Besides this feudal system of church, nobility and peasants, there was, in the Sweden of the early Renaissance, a governmental structure that had developed through the Middle Ages. At the county level, there was an assembly, sheriff, and administrator (häradshövdingar) combining executive and judicial offices. The officials were usually from the petty nobility, but all taxpaying peasants had the right of representation in the assembly (the häradsting).
The provinces acted much like independent states, exchanging emissaries and making agreements even with foreign provinces and governments. In the eleventh century, during a war between King Olof of Sweden and St. Olaf of Norway, Västergötland concluded its own peace treaty with Norway. In 1381 Skåne signed a peace treaty with Sweden during a Swedish-Danish war. Skåne repeated the act in 1434 and in 1436, concluding an armistice with Engelbrekt of Sweden in defiance of the Danish king Erik of Pomerania who was waging war with Sweden. Later, in 1505, the Smålanders of the Varend, More, Sunnerbo and Västbot counties signed a peace treaty with Blekinge during Svante Nilsson’s war against King Hans of the Union. Apparently this was not considered treasonous as a copy was sent to Svente Sture’s court.
Again the governors (lagmän) combined executive and judicial functions and were usually nobility, but as in county government, all taxpaying peasants could take part in the provincial assembly (the landsting). This was especially important because, by law, any new laws or new taxes had to be passed by the landsting.
At the national level the Råd, an assembly of nobility representatives, had been able to exert considerable influence through the late Middle Ages in selecting the king or regent and apply pressure on the crown. In 1441 the Råd forced Kristoffer to promise that no new members would be appointed to it without the body’s consent. In 1457 Christian I was forced to agree that the crown would not acquire more frälse land. If additional support was needed a herredag might be called, that is a Råd with representatives from one or more of the other classes. Finally, the king, or regent, found he could dilute the power of the nobility by calling a meeting of all the Estates, an embryonic Riksdag. Christian II did this twice to reinforce his authority and Sten Sture the Younger called one meeting of all the Estates in 1517 to endorse his action against Gustav Trolle. So, by the early Renaissance the idea of a national assembly with representatives from all classes, except the church, was established if not practiced with any regularity.
To deal with this hodgepodge of a semi-feudal system and developing governments, Gustav had inherited a woefully inadequate civil government system. At the local level were the king’s bailiffs. During the Danish occupation, Danes had filled this office, and it had been used successfully to gather taxes and maintain Danish control of county and provincial governments. Although Gustav had now turned these positions over to Swedish gentry, they were still looked upon by the peasants with suspicion and distrust.
The castles and associated fiefs were looked after by the great nobles, but the king reserved for himself certain high production fiefs, the larder-fiefs (fatu-burslän). And he always kept Stockholm Castle as the very symbol of throne and power. The royal court, that is the king’s civil service, had traditionally been made up of trusted servants. If Gustav was going to create a strong central government, he would need to expand the number of these administrators, but he found a dearth of material. The nobles were not interested nor did they have the training. True, Sweden did have the University of Uppsula founded in 1477, prior even to the University of Copenhagen, however, education here was almost strictly ecclesiastic in nature. Little was available in terms of training for business or government. So Gustav was forced to turn to the clergy and foreigners to augment his administrative workforce.
The king did inherit a chancellor, two in fact. One was the old Sture personal officer. This was Peder Jakobsson Sunnanväder, who had escaped the Stockholm Bloodbath, being on a diplomatic mission in Danzig. The other, an office of the Råd, was, by tradition, the bishop of Strängnäs. Neither of these would be acceptable to the new king.
During the period of the Kalmar Union, Sweden had, in many respects, stagnated. Her industrial growth, political progress and mercantile development had all been stifled. A formerly vibrant and progressive people had fallen behind the rest of Europe. Early Renaissance Europe would certainly have considered Sweden backward, a country out on the fringe, geographically as well as developmentally, a nation of little consequence. Gustav Eriksson Vasa was about to set his people on a path that would change all that. True, he ruled a land without the great cities of his southern neighbors, without a large, highly developed class of tradesmen, burghers, merchants or a merchant marine. His realm was almost entirely agrarian. Still, it was not a nation without resources.
About half the land was arable, providing sufficient food for the people and supplying some surplus for trade. Grain was mostly barley, though rye was growing in popularity. Hard bread and salt-fish were the staples. Butter and hides augmented the export of copper, iron and furs. These were exchanged for cloth, beer and, most importantly, salt. Furs came from the great forests that touched all parts of Sweden. The forests also supplied lumber for fences and buildings, birch bark for roofing, fuel for home fires and smelting. There was game and in the event of crop failure, certain barks and mosses could be used as grain substitutes to make bread. This bark bread was a common staple and was made from the inner bark of the pine, oak and some other trees. It was stripped in the late summer, dried, and pounded into a flour. Though difficult to harvest and process, and not particularly appetizing, it did provide excellent nourishment and was a food source well into the 1800s.
Roads were poor, often impassable during periods of heavy rain or snow. However, as in colonial America, waterways facilitated transportation. Boats and barges plied Sweden’s ubiquitous lakes and rivers in the summer, and sleighs and sledges traversed the winter ice.
Gustav’s subjects numbered less than a million people with only about 5 percent living in towns and even these towns were tied to the soil. Generally villages were surrounded by a high wall with fields and meadows, belonging to its citizens, laid out around the town. Villages generally developed around ecclesiastic centers, in areas of dense population, or at major markets.
The only real city was Stockholm with perhaps six to seven thousand inhabitant, but could claim both burghers and merchants, and boast a class of craft and trades people. Perhaps half the houses and commercial buildings were now of brick instead of traditional wood. This was the main trade center between the Bergslag and the Hanse cities with copper traded primarily to Lübeck and iron going to both Lübeck and Danzig. I
t was also the nominal seat of government and featured Stockholm Castle, an impregnable citadel never taken by storm.
During his war of independence with Christian II, Gustav had sent forces into the Danish-Norwegian provinces adjoining southern Sweden causing the Danish king great consternation. Some progress was made in Blekinge, Halland and Viken, but for the real prize, the breadbasket province of Skåne, Gustav put together a serious force. Three thousand German, mercenary men-at-arms and a large contingent of Swedish peasant foot soldiers were placed under the command of Lars Siggesson Sparve and the German Berend von Melen. In January 1523 this army crossed the Lagan River from Västargötland into Skåne where no opposing force near its size existed. Yet within six weeks this expeditionary force was in full retreat, withdrawing back across the Lagan River. What had happened?
Von Melen claimed he had been stopped by the spring flooding of the rivers. The army was back in Swedish territory by the end of February, a little early for spring runoff. Actually, the invasion fell victim to the border people’s peace treaties, in this case, the long-standing agreement between Skåne and Västargötland not to attack each other or aid those that did. The companies of Swedish foot from Västargötland refused to fight their Skånean neighbors. Border clans on both sides of the frontier collaborated in sabotaging communications and supply lines. Von Melen, whose heart may not have been in the expedition in the first place, pulled out giving Gustav one more defeat at the hands of the border people.
This failure did not, however, dampen Gustav’s enthusiasm for his German general. As we’ve seen, he played a prominent role in Gustav’s election and coronation at Strängnäs later that year.
In Stockholm, Gustav set about restoring the war ravaged city. The population of a few thousand had been reduced to a few hundred and most of the structures destroyed. Burghers, merchants and laborers were ordered into the city from other parts of his realm. Construction boomed and trade began to build to its former level of activity. However, the disruption of commerce due to the war was having its effects across the country. Exports of Bergslag metals had been interrupted. The importation of salt, necessary for the preservation of the fish, a staple all across Sweden, was slow in coming back. Gustav’s rebuilding of Stockholm added to the huge debt to Lübeck. This, on top of a shattered economy, had brought about a debasing of the currency. These grievances produced smoldering resentment, especially in Småland and in Dalarna, a province also unhappy at not getting more consideration in Gustav’s government. To exacerbate the situation Peder Jakeobsson Sunnanväder, former chancellor under the Stures, arrived from Danzig expecting a high place in Gustav’s government, but was rebuffed and given the disappointing office of bishop of Västerås. He settled in Dalarna, combining forces with a Master Knut Mickilsson to lead a revolt already brewing there.
Warrior Kings of Sweden Page 7
