Cross and Scepter

by Bagge, Sverre

  The description of the merchant in The King’s Mirror also suggests an explanation of why the Germans succeeded in Scandinavia. Aristocratic merchants like the one in this text, who mostly exported the surplus of their own lands, might occasionally want to travel abroad, bringing their own merchandise to markets in order to see the world and meet other people. However, they had no economic incentive to do so, if the buyers were willing to pick up the goods themselves and bring back what the sellers wanted in return. As long as the main export articles were the surplus from agriculture and the fisheries in the form of land rent, both producers and foreign buyers had a common interest in avoiding the unnecessary mediation of indigenous professional merchants. The land rent was mostly paid in kind—in grain, butter, and fish, the latter notably in the northern and western parts of Norway, so the great landowners received a considerable surplus. The archbishop, for example, was the greatest fish exporter in the country. In addition to his permanent residence in Nidaros, he had a great palace in Bergen, partly because Bergen was the most important royal residence, but also because of the fish trade. For this reason, the archbishop also had a more positive attitude toward the Germans than many of the other lay and clerical magnates. Peasants and fishermen had a similar attitude to German merchants. The fishermen brought their stockfish the long distance from northern Norway to Bergen, but they were unable to transport them further as the voyage to Bergen and back took the entire summer. They too established permanent relationships to individual merchants, which probably meant that they got lower prices, but had the advantage that they could get credit in bad seasons and thus secure the goods they needed even if they could not pay for them at once.

  A similar pattern existed in other parts of Scandinavia: Scania in Denmark (now southern Sweden) had extremely rich herring fisheries, and during the thirteenth century the great fair held there became a crossroads for trade between Scandinavia, Germany, and Western Europe. The markets in Scania are mentioned in the sources from around 1170 onwards. In the early thirteenth century, the chronicler Arnold of Lübeck pointed to the wealth that the trade in fish brought to the Danes and mentioned its importance for his own hometown. King Valdemar II (1202–41) issued a law for the port of Skanør, regulating the fishing and trade at this port and the custom due from the exporters. At this time, there were royal castles and some smaller towns in the surrounding area. Foreign merchants had their own plots, where they were allowed to salt their herring and conduct their trade and where they had internal jurisdiction. Merchants from a large number of towns, from the Baltic as well as the North Sea area, came to the market in Scania, which thus became a meetingplace between East and West, where a wide range of goods were sold or exchanged for herring. Scania thus became a market not only for herring but also for wine, beer, furs, hemp, salt, meat and various other commodities. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the value of Lübeck’s trade in Scania was six times that of the city’s trade in Bergen. In 1399, 1,218 of 1,760 ships that left Lübeck were bound for Scania, and the value of the trade in this and the following year amounted to one half of the town’s total exports and imports.

  Sweden’s main export article was iron. Iron is one of the most common metals on earth and can be found in a variety of landscapes. However, some of the inner parts of Sweden, Dalarna and the surrounding areas, had the advantage of high-quality iron, readily accessible near the surface of mountains. This resource was increasingly exploited from the late twelfth century onwards, and played a prominent part in the Swedish economy after around 1300. Mining in Sweden was organized and largely controlled by freeholders or members of the lower nobility who jointly owned the mines and worked in teams to extract the ore (Swedish bergsmän = mountain men/miners). The smelting took place in privately owned works at the farms of individual miners. Iron mining was very labor-intensive, requiring large numbers of hired laborers; around 20,000 people, men and women, are supposed to have worked in the industry, which may amount to around 3 percent of the total population. In addition, mining created a considerable market for food. Grain was imported from the rich agricultural areas around the Lake Mälaren, and oxen were driven distances of 300 to 400 kilometers from the southern provinces. The existence of a wealthy class of commoners with easy access to arms also had major political consequences: the iron-producing areas formed the core of the popular movement against the union king in the fifteenth century (see Chapter 5).

  Iron was transported from the inland mines to the coast and exported to other countries, mostly by German merchants who dominated trade in several Swedish towns, most notably Stockholm and Kalmar, where they may have numbered around one third of the total number of burghers. In contrast to Norway, the Germans in Sweden did not form a separate community, but became burghers with equal rights and the same duties as their Swedish counterparts.

  The relationship between the Germans and the Scandinavian kingdoms was somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, the Germans filled an obvious need for the great landowners, enabling them to sell their products and get others in return, and were also a source of money and credit. On the other hand, their trading conditions and the conditions for their settlement in the Scandinavian cities were a constant source of conflict, and the wealth of the merchants and cities was a temptation, particularly for the Danish king. The events during the last years of Erik Menved’s reign and after his death in 1319 showed their financial strength and gave indications of the further expansion that followed. In 1367–1370, they defeated King Valdemar IV in war, and they played a major part during the period of Scandinavian unions. Their main aim was to protect their trading interests, which often led them to interfere in Scandinavian politics, particularly against Denmark, the strongest power in the region.

  The growth in trade increased town populations and led to the foundation of new towns. In addition, bishops were normally supposed to reside in towns, and a bishop had a sufficiently large entourage and the wealth needed to support at least a small town with a cathedral, an episcopal palace, and houses for canons and for the meetings of the cathedral chapter. Kings and their courts also increasingly took up residence in towns, normally moving between a number of them, another factor contributing to urbanization. In addition, most towns served as area markets, where peasants and local lords could exchange commodities. But of the around 140 Scandinavian towns founded before the early fourteenth century—fifteen in Norway, twenty-five in Sweden, and the rest in Denmark—only three were significant centers for long-distance trade: Bergen, Stockholm, and Visby, each probably with around 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants.

  The two largest towns in Scandinavia from the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth century onwards were Bergen in Norway and Stockholm in Sweden, both centers for the export of, respectively, fish and iron, transported by German merchants, who formed a large part of the towns’ populations. Visby was also important from this point of view, although it declined from the thirteenth century onwards because of competition from German towns. By contrast, there was no similar town in Denmark, despite the importance of the Scania market. The reason for this was most probably the short distance between North Germany and the Danish markets. German merchants could easily buy the herring where it was caught and either return to their hometowns or export it to Western Europe during the same summer, whereas they needed to spend the winter in Bergen if they were to do the same with fish from northern Norway. Consequently, despite their greater economic importance, the fisheries in Scania did not give rise to extensive urbanization; the trade was carried on in various market-places along the shore. This changed after 1400, when the markets in Scania declined, while the towns, notably Malmö, became more important. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, it was the fourth largest town in Scandinavia, after Bergen, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, with around 4,500 inhabitants. It also played a major part during the Reformation and the Count’s War (p. 284–85). The growth of Copenhagen took place after 1417, when the king took it over from the bishop of Ros
kilde and made it his capital.

  Figure 13. Sixteenth-century city plan of Visby on Gotland (Sweden). Only half of the area inside the wall has urban settlement; the upper part, which is actually a hill, consists of fields. This may be the result of the decline of the town in the later Middle Ages, although it was quite normal for medieval towns to have agricultural areas inside their walls to provide food for the inhabitants. The many stone houses and the large churches indicate that the city was still wealthy. Today, Visby is one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Scandinavia, although, except for the cathedral (no. 2 from the left), all the churches are in ruins. From Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, eds. Civitates orbis terrarum, vol. 5., first edition (Cologne 1572, repr. Cologne, 1898).

  There was a considerable expansion of Scandinavian trade during the Middle Ages, which led to closer contact with the rest of Europe, to urbanization, and to the increased use of money; all of which contributed to a substantial economic surplus. Almost all the towns that existed in Scandinavia around 1300 had been founded during the previous 300 years. However, the urbanization trend did not alter the predominantly agrarian character of Scandinavian society. Agriculture was probably more important in the High Middle Ages than in both the previous and the following period. Most of the export consisted of surplus from agriculture and the fisheries, and the greatest exporters were the members of the landed aristocracy. Although the towns were home to a number of indigenous merchants and artisans, export trade was dominated by foreign merchants. Politically, the indigenous merchants were too weak to compete with the landed aristocracy, in contrast to the situation at this period in the most commercialized areas of Europe—Italy, the Netherlands, and parts of France and Germany.

  Bureaucracy or Feudalism?

  Thus, the division of power in contemporary society—at least at the central level—becomes a question of the relationship between the king, the Church, and the secular aristocracy. In contrast to many other recent scholars, R. I. Moore regards the period from 975 to 1225 as crucial for the development of the European state. An ecclesiastical bureaucracy and an intellectual elite developed an increasingly systematic and intolerant doctrine that was imposed on the population, and a distinctive royal bureaucracy resulted in more effective and oppressive government in Europe than in most other contemporary civilizations. Although there arose a class of professional bureaucrats in the king’s service in countries like England and particularly France, which to some extent formed a counterweight to the top aristocracy, Moore exaggerates their importance compared to the prelates and the aristocracy. What characterized the political system of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, compared to that of other civilizations, was not the strength of the bureaucracy under the king’s direct control, but on the contrary the king’s greater dependence on the leading strata of the population, the prelates, nobles, and burghers. This resulted in corruption, inefficiency, and injustice, but it created a certain amount of stability as well, because the state mattered to its most influential inhabitants. This applies even more to Scandinavia. First, there is little evidence of a central administration recruited from men of lower rank who were completely dependent on the king. In most cases, we do not know the social origin of the men in the king’s service, but to the extent that we do, they seem mostly to have been recruited from the aristocracy. Second, the central administration was significantly smaller and less developed.

  However, we do note movements in the direction of Moore’s bureaucracy in Scandinavia from the late twelfth and particularly the thirteenth century onwards. The central administration in Scandinavia, as well as in the rest of Europe, had its origin in the king’s household, as the titles of the various officers indicate: “marshal” or “constable” (head of the stable), “steward” (kitchen manager), etc. These offices continued to exist later in the Middle Ages, but they were sometimes kept vacant. A new officer appears from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, the “chancellor,” who was responsible for the king’s correspondence and kept his records and accounts. The development of the chancery in the following period made the chancellor the most important royal official and gave him a role resembling that of Moore’s bureaucrats in England and France. Clerical chancellors played an important part during the authoritarian regimes in Denmark under Erik Klipping and Erik Menved, as well as in Norway under Håkon V.

  The rise of the chancery was of course a result of the increasing use of script in administration from the thirteenth century onwards. The number of letters extant or known to have existed during the most active period of the royal chancery in Norway, the reign of Håkon V (1299–1319), is twenty per year. The Swedish chancery reached the same figure in the 1330s, while the total number of letters per year in Denmark in the early fourteenth century was eighty. As most of what was written has been lost, these numbers probably represent only a tiny part of what was actually produced. There is also evidence of efforts by the king to attach competent people to his chancery, clerics as well as laymen, for instance the foundation of an organization of royal chapels by King Håkon V of Norway, and the systematic use of canons for the same purposes in Denmark and Sweden. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the output was anywhere near that of the contemporary English chancery. Henry II (1154–89) already is supposed to have issued 115 letters per year, whereas a dramatic increase took place under his successors, which can be measured in the rise in the amount of wax used per week for sealing: from 3.63 pounds between 1226 and 1230 to 31.90 between 1265 and 1271. It might also be mentioned that the total of all published documents from Norway in the period from about 1000 to 1570, from institutions as well as individual persons, fills twenty-three large volumes, which represents the majority of the extant material; unprinted letters may fill a few volumes more. This amount is roughly equivalent to the material issued by the English royal chancery over a few decades of the thirteenth century. However, medieval England was “a much governed country,” and the volume of documents both used and preserved was higher there than in any other country north of the Alps. Although far behind England, the Scandinavian countries show a significant rise in the use of script from the thirteenth century onwards, the late-medieval material from Sweden, and particularly Denmark, being significantly more abundant than that from Norway.

  The medieval commonplace about the value of writing was that it served to preserve the memory of things that had happened. This is the theme of numerous introductory statements in the royal charters (arengas) and is also mentioned in prefaces to historical works. Most obviously, kings, prelates or great lords needed to keep records of their estates and rights to determine whether they received what they were entitled to from their subordinates. The concentration of property in few hands over widely different parts of the country is difficult to imagine without written records; at the least, such concentrations would likely have been less stable. The importance of the preservation of memory also applies to the legal field, where the reforms carried out in the thirteenth century would hardly have been possible without writing. Whereas in the past it would have been difficult to base legal decisions on a broad knowledge of sentences from earlier courts that had dealt with similar cases, precedence could now acquire greater importance than before. The same principle applied to other administrative decisions. Standardized procedures and routines became possible to a greater extent than in an oral society, and the decisions of lower instances could be backed up by the king’s confirmation. The introduction of writing also served to give the elite greater authority as experts on law, religion, and other fields of knowledge, which in turn contributed to further centralization. Most important, even the relatively modest use of script in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries gave the king and the central government a clear advantage over potential rivals in other parts of the country. The king now could make his will known to his officials all over the country and receive reports from them, which gave him an amount of information that none of his potential rivals in other pa
rts of the country could match.

  The consistent application of these principles is more characteristic of Early Modern than of medieval government, but already in the thirteenth century, the use of script made it less necessary for the king to be present in person to have his will respected. Kings, bishops, and other leaders now to a greater extent communicated indirectly, through local officials or through the use of script. The king also normally resided in towns, although he moved between a number of them. In Norway, his usual itinerary in the thirteenth century was by ship along the coast between Oslo and Bergen, spending most winters in Bergen. Winter was also the time for the main festivities of the year, the Christmas celebrations, when most of the leading men in the country gathered around the king. Capitals in the modern sense were a later development. In Denmark, Copenhagen developed into the permanent administrative center in the fifteenth century, but the king continued to travel.

  There was also a change in the relationship between the king and his subordinates, at least in theory, a change from “friends” to “officials,” that amounted to a degree of what might be termed “bureaucratization.” Like ecclesiastical officers and in contrast to previous usage, they now had clearly defined districts and owed obedience to the king, although there was nothing like the total dependence on him propagated by sources like The King’s Mirror. Here the models for the royal official or retainer are Old Testament heroes like Joseph, Mardocheus, and Esther, who remained obedient to their masters no matter how unjustly they were treated, and whose absolute subordination to the king is expressed in the passage where the Father explains the advantage in joining the king’s service. When all men in the realm are obliged to do whatever the king demands without receiving anything in return, becoming the king’s man and receiving a salary from him will be an unquestionable advantage.