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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge History of Scandinavia
  • Cited by 23
  • Volume 1: Prehistory to 1520
  • Edited by Knut Helle, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
2003
Online ISBN:
9781139053570
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521472999
Subjects:
Area Studies, European History 1000-1450, British History: General Interest, European History after 1450, History, European Studies
Series:
The Cambridge History of Scandinavia (1)
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - British & European History
Information

Book description

This volume presents a comprehensive exposition of both the prehistory and medieval history of the whole of Scandinavia. The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

Reviews

"...this work is clearly designed to permit regular consultation in library collections for many decades. Essential." Choice

"...a significant addition to the growing literature on Nordic history...an indispensable reference book for every major library. Thanks to good editing, it is highly readable and flows seamlessly from chapter to another. It is a volume not only for professional historians, but also a valuable research tool for college students and the general adult reading public." History

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Contents

Page 2 of 2

Contents
  • 14 - Ideologies and mentalities
    pp 463-486
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter explains the treatment of mentality with respect to the monarchy and the church that were built up in Scandinavia in the high Middle Ages. In this way, it becomes possible to treat mentality in close connection with ideology. A main theme in most surveys of the Scandinavian countries until around 1300 is the growth of the state. The mental aspect of this development is illustrated clearly in The King's Mirror. The conflict between the old and the new attitude to a central authority emerges clearly from The King's Mirror. An important symbolic expression of the new ideology was royal unction and coronation which introduced in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in the 11th and 12th centuries. Courtly culture was an important medium of the far-reaching changes as a result of the victory of the state. The chapter also discusses the importance of Christianity, oral and visual preaching, and Christianity as a religion for the laity and the nobility.
  • 15 - Literature
    pp 487-520
  • View abstract

    Summary

    From an international point of view Scandinavian literature of the Middle Ages is largely identified with the narrative literature of Iceland, particularly the myths of the Edda and the classical family sagas. When the Church brought the Latin alphabet and European learning to Scandinavia, the culture of the region was basically oral, although runes played a certain role. Traditional oral culture encompassed all aspects of life. In east Scandinavia, literary production was originally confined to very few centres of clerical learning. The first Scandinavians known to have studied at foreign centres of learning are Icelanders in the eleventh century. Both bishops of Skálholt, Ísleifr and Gizurr were educated in Germany and France. The Eddic style was used, in composing new poetry for fornaldarsögur, while some fragments of heroic poetry included in such sagas may be old and preserved in oral tradition into the fourteenth century. The chapter also discusses storytelling literature, Skaldic poetry, and king's sagas.
  • 16 - Art and architecture
    pp 521-549
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Romanesque style dominates in Scandinavian art between circa 1100-50 and circa 1225-75, followed by the early and high Gothic, and finally from around 1375 by the late Gothic. The first signs of the Gothic style appear already in the late twelfth century, though it always takes some time before a new taste is commonly accepted. A survey of Romanesque painting and architecture in Scandinavia should begin with the medieval Danish kingdom, though there are also many and interesting monuments from the Romanesque era in the two other Nordic kingdoms. In Sweden, examples of Romanesque stone sculpture are mostly found in Götaland, especially in Västergötland, and on Gotland. By tradition the art of metal-forging was of great importance in Scandinavia. Although the medieval application of this art does not equal the artistry of the Germanic Iron Age it is worthy of notice, at least in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
  • 17 - Music
    pp 550-556
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The knowledge of music in prehistoric Scandinavia is mainly based on finds of instruments. The most remarkable are no doubt the bronze lures of which about fifty specimens and fragments from the period circa 1200-500 BC have been discovered in Denmark as well as a few in southern Sweden, southern Norway, and northern Germany. The evidence of song and music increases significantly in the high Middle Ages. Finds of instruments from this period have been made even in Finland and the islands of the Western Ocean. After Scandinavia was officially Christianised from the late tenth century, regional variations of church music became popular. The musical climate of west Scandinavia deteriorated in the late Middle Ages. The unions with Sweden and Denmark meant that the monarchy moved away and the country lost its courtly milieus, which favoured the development of secular music in Denmark and Sweden.
  • 18 - Population and settlement
    pp 557-580
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the early and high Middle Ages there was a considerable expansion of population, settlement and production in Scandinavia. The medieval population in Scandinavia can best be calculated on the basis of the numbers of farms and holdings and the estimated average numbers of people living on them. In northern Sweden, the population presumably continued to grow throughout the late Middle Ages, mainly as the result of colonisation. In Norway, the absence of suitable sources makes it difficult to grasp the chronology of depopulation and settlement contraction. The crisis has left early traces in the form of a sudden drop in farm and land prices over much of the country immediately after 1350. The chapter also deals with the less dramatic settlement development in the rest of western and southern Scandinavia. Abandonment of settlements was a clear feature of the late medieval development of Danish society.
  • 19 - The condition of the rural population
    pp 581-610
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Rural society in Scandinavia was marked by the repercussions of a dramatic loss of population well into the second half of the fifteenth century when the first signs of recovery manifested themselves in some areas. Nobles and the Church were the dominant landowners in Denmark at the end of the Middle Ages, possessing together 75 per cent of the farms, but there were districts in the peripheral forested areas where freehold farms could amount to 50 per cent of the total. As a consequence of the late medieval loss of population the profitability of certain forms of agricultural production decreased radically, destabilising the economy of those involved. On the other hand, large groups of the rural population profited from the changes that occurred in the period of crisis. Auxiliary means of livelihood often permitted farmers to accumulate wealth. In the course of the high Middle Ages, the rural population of Scandinavia came to comprise only legally free persons.
  • 20 - The towns
    pp 611-634
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the early fourteenth century, there was a relatively dense pattern of towns in the southern part of Scandinavia, which were concentrated in the coastal areas and linked by the traditional sailing-routes. What really happened to Scandinavian towns in the second half of the fourteenth century is obscured by the shortage of contemporaneous evidence, particularly sources on which quantitative valuations may be based. As for written evidence, there is a general decrease in Scandinavian narrative sources; historical sagas were no longer produced and ecclesiastical annal writing was waning. Scandinavian towns were small by contemporary European standards. None of them exceeded 10,000 inhabitants. The chapter also discusses the import and export of goods in medieval Scandinavia that took place mainly through merchants, guests and immigrants, the laws to regulate medieval town life, and town administration. Crafts and local trade in Scandinavian towns were similar to those in other towns of northern and western Europe.
  • 21 - The nobility of the late Middle Ages
    pp 635-652
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The importance of the nobility depended to a great extent on its wealth, mainly in land. This chapter first talks about Scandinavian nobility during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the latter half of the fourteenth century the number of noblemen in Norway and Denmark decreased. The Norwegian low nobility was drastically weakened by the loss of income which followed the fall in population. Then, the chapter discusses the nobility in Finland and Norway. The Finnish nobility was established as a service aristocracy. From Sweden, the Finnish nobility was regarded as local, and the royal castles were held by Swedish magnates. The mainstay of the developed high and late medieval system of government in Scandinavia was the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy. Norwegian historians have been aware of the interdependence of the nobility and royal power, but Danish and Swedish historians describe the political development as fundamentally a conflict between king and nobility.
  • 22 - Church and clergy
    pp 653-676
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The beginning as well as the end of the period 1350-1520 is marked by historical events of considerable significance in Scandinavian church history. The demographic effects of the plague epidemics led to general loss of population which reduced the size of congregations and caused a shortage of clerics, leading to incorporations and annexations of parishes. In the period from the great plague to the mid-fifteenth century donations of land to the Church increased considerably, both as pious gifts and in return for perpetual masses, revealing a religious spirit of generosity as well as fear for the dies irae and the life to come. St Birgitta was strongly influenced by her membership of the Swedish high nobility and her spiritual background in the Swedish church. For the whole papal schism the Nordic churches remained in the Roman obedience. During most of the late Middle Ages their relationship with the papacy also interacted closely with their ties to the royal power.
  • 23 - The political system
    pp 677-709
  • View abstract

    Summary

    A common feature of the Scandinavian political system which had developed by the mid-fourteenth century was the absence of larger political assemblies corresponding to European general estates and English parliaments. The only regular decision-making body alongside the Scandinavian kings was the aristocratic-clerical council of each realm. In 1397, the grand-nephew of Margrethe was crowned king of all three Scandinavian kingdoms in Kalmar. The two documents from the Kalmar meeting of 1397, the Act of Coronation and the Union Document, are the most debated in Scandinavian medieval research. The thirty-five years following the Kalmar meeting have been described as the Nordic union of the Act of Coronation. The union monarchy dominated the three realms beyond the purely local level. Subsequently, the union monarchy met with a crisis in the 1430s which it could not overcome. The chapter also discusses council constitutionalism, the constitutional situation in the period 1450-1513, and the local administration in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
  • 24 - Inter-Scandinavian relations
    pp 710-770
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Inter-Scandinavian relations in the late Middle Ages were strongly influenced by geopolitical conditions as they had been already in the latter part of the high Middle Ages. Scandinavian union history starts in the year 1319 when a Swedish-Norwegian personal union was established as an unplanned consequence of the three year-old Magnus Eriksson's accession to the thrones of Norway and Sweden. During the period 1355-75, Swedish political scene was dominated by continued strife and unrest which threatened the kingdom with partition. The election of Olaf in the 1370s may be said to have put Denmark under the rule of the Norwegian royal house and thus to have heralded the later Nordic union. The removal of King Erik, the installation of Duke Christopher as king of Denmark in 1440, and the succession conflict also influenced the inter-Scandinavian relations. With the events of 1522-23, the late medieval epoch of a union between all three Nordic kingdoms finally ended.

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