Aside from scattered references in ancient sources, Scandinavia was little known to the rest of the world before the VIKING raiders from the region began terrorizing Europe in the 800s. The Christianization of the Scandinavian nations—Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland—between about 950 and 1100 linked the area more closely to European civilization.
Early History
The earliest surviving reference to Scandinavian peoples appeared in a work by the Greek geographer Strabo, who described the writings of a sailor's journey to the far north around the fourth century B.C. The Roman writer Pliny, writing in the first century A.D., used the name Scadinavia (the n was added later) to refer to the Germanic tribes who lived around the Baltic and North Seas. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in his Germania in A.D. 98, discusses the kingdom of Sweden, the Lapp people of northern Scandinavia, and the Finns. Other references to Scandinavia appear in the early medieval period. However, it was not until the 800s — when CAROLINGIAN Europeans traveled to Scandinavia and the Vikings raided Europe—that Scandinavia entered European history.
The Scandinavians did not write about their early history. What little is known about them (from before 800) comes from archaeological remains and artifacts found at settlement sites, graves, and other places. Among the articles discovered were spears, swords, horns, pictorial stones, and gold jewelry.
In the early Middle Ages, the common political unit in southern Scandinavia was the herred, or district. Decisions were made by yeomen (free farmers) who met at regular intervals at a local public assembly. A central assembly generally approved a new king's right to rule, and when the king attended such assemblies, he did so as a guest. The assemblies could replace the monarch if he broke the law or failed to bring prosperity and success to the region. Over time, the king played a greater role in defense—building fortifications, guarding coasts, and constructing roads and bridges. As his power increased, so did the size of his entourage (those who went with him when he moved from place to place). During the Middle Ages, the peoples of Scandinavia were united by shared language and customs. For a time, they were politically unified as well. However, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland did not maintain their unity. Iceland was most distinctive in being ruled by chieftains in a "democracy" until it came under the authority of the Norwegian king.
Denmark
The first reference to Denmark appears in Carolingian chronicles of the ninth century, which report frontier skirmishes against a Danish king named Godfred. Soon after, Vikings from Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia came from the north to explore, raid, colonize, and trade in Europe. The first Vikings set out in small groups under the leadership of war chieftains. Gorm the Old and his son Harald II Bluetooth were the first to launch full-scale attacks beyond the Baltic and North Seas.
In the 980s, Harald's son, Sweyn I Forkbeard, set out to conquer England and became the English king in 1014. Sweyn was succeeded by his son Cnut I the Great, who spent most of his time in England and greatly admired English civilization. He not only allowed ANGLO-SAXON customs to continue in England, he also introduced them in Denmark. Danish interest in England died with Cnut and his sons. Succeeding Danish kings concentrated on raising the standard of living in Denmark. However, European interest in Scandinavia increased after the mid-1 OOOs. Several historical sources reported the growing contact between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. Adam of Bremen's History of the Bishops of the Church of Hamburg, written in the 1070s, described in detail the missionary work carried out in Denmark by the German church. The most outstanding of the Danish historians who emerged at this time was Saxo Grammaticus. His Gesta Danorum, a massive history of the Danes from the beginning of the monarchy to about 1185, compares in size and worthiness to BEDE'S great Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
Sweyn II Estridsen, Cnut's nephew and an Anglo-Saxon earl, was the first and most important Danish king. In 1042, he received Denmark as his share of Cnut's vast North Sea empire and ruled it until his death in 1074. Sweyn promoted the growth of Christianity in Denmark. Working with the archbishop of Hamburg, he organized the Danish church into eight bishoprics*—an act that greatly impressed Pope GREGORY VII, who wrote Sweyn a series of friendly letters. The church was further strengthened in 1103 when a Danish archbishopric* was established in Lund.
For 60 years following Sweyn's death, Denmark was ruled by his five sons, who were elected king in succession. After the last son died in 1134, family members fought bitterly for the crown. Family rivalries led to the election of two kings. Both candidates appealed to the German emperor FREDERICK I BARBAROSSA, who tried to divide the kingdom between them. Family rivalries resurfaced many times until one member of the family, Waldemar I, finally emerged as sole rule.
The Waldemar Age—from 1157 to 1241 and including the reigns of Waldemar I and his sons Cnut VI and Waldemar II—was the high point of Danish medieval history. The kings and the archbishops of Lund worked together to strengthen both church and state. Denmark expanded its power in the Baltic, conquering Estonia and German coastal areas. Eventually, tensions developed between church and state, the nobility revolted, and the monarchy fell.
The monarchy enjoyed a brief revival under Waldemar IV in the mid-1300s. His remarkable daughter Margaret, married to the Norwegian king, established the Nordic Union that united Denmark, Norway, and Sweden into a single Scandinavian government in 1397. Her son, Olaf, ruled both Norway and Denmark, and her grandnephew, Eric of Pomerania, served as king of Sweden. The union prospered under Margaret, but after her death, the Swedes withdrew and chose their own king. Denmark and Norway remained united for four centuries.
Sweden
In the early Middle Ages, Sweden was virtually unknown to the rest of Europe. Historians Jordanes (a Goth) and Procopius (a Byzantine) recorded stories of sailors, traders, and Scandinavian officers who served in the armies of Gothic Italy and Byzantium. According to their accounts, three major tribes lived in Sweden—Goths, Swedes, and Ostrogoths. Other, smaller tribes in western Sweden were part of the Danish Empire.
The peoples of Sweden lived in small villages and engaged in farming, herding, hunting, and fishing. The climate was favorable for AGRICULTURE, and trade was also important to the economy. Archaeological evidence shows that the inhabitants of Sweden traded with the Romans and Greeks and later with the FRANKS, ANGLO-SAXONS, and Irish. Birka, a new town built on an island in Lake Malar, became a center of international trade and a temporary residence of the king of Sweden.
During the Viking era (800-1000), the kingdom of Sweden was a loose federation of the three main tribes. The Swedes chose the king, and the other tribes then decided whether to accept or reject the Swedish choice. The Swedish king, in fact, had little power except in time of war, and sometimes the Goths preferred to have their own king. From earliest medieval times, the Swedish people were linked by water. They traveled readily along the ocean coast and on rivers and lakes. Scandinavian ships— light, swift, and seaworthy—both united the Swedes and other Scandinavian peoples and allowed them to sail across the seas and down the rivers of Europe.
In the 900s, Sweden was Christianized, probably by English missionaries. Swedish kings were Christian, although several early kings were expelled by their pagan* opponents. In the mid-1 OOOs, Christianity gained a stronger foothold in Sweden when a diocese* was established in the new city of Skara.
During the later Middle Ages, the Swedish kingdom expanded eastward. Sweden established settlements on both sides of the Gulf of Finland, attempted to control trade in northern Russia, and colonized the sparsely populated northern parts of Sweden. The 14th century brought civil war between the Swedish kings and the nobility who opposed them. The conflict ended when Margaret of Denmark was recognized as ruler of all three Scandinavian kingdoms. However, later, the Swedes left the Nordic Union, and Sweden remained an independent kingdom until the close of the Middle Ages.
Norway
Medieval Norway was an agricultural society with few villages and fewer towns. Most people lived on farms and supplemented their farming with fishing, hunting, and wood cutting. Fish made up a large part of the daily diet of the people who lived in the northern and western coastal districts.
As the population of Europe increased after 1000, so did the demand for Norwegian stockfish (fish dried in the open air without salt). In addition, the fasting rules of the church banned the eating of meat on certain days, which meant that many people ate fish instead. This further increased the demand for Norwegian stockfish, which accounted for as much as 80 to 90 percent of Norway's exports. With the money they made from selling stockfish, the Norwegians imported much-needed grain and malt. The western port of Bergen became a bustling center of foreign trade, especially with England and Germany.
As the population of medieval Norway increased, settlement expanded into the interior and into the sparsely populated north. Overpopulation in the southern and western coastal areas may have been the main force behind the Viking colonization of the Shetland, Orkney, Hebrides, and Faeroe Islands in the North Atlantic. Even after the Viking emigrations from Norway, the country's population continued to grow. In the early 1300s, the population was between 300,000 and 500,000. However, the BLACK DEATH of 1349-1350 and the epidemics that followed drastically reduced the Norwegian population.
The unification of Norway, which had begun with the reign of King Harald I Fairhair in the late 800s, proceeded with periods of military struggle that pitted the king against local chieftains who resisted his rule. In the late 1300s, Olaf IV (the son of Norway's King Haakon VI and the Danish princess Margaret) became king of Denmark even before he inherited his father's Norwegian throne. Olaf s reign strengthened the Danish-Norwegian union that eventually lasted for more than four centuries.
Iceland
Iceland is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean. In the mid-800s, it was inhabited by only a few Irish hermits. A Scandinavian explorer discovered Iceland by mistake when a fierce wind blew him off course as he sailed to the Faeroe Islands. His chance discovery of the remote island led to further exploratory visits and then to large-scale colonization.
Between 870 and 930, thousands of Scandinavians settled in Iceland. Most were Norwegian, but some came from Denmark, from Sweden, and from Scandinavian settlements in SCOTLAND, IRELAND, and the North Atlantic islands. The main reasons for the large-scale emigration from Scandinavia seem to have been overpopulation and the dissatisfaction of local chieftains in western Norway with policies of King Harald I Fairhair. By 930, more than 30,000 Scandinavians had settled in Iceland.
Fearful of allowing a king to gain too much power, the settlers established a government that gave local chieftains the authority to control the legislative and judicial processes. The chieftains gave land to their followers in exchange for allegiance and the payment of taxes. The chieftains provided their followers with protection, settlement of disputes, and places of worship. As more settlers came to Iceland and the number of disputes between neighbors increased, judicial assemblies became necessary for areas larger than those controlled by a single chieftain.
The most important assembly was the Althing, an islandwide assembly that had been established by 930. It met for two weeks every June. The legislative body associated with it—the Logretta—had 144 members, two bishops (after Christianity was introduced to Iceland), and a "lawspeaker" whose main duty was to recite the laws to the assembly from memory. (Iceland's laws were first written down around 1117.)
When Iceland was divided into four regions in 965, the Althing had four Quarter Courts whose members were chosen from the island's 36 chieftaincies. The Fifth Court was introduced in the early 1000s to serve as an appeals court. After the Logretta adopted Christianity in about 1000, the chieftains found a way to control the new religion the way they had controlled the old pagan religion—by building their own churches and becoming priests themselves or appointing their own priests. After two dioceses were established at Skalholt (1056) and Holar (1106), the Althing chose the bishops, who were usually relatives of the chieftains. When a TITHE (church tax) was imposed in 1097, the chieftains kept half the money they collected in their districts.
Iceland's main product was a rough wool cloth, but the island never seemed to have enough cloth to export in exchange for the grain it needed. Despite Iceland's attempt to trade with other places, its only consistent trading partner was Norway. Iceland's commercial tie to Norway was strengthened in 1022 by a trading agreement.
In the 1200s, strife among Icelandic chieftains became so intense, and their opposition to church reforms so extreme, that the people called on the king of Norway for help. In 1262, the island's leading chieftains agreed to a political union with Norway. In return for an annual tax, the king kept peace on the island and passed no laws that were burdensome to the Icelanders. However, after the union, Norwegian laws were introduced, and the authority of the Althing and the Logretta was reduced.
By the end of the Middle Ages, there was peace in Iceland, and the island was receiving basic necessities—but at a price. Although the island had been settled in part to escape royal power, it was now dependent on the united kingdom of Denmark and Norway.
Culture of Scandinavia
The literary culture of medieval Scandinavia consisted of two types of material: the old mythology and sagas (long tales or poems about heroes from Scandinavia's pre-Christian past), and the newly created material such as rhymed chronicles, saints' lives, sermons, and other religious works written on Christian themes.
Mythology and Sagas.
Most of what we know about pre-Christian Scandinavian culture comes from medieval Icelandic poems called Eddas which recorded the Norse legends about heroes, gods, giants, and the origins of the world. One important source of information about Norse legend and myth is a manuscript called the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. Another is the Prose Edda, a handbook of poetry compiled by Icelander Snorri Sturluson around 1220.
The chief god of the pre-Christian Scandinavians was called All-father. He was supreme over 12 other gods, the best known of whom were Odin and Thor. Odin—later equated with All-father—was the highest and oldest of these gods. Wednesday (Woden's day in Old English) was named for him. Thor, the strongest of the gods, was often pictured in battle against evil forces represented by giants, trolls, wolves, and other creatures, such as the Midgard serpent, who lived in the ocean and was coiled around the earth. Thursday (Thor's day) was named for this god. Two other weekdays bear the names of Scandinavian dieties. The name of Tyr, the boldest of the gods, was given to Tuesday (Tyr's day), while the name of Odin's wife, Frigg, the preeminent goddess, was given to Friday.
The sagas are long narratives that describe the deeds of notable Vikings and other Scandinavians. Although the sagas are concerned mainly with events of the 10th and the llth centuries or earlier, they were not written down until the 1200s and the 1300s. Because the sagas were passed along orally and preserved only in memory for many years, there are various versions of each popular tale. The Greenlanders' Saga and the Saga of Erik the Red are of special interest to modern historians. They tell how Norse adventurers founded a colony on Greenland, a large island off the coast of North America, and how Vikings became the first Europeans to see the Americas.
Rhymed Chronicles.
The rhymed chronicle originated on the European Continent in the late 1100s and appeared in Scandinavia in the late 1200s and the early 1300s. A rhymed chronicle is an account in verse of a historical event or series of events, usually in honor of an aristocrat or aristocratic family. The style and structure of the medieval Scandinavian chronicles were based on models from elsewhere in Europe, especially from Germany.
The first and perhaps the finest of the Scandinavian rhymed chronicles is Erikskronikan (The Chronicle of Erik). Composed anonymously between 1322 and 1332, Erikskronikan set the pattern for all later Scandinavian chronicles. The longest surviving version of the chronicle contains 4,545 lines. It opens with the following lines: "May God grant you honor and praise./He is the source of all comely virtue,/All earthly pleasure and heavenly grace,/For he reigns over them both."
Erikskronikan chronicles Sweden's history from the rule of Erik Eriksson in 1249 to the selection of Magnus II Eriksson as king in 1319. Most of the first part of the poem, which chronicles events to the year 1301, is about a war against the heathen* Finns. The next section narrates the events of the next few decades, including a 1309 sea battle between the king of Norway and Duke Erik, the brother of King Birger Magnusson of Sweden. The last part of the chronicle describes a feast at Nykoping Castle to which King Birger invites his brothers Erik and Waldemar. The king imprisons and executes his brothers in a scene that forms the emotional core of the chronicle and raises it to the level of a true epic poem. None of other Scandinavian chronicles comes close to achieving its high artistic standard.
Of the Scandinavian chronicles that followed Erikskronikan, only Karlskronikan, the longest of the rhymed chronicles (9,628 lines), is of special interest. This is because it contains valuable historical information. Completed in 1452, Karlskronikan chronicles Sweden's history from 1390 to 1452. The poem seems to contain two distinct chronicles and is probably the work of two anonymous authors.
Religious Works.
The medieval religious literature of Scandinavia and Iceland consisted of commentaries on the BIBLE, translations, SERMONS, lives of saints, accounts of visions and revelations, theological* handbooks, prayer books, and other devotional writings. These works were not fundamentally Scandinavian. They closely resemble Latin sources and were part of the teaching and preaching of missionaries who Christianized Scandinavia.
CHRISTIANITY was introduced to Scandinavia in the 800s, first to Denmark and Sweden, and later to Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. St. Ansgar, the first archbishop of Hamburg in northern Germany, is credited with bringing Christianity to Denmark and Sweden about 830. However, missionaries from the British Isles also went to Scandinavia. They may have been the ones who inspired Scandinavian writers to use their native languages. The missionary period lasted until 1104, when the church established an archbishopric* in Lund, in southern Sweden, to serve the needs of Sweden and Denmark. In the mid-1100s, two additional archbishoprics were created in Scandinavia.
Medieval Scandinavians were deeply interested in stories about the lives of saints. More than 100 saints and groups of saints had their stories told in Icelandic and Norwegian sagas, and collections of saints' lives were constantly revised and expanded to make the legends fuller and better. Literature about Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also extremely popular in Scandinavia, especially legends about the miracles she was said to have performed. Stories about her life circulated in Iceland as early as the 1100s, and a long series of Swedish tales about her miracles was also found.
Two nearly complete manuscripts from about 1200—one Icelandic and the other Norwegian—are the best surviving source of medieval Scandinavian sermons. Theological handbooks, schoolbooks, prayer books, and other works used in worship from the medieval period were mainly in Latin or translated from Latin. As with most Scandinavian religious literature, inspiration for these works came from abroad, particularly from Germany.
In "The Middle Ages - An Encyclopedia for Students" edited by William Chester Jordan, Charles Scribner's Sons, Macmillan Library Reference USA, Simon & Schuster Macmillan, New York. Excerpts volume 4 p.38-44. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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