Scandinavian Journal of History 027 [91-114] - The Eighth Argument Identity, Ethnicity and...

The Eighth Argument. Identity, Ethnicity and PoliticalCulture in Sixteenth-Century Scandinavia

Harald Gustafsson

What was a Swede in the 16th century? How did people identify themselves andothers, and what political role did collective identities play before the coming ofmodern nationalism? One would perhaps expect that there exist many worksproposing answers to such questions. Within the humanities, there has been asteadily increasing interest in culture and identities in the last few decades.Nevertheless, few have asked such questions. When dealing with medieval and earlymodern Europe, historians have put the questions rather in this way: Was theSwede of the 16th century Swedish in the modern sense? Did nations and/ornationalism exist before the end of the 18th century?

The discussion of medieval and early modern identities has been severely limitedby “the nationalicistic trap”. Identities before the late 18th century have beenstudied in order to look for the roots of modern national identity, to find out wherenations originate, or to argue that nationalism is a purely modern phenomenon. Iintend to fall into that trap myself later in this article, discussing why nationalismand national identity are less fitting concepts when dealing with the 16th century.But basically, I seek to uncover and conceptualize the identities of the time in theirown right.

1. Ethnicity, nationality and the historians

It is common to divide scholars into modernists and primordialists.1 The modernistsclaim that nations and nationalism is a phenomenon rising basically together withthe western “twin revolution” of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The stress couldbe different on different factors causing or catalysing this development and the timespan of the transition could be seen differently. While Ernest Gellner and Eric

Harald Gustafsson, born 1953, is Professor in the Department of History, Lund University, Sweden. His publishedworks include Mellan kung och allmoge (1985); Political Interaction in the Old Regime (1994); Nordenshistoria (1997); Gamla riken, nya stater (2000); “The Conglomerate State” (Scandinavian Journal of History,1998).

Address: Department of History, Lund University, Box 2074, SE 220-02 Lund, Sweden

1 Overviews of the field, for example in P. Hall, The Social Construction of Nationalism. Sweden as anExample (Lund, 1998), pp. 22–41; C. Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism. Ethnicity and Nationhood inthe Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 1–6; R. Johansson, “Etnicitet och nationalism– ett forskningsfalt for historiker, Historisk tidskrift, 3 (2000), pp. 422–429.

# 2002 Taylor & Francis

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Hobsbawm knit the rise of nationalism tightly to the rise of industrialism andbourgeois society, and Elie Kedourie to the rise of romantic philosophy, BenedictAnderson stresses the development of “print capitalism”, which starts withGutenberg in the 15th century, and Michael Mann and Anthony Giddens drawattention to the state formation process of early modern or even medieval Europe.2

Such historians usually describe identities before nationalism as, for most people,merely local.3

Primordialists claim that national sentiments are in some way “primordial”,original, perennial, natural or how it might be expressed – that modern nationalismonly differs in scale, not in nature from older forms of identity, and that also inolder times there existed larger collective identities.4 But it should be rememberedthat the label “primordialists” was created to discredit this position, just as“modernists” actually served the same purpose. To the best of my knowledge, thisdichotomy was coined by Anthony D. Smith in his The Ethnic Origins of Nations in1986.5 His intention was to show that both sides went too far. In the middle, with abalanced opinion on the ethnic roots of nationalism, stood of course the authorhimself. This is a common rhetorical means of putting your own research inperspective and claiming your own originality, but it has been taken over as truth inmany recent texts. Smith himself has even been a victim of his own dichotomy; bymany authors, he is simply referred to as a primordialist.6

What unites most of these “modernists” and “primordialists” is their underlyingmodernization theory. Nationalism, as a part of modernity, should be explained, itsroots should be traced, its first appearances recorded. A considerable number ofscholars manage to find the first “real” nationalism in the period and the countrythey are studying. In England, for instance, nationalism developed, according todifferent authorities, in the high middle ages, during the Hundred Years War, inthe Elizabethan age or in the 18th century.7 The mere use of the words “Norway”and “Norwegian” in sources is enough for a Norwegian historian to claim that therewas a national identity in early modern Norway, which was possibly even strongerthan to-day, although he says that it was not nationalistic.8 This “nationalicistic”approach makes it difficult to assert the content and weight of such ethnic/

2 E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780(Cambridge, 1990); E. Kedourie, Nationalism (London, 1985, 1960); B. Anderson, ImaginedCommunities (London, 1991); M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. I (Cambridge, 1986); A.Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, vol. 2, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley,1985).

3 Very pronounced in Gellner’s description of pre-national society as consisting of a cosmopolitanelite and a locally isolated peasantry.

4 Examples could be J. A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, 1982); A. Hastings, TheConstruction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, 1997).

5 A. D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986).6 For example, in Kidd, op. cit., p. 3. There might be justification for this in his later works, such as

National Identity (London, 1991), but in my opinion not in the Ethnic Origins.7 Th. Turville-Petre, England the Nation. Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford,

1996); Hastings, op. cit.; L. Greenfeld, Nationalism. Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass., 1992),and others.

8 Ø. Rian, “Norsk identitet i den dansk-dominerte oldenborgstaten. Svar nr. 2 til Harald Gustafsson”,Historisk tidsskrift (Norway, 2001), p. 4.

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92 Harald Gustafsson

political/geographic identities in a period when no one had read German romanticphilosophers or had experienced the French Revolution.

There are, however, keys to a less “nationalicistic” approach. Although Smith’soverriding aim is to trace the origins of nationalism, he acknowledges that the“national” identities he finds are fundamentally different from nationalism. That iswhy it is important that he gives them another name and uses the label “ethnic”.Other scholars, who have rejected his specialized terminology, have not alwaysappreciated this.9 In my opinion, it is very important to deal with identities beforenationalism in a terminology separating them clearly from the modernphenomenon. Smith’s “ethnie” is not a nation; it does not necessarily seek politicalsovereignty, it does not have to be spread among large segments of a population, its“ethnicism” is not the categorical imperative of the group (a role rather played byreligion in a pre-secularized, pre-national society). But it is a group of people thatbelieve that they belong together for certain reasons, and this belief can give societaleffects.

It might be open to debate whether Smith regards his criteria for an ethnie aspurely subjective or partly objective. His criteria are a collective name, a commonmyth of descent, a shared history, a distinct shared culture, an association with aspecific territory, and a sense of mutual solidarity.10 As I prefer to use the definition,it is a question of perceived factors, not necessarily “objectively” existing. Within anethnie, there is, for instance, a widespread belief in a common descent and a sharedhistory, although it might be shown by genetic research and historic records thatthis is not the case. It is obvious that we can find groups in history claiming that theyshare such criteria, and it seems fruitful to speak of them as ethnic communities orethnies rather than nations.

Susan Reynolds applies another terminology that seeks to get behind our modernnational notions in her discussion of how peoples and states were conceived in theMiddle Ages. She argues that within the religious worldview, the world consisted ofdifferent people, with different manners and languages, and different myths ofdescent (all of them going back to antiquity or the Bible). Each people was ideallyorganized in a kingdom. This ethnic-political conception she calls “regnalism”. Theworld did not look like this, but – unlike in nationalism – this was no great problem.The people of the Middle Ages “seem to have been remarkably capable of ignoringanomalies, such as a plurality of language within one kingdom, or relatively recentmigrations which must still have been remembered.”11

The ability to work simultaneously with different definitions of community is alsounderlined by Peter Sahlins, in his stimulating study of the new French–Spanishborder in the Pyrenees. He argues that a “national interest” was constructed notfrom Paris or Madrid, but from peasants and burghers on the border, usingnational rhetoric when they needed the help of the central authorities in their local

9 J. Nordin, Ett fattigt men fritt folk. Nationell och politisk sjalvbild i Sverige fraºn sen stormaktstid till slutet avfrihetstiden (Stockholm, 2000), p. 138, rejects explicitly Smith’s terminology as too “specialized”. Seemy critique in Scandia, 1 (2001), pp. 147–151 (review).

10 A. D. Smith, op. cit. (1986), pp. 22–30.11 S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984); “Medieval origines

gentium and the Community of the Realm”, History, vol. 68 (1983) (quotation from the latter, p. 389).


Identity, Ethnicity and Political Culture 93

quarrels. In doing so, they strengthened the “national” level in a series of identitiesand counter-identities that were present all the time. On one level, people could bevillagers against other villagers, but in another context all the villagers in the valleycould be “people of Cerdagne” against those in Roussion, and so on. Only after theFrench Revolution, the national identity came gradually to colonize the otherlevels.12

Collin Kidd underlines the co-existence of ethnic factors and other factors in hisrecent study of learned ideas of ethnicity and genetic bounds in 17th and 18thcentury Britain. Speculations about descent played a great role in how institutionswere legitimized, such as monarchy and the parliament in England, or the churchof Ireland. But this differed in several ways from a nationalistic usage. First, all thepeople were regarded as one another’s relatives, all of them stemming from the sonsof Noah. To speculate about the relations between the Goths, the Saxons, and theearly modern British peoples was motivated by a religious worldview. Even thepagan peoples were distant cousins. Ethnic ideas did not only separate, but alsobound together. Second, there was never the racial argument that became soimportant in nationalism, a difference clearly demonstrated by the attempts ofconstructing the Celts and the Germanic peoples together, something that would bequite unthinkable in the “full-blown Teutonic racialism and pan-Celticism [...] ofpost-Biblical nineteenth century”.13

To conclude, it seems highly likely that we can find collective identities in pre-nationalist times that reasonably could be labelled ethnic or ethno-territorial orpolitical-territorial.14 But in order to find them, we have to approach the sourceswith an open mind. If we start out to look for nations in the modern sense, either wewill find them everywhere, if we are committed enough to the project, or we will,more likely, have to conclude that there were none. I find it more fruitful to start byasking what kind of collective identities were there, what was their content and howdid they weigh up in relation to other conceptualizations of the order of things inthe minds of the contemporaries.

In this text, I will do so by studying the Nordic area in the beginning of the 16thcentury;15 a period of instability, when the union of the three Scandinavian crowns– the Union of Kalmar – broke down in a series of crises, and many alternativeswere open for constructing new political entities. In this turmoil, one would expectthat identities involved in political loyalties would come to the surface and would beextensively used by the actors. These fights produced many letters, publicannouncements, manifestos, and negotiations, which can be used as sources. Dothey express a belief in ethnic communities, do they show a regnal identity, arethere identities and counter identities on different levels, and how much of all this iscentred on a “national” level – Danish, Norwegian, Swedish?

12 P. Sahlins, Boundaries. The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley, 1989).13 Kidd, op. cit. (1999), p. 62.14 On territoriality and ethnicity, see Johansson, Rune et al., “A Crisis of the Territorial State?

Integration and Fragmentation in Europe”, in S. Tagil, ed. Europe. The Return of History (Lund, 2001),pp. 13–18.

15 What follows is largely based on my Swedish text in chapter 9 of my Gamla riken, nya stater.Statsbildning, politisk kultur och identiteter under Kalmarunionens upplosningsskede 1512–1541 (Stockholm,2000).



But as already stated, it is not enough to ask if terms such as “Danish”, and so on,were used. To find out the nature of such ethnic labels and their relative weight, mymethod has been to look for arguments for action. I have been looking for the passagesin the documents where actors – individuals or groups – argue for legitimizingaction, either to justify their own acts, or to make others act. It might be the case ofjustifying an act of war, calling people to arms, trying to start a rising, explainingwhy one is changing one’s loyalty from one lord to the other, justifying religiouschanges, and so on. In these sources, I do not look only for the use of ethnic/“national”/regnal concepts, but for all types of arguments, also such as dealing withhonour, Christian values, fear, and so on. With this method, it would be possible toplace the ethnic arguments in their context and not isolate them, thereby riskinggiving them too great a significance.

2. A short background

The events covered in this study start with the death of the Swedish regent, SvanteNilsson, in 1512.16 His son, Sten Sture the Younger, assumed power after a shortperiod of internal rivalry in the Swedish aristocracy. In the following year KingHans of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, died and wassucceeded by his son Christian II. Although formally subjects of the Union king, thedominant part of the Swedish aristocracy kept Christian out of his Swedish realm,and hostilities followed, both internally in Sweden and between Sten Sture andChristian II. In 1519, Sten was killed in battle. The next year, Christian wascrowned Swedish king, and tried to crush the Swedish opposition, in the so-calledblood bath of Stockholm. But very soon, rebellion broke out in Sweden. When in1523, the nobility of Jutland, the Baltic great power of Lubeck, and Duke Frederik(the king’s co-duke in Schleswig-Holstein) joined hands, Christian was exiled andFrederik became king of Denmark.

There now began a scramble for the parts of the fallen Nordic Union. InSweden, Gustav Vasa was elected king. In Norway, the aristocracy used theopportunity to strengthen the position of the council of the realm, choosing, aftersome reluctance, to renounce their allegiance to Christian II and elect Frederik asking. The division of the old union was, however, not clear-cut, territories betweenthe realms were disputed, there occurred rebellions, and above all the position ofNorway continued to be unclear for the coming ten years. In 1531, Christian IIattempted a comeback, landing in Norway with continental mercenaries. Thisthreat of the re-establishment of the union led Sweden and Denmark into alliance;Christian was defeated and imprisoned in Denmark.

The worst crisis of the break-up of the Union of Kalmar started with the death ofKing Frederik I, in 1533. The so-called Count’s War (1534–1536) was acomplicated mixture of different conflicts. It was a civil war in Denmark; it was awar between Lubeck and its allies on the one hand and Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein and Sweden on the other; it was a conflict between Catholics and

16 For the details, see my Gamla riken. The best account in English is given by M. Roberts, The EarlyVasas. A History of Sweden 1523–1611 (Cambridge, 1986) (1968), pp. 1–107.



Lutherans as well as between more or less radical Lutherans; it was a series ofpeasant rebellions, an attempt to set Christian II free and an internal affair withinthe Norwegian aristocracy. The future seemed wide open.

The war was lost by the Catholics, the radical Lutherans, by Lubeck and theDanish peasants. In 1536, the son of Frederik I, Christian III, Duke of Schleswigand Holstein, was the victor of the civil war in Denmark. This meant the end ofCatholicism in Denmark and the next year also in Norway. Norway was reduced tobecoming a junior partner in the union with Denmark and the duchies. Denmark–Norway and Sweden were now two princely, Lutheran states (the Reformation inSweden had been carried out in 1527), which mutually accepted each other, a stateof affairs that was formalized with the Bromsebro agreement of 1541. More thantwenty years of peace were to follow in the Nordic area.

3. The arguments

What arguments were used in the intense propaganda and political correspondenceduring all these Nordic crises? To cut a long story short, we can conclude that theywere of eight different types:

. Something is old and for that reason good and worth defending.

. According to law and binding agreements, a certain way of acting is necessary.

. The status and position of a man require a certain way of acting.

. Peace should prevail or be re-established.

. Material damage should be avoided or material advantages reached.

. Every man should act as a good Christian and against what is not Christian.

. The honour of a certain group must be defended.

. Belonging to a certain collective necessitates a certain kind of behaviour.

All the arguments could be worded slightly differently, some of them could be splitinto two or three and some brought together. But since I have been working withhundreds of documents from these events, I feel quite confident in that the eighttypes together cover the most important lines of argument. We will now have acloser look at each of them, asking what collectives and political/territorial unitsthey referred to. We will first briefly survey the first seven, and then devote a closeranalysis to the last argument, which directly has to do with ethno-territorial politicalidentities.

4. Good, old times

“Old” was always a positive quality. In many situations, the “good, old times” orthe legitimacy of an old institution was stressed. Duke Christian, the later ChristianIII, wrote during the Count’s War to the inhabitants of Gotland, asking them torecognize him as king so that he would be able to “save this good old Christiankingdom”.17 Kristina Gyllenstierna, the widow of Sten Sture, asked the people ofSodermanland, when she was under siege in Stockholm, that they should keep their

17 “Tegnelser over alle lande”, T. A. Becker, ed., in Danske Magazin 3:IV (Copenhagen, 1854), p. 27 f.



loyalty to their fatherland “as your fathers and forefathers before you always to thisday have done”.18

“Old” is here not primarily a reference to a certain age. It is not important whenan institution, such as a law or an agreement, was established, it could have been ayear ago or two hundred years ago. What was more important was that “old”referred to an undefined sphere behind the daily events. “Old times” was a goldenepoch without change, not a continual flow of time. This idea is, of course,connected to a Christian philosophy of history where everything had grown worsesince the beginning of time.

The argument “old” could, thus, stand for itself. An illuminating example is theletter from the Swedish Archbishop, Jakob Ulfsson, in December 1512 to StenSture. The archbishop is demanding a meeting of the local members of the councilof the realm in Central Sweden, before the planned Diet of Vadstena. His onlyargument for this is that “when all went well in Sweden in the old times”, this wasalways done.19 It is clear that what the archbishop wanted was to exert politicalinfluence, but he does not use constitutional arguments about the position of thecouncil or his rights as archbishop, only that this was the custom “in the old times”.

The “good old time” seems to have been just as popular among princes andnobility as among the peasantry. It was often used when the elite spoke to thepeople (as in the first examples above), but also by the common people. Inconnection with the so-called Bell Rising in Sweden in 1531, the people of Dalarnaused it when they referred to the old friendship that had always lasted betweenthem and the people of Halsingland,20 and the Halsinglanders used it, in turn,when they told the king how they had been taxed in the old times.21

The “old” argument could be used about many units. It was often used tolegitimate the existence of the kingdoms, but also combinations of them, as whenKing Frederik I in a letter to the Norwegians argued for the continued unionbetween the two kingdoms, which “with old letters and agreements are boundtogether”.22 The agreements were not only judicially valid, they were also old. Itwas easier to use this argument when there actually existed a tradition to point to.Gustav Vasa never tried to legitimize his occupation of Norwegian Viken by sayingthat since old times it belonged to the Swedish crown, while no one could contestthe insistence of the Norwegian council of the realm of Viken being an oldNorwegian territory. The concept of “old and thus good” in this way helped tofortify the once existing institutions.

5. Law and binding agreements

As we just saw, Norway and Denmark were bound together “with old letters andagreements”; they were not only old, but also judicially valid. A standard argument

18 Bidrag till Skandinaviens historia ur utlandska arkiver V, edited by C. G. Styffe (Stockholm, 1884) (BSH), nr.506.

19 BSH V, nr. 412.20 Konung Gustaf den forstes registratur I–XI, Stockholm 1861–1888 (GR), VIII, p. 532 f.21 GR VII, p. 536.22 Diplomatarium Norvegicum I–XXII (Christiania/Oslo, 1849–1992) (DN), XII, nr. 299.



in all the conflicts of the whole union period was that the adversaries had violatedthe law of the land, the accession charters, the agreements between the realms, andso on, and the exact wording of such documents sometimes caused difficultnegotiations.23

Often the references were made to laws and agreements in general, not to aspecific document, and sometimes it might be suspected that no document actuallyexisted. After the death of King Hans, the leading nobleman of Western Sweden,Ture Jonsson, encouraged Sten Sture to claim that a Swede should be elected kingof the Union, since “the vote is now ours, as you will find in the old agreement, ifyou oversee it”.24 There are no such rules about the election of the kings in any ofthe constitutional agreements in the history of the Union. The word “oversee” (laºtaoverse) is dubious. Perhaps it is an invitation to Sten Sture simply to produce afalsification.

The common people used this kind of argument also. In a letter from the tingassembly (the regional court) of Trøndelag (Frostatinget), where the ting communityrejected the claims of Christian III to be legitimate king of Norway, it is said thatChristian had acted “against all written law of Norway”, taken up illegal taxes, andhad not been recognized as king “in the manner that the law prescribes”.25 Whatwas most usual for the local communities was, however, to ask for recognition oftheir own privileges, such as when the people of Jamtland used the uncertainpolitical situation in 1530 to ask not only for lower taxes but also royal confirmationof the privileges of the province.26

What had been written down on paper – and even more so on parchment – hada strong position in the political culture, its existence perhaps more so than theactual content of the document. This type of argument was not necessarily tied to acertain unit or collective. It could be privileges, laws, or agreements concerning alocal community, a town, an estate, or an individual, just as much as a wholekingdom. But it must be underlined that the kingdom was one important unit thatcould be bound by, protected by, or give such binding rules.

6. A good subject

In an open letter from the Norwegian council of the realm in 1524, the councillorsmade public that they had recognized Frederik I as king of Norway. If thepopulation acted as “Norway’s faithful inhabitants ought to do”, the council would,with the help of God, maintain peace and ensure that Frederik would ruleaccording to the law of Saint Olav and good old customs.27 “Saint Olav’s law” wasan often-used term for the old laws of Norway, mythically ascribed to the holy king.This example demonstrates how people were supposed to act in a certain way

23 An example is the negotiations over the accession charter of Frederik I to the Norwegian throne; seeGustafsson, Gamla riken, p. 93.

24 C. F. Allen, De tre nordiske Rigers Historie under Hans, Christian den Anden, Frederik den Første, Gustav Vasa,Grevefejden 1497–1536 I–V (Copenhagen, 1864–1872), II, p. 584 f.

25 DN VI, nr. 726.26 DN XIV, nr. 680.27 DN VII, nr. 791.



according to their position in a mutual relation. By being inhabitants in the realmof Norway, they had certain plights and duties, just as the councillors of the realmalso had their duties in safeguarding the interests and rights of the kingdom. Theyhad those duties not as a social elite but exactly in their capacity of councillors ofthe realm. These kinds of arguments and ideas were especially tied to the realm.

Accession charters of the kings and other documents of this type are built uparound the idea that the whole of the realm on one side and the king on the otherenter into a mutual relationship that obliges them to act in a certain way in thefuture. Christian III promised in his accession charter in 1536 “by Our royal oathto obey all paragraphs and words” of the charter.28 The Swedish council motivatedits disposal of Christian II in a letter to the Norwegian council with the fact thatsince the king had broken his oath to the realm, it was the duty of the councillors,according to their oath to the realm, to dispose of him.29

This set of mutual obligations was in political–territorial terms tied to thekingdom as a unit. To be a “Danish man” meant being an inhabitant of the Danishrealm and subject of the Danish king, and as such to have certain duties and rights.Also rights: a bailiff in Vastergotland complained to the town council of Lubeckthat some merchants of Nya Lodose had been badly treated, and claimed that theyshould be included in the friendship that had been agreed between Lubeck “and allthe inhabitants of Sweden”.30 This way of reasoning must have been familiar forordinary people from scenes at the ting, when royal commissioners met the localpopulation. A report to Frederik I told him that the peasants of Bohuslan hadpromised him loyalty, if he in his turn would promise them “to keep them by thelaw of Norway”, which was a standard formula on such occasions.31

This notion of how lords and subjects ought to behave towards each other musthave helped to reproduce the concepts of the existing political unit of the realm. Itwas within the realm as a political community that you were lord or subject.

7. Peace

Peace was a major argument for those who wished to uphold the internordic union.The Swedish opposition against Sten Sture used this as an argument for keeping thetruce with King Hans; Christian II promised “eternal peace” when the Swedishcouncil had accepted his claim to the throne, and the royal commissioners sent toNorway in 1532 should negotiate with the Norwegians on “union, peace andconcord”.32

Even an enemy of the Union like Gustav Vasa recognized in principle that thisought to have led to peace. In his proclamation to Skaº ne and Halland in 1523, heclaims that war would not have come, “if these three realms had stood united and

28 Aarsberetninger fra Det Kongelige Geheimearchiv II, edited by C. F. Wegener (Copenhagen, 1856–1860),p. 89.

29 GR I, p. 26 ff.30 BSH V, nr. 405.31 DN XII, nr. 302.32 Sveriges traktater med frammande magter III, edited by O. S. Rydberg (Stockholm, 1895), nr. 580a; Wie

Andersen, Lizzie, et al., Uppsala-Overenskomsten 1520. Magtstruktur og magtkamp i Sverige, januar-oktober1520 (Odense, 1975), p. 80; DN VIII nr. 694.



trusted each other”.33 But now, the argumentation was turned around, and thesovereign kingdom in relation to other sovereign kingdoms was the guarantee forpeace. This is eloquently expressed in a manifesto read to the crowd at theimportant winter market in Strangnas in 1534. The king motivated a new treatywith the Danes and said it had been concluded to stop all “feuds, disputes, fires,murders and spilling of blood and other calamities, which in the past have occurredmany times between these three kingdoms”; now this would be replaced by “peace,concord, friendship, and they will be good neighbours”.34

In the Christian worldview, peace was always a highly valued concept, whichcould be used for motivating and legitimizing action – even violent action. Theunits between which peace should be kept were the realms. This could be achievedeither by binding the realms together or by separating them. In this way, the peaceargument could be used both for the Union and for the separate realms. It couldalso, as we will see below, be used for maintaining internal peace. But in all cases,the realm was an important unit in the peace discourse.

8. Threats and promises

Direct threats of physical violence were not a part of the ordinary politicallanguage. They occurred in situations where violent confrontations were alreadytaking place, and from parties who had offensive military resources. There are nosuch threats in the sources from the peasantry. The threats were usually delivered ina general form as a reference to “damage and ruin”. In 1517, Christian II let theSwedes know that they should acknowledge him as their lord “if you care about thewelfare of yourself and your children”.35 The Norwegian council legitimized theirrenewed homage to Christian II in 1531 not only with his rights to the throne butalso with the fact that “damage and ruin” would have threatened them and theinhabitants of the realm, had they not accepted him.36

Among the belongings that could face damage were also wives and children.When proclamations referred to “all the inhabitants of N.”, “our dear friends thatlive in the landscape N.”, and so on, this meant men. When Frederik I in 1532pardoned the Norwegians who had sided with Christian II, he excused them withthe assumption that they had done so to “save their lives, their wives, their childrenand their belongings”.37 The political culture was not gender neutral. It was themale adults that were supposed to read and to listen to letters, laws andproclamations; it was they who should be able to see how their wives and childrencould be hurt.

This gendering of the political culture comes as no surprise, in a society were thepatriarchally organized household was the basic unit. But it is worth noting that theresponsibility of men over women and children was a factor that was used in thepolitical language. This responsibility was a legitimate reason for acting. Men were

33 GR I, p. 49.34 GR IX, p. 53 f.35 A. Huiltfeld, Danmarckis Rigis Krønike, II (Copenhagen, 1652), p. 1127 f.36 DN XXII, nr. 202.37 DN VIII, nr. 684.



supposed to be able to imagine the whole realm as a community and to identifywith its well-being, but their daily-life situation as head of a household was also aproductive motive.

It was more common to promise advantages, service or obedience. There was anever-ongoing dialogue about taxes and other burdens between the subjects and themen claiming authority. When Christian II had fled and Norway could chosebetween Gustav Vasa and Frederik I, both sides promised the Norwegians reducedtaxes. That is, the rhetoric was that the illegal taxes levied on them by Christian IIshould be abolished and good laws and customs should once again prevail.38 Thisgame could also be played from below; the peasants in Halsingland assured KingGustav of their loyalty during the Dalecarlian rising of 1531, but mentioned in thesame letter that there were some taxes that they wanted to see reduced.39 Gustavsurely understood the hint.

The threats and the promises did not necessarily have more relevance for onetype of political unit than the other. They could be used concerning a town, a partof the country or a whole kingdom. But it is interesting to note that the realm alsowas seen as a community that could be threatened or rewarded, and that ordinarypeople obviously were meant to understood this kind of rhetoric. When ChristianIII had won the Count’s War in 1536, he spoke to the estates in Copenhagen abouthow the war had meant “plundering, murders, and the loss of Christians’ blood”.But now, order was to reign in the realm, there should be no more foreign invasionsand each estate should enjoy their righteous privileges.40 The basic unit here wasthe realm, and the individual subject was supposed to feel a responsibility for thewhole realm’s gains and losses, welfare and damage. We trace here an idea of the“common good” of the whole realm, a variety of the “Gemeinnutz” that has beenfocused on by continental historians.41 Here was an idea that the political elitethought was strong enough to be used for legitimating action.

9. Good Christians

To be, live and act as a Christian was a frequently used argument. Christian II’sfinal war for Sweden, and the bloody climax in Stockholm in the autumn of 1520,was officially motivated by the fact that Sten Sture had attacked the Swedisharchbishop, and thus was a heretic.42 An important reason behind the Vastergot-land Rising in 1529 was the fear among certain noblemen that time was runningout for the Roman Church in Sweden.43 Such anxiety over the future of the church

38 GR I, p. 509 f.; DN VIII, nr. 512.39 GR VII, p. 536.40 Monumenta Historiæ Danicæ I, edited by H. F. Rørdam (Copenhagen, 1884) (Rørdam), pp. 144 and 148.41 Peter Blicke stresses that Gemeinnutz was an important category in the interaction between peasants

and lords, for example in his Unruhen in der standischen Gesellschaft 1300–1800 (Munchen, 1988), pp.104–109, while Winfried Schulze draws a line from the “Hausnotdurft”-ideas of the late MiddleAges to the “Polizeistaat” of the 18th century in his Einfuhrung in die Neuren Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1987),p. 162.

42 G. Wieselgren, Sten Sture d.y. och Gustav Trolle (Lund, 1949).43 H. Gustafsson,“Statsbildning och territoriell integration. Linjer i nyare forskning, en nordisk ansats

samt ett bidrag till 1500-talets svenska politiska geografi”, Scandia, 2 (1991), pp. 208–211.



was probably the most important driving force behind all political actions of OlavEngelbrektsson of Trondheim during his whole archiepiscopate.44

Explicitly religious arguments became all the more important as westernChristianity started to split into different factions. It is quite clear that a great manycommoners in Sweden opposed the Lutheran church policy of Gustav Vasa’sregime. In the Vastergotland Rising, they were supported by a group of noblemen,but they fought alone in the Dalecarlian Bell Rising. In the latter, the Dalecarlianstried to win the people of Halsingland as allies, mentioning “paganism, bells andother illegal taxes” as their reason for rebelling.45 In a lengthy letter to his formerenemy, the leading Norwegian nobleman Vincens Lunge, Gustav Vasa in 1531noted that “you have become (blessed be God) a good evangelic man”, whichopened for a new front towards the now common enemy the arch-Catholic OlavEngelbrektsson.46

In the latter example the Christian-evangelic (that is, Lutheran) identity was seenas more important than the fact that the one was Swedish, the other Norwegian (oractually Danish; Vincens Lunge had moved to Norway in 1523 only). But in othercases, it was tied to the realm. As we saw, Frederik I wrote to the Gotlanders about“this good old Christian kingdom”. But it could of course also be tied to ecclesiasticentities, such as parishes or dioceses. Probably, this was a source of identity that wasquite frequent, although it seldom surfaces in this political material. An illuminatingexception is when the strongly committed Catholic, Bishop Hans Brask ofLinkoping, in 1524 complained about “foreign men” coming with heretical booksand teachings into the diocese, spreading them to “Swedish men in the realm” –first the diocese, then the realm. But the diocese was firmly placed in the realm:according to the bishop, it was the duty of “all the spiritual and worldly officials ofthe realm here in the diocese” to stop these dangerous teachings.47

As time passed and the reformation process went on, Christianity was moreclosely knit to the political level in terms of identification. The English became“God’s own people”, the French monarch “the most Christian king”, and so on.The confessional state came into being. This was extremely clear in the Lutheranorthodoxy of the Nordic states in the 17th century. But in the early 1500s, this wasstill not the case. The Christian kingdom was an important notion, but not asexcluding as it would later be.

10. A famous and respected kingdom

In 1525, Vincens Lunge complained to Olav Engelbrektsson that the Danishcouncil, by announcing its will to let Frederik I be crowned in Norway, “despises tosuch a high degree the Norwegian council of the realm”.48 In 1535 the sameargument is turned against the archbishop by his fellow councillors from southernNorway, who said they were astonished that he “holds the Norwegian council of the

44 Gustafsson, Gamla riken, passim.45 GR VIII, p. 526.46 GR VII, p. 350.47 Handlingar rorande Skandinaviens historia XII (Stockholm, 1828), pp. 52–54.48 DN VII, nr. 614.



realm in such contempt” that he negotiates on his own with the parties in theDanish civil war.49 In both these cases, the council as a collective was supposed tohave an honour to defend.

The idea about defending honour is closely knit to the realm, its institutions andits aristocracy. Frederik I complained to the meeting of the nobility in 1525 that it is“deplorable, miserable and wretched that a kingdom, that is famous and respected[...] and in recent times thrice has conquered and subjugated Sweden” did notstand better against Søren Norby’s rebellion in Skaº ne.50 This was supposed toinspire the noblemen to new deeds, if they did not want to be regarded asdeplorable, miserable and wretched. Gustav Vasa cared for the honour of thearistocracy of the realm in a very concrete form when he announced to the Swedishdelegates at a meeting between representatives of the three kingdoms in NyaLodose in 1528 that they had to wear fine clothes.51

This type of argument is lacking in non-aristocratic, local sources. Of courseother groups in society could have had notions about honour that could motivatethem to act. The arguments about how a good Swedish man should act are close tothis. However, the type of more personal, emotional appeals to honour that wehave seen belong to an aristocracy that obviously was supposed to identify stronglywith its realm. It is worth remembering that noblemen were noble – that is, tax-exempted – in return for their service to the crown. The idea of the realm was aprerequisite for noble status.

11. The eighth argument: we and they

We have now seen that some of the arguments used for justifying action have somebearing upon ethnic/territorial/political identities, usually centred on the realm.This is true for many arguments and notions used, but by no means for all of them.With this in mind, we will now turn to the eighth type of argument, that whichexplicitly deals with the identity of a collective defined in terms like “the Danes”,“Norwegian men”, or “Sweden”.

In March 1517, Sten Sture was at war with Christian II. He was an experiencedman in dealing with the peasantry; indeed, he had based much of his power on thecommoners’ support against his fellow aristocrats in the council. He badly neededreinforcements, and issued a letter to the peasantry in the fief of Stakeborg castle inSmaº land. What arguments did he consider effective in this pressing situation? Hedescribes how “Danish men” and “a few” Swedes have ravaged the realm, despitehis offer of peace in order to save “Swedish blood and the realm of Sweden”. It isimportant not to once again invite foreign lords into the country, “which since longhave been very bad for Swedish men”. Now he urges the peasants and inhabitantsof Stakeborg fief to defend the realm against murder and plunder, as their ancestorshave done before them.52 The men in northeast Smaº land were supposed to feel and

49 DN XV, nr. 456.50 Nye Danske Magazin V (Copenhagen, 1827) (NMD), p. 30 ff.51 GR I, p. 91 f.52 BSH V, nr. 469.



act like “Swedes”, they should feel a community with their ancestors and with otherSwedes, and they should identify their adversaries as Danes.

Over and over again, we meet this counter-identity formation in the sources; the“own” side in contrast to “the others”. “We” are often Swedes (or Danes, orNorwegians) in contrast to Danes (or Norwegians, or Swedes, or just foreigners). Itis better to be with “us” than with “foreigners”. In 1523, Gustav Vasa told theSwedish estates that it was good that the realm had gotten a Swedish king (himself),“if we think about the misfortunes foreign kings have brought over the realm”.53

The new Swedish regime was particularly keen to state its domestic roots andidentity, but this discourse was also used elsewhere.

Thirteen years later, Christian III described to the Danish estates the rule offoreign lords as one of the misfortunes that had hit the country during thepreceding civil war – that is, the foreign lords were not only responsible for the war,their appearance in Denmark was in itself a misfortune.54 From Norway there arecomplaints from the nobility about the Danish idea of supremacy within the union;“we are poorly respected in Denmark”, Vincens Lunge reported in 1525.55 It wasmainly the other Scandinavian peoples that were used for counter-identities, withone exception: the Germans. This was especially clear in the many conflicts withthe Hanseatic towns, headed by Lubeck. Claus Bille at Bergen castle stated in 1534that “these three realms” must stand united, or else “we and our descendants [...]will be the eternal slaves of the Lubeckers”.56 It is worth noting that also a politicalentity like the free town of Lubeck could be the home of a “people”, although theycertainly also were seen as a part of the bigger concept of Germans.

In a worldview built on “us and them”, “we” must stay united. A much-usedargument is that “we” should avoid internal strife. When Vastergotland was rising,Gustav Vasa told the miners of Kopparberget that “we are though all, God help us,Swedish men” and thus should not “feud with each other”, which would be “to notlittle delight and joy for our foes”.57 When the council assumed power in Denmarkduring the interregnum in 1533, its first open letter stated the need to curb“discord, rising and disagreement, that have now for some years (unfortunately)been here in the realm”.58 Internal strife was bad, not only because it opened forforeign adversaries, but also it was an evil in itself.

The inhabitants of the realm were thus defined in terms that could be calledethnic. “Swedes” were “Swedish”, living in the realm of Sweden. Gustav Vasa triedto persuade the people of Skaº ne that they ought to join Sweden, since they,according to him, had “one tongue and all customs” common with the Swedes.59

He seems to have been particularly anxious about the language. He becomes veryupset when he receives a letter in mixed Danish and Swedish from a bailiff and

53 GR I, pp. 121–129.54 Rørdam I, pp. 143–199.55 DN VII, nr. 600.56 DN VIII, nr. 722.57 GR VI, p. 44 f.58 Samling af gamle danske Love IV, edited by J. L. A. Kolderup-Rosenvinge (Copenhagen, 1824), p. 19.59 GR I, pp. 48–53.



commands him to “tell your scribe that he addresses Us in his mother tongueSwedish [...] and do not write ‘jeg’ instead of ‘jag’ ”.60

It is difficult to say whether this idea of language purity was peculiar to GustavVasa or widespread in society. The Scandinavian languages were (and are)practically only dialects of each other and it is hard to believe that the smalldifferences have mattered to ordinary people in everyday life. In religious matters,it was rather the introduction of vernacular in the church service that met popularresistance. During the Bell Rising in 1531, the town of Stockholm sent a letter tothe rebellious Dalarna, a letter that the king probably dictated. They assure theDalecarlians that the king has no intention to force them to listen to the mass inSwedish instead of Latin, but also states that in several places such as Denmark andGermany, the mass is delivered in the vernacular, “so that we feel it to beembarrassing that we should despise our mother tongue”.61 Here it is clear thatcaring for the mother tongue comes from above, while the peasants care moreabout the true and faithful way of celebrating God, that is to do it in the old way, inLatin.

There seems to have been a learned discourse about customs and languagekeeping a people together. Susan Reynolds has shown how this idea existed as earlyas in the 10th century and was very productive during the Middle Ages.62

Machiavelli speaks about how uniformity in language and customs makes it easierto integrate conquered territories in the state.63 It is probably such learned ideasthat Gustav Vasa echoes, more than any widespread feeling of culturalhomogeneity within the whole realm. But it is not without significance that suchideas actually were around in elite circles.

Collectives smaller than the realm were also directly invoked in the politicallanguage. This is especially notable concerning local groups of nobility and highclergy, which often were identified with their part of the country. Many times thesources talk about “the Jutland lords”, “the southern lords” (in Norway), “the lordsof Finland”, and so on.64 Such collectives could act in a very independent way, suchas when the Jutland lords actually decided on the faith of Denmark when theyinvited Duke Frederik to dethrone his nephew Christian II. But they acted withinthe realm. They were supposed to behave like “good Danish men”, not like “goodJutlanders”. The Jutlanders were not a people in the ethnic, nor the political sense,although it was an existing category that could also form the base for politicalaction.

Another differentiation within the people was that between the genders. As wehave seen above, there was a clear, although not outspoken gender difference in thepolitical culture. During the rebellion in 1523, Frederik I called all inhabitants inJutland above the age of eighteen to hurry to his aid with “weapon and sword”.65

60 GR VII, p. 42 f.61 GR VIII, pp. 528–530.62 Reynolds, “Medieval Origines Gentium and the community of the realm”, History, vol. 68 (1983), pp.

383–386.63 J. H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies”, Past and Present, 137 (1992), p. 52.64 DN VII, nr. 600, nr. 713; GR II, p. 129 f.65 Huitfeldt, p. 1199.



He would certainly have been quite astonished if all the adult women of Jutlandhad turned up carrying arms, although the letter was styled to “all inhabitants”. Itwas so obvious that it was the men who were the recipients of political messages,that there was no need to state this.

Probably the most important differences in identity formation within the realmsand peoples were social in nature. We have noticed that there existed notions aboutthe realm and the people as demanding entities in the political culture, and thatelite groups exploited these ideas to gain popular support. Since this was used overand over again by experienced politicians, we may safely conclude that such notionswere not unknown outside elite circles. But did they also exist in their own rightamong people in general?

During the Bell Rising in 1531, the people of Dalarna sent a letter to all otherparts of Sweden. The Dalecarlians reminded the other landscapes how they allswore to stand together when they, together with King Gustav, fought to rid therealm of foreign lords. Now the king has sent them a decree concerning the wholerealm (the bell tax), but they do not want to answer it before “the whole realm hasbeen together”. They now urge all landscapes to send representatives to a meetingin Arboga to discuss matters that concern all.66 The realm was a community withmutual responsibilities.

Time after another, the peasantry, based in the ting organization (the localcourts), chose to act and argue within the realm, as a community, also when theyinteracted with each other. The people of northern Smaº land discussed the king’sunchristian regiment and the responsibility of the realm for the debt to Lubeck withthe Vastergotlanders.67 They not only saw the realm, then, as a geographic unity,where all had been hit by the king’s unchristian regiment, but also as an actingsubject that they were a part of themselves.

It is especially from the peasant-dominated landscapes in the Swedishperipheries, most of all from Dalarna and Halsingland, that we have good sourcesto show how the peasant elite themselves expressed their standpoints. We see fewerof these kinds of political initiatives from the Norwegian peasantry, although muchpoints to the fact that the realm as a community also was a widespread idea heretoo. They accepted the realm and the idea of Norwegian kingship and Norwegianlaw as a framework and sometimes used it actively. There is a document from theinhabitants of a district in Vestfold where they make public that they cannot attendthe estate meeting in 1533 but that they will accept “anything that the council of therealm of Norway and all the inhabitants of the realm of Norway will decide”.68

It is even more difficult, owing to the lack of sources, to get close to the politicalculture of common people in Denmark. It is likely that the unity of the realm playeda lesser role for them. A hint of this is when the nobility in 1527 reacted againstattempts from the king to negotiate directly with local inhabitants in different partsof Denmark, attempts obviously caused by a, now lost, letter of complaint to theking from the peasantry in Jutland.69 Danish peasants were never invited to political

66 GR VII, p. 534 f.67 GR VI, p. 358 f.68 DN X, nr. 499.69 NMD V, pp. 288–300.



meetings, they were closely tied to their local landlords, and might have had lessinterest to act on a “regnal” level than their Norwegian or Swedish counterparts.

Like the Norwegians and Swedes, the Danes had been steadily reminded aboutthe realm by the recurrent demands for taxes. It is logical that, after the death ofFrederik I, a parish in Jutland let the council know that it had no intention ofpaying taxes as long as the realm did not have a legitimate king.70 The realm as anorganization for resource reallocation was something that most people met, oftenseveral times each year, and this must have reminded every household of the factthat there was a legitimate political centre that they stood in relation to (howeverunpopular it might be at times). The realm was a political community for ordinarypeople.

Was the realm also an ethnic community for the many peasant households? Thisis very hard to tell. As stated above, the language differences between the realmswere small, the differences within them often bigger (as the difference betweenSwedish and Finnish in Sweden). They also had religion in common. There is, onthe other hand, no evidence for stating that the inhabitants of Denmark did notregard themselves as Danes. Other identities, such as Jutlanders or Scanians or eveninhabitants of a certain hundred or parish, could perhaps be just as strong, althoughwe do not see them since it is the game of power over the whole kingdom that hasproduced the source material. Once again, it can at least be concluded that thepolitical elites believed the commitment of the peasantry to the realm and its peopleto be strong enough to serve as an argument – one argument among others. Butmuch points to the fact that this ethnic identity has been more important to thelords than their subjects.

12. Three ethnies?

There existed, as we have seen, identities that could be called ethno-territorial andpolitical-territorial in the early 16th century Nordic area. Could one, then, speak ofthe Danes, the Norwegians and the Swedes of the early 16th century as ethnies in thedefinition by Anthony Smith? Did they have a collective name, a common myth ofdescent, a shared history, a distinct shared culture, an association with a specificterritory, and a sense of mutual solidarity?71

It is quite clear that the names of the countries and the peoples had been used forseveral hundred years. Saxo wrote in the early 13th century about the “Deeds ofthe Danes” (Gesta Danorum) and a hundred years later the Swedish chronicleErikskronikan told of “the noble men that live in Sweden”. We have seen manyexamples above of how the names were widely used. People within the Swedishrealm were called Swedes by others, and also by themselves.

There were other labels, however. Several times we have seen how groups suchas the Dalecarlians, Jutlanders or Jamtlanders are supposed to exist as actingcollectives. But when people from outside speak about the Jutlanders, they tend to

70 A. Heise, “Bondeopløb i Jylland i Kong Frederik den førstes Tid”, Historisk Tidsskrift, 4:V (Denmark,1875–1877), p. 290 f.

71 This discussion builds on my Gamla riken, pp. 305–317.



be labelled Danes. The exception is when someone tries to separate them fromtheir old bounds, as when Gustav Vasa tries to tell the Jamtlanders that they areSwedes (rather than Norwegians).

Unfortunately, we cannot study local conflicts in this way. It would be interestingto see what identifications were used when peasants in two neighbouringlandscapes, hundreds or villages quarrelled. Probably we would find a ladder ofcounter-identities, as Peter Sahlins shows for the Cerdagne. On one levelDalecarlians and people from Halsingland could identify themselves in oppositionto each other; on the next, they would all be Swedes against the Danes, and bothwould be Christian in contrast to the unfaithful (orthodox) Russians. But it is worthnoting that while “foreign bailiffs” is a popular topic in complaints during the wholeUnion period, there is, to my knowledge, no example of people in, let us say,Ostergotland complaining that a bailiff from Smaº land would be a “foreigner”. Thislabel is exclusively used for people coming from outside the realm. Neither didOstergotland go to war against Smaº land. The wars between the realms, that hadbeen fought as long as there had been kings, must repeatedly have reminded manypeople of their expected identity as belonging to a certain realm.

The realm’s territory was also relatively fixed. There were, in the north and east,vast areas of uncertainty between Sweden, Norway and Novgorod, but in thesouthern, more populated parts of Scandinavia, it must have been clear to everyonewere one kingdom stopped and the other started. The dissolution of the Unionbrought with it border conflicts. Gotland remained with the Danish crown whilethe Swedish regime claimed a historical right to it. But this was a conflict over aspecified territory; a conflict caused by the concept of territoriality – that is, everyterritory rightly belonged to one realm or the other. This was still clearer in the caseof north and middle Bohuslan (Viken), occupied by Gustav Vasa from 1523 to1531. Although in his safe military possession, this became an ever-greater politicalproblem, since everyone knew and accepted that this was historically and judiciallya part of the kingdom of Norway, a fact that the Norwegian council never failed topoint out. The Swedes, Danes and Norwegians obviously had a relation to a fixedterritory.

It is also clear that there were myths about a common descent and a commonhistory within each realm. The most cultivated myth of descent was that nurturedby Swedish learned professionals about the identity between the Swedes and the oldGoths, which was forcefully advanced by the Swedish bishop, Nicolaus Ragvaldi, atthe church council in Basel in 1434 (in order to secure a better seat for himself). Itwas spread among the Swedish elite by the Cronica regni Gothorum of Ericus Olai inthe 1470s. Besides such learned works, more popular pictures of the history of therealm were spread by several chronicles in the vernacular, which were widelycopied in the late 15th century. This renewed Swedish interest in producing historyseems to have been directly connected to the political ambitions of King KarlKnutsson, who sought in vain to establish a Swedish kingdom outside the Union.State formation needed myth formation.

The Danes (and Russians) were “the others” of the Swedish chronicles, and inDenmark this stimulated a new interest in producing and even printing newchronicles, hostile towards the Swedes. The counter-identities of Danes and Swedeswere obviously very important to use and enlarge for the circles around the kings



and regents in the respective kingdoms. In Norway, where there was no permanentcourt or regent, there does not seem to have been any comparable new productionof texts, but the old Icelandic–Norwegian historical literature was known, especiallyin the circles around the archiepiscopal see in Trondheim.

With few exceptions, all historical texts from the late Middle Ages take the realmas the obvious entity of history.72 This is very clear when one looks at the SkibbyChronicle by Poul Helgesen. He was a Danish Carmelite brother and reformhumanist who strongly opposed the Lutheran reformation movement. Despite hiscommitment to an inter-European order and the Catholic Church, his chronicle isstrongly centred on Denmark. The Lutherans threaten to bring “this whole realm”down, he claims. He completely ignores Schleswig-Holstein and Norway, even inthe 1520s, a period when developments there were vital to the situation withinchurch and state in Denmark, a period that he himself experienced. The Union ofKalmar gets minimal attention in his work; indeed, he does not even mention themeeting in Kalmar in 1397.73

Were there also a shared culture and a sense of solidarity within each political–territorial group? It is clear from our examples that there was supposed to be asolidarity – how deep it went is hard to tell, but the concept of mutual solidaritywithin the realm must have been known. The elite had an idea of shared culture,but it is even harder to say whether this was shared by a majority of the people. It isalso impossible, at least at the present state of research, to say something about howfar in society the myths of a common history stretched.

Smith makes a distinction between aristocratic and “demotic” ethnies, or rathermore elitist and more popular elements in them. A conclusion would be that theScandinavian peoples were ethnies of a mixed sort: the aristocratic elements werecertainly there, and some demotic elements, too. Regnalism, the idea of the realmof one people under one prince, all embraced within Christianity and mankind (tocombine Reynolds and Kidd), was certainly there, also among the common people.But it is probable that the ethnic element was stronger within the elite than amongpeople in general.

The relevance of using Smith’s criterion of an ethnie is not to show that Smithwas right. It has no value in itself to state that the Scandinavian people of the 16thcentury were ethnies. The relevance is rather to show that by using Smith’scriterion, we can find factors important for understanding identities and identityformation in pre-national times. It is easier to find them using this ethnicterminology than by starting out from modern nationalism. This conclusion leadson to the question of the difference between the pre-national and nationalidentities.

72 There are two important exceptions, which would be worth a treatment of their own: The Gutasaganof Gotland, and especially the rich historical literature of Iceland.

73 Gustafsson, Gamla riken, pp. 313–315.



13. Why this was not nationalism

Was there a national identity in early 16th-century Scandinavia? If we put thequestion in this traditional way, the answer must be no. National identitypresupposes a nationalist worldview, where mankind is “naturally” divided intonations. In nationalism, the nation is a supraindividual category that exerts anultimate imperative over the individuals. It is the most important collective insociety – indeed, it is society. The nation should, in the nationalist worldview, be themain collective political subject; preferably, it should form a state of its own. Theethno-territorial political sentiments that we have met do not fit in with thisdescription.

It is obvious that belonging to a people and a realm was only one group ofarguments among others that could be used to legitimate action. Most argumentshad only vague or no connection to ethnic factors. Several of them had somethingto do with the realm, but not all, and by no means always with the realm as anethnic unity. A person’s or a group’s honour, Christian values, or good old laws andcustoms could take priority over being a Swede.

In a nationalist world, committing treason against one’s nation would be themost contemptible crime of all. This is not the case in the Nordic wars in the early16th century. Treason is to break one’s oath, to not live up to the behaviourexpected as a member of a certain group, to act against one’s lawful superiors.When Christian II surrendered in Norway in 1531, one of the conditions in thetruce was that his followers in Norway were released from their oath to him. Theywere thus free to once again swear their oath to king Frederik, and they could thenlive on as his faithful subjects.74

It is interesting to note how the Swedish nobleman Ture Jonsson (Tre Rosor)could stay at the political top for decades, always managing to survive (politicallyand physically) by changing allegiance at the right time. But in 1529, he finallymade a mistake and took part in the failed Vastergotland Rising. After exile, hecame back with Christian II in 1531. When he demanded capitulation from EskeBille at Bohus castle, the latter answered him that he had changed his loyalty somany times that nobody trusted him any longer.75 According to Eske Bille, his faultwas not that he had betrayed his country, but that he had changed allegiance toomany times to be reliable.

We have also noted that other units than the “country” were of greatimportance. The word “country” (land) was used not for the realm, but usually forthe province, the area of one landsting. The place of the ting organization in thepolitical worldview of the peasants is obvious. They accepted the realm, but forthem the realm was not the aristocratic network of the noble council, nor the moreor less centralized organization of the monarchy. The realm for them was afederation of ting lands.76 As we have seen, also the nobility and the clergyfrequently used such smaller units.

74 DN XV, nr. 481.75 GR VII, p. 559 f.76 Gustafsson, “Statsbildning och territoriell integration”, op. cit., pp. 211–213.



As we have noted above, identities tied to smaller territorial units are difficult totrace in the sources produced by the fight for power over whole realms, but we dosee them pop up now and then. The peasantry, clergy and nobility of Varend, insouth Sweden, met in July 1520 at the ting and asked Christian II for a truce untilthey knew how the war was going in central Sweden. They assured Christian that if“You get Your will in Uppland, Your Grace will get also this province without allstrife”.77 The security of the province here obviously was a legitimate argument thatwent higher than solidarity within the realm or with other Swedes, and the loyaltythey would pay to Christian if he were victorious in the north was thought to be justas valid as any, although they had made it dependent on such a pragmatic deal. Weare light years away from a national identity.

Also units larger than peoples and realms mattered. Christian values were notconfined to the realm. The fate of the Roman Church in the Nordic realms was apart of a larger European drama. The Archbishop of Trondheim became the lastfighter for the integrity of the Norwegian council of the realm, but he was, aboveall, fighting to keep his archdiocese and kingdom within the Catholic Church. Inorder to do so, he had close contacts with the German Emperor. Furthermore, theEmpire was part of the wider setting of Nordic politics, not least by virtue of the factthat Christian II was the brother-in-law of Charles V. Although himself a Lutheran,Christian had sworn loyalty to the Catholic Church and the Emperor beforeembarking on his attempted comeback.

Above all, the Union of the three realms was continuously present well into the1530s. It is misleading to view the election of Gustav Vasa as Swedish king in 1523as the end of the Union, as has often been done. Gustav Vasa tried to take over asmuch of the old Union territory as possible, offering his services as regent or king tothe Norwegians, and especially to Jamtland, to the people in Skaºne and to Gotland,actually occupying Danish Blekinge and Norwegian Viken. Frederik I also acted asif his intention was to take over the whole territory of his dethroned nephew, andgave up Sweden only when Gustav seemed too secure on the throne. With theagreement in Malmo in 1524, a fragile truce was established between the twousurpers within the old union territory, rather then a cordial relation between twosovereign neighbours.

Christian II’s comeback in 1531 once again made the Union a possiblealternative. Also during the Count’s War, the Union was a threat to the regimes inDenmark–Norway and Sweden. The Lubeckers and the Count wanted to haveChristian II released and re-established as Danish king. It is quite obvious that forGustav Vasa, this meant the immediate threat of a reawakening of the Union, sincehe at a very early stage decided to give full support to the anti-Count side inDenmark. Gustav Vasa had not read the historians of later centuries, for whom aSwedish national state was firmly established in 1523.

It is, however, important to note that this presence of the Union in practicalpolitical life did not correspond to any significant rhetorical presence. In thearguments we have met above, there is very little reference to the Union. It did noteven have a name, although “these three realms” in practice usually referred to these

77 BSH V, nr. 503.



three realms and no others. When Christian II pursued his claims in Sweden, orFrederik I his in Norway, they chose to act as Swedish or Norwegian kings/pretenders,not as Union monarchs. There was no counterpart to the chronicles of thekingdoms on a Union level and only very few references to solidarity within theUnion. There was rarely any “we” of the Union.

This lack of established concepts in the political culture partly explains thebreakdown of the Union. It was not impossible to change the units, and far-reaching changes were sometimes close at hand. But there was a certainconservatism in the political culture that gave an extra bonus to those who choseto play with the old, established units. The ethno-territorial political identities of thethree realms made it easier to use them as building bricks for state building insteadof tearing them apart to make new blocks.

Still another difference to a nationalist worldview is the fact that political unitswere not normally ethnically homogeneous. This is very clear in Sweden, wheremost of the inhabitants of the eastern part – present-day Finland – spoke Finnish,and certainly were seen as another people than the Swedes.78 This was of course adiscrepancy from the identification of Sweden with the land of the Swedes, asexisted among the social elite and possibly also in broader segments, but it was thiskind of discrepancy that pre-national people could handle with remarkable ease.79

There was no necessary relationship between political units and ethnicity as in thenationalist discourse.

If one cannot speak of nationalism in early 16th-century Scandinavia, howshould the sentiments and attitudes we have encountered be labelled? Scholarshave tried different terms. Peter Reinholdsson speaks about proto-nationalism, PatrickHall of genealogical nationalism, Øystein Rian of national identity.80 I have previouslyused the term patriotism, since the fatherland was a relatively frequently employedconcept. Susan Reynold’s regnalism and Anthony Smith’s ethnicism are otherexamples.

This might be a contest over words, but words, after all, are what we have inorder to conceptualize reality. “Nations”, “nationalism”, and so on, always conveyto us associations with modern nationalist ideologies and sentiments, regardless ofhow often we remind ourselves and our readers of the opposite. This is why I prefera label without such connotations. “Patriotism” might also be misleading, sincemany other entities than the realm, such as provinces or dioceses, could be termedpatria.81 It has, though, the advantage of associating with the ideas of classicalantiquity, which I believe were important for the rhetoric around language,customs, fatherland and king. There is also something to be said for the

78 J. Nordin, “I broderlig samdrakt? Forhaº llandet Sverige-Finland under 1700-talet och Anthony D.Smiths ethnie-begrepp”, Scandia,2 (1998); M. Lamberg, “Finnar, svenskar eller framlingar? Inblickar iden finska befolkningsdelens status i det svenska riket under senmedeltiden”, Historisk tidskrift, 4(2000).

79 Reynolds, “Medieval Origines Gentium”, p. 389.80 Ø. Rian, “Danmark-Norges historie. Refleskjoner over Harald Gustafssons refleksjoner” Historisk

tidsskrift, 3 (Norway, 2000).81 M. Edgren, Fraºn rike till nation. Arbetskraftspolitik, befolkningspolitik och nationell gemenskapsformering i Sverige

under 1700-talet (Lund, 2001), pp. 48–50; S. Jakobsson, “Defining a Nation: Popular and PublicIdentity in the Middle Ages”, Scandinavian Journal of History, 1 (1999).



terminology of both Smith and Reynolds. A patriotic, ethno-territorial regnalism,perhaps? Anyhow, it was not nationalism.

14. Conclusions

In this study, I have looked for identities and ideas about ethnicity and politicalunits in the political culture of 16th century Scandinavia. It has not been theintention to find the roots of modern nationalism, neither has it been the mainobjective to decide whether we can speak of national sentiments or not (although Ihave devoted some space to showing that we cannot). The task has been to writeidentity history without a modernization perspective: to ask how people identifiedthemselves and others, regardless of how their posterity came to identify themselveshundreds of years later.

There existed a relatively widespread idea about the realm as a fundamental unitfor social life – not the only, but one important such. It seems to be fitting todescribe this idea as regnalism, in the meaning of Susan Reynolds. It is important,with Colin Kidd, to underline the place of this regnalism in Christian thought.People lived within a Christian worldview, where all men belonged together butwere divided as peoples, each with one prince, in the face of God.

There was a basic ethno-territorial assumption – in the Swedish realm there liveda special people called Swedes, speaking Swedish. But this notion could well co-exist with the fact that a great many Swedes also were called Finns and spokeFinnish, without this causing any trouble. There existed an ethnicism in AnthonySmith’s meaning, but it was of limited importance in politics. It might well havebeen stronger within the societal elites and less so among the peasantry, although itwas also well known in peasant society. This ethnic identity was at its mostproductive as a counter-identity, in Peter Sahlins’ meaning, against possible or realfoes. The role of the other Scandinavian realms and peoples as mirrors for an ownidentity is very clear; for instance in the case of the historical chronicles in Swedenand Denmark.

Although this ethno-territorial political identity could be used and reproduced inthe political culture of those turbulent years, it was only a part of a larger repertoireof legitimizations. Other arguments could take priority; arguments could becombined in different ways. It is impossible to count the number of argumentslegitimizing action in any “objective” way, but I have chosen to call the ethnic/regnal/patriotic factor “the eighth argument” in order symbolically to underline itsposition as one of many. The Swede of the 16th century was in most cases probablya Swede for himself, but this was a smaller thing for him than for his counterparts inthe modern era.



Scandinavian Journal of History 027 [91-114] - The Eighth Argument Identity, Ethnicity and...

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