Margaret of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden

Danish-born queen of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (1376-1412)

• Born: 1353
• Birthplace: Søborg, Denmark
• Died: October 28, 1412
• Place of death: Flensburg, Denmark

Margaret was the first to unite Scandinavia (through the Kalmar Union) under one sovereign ruler and the first ruling queen of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Early Life

Born in 1353, Margaret was the younger daughter of King Valdemar IV Atterdag of Denmark and Queen Hedevig (the sister of the duke of Slesvig). Betrothed at the age of six to Hákon VI of Norway, born in 1340, she became his wife in 1363, when she was ten and he twenty-three.

She did not go to the court at Akershus until she was sixteen, however, but spent her early married years in Norway in the household of Märta, the married daughter of the Swedish Saint Brigit, a mystic visionary and the founder of a monastic order. At Märta’s house, Margaret must have heard daily of political happenings in all the Scandinavian kingdoms, for Brigit was somewhat of a celebrity, better known than any other Scandinavian citizen. Her children similarly were well traveled, educated, and cosmopolitan. Margaret in her later life worked tirelessly for Brigit’s canonization, accomplished in 1391.

Margaret’s son Olaf was born in 1370, when she was seventeen, a year after she joined Hákon at the Norwegian court. When Olaf was five, Valdemar IV Atterdag died. Then only twenty-two, Margaret persuaded the council of state to elect Olaf king with herself as regent, even though her sister’s son Albert of Mecklenburg was the logical heir as son of the elder daughter. The Danish council did not like the Germans, however, and had many quarrels with the Prussian nobility. War with Mecklenburg and Holstein followed, but Albert was defeated. On the death of her husband, Hákon, in 1380, Margaret managed to secure Olaf’s election as king of Norway (he was only ten years old), again with herself as regent. By this time, she was only twenty-seven years old.

Some background should be remembered for fourteenth century Scandinavia. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden had been isolated from the rest of Europe for a thousand years, developing a culture of their own, free from the influences of both Rome and the Teutonic cultures of Germany. They had produced one of the world’s great literatures (that of the Nordic sagas), and women had a social position they had nowhere else. Scandinavians practiced rotation of crops, invented their own system of writing (runes), and discovered new lands in the West. Feudalism came to these cultures very late, and the system that developed in Scandinavia had no serfdom, no lifetime service to an overlord. Instead, all three countries were unified kingdoms from early in their history; military service was owed to the monarch not by the person but by the district. Laws had more than a local application, because the whole of each kingdom was united and easily connected by water transportation.

The fourteenth century, however, was disastrous for Scandinavia. The cities of the Hanseatic League (an assembly of German trading towns), as well as the various northern German states such as Holstein and Mecklenburg, conquered much of the wealthiest Scandinavian territory Sk†ne (in Sweden), the islands of Bornholm and Gotland, the Baltic states, and Slesvig (part of the Jutland peninsula).

Worse, the Black Death was particularly difficult for sparsely populated Norway and Sweden. Brought to Bergen by ship in 1349, the plague killed one-third to one-half of the population before the end of the century. By 1400, there were only sixty of the more than three hundred noble families remaining in Norway. Farms lay in ruin, crops were neither planted nor harvested, the clergy death rate left parishes without religious leadership, and famine and poverty were everywhere. A letter exists from young Queen Margaret written to Hákon in 1370, in which she begs for basic provisions for herself and the servants.

You must know, my lord, that I and my servants suffer and are in dire need for lack of food and drink, so that neither they nor I get the necessities. And so I beg you that you will find some way out so that things may improve and that those who are with me shall not leave me on account of hunger.

Members of the royalty were often in straitened circumstances for years. Hákon’s mother, Queen Blanche, for example, left at her death only some linens for bed and table, a few spices, and “a few table knives and four silver spoons.”

Margaret’s father, Valdemar IV Atterdag, was called “another day” because of his characteristic expression and the “new day” he brought in for Denmark. After twelve years without a king, under the chaos of the rule of the German dukes, he reunified the country, bought back lost land (such as Gotland), and made favorable treaties with Hanseatic cities such as Lübeck. Margaret continued his policies and strengthened the monarchy.

Life’s Work

Margaret’s great achievement was the uniting of all Scandinavia under one sovereign. Olaf died suddenly at the age of seventeen in 1387. With no clear heir, only Margaret remained and no woman had ever been queen. Nevertheless, in preference to Albert of Mecklenburg, she was chosen “all-powerful lady and mistress,” regent of Denmark and Norway, with the right to name her successor.

In Norway, a disaffected faction reported that Olaf was not dead. The impostor claimed the crown and gained followers by revealing information that only Olaf and Margaret could know. Margaret hurried to Norway and proved that the impostor was the son of Olaf’s nurse by showing that he did not have a large wart on his back, Olaf’s birthmark. The false Olaf was tortured and burned at the stake.

Soon Margaret named her grandnephew Erik of Pomerania as her successor; both the Norwegian and the Danish clergy and nobility agreed with this move. In Sweden, the nobles opposing King Albert, led by Birger, Brigit’s son and Märta’s brother, called on Margaret for assistance. She accepted on the condition that she be made queen of Sweden. Albert had insulted Margaret, calling her “a king without breeches” and the “abbot’s concubine,” as well as claiming both Denmark and Norway for himself. He also sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, swearing not to put on his nightcap until she surrendered.

The battle lines were drawn for civil war in Sweden. In September, 1388, the Battle of Falköping was fought, with about twelve thousand men on each side. Both sides incurred great losses, but in the end, Margaret’s forces were victorious; both Albert and his son Erik were captured. When the prisoners were brought before her, she had Albert fitted for a paper nightcap that was 17 meters (19 yards) long, proportioned to his verbal offenses. He was imprisoned in Sk†ne for seven years. Margaret was now the undisputed queen of Sweden as well as of Norway and Denmark.

Sweden, too, accepted Erik of Pomerania, and in 1397 Kalmar, Sweden, was the site for a gala coronation ceremony. Erik was crowned king of all the Scandinavian countries by the archbishops of Uppsala and Lund. At the same time, Margaret called together a large group of nobles and clergy from all three countries, and together they drafted an arrangement for a closer union of the three governments. The resulting document had three articles. The first provided that the three kingdoms should have the same king, to be chosen successively by each of the kingdoms. The second article decreed that the monarch divide his time equally among the three kingdoms. The third article directed that each kingdom should continue its own laws, customs, and councils, but that foreign alliances concluded with one country would be binding on all three, that all must aid the others in time of war, and that banishment or treason in one country would be treated the same way in all.

Nevertheless, the document, called the Kalmar Union , is inconsistent. The six parchment copies called for do not exist; they seem never in fact to have been drawn. The single copy extant is on paper, not parchment, and has only ten seals, instead of the requisite seventeen. These wax seals are stamped on the paper, rather than attached to the document. Perhaps this copy is a draft, and the others were never agreed on or made. There are no Norwegian seals at all, and only three Danish ones. Scholars continue to debate the issue, wondering who exactly was opposed to the union and for what reasons. Despite these problems, the union existed de facto for the lifetimes of Margaret and Erik, and the union of Denmark and Norway continued until 1814.

Margaret continued to consolidate and strengthen her power. She kept close, personal contact with all levels of government in the three kingdoms and was an indefatigable traveler, spending more time away from Denmark than at home. She appointed administrators and bishops, having them serve away from their home countries in order to strengthen their personal loyalty to her. The Danehof, or Danish Assembly, was never called, since she made decisions personally. She continued to win back the Danish lands lost to German states, through battle, treaty, or outright purchase. She negotiated marriage contracts to strengthen alliances, first Erik’s marriage to Philippa, daughter of Henry IV of England, and later a marriage treaty with Bavaria. Nevertheless, she remained steadfastly neutral in the bloody wars between England and France and in other European conflicts.

Margaret transformed the coinage , minting coins of pure silver rather than of copper, thus strengthening the Crown’s economic position. Even though she had inherited heavy debts from her father, after 1385 her economic situation was markedly improved when she regained the Swedish castles in Sk†ne. Earlier, she had had to borrow from the bishop of Roskilde; now, she was able to make large donations of money and property to the Church. According to some scholars, these gifts were cleverly arranged, however, so that the property reverted to the Crown after a certain income had accrued. In any event, she was well loved for her generosity to religious establishments such as the motherhouse of the Brigittine order at Vadstena, Sweden.

Margaret’s last years were especially concerned with the perennial problem of regaining lost Danish territory in Slesvig. In 1412, not yet sixty years old, she died suddenly, probably of the plague, on board her ship in Flensburg harbor in Slesvig after she had been welcomed into the city and negotiations had begun.

Significance

Called the “Semiramis of the North” after the queen of Babylon, Margaret was one of the strongest monarchs of the three kingdoms. She had a gift for avoiding strife and persuading factions to come to terms under her strong leadership. She managed to influence public opinion in controversial matters, such as heavy taxes and the appointment of Germans to administrative posts. Tactful but assertive, she could be charming even while ruthless. She was restrained and lovable, knowing how to keep both the Church and the nobility happy. She used her considerable resources to strengthen the kingdoms by means of alliances and contributions and kept clear of expensive foreign wars.

Margaret’s achievement at a time when all Scandinavia was being threatened by German cultural and economic domination was to unite the kingdoms and not only hold back the Germans but also regain lands lost to the south. At the time of her death, the Scandinavian Union was by far the most powerful force in the Baltic; it was also the second largest accumulation of European territory under a single sovereign. It is not too much to say that she almost single-handedly kept Scandinavia independent at a time when the kingdoms could easily have been made subservient to various German states.

Monarchs of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, 1375-1523

Reign

• Ruler

1375-1387

• Olaf (V of Denmark, of Norway)

1376-1412

• Margaret I of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden

1380

• Unification of Denmark and Norway

1397

• Kalmar Union (joins Norway, Denmark, and Sweden)

1412-1439

• Eric (VII of Denmark, III of Norway, XIII of Sweden)

1439-1448

• Christopher (III of Denmark)

1448-1481

• Christian I of Oldenburg

1481-1513

• Hans/John (II of Sweden)

1513-1523

• Christian II

1523

• Gustavus I Vasa founds independent Swedish line

Bibliography

Andersson, Ingvar. A History of Sweden. 2d ed. Translated by Carolyn Hannay and Alan Blair. New York: Praeger, 1970. The chapter titled “The Union of Kalmar” deals with the subject from the Swedish perspective, giving much detail about the controversy surrounding the document.

Derry, T. K. A History of Scandinavia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979. This work is particularly good on social and cultural history. Chapter 3 deals with Margaret and the Kalmar Union and gives a contextual discussion on life in the Middle Ages. Includes maps, genealogical tables, and a helpful time line of parallel events in the Scandinavian countries. Excellent bibliography.

Duggan, Anne J., ed. Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 1997. Papers from a conference that explore the reigns of several queens of the European Middle Ages, with a chapter on the queens of Scandinavia. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Jochens, Jenny M. “Denmark.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Vol. 4. New York: Scribner, 1984. This helpful article gives a historical overview of Denmark in the medieval period, focusing on political history and connections between the Scandinavian countries. A bibliographical essay surveys scholarly work in English and Scandinavian languages.

Larsen, Karen. A History of Norway. 1948. Reprint. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974. A good source on Norway, this study is particularly helpful on the social-historical context. Chapters 9 and 10 cover the years of Margaret’s reign, evaluating her somewhat negatively from the Norwegian perspective. Good bibliography.

Scott, Franklin D. “Margareta and the Union of Kalmar.” In Sweden: The Nation’s History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. Discusses Margaret and the Kalmar Union as seen by Sweden. Includes maps, bibliography, and index.

Scott, Franklin D. “A Saint and a Queen: Two Indomitable Figures of the Fourteenth Century.” In Scandinavian Studies, edited by Carl F. Bayerschmidt and Erik J. Friis. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965. One of the few scholarly articles on Margaret available in English. Discusses Margaret and Saint Brigit, focusing on the international and Scandinavian values that each espoused and the many connections between the two women.

Sinding, Paul C. History of Scandinavia: From the Early Times of the Norsemen and Vikings to the Present Day. 9th ed. New York: Author, 1867. This study has more detailed information on Margaret, in chapters 2 and 3, than do most other texts. Each chapter begins with an outline, making it easy to find topics.