Scandinavian states of the Middle Ages


At the end of IX c. Vikings from Norway settled on a large treeless island. They called it Iceland – “The Land of Ice”. The climate in Iceland was very unfavorable for agriculture, but the presence of fat pastures allowed to graze livestock. Soon the entire coast of Iceland was dotted with the hamlets of the Viking colonists.

Icelanders only in 1000 joined the faith of Christ. During the IX-XIII centuries. they had neither state power nor army. The problems of inner life were decided by the whole world, at the annual assemblies of the farmers.

The stratification among the Normans of Scandinavia was deeper. Thanks to military campaigns, the kings and their approximate people were enriched, their influence increased. In the end, in Scandinavia the Norman states arose – the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish kingdoms.

In Denmark, the state was formed in the tenth century, when the King of the Danes, Harald Sinezuby, pacified the local nobility. In

neighboring Norway, royal power increased in the eleventh century, but there the formation of the state was slower. When the royal power introduced Christianity in the country, people stood up for paganism and former liberties and killed the monarch. In Sweden, first there were two separate states, in the north and south of the country, but in the XI century. they united.

The peoples of Scandinavia, especially the Danes and the Swedes, did not forget that the blood of the Vikings flows in their veins. So, the Danes in the beginning of the XI century. subdued England, Norway and part of Sweden. In the XII century. they undertook to forcibly baptize the Baltic and Pomeranian Slavs, and in the thirteenth century. captured northern Estonia and a number of German territories. However, the Hansa drove them from these lands. Swedish military knowledges captured in the middle of the 13th c. part of Finland. She tried to take possession of the lands in the mouth of the Neva, but was defeated in the Battle of the Neva from the Rus.

At the end of the XIV century. Denmark, Norway and Sweden have united in one state. But this union turned out to be “folded, not connected”. It was not an alliance of equals, it was dominated by a stronger Denmark. Therefore, soon it disintegrated.


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Scandinavian states of the Middle Ages