Episode 2 Kings of the North Audio

Mikael Shainkman

Magnus Eriksson, uh, died with a crossbow bolt in his eye at Skara Heath in the spring of 1336, which is, let's be honest, a spectacularly messy way for a king to exit the stage of history. But as a historian, you quickly realize the real tragedy wasn't the corpse itself, or even the gruesome nature of his demise. No, the real problem was constitutional. You see, Norway and Sweden hadn't been some beautifully fused, harmonious super-state. They were two highly suspicious, intensely stubborn medieval kingdoms that just happened to be wearing the same man as a bridge. And now, well, someone had gone and shot the bridge. This left both kingdoms staring across the ruins of a personal union, completely headless, while the blood was still drying on the fields of Westrogothia. What should have happened next, according to standard medieval protocol, was a massive, decades-long civil war. Both elites were armed to the teeth, both were traumatized by the sudden collapse of the royal administration, and both were desperate to protect their own estates. Or did they? Actually, what followed was a mad, desperate scramble to find a replacement. But here is the beautiful irony of 1336: Sweden and Norway faced the exact same structural crisis, the exact same empty throne, yet they chose two completely opposite paths to solve it. One went looking abroad for a puppet; the other looked inward for a savior. And the consequences of those two choices would rewrite the political map of the North for generations.

Mikael Shainkman

Let us look at Sweden first, because their solution was, uh, classic committee-driven panic. In November 1336, the Swedish Council of the Realm--the Riksrådet--met and proclaimed Albert von Mecklenburg, the Duke of Mecklenburg, as the new Swedish king. Now, on paper, this looks like a bizarre choice. Why bring in a German duke to rule Sweden? Well, the answer, as usual in the Middle Ages, comes down to family trees and desperate legal fictions. Albert was married to Eufemia Bjelbo, who happened to be the sister of the late, bolt-eyed King Magnus. So, Albert himself didn't have a drop of Swedish royal blood, but his wife did, which meant their children would. It was what we might call 'usable legitimacy.' It allowed the Swedish high nobility to claim dynastic continuity without actually having to submit to Magnus's closer, much more intimidating Norwegian relatives. But there was a catch. Oh, there is always a catch with the Swedish nobility. They didn't just hand Albert the crown on a silver platter; they wrapped it in a legal straightjacket called a handfesting. Now, a handfesting isn't just some polite coronation oath where the king promises to be nice. It is a brutal, transactional contract. It stripped the Swedish crown of almost all its independent fiscal and military authority, placing real power firmly in the hands of the aristocratic oligarchy. The Swedish nobles wanted a king who was foreign enough to lack a local power base, and weak enough to be easily managed. They got exactly what they wanted. Brilliant, right? Well, only if you ignore the fact that they had just built a monarchy on a foundation of absolute, systemic suspicion, setting up decades of bitter friction between a frustrated king and a greedy council. Albert had the title, yes, but he was a king with his hands tied behind his back.

Mikael Shainkman

Now, while Sweden was busy castrating its executive branch, Norway took a completely different path. The victorious Norwegian army had marched back from the battle of Skara Heath with no king, and to make matters worse, their great aristocratic anchor, Erling Vidkunsson of Bjarkøy, died of his battle wounds on the journey home. This was a massive blow. But in medieval politics, a vacuum never stays empty for long. With Erling gone, Jon Havtoresson Sudreim stepped directly into the spotlight as the undisputed leader of the Norwegian Council of the Realm. Jon was not some lucky upstart who had performed well in battle. He was a Sudreim, the gold standard of Norwegian nobility. More importantly, his mother was Agnes Håkonsdotter, an illegitimate daughter of the old king, Håkon V. This made Jon the nearest, eldest, living male relative of both Håkon V and the deceased Magnus. He had the blood, he had the prestige, and after the victory at Skara, he had the army. In March 1337, Jon called a Storting in Oslo. Now, remember, the Storting was not a modern parliament. It was a massive, theatrical public assembly where the king had to perform his legitimacy before the peasants, the church, the merchants, and the lords. And Jon was a master class in political marketing. To the free peasants, he promised legal protection and a guarantee of peace under the ancient laws. To the wealthy burghers, he confirmed their precious town privileges and trade routes. To the Church, he offered deep, pious respect for sacred kingship. He bought the consent of every single estate by giving them exactly what they had been begging for. And so, on March 30, 1337, Jon was hailed as king, and soon after, he was crowned in Nidaros Cathedral by Archbishop Pål Bårdsson as Jon I Yngling of Norway. Notice that name: Yngling. The Archbishop dug up this ancient, semi-mythical dynasty name from Snorri Sturluson's sagas to wash away any taint of Jon's mother's illegitimacy. It was pure political theater, a giant neon sign telling the world: this is not a compromise candidate. This is the ancient royal blood of Norway, returned. And unlike Albert in Sweden, Jon didn't sign a handfesting. He swore to respect the laws, yes, but he kept the traditional, formidable powers of the Norwegian monarchy completely intact. Albert became king by surrendering; Jon became king by consolidating.

Mikael Shainkman

Once he had the crown, Jon I did what insecure, highly intelligent monarchs always do: he began aggressively remodeling the entire kingdom around his own person. He started with family management, which in the Middle Ages is just another word for national security. His brother, Sigurd Havtoresson, was a potential rival, so Jon married him off to Ingebjørg Erlingsdotter--the enormously wealthy heiress to the Bjarkøy estates in the far north. Jon then promptly installed Sigurd as the Sysslemann of Hålogaland. It was a brilliant move. It tied the massive Bjarkøy wealth to the throne, rewarded his brother, and, most importantly, sent Sigurd to the absolute edge of the civilized world, far away from the halls of power in Oslo. Brotherly love is wonderful, but distance is safer. Then, Jon secured his own marriage to Helvig of Schleswig, the sister of the former Danish king, Valdemar of Schleswig. This was a massive diplomatic coup, sponsored by none other than Count Gert of Holstein, opening the door for Norway to play a major role in Danish and German politics. But Jon's real masterpiece was the Law of Knighthood of late 1337. Jon wanted Norway to look like a proper, sophisticated European state, not a rustic northern outpost. The law declared that no one in Norway could hold a title higher than knight unless they had royal blood. This kept the nobility from becoming overmighty barons, but in return, Jon dubbed seventy-four men as knights. These weren't just old-money elites like the Bolts, Giskes, and Smørs; they were also new men, loyal soldiers from his own hird and administration. These seventy-four knights received tax exemptions on their ancestral seat-farms, but in exchange, they had to serve the king on horseback whenever he called. It was the formal birth of the Norwegian knightly class, and it was brilliant: the nobility got prestige and tax breaks, but the king held the key to the gate. He decided who got knighted. Then came the cultural face-lift. With the help of Walloon knights brought in by the dowager queen Blanche of Namur, and German knights from his new wife's court, Jon standardized Norwegian heraldry. Suddenly, new noble families were designing striking coats of arms and adopting grand, heraldic surnames like Adelssverd, or 'Sword in Hand', and Haukenlilje, 'Hawk and Lily'. It was medieval corporate branding, a very expensive way of saying, 'We belong in the room.' And Jon didn't stop there. He had a colossal royal banner woven, a two-by-five-meter masterpiece featuring the Norwegian Lion intertwined with the Sudreim Rose. He even commissioned a monk from Stavanger, Olvar Ulriksson, to write a brand-new royal history, the 'Saga of Magnus the Lawmender and his Sons'. This saga, finished in 1341, didn't just revive Norwegian historical writing; it conveniently framed Jon's ancestors as the heroes of the past. Jon wasn't just ruling Norway; he was actively rewriting its history to make his own rise look completely inevitable. By the early 1340s, the contrast was stark. Sweden had a king, Albert, who was a prisoner of his own court. Norway had Jon I, who had a crown, a banner, a brand-new history book, seventy-four knights, and a very clear understanding that power is not just inherited--it is performed. But as both kingdoms would soon discover, these two very different solutions to the same royal corpse were about to collide, and the peace of the North would not last. But that, as usual, is a story for next time. Good chatting, talk soon.