Sweden and Denmark
Similar patterns are observable in Sweden and Denmark. The main feature to be foregrounded from the perspective of this book is that the crown was elected during the formative early period.127 This suggests it was relatively weaker and depended on the most powerful actors of the realm.
Population was low before 1300 - around 600,000 in Sweden, slightly more in Denmark.[1132] These traits affected representative pracÂtice, since Scandinavian royal assemblies “never became permanent polÂitical institutions,” unlike Western European ones.[1133] Rather, they too developed a more institutionalized form of the Royal Council, especially after 1280.[1134]30 Both cases developed constitutional practices, but both also succumbed to absolutist rule, though Denmark remained that way into the modern period. Only a brief overview can be offered here, showing how weaker executive power in Denmark underlay this diverÂgence. Sweden was closer to England, but its kings lacked the capacity to integrate society as effectively.Reliable comparative data on extraction and assemblies are lacking, so the analysis must remain suggestive. As in all cases, land was held of the crown. Sweden in particular resembles England in having conditional tenures and no subinfeudation, both signs of relative royal strength. Fiefs were apparently not heritable.[1135] Royal control was strongly tied to Church initiative in both cases.[1136] As again in England, provinces had a homogeneous administrative structure,[1137] generated by the crown in alliance with bishops. The king was the supreme judge in both kingdoms by the late thirteenth century[1138] and judicial activity was originally central to the provincial assemblies (the “things”).[1139]
The Swedish crown was relatively stronger than its Danish counterpart.
Private jurisdiction was almost totally absent there after the 1200s.[1140]Another indicator was the free peasantry. The peasants are typically discussed as an independent, idiosyncratic element of both societies.[1141] Yet, in Sweden they were subject to direct royal taxation that stemmed from the commutation of either purveyance (the supply of goods to the itinerant king) or military service.[1142] The term “peasants” seems to denote a lower social class than was included in the English and other parliaments; however, their legal status seems closer to English tenants or even freeholders[1143] and it is unclear if they were poorer.[1144] The relations of dependence, as in England, aggregated to collective rights - only here these included the right to elect the king. Danish peasants, by contrast, were also believed to be free but were in fact tenants of lay or ecclesiastical lords, reflecting even weaker royal powers.[1145] This weakness also enabled the influx of German nobility that developed feudal relations with the local population, as Ertman noted, creating a strong centrifugal force that put Denmark on a different trajectory.[1146]Other key indicators, however, suggest that both Scandinavian kings were relatively weaker than English ones. Noble tax immunity was cruÂcial; in exchange for the land they received nobles only provided military service and they retained a privileged position throughout the period, especially through the Royal Council.[1147] Noble tax immunity in fact pushed the two lower estates in Denmark, the burghers and clergy, to support a hereditary absolutist monarchy that could break noble power after 1660.[1148]
Royal relative weakness was also reflected in the judicial system. Local Danish assemblies were very active, voting on taxes and even on royal elections.
As they retained separate provincial laws, however, the crown could not achieve the territorial anchoring observed in England that flowed from judicial control. A national law was instituted only in 1683.145 Swedish kings imposed a uniform law code from the mid- 1300s, which enabled relatively stronger territorial anchoring of the crown in the provinces.146 However, Sweden’s semi-federal character kept judicial functions localized originally.147 So the population was less integrated in the central judicial or legislative activity of the realm in both cases - as argued, lack of institutional fusion typically reflects royal weakness. This helps explain why Swedish representative practice did not involve legislation by broader social orders: the “legal right of â€?comÂmonalty’ to participate in decisions affecting the entire kingdom was limited to royal elections and taxation,” not legislation.148Nonetheless, as this book suggests, representation emerged under a strong king, Magnus Eriksson (1319-64). He was strong enough to pass the aforementioned common rural land law, the Landlaw that lasted until 1719.149 Strong royal powers also underlay the next step in repreÂsentative practice, under the rising but challenged king, Gustav Vasa (1523-60). Faced with a powerful nobility, he incorporated the free peasants into a national central system of representation after 1527 (later called Riksdag), generating another case of the second-best constiÂtutionalism observed in Poland and Hungary.
Gustav expanded royal strength the most, after liberating Sweden from the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Norway and getting elected from a strong base. In addition to the silver/gold reserves he amassed, he increased tax collection, contrary to old views - though taxation was not important in early meetings.[1149] He also expropriated extensive Church lands before England’s Henry VIII did and made the monarchy hereditary.[1150] Royal power was also asserted by enforcing the conditionÂality of relations with the critical group: the same peasants that were being included in parliament now faced strict rules that failure to pay taxes three years in a row reverted their land to the crown.[1151]
Scholars with access to primary and further secondary sources can uncover how petition-making and collective responsibility interacted with political centralization. But available evidence suggests that the weaker powers of the Swedish monarchy compared to England, ironically leading to its more “democratic” character, undermined the constitutional strucÂture for an extended period. This led to the mix of constitutionalism and autocracy that has divided scholarly views and made Swedish history less linear than the English one. In Denmark, where local lords were strong, absolutism prevailed, as it did in neighboring France.
10.3
More on the topic Sweden and Denmark:
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- The NormativeZEmpirical Inversion