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A concise history of medieval Scandinavia Christianity and European-style monarchy—the cross and the scepter—were introduced to Scandinavia in the tenth century, a development that was to have profound implications for all of Europe. Cross and Scepter is a concise history of the Scandinavian kingdoms from the age of the Vikings to the Reformation, written by Scandinavia's leading medieval historian. Sverre Bagge shows how the rise of the three kingdoms not only changed the face of Scandinavia, but also helped make the territorial state the standard political unit in Western Europe. He describes Scandinavia’s momentous conversion to Christianity and the creation of church and monarchy t...
In this seminal work, Sverre Bagge provides a detailed account of Norwegian state formation in the period from c. 950 to 1350, widening his perspective to include a discussion of the emergence of the medieval state and state formation in the Middle Ages in general. The primary objective is to examine Norway as a case that may serve to illuminate some general problems of European state formation in the period, problems related both to the formation of the European system of independent kingdoms within a common cultural framework and to the inner development of these kingdoms.
The volume furthermore examines the changes that took place in the military, social-economical, ideological, l...
This book applies a legal anthropological framework to high medieval Norwegian history. It formulates the question of state formation in a new and challenging way by showing how the king a substantial degree based his dominion on unpredictability and presence.
In this book, Beñat Elortza Larrea analyses the processes of polity consolidation and military transformation in Scandinavia between the early eleventh and early fourteenth centuries. Based on a plethora of administrative, legal, and narrative sources, this study examines the development of governance and warfare in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and evaluates to which degree European ideas and institutions shaped the budding medieval Scandinavian realms. In other words – did the formation of these kingdoms stem mostly from European influence, were they a by-product of a purely Scandinavian ethos, or did they largely develop due to historical and geographical circumstances unique to each realm
"Carries the historical reinterpretation of the sagas a big step forward."--Jesse L. Byock, author of "The Saga of the Volsungs"
The volume presents a new understanding of medieval historiography by examining the representation of society, politics and human behaviour in six historical writings from imperial Germany, one of the leading political and intellectual centres during the period c. 950-1150.
The King's Mirror is the outstanding literary monument of thirteenth-century Norway. It is presented as a dialogue between a father and his son. The son wants his father's help and advice to live a good life, and more generally, he wants to know how people belonging to different layers of society should live, both in a moral and in a more practical sense. The dialogue starts with the merchant, goes on to the hirthmathrThe King's Mirror was written in Norway, on the periphery of Western Christendom, and a country whose contribution to political thought has not received much attention. This study attempts to cut across the traditional borderline between the Nordic countries and the rest of Western Christendom, both in examining The King's Mirror as part of a common European tradition and in using the work to illuminate European political thought in a comparatively little known period, from the end of the Investiture Contest in the early twelfth century to the revival of Aristotelian studies in the later thirteenth century. The book was originally published by Odense University Press in 1987 but all the remaining stock has now been taken over by Brepols.
This book is the first treatment in English of the medieval Swedish kingdom in its formative period, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It provides an overview of Scandinavian research on the subject and an analysis of all aspects of kingship and government.
In Frontiers for Peace in the Medieval North. The Norwegian-Scottish Frontier c. 1260-1470, Ian Peter Grohse examines social and political interactions in Orkney, a Norwegian-held province with long and intimate ties to the Scottish mainland. Commonly portrayed as the epicentre of political tension between Norwegian and Scottish fronts, Orkney appears here as a medium for diplomacy between monarchies and as an avenue for interface and cooperation between neighbouring communities. Removed from the national heartlands of Scandinavia and Britain, Orcadians fostered a distinctly local identity that, although rooted in Norwegian law and civic organization, featured a unique cultural accent engendered through Scottish immigration. This study of Orcadian experiences encourages greater appreciation of the peaceful dimensions of pre-modern European frontiers.