The first union between Sweden and Norway occurred in 1319 when the three-year-old Magnus, son of the Swedish royal Duke Eric and of the Norwegian princess Ingeborg, inherited the throne of Norway from his grandfather Haakon V and in the same year was elected King of Sweden, by the Convention of Oslo. The boy king's long minority weakened the royal influence in both countries, and Magnus lost both his kingdoms before his death. The Swedes, irritated by his misrule, superseded him by his nephew, Albert of Mecklenburg in 1365. In Sweden, Magnus partialities and necessities led directly to the rise of a powerful landed aristocracy, and, indirectly, to the growth of popular liberties. Forced by the unruliness of the magnates to lean upon the middle classes, in 1359 the king summoned the first Swedish Riksdag, on which occasion representatives from the towns were invited to appear along with the nobles and clergy. His successor, Albert, was forced to go a step farther and, in 1371, to take the first coronation oath.

Kalmar Union

In 1388, at the request of the Swedes themselves, Albert was driven out by Queen Margaret of Denmark and at a convention of the representatives of the three Scandinavian kingdoms (held at Kalmar in 1397), Margaret's great-nephew, Eric of Pomerania, was elected the common king, although the liberties of each of the three realms were expressly reserved and confirmed. The union was to be a personal, not a political union. Neither Margaret herself nor her successors observed the stipulation that in each of the three kingdoms only natives should hold land and high office, and the efforts first of Denmark (at that time by far the strongest member of the union) to impose her will on the Union's weaker kingdoms soon produced a rupture, or rather a series of semi-ruptures. The Swedes first broke away from it in 1434 under the popular leader Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, and after his murder they elected Karl Knutsson Bonde their king under the title of Charles VIII, 1436. In 1441 Charles VIII had to abdicate in favour of Christopher of Bavaria, who was already king of Denmark and Norway; however, upon the death of Christopher in 1448, a state of confusion ensued in the course of which Charles VIII was twice reinstated and twice expelled again. Finally, on his death in 1470, the three kingdoms were reunited under Christian II of Denmark, the prelates and higher nobility of Sweden being favourable to the union, though the great majority of the Swedish people always detested it as a foreign usurpation. The national party was represented by the three great Riksforestandare, or Viceroyalty, of the Sture family who, with brief intervals, successively defended the independence of Sweden against the Danish kings from 1470 to 1520 and thus kept the nation's spirit alive. But the viceroyalty was too casual and anomalous an institution to rally the nation around it permanently, and when the tyranny of Christian II became intolerable the Swedish people elected Gustavus Eriksson Vasa, who as viceroy had already driven out the Danes, king of Sweden at Strangnas on June 6, 1523.
 
Kalmar Union

The Kalmar Union (Danish/Norwegian/Swedish: Kalmarunionen) was a series of personal unions (1397–1520) that united the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden under a single monarch. The countries had given up their sovereignty, but not their independence, and diverging interests (especially Swedish dissatisfaction over the Danish and Holsteinish dominance) gave rise to a conflict that would hamper it from the 1430s until its final dissolution in 1523.

Union

The union was formed by Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412) in the Swedish town of Kalmar, then close to the Danish border, after Danish and Swedish troops in 1389 had defeated the Swedish king, Albert of Mecklenburg, and he subsequently failed to pay the required tribute of 60,000 silver marks within three years after his release. King Albert, born in Germany, was disliked by the Swedish nobility and their rebellion had received help from the Danes, who intended the union to serve as a check on the growing power of the German Hanseatic League. Queen Margaret, who was a daughter of the late Danish king Valdemar Atterdag and wife of the late Norwegian king Haakon VI, maneuvered to have her grandnephew Eric of Pomerania recognized as heir to the Norwegian throne, and then elected king over the two other countries. Margaret promised to protect the political influence and privileges of the nobility under the union, but Eric wanted to strengthen the monarchy.

Conflict

The Swedes were not happy with the Danes' frequent wars on Schleswig, Holstein, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania, which were a disturbance to Swedish exports (notably iron) to the Continent. Furthermore, the centralization of government in Denmark raised suspicions. The Swedish Privy Council wanted to retain a fair degree of self-government. The unity of the union eroded in the 1430s, even to the point of armed rebellion (the Engelbrecht rebellion), leading to the expulsion of Danish forces from Sweden. Eric was deposed (1438–1439) as the union king and was succeeded by the childless Christopher of Bavaria. In the power vacuum that arose following Christopher's death (1448), Sweden elected Charles VIII king with the intent to reestablish the union under a Swedish crown. Charles was elected king of Norway in the following year, but the counts of Holstein were more influential than the Swedes and the Norwegians together, and made the Danish Privy Council appoint Christian I of Oldenburg as king. During the next seven decades struggle for power and the wars between Sweden and Denmark would dominate the union.

After the successful retaking of Sweden by Christian II and the subsequent Stockholm bloodbath in 1520, the Swedes started yet another rebellion which ousted the Danish forces once again in 1521. While independence had been reclaimed the election of King Gustav of the Vasa on June 6, 1523, restored sovereignty for Sweden and finally dissolved the union.

Final dissolution

The last structures of the Kalmar Union remained until 1536 when the Danish Privy Council, in the aftermath of a civil war, unilaterally declared Norway to be a Danish province, without consulting their Norwegian colleagues. As Norway was a hereditary kingdom, it was in the king's interest to maintain Norway's formal status as semi-independent, to insure that future members of the Oldenburg dynasty would be elected to the Danish throne. Norway kept some separate institutions and its legal system, but the former Norwegian possessions of Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, came directly under the Danish crown. In 1814 the king of Denmark-Norway was forced to cede Norway to the king of Sweden. In the middle of the 19th century, this would give rise to the Scandinavist movement, which sought to reunite the countries of the Kalmar Union, except Finland, under one monarch.

Foundation of modern Sweden

Gustav Vasa

Gustav Vasa had political and religious difficulties in his kingdom, established in 1523. Shortly after seizing power, he addressed the Pope in Rome with a request for the confirmation of Johannes Magnus as Archbishop of Sweden, in the place of the rebellious archbishop Gustav Trolle, who as a convicted traitor had been formally deposed by the Riksdag of the Estates, and was actually an outlawed exile.

Gustav promised to be an obedient son of the Church, if the pope would confirm the elections of his bishops. However, shortly after sending the letter, the King received a papal bull ordering the immediate reinstatement of Gustav Trolle.

Gustav could not accept as primate an open and determined traitor like Trolle. He protested that unless Johannes Magni were recognized at Rome as archbishop of Uppsala, he was determined to break with Rome, by his own royal authority. He declared he would order the affairs of the Church in his realm to the glory of God, and to the satisfaction of all Christian men.

He began by protecting and promoting the Swedish reformers Olaus, Laurentius Petri, and Laurentius Andreae. The new teaching was allowed to spread, and the Lutheran schooled Petri brothers were useful teachers. A few months later there was an open rupture between the King and Archbishop Magni, who ultimately was frightened into exile by a sudden accusation of treason. In 1526 all Catholic printing-presses were suppressed, and two-thirds of the Church's tithes were appropriated for the payment of the national debt.

On February 18, 1527 two bishops, the first martyrs of Catholicism in Sweden, were gibbeted at Stockholm after a trial which was a parody of justice. This act of violence was effectual, for at the subsequent Riksdag of Vasteras in June, 1527, the bishops dared not even present a protest which they had privately prepared, and the assembly itself was bullied into an absolute submission to the royal will. The result was the Recess of Vasteras, which transferred all ecclesiastical property to the Crown. By the subsequent Vasteras Ordinance, the Church of Sweden was absolutely severed from Rome.

However, the changes so made were mainly administrative. There was no modification of doctrine, for the general resolution that God's Word should be preached plainly and purely was not contrary to the teaching of the ante-Tridentine Church. Even at the Synod of Orebro, summoned in February 1529, "for the better regulation of church ceremonies and discipline according to God’s Word," there was no formal protest against Rome; and the old ritual was retained for two years longer, though it was to be explained as symbolical. Henceforth the work of the Reformation continued uninterruptedly.

In 1531 Laurentius Petri was elected the first Protestant primate of Sweden. Subsequently matters were much complicated by the absolutist tendencies of Gustav Vasa. From 1539 onwards there was a breach between him and his own prelates in consequence of his arbitrary appropriation of the Church’s share of the tithes, in direct violation of the Vasteras Recess. Then Gustav so curtailed the power of the bishops, by the ordinances of 1539 and 1540, that they had little of the dignity left but the name, and even that he was disposed to abolish, for after 1543 the prelates appointed by him, without any pretence of previous election by the cathedral chapters, were called ordinaries, or superintendents. Finally, at the Riksdag of Vasteras in 1544, though no definite confession of faith was formulated, a final breach was made with the traditions of the old religion.