Cross and Scepter (32 page)

Tournaments are mentioned already in the sagas. Snorri lets King Sigurd boast of having participated in one on his expedition to the Holy Land, and Sverre challenges his rival Magnus to fight from horseback.
The King's Mirror
also includes a description of such contests. However, none of these sources can be regarded as evidence that actual tournaments took place in Norway in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The
Chronicle of Erik
furnishes the earliest near-contemporary evidence, although we cannot exclude the possibility of earlier occurrences. King Magnus of Sweden and King Erik Klipping of Denmark fought a tournament during their meeting in 1275. There are several
other examples, all suggesting that Scandinavian tournaments were largely confined to royal and princely circles. Evidence from the
Chronicle of Erik
leads us to conclude that other aspects of the courtliness described in the romantic literature also were put into practice by the aristocracy. Gifts and parties are of course traditional means of gaining followers and keeping them, but the chronicle suggests greater refinement and luxury in these gifts than ever before and gives some substance to the idea of new manners in the wake of the introduction of chivalrous romance. As a whole, however, the chronicle pays more attention to war than to romantic love and courtly behavior towards women.

This examination of Scandinavia's elite culture has confirmed the impression of increasing European influence after Christianization, but has shown also that there was a specifically Scandinavian reception of this culture. This is particularly prominent in vernacular literature from Norway and Iceland, notably the sagas and the skaldic poetry, but also in Saxo's Danish patriotism and his elaboration of traditional myths and tradition. Moreover, Saxo was not only a recipient of the common Latin culture, but also made an original contribution to it. The examination of Scandinavian culture also shows a connection between trends in the cultural sphere and the political and social trends discussed previously; namely, the formation of royal and ecclesiastical institutions and increased social stratification.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Later Middle Ages: Agrarian Crisis, Constitutional Conflicts, and Scandinavian Unions

T
HE MID-FOURTEENTH CENTURY
marks a new epoch all over Europe. A new and terrible disease, the Black Death, arrived from Eastern Asia late in 1346 and spread from Italy to the rest of Europe over the course of the following years. Calculations of mortality vary from one third to half of the population. Moreover, the disease returned at irregular intervals until the mid-seventeenth century (and in some places well into the eighteenth century), although its spread and mortality seem gradually to have decreased. Thus, the relationship between land and people changed drastically; there was now plenty of land but few people to cultivate it. From the point of view of ordinary people who survived the disease, this was in many ways an ideal situation. There are also many indications that their standard of living improved; it has even been maintained that in many places it was better than at any time before the second half of the nineteenth century. By contrast, the landowning classes suffered drastic reversals after their expansion in the previous period.

In the 1960s and '70s, a large research project looked at the consequences of the Black Death in Scandinavia. Although its
sources are meager, posing a number of problems, the project has given some indication of the rates of farm desertions and declines in land rent. The calculations show great differences between the countries, with Norway the most seriously affected according to both criteria. In fifteen of the nineteen Norwegian areas that have been examined, more than 40 percent of the farms were deserted. An equally high percentage is found in only one of the areas studied in Denmark. Similarly, the land rent was reduced to somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of its previous level in Norway, while the reduction was considerably less in Denmark and Sweden, where the peasants continued to pay well over 50 percent of the previous rents. To some extent, this difference can be attributed to the way the research was conducted and the available source material. The Norwegian researchers went further in the attempt to reconstruct old farms on the basis of much later sources than did their Danish and Swedish colleagues. It was also easier to trace desertions of farms in Norway than in Denmark and the main agricultural areas of Sweden, because individual farmsteads were the rule in Norway in contrast to village settlement patterns favored in the other countries. Nevertheless, there is hardly any doubt that the numbers also indicate real differences. This is evident particularly from the decline in the land rent, which was clearly greater and lasted longer in Norway.

There is no reason to believe that mortality in Norway was higher than in the other countries; on the contrary, it seems more likely that it would have been lower, since the population was more widely dispersed. However, two other explanations are possible. The first is the nature of the terrain. In Norway most of the cultivated area consisted of small and scattered farms, many of which were deserted. It would have been more difficult for the landowner to use these farms himself for pasture or other purposes than in Denmark or England, where owners turned to animal husbandry, to sheep in England and oxen in Denmark.
Second, and for the same reason, it was easier for the owners to force the peasants to pay more rent than they would have if the rent had been determined solely by market conditions, the more so as the aristocracy in these countries was stronger than in Norway.

In general, landowners suffered more as a consequence of the agrarian crisis than did public authorities. Tithes and taxes were reduced approximately in proportion with the decline in the number of taxpayers, while land rents declined considerably more. Moreover, the king could compensate for reduced revenues by imposing extra taxes, which is known to have happened with considerable frequency. Consequently, the Church and particularly the king were better off than the lay aristocracy, and within the Church, the bishops fared better than the monasteries, which often suffered heavy losses during the later Middle Ages, and not only because of the agrarian crisis. They were also negatively impacted by competition from other forms of devotion and other institutions of learning. The lay aristocracy as a class suffered the heaviest losses, but the losses were not the same for all its individual members. As the number of dioceses, bishops, and canons was probably more or less the same before and after the crisis, each individual's income would have been reduced by about the same amount, even if the death rate among the higher clergy were the same as in the population at large. By contrast, the loss for individual aristocrats might be lessened by a reduction in the number of aristocrats, because survivors would inherit the land of their deceased relatives. The wealthiest and most fortunate of the class might actually have profited from the crisis. They could buy large stretches of land previously owned by the deceased or by their less fortunate colleagues and use it for pasture. The result was a reduction in the number of aristocrats as well as greater inequality within the class as a whole. The members of the lower aristocracy were largely reduced to serving as retainers or servants of the leading magnates.

Turning to the political consequences of the crisis, we might expect to find a reversal of some of the trends discussed earlier. We might expect to see a strengthening of the monarchy and to some extent of the Church, and above all a reduction in the power for the upper classes relative to the peasantry. What we actually find is just the opposite. The later Middle Ages is the age of aristocracy. The movement we have seen towards the greater exclusivity of the ruling elite becomes more pronounced; there is increasing rivalry between the monarchy and aristocracy; the council of the realm is at the height of its power and the constitutional ideology that was detected in the previous period is developed further.

Common to all three countries was the institutionalization of the aristocracy. We saw the beginnings of this process in the previous pages, but it progressed during the later Middle Ages. Whereas the state in the previous period had been largely identical with the king and institutional conflicts restricted to disagreements between the king and the Church, the following period saw the increasing institutionalization of collective bodies representing the “people” against the king, notably the council of the realm, dominated by the aristocracy and the bishops. Admittedly, this is not the whole picture; there were also trends that reflected the economic development. The peasants did strengthen their position at the local level in all three countries, but only in Sweden did they have significant influence at the national level. Those who did, however, were not the tenants in the central areas who had their land rent reduced, but the freeholders and miners in the outskirts, particularly in the north, who had held a strong position even in the previous period. Moreover, we find no evidence of an increase in the number of freeholders. As for the relationship between the king and the aristocracy, increasing competition for
len
among the members of the latter and the attempts of the class as a whole to reserve them for itself may be connected
to some degree with the crisis, but it was also a continuation of trends from the previous period. The reduction in the number of
len
, particularly in Norway, is also connected to the crisis; larger districts were needed to give castellans sufficient incomes, while a reduced population would also make it easier to govern larger areas.

In Scandinavia, the later Middle Ages are known not only as the period of the Black Death but also as the period of the Scandinavian unions. Some scholars have pointed to a connection between the two phenomena: the union was a means both to reduce the cost of government and to protect a weakened Scandinavia against aggression from abroad, particularly from Germany. The clearest connection between the Black Death and union is to be found in Norway, whose elite seems to have regarded a union with one or both the neighboring countries as inevitable and which eventually succumbed to Denmark. Otherwise, it is difficult to find a clear connection. In any case, the origins of the union must be sought on the dynastic and political level rather than in the economic and social consequences of the Black Death. As we will discover, these origins go far back in history.

Towards Renewed Scandinavian Integration, 1261–1397

In summer 1260, a Norwegian delegation, led by a friar, Nikolas, turned up at the residence of the Duke of Saxony and asked him to consent to the marriage of his granddaughter, the Danish princess Ingeborg, to King HÃ¥kon of Norway's son Magnus. The duke answered that he had no say over Ingeborg's marriage and referred the Norwegian envoys to the queen of Denmark. He then showed the envoys his two daughters, both beautifully dressed, and told them, “I decide over these two, if anyone will ask for them.” The envoys were apparently unimpressed and left Saxony.
Nikolas continued his journey to Denmark and according to the saga returned with the message that the queen had accepted the proposal and promised to outfit the princess in the most honorable way. However, when a new and higher-ranking delegation, led by Bishop HÃ¥kon of Oslo and traveling with an armed force on seven ships, arrived the next year at the convent in Horsens where the princess was living, they found that no preparations had been made and that the queen had no plans in this direction. The bishop then approached the princess directly, urging her to trust in God and the king of Norway. The princess was finally persuaded, and Bishop HÃ¥kon betrothed her on behalf of Magnus. Shortly afterwards, the Norwegian delegation returned and quickly brought the princess back to Norway, taking care to avoid the Swedes, whom they suspected of wanting her for themselves. The delegation arrived safely in Norway, to the great satisfaction of King HÃ¥kon, who was very impressed by his daughter-in-law and arranged what according to the saga was the most magnificent wedding ever to have been celebrated in Norway.