Cross and Scepter (41 page)

The Sources for Scandinavian History

There is little written evidence of Scandinavian history before the introduction of Christianity in the tenth and eleventh centuries, only some runic inscriptions and references in foreign chronicles. Consequently, archaeological excavations and place names are important evidence for the history of this period. For the following period, up to and including the thirteenth century, there is a considerable volume of narrative sources from Norway, Iceland, and Denmark, but little from Sweden. As we have seen, these sources present considerable problems. Although there may be some objections to the Weibull's interpretation, there is no way back to the nineteenth century view of the sagas and Saxo as valid sources for the period before the twelfth century. There are better reasons to trust the narrative sources for the following period, which are contemporary or almost contemporary with the
events, although they too raise issues of bias, selectivity, and the individual authors' variable access to information. However, the narrative sources have a value apart from their factual information. They form an important part of the cultural heritage of the Scandinavian countries and can give information about ideas and attitudes at the time of their writing. They can also to some extent be used retrospectively as information about norms and social practices, including gift exchange, revenge, kinship, and alliances, phenomena that still occurred at the time of writing, but are unlikely to have been new in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Whereas the Weibulls for the most part rejected the sagas as sources for the earliest Scandinavian history, they accepted the skaldic poems quoted in them. The sagas, notably Snorri's
Heimskringla,
contain a large number of such poems, the oldest allegedly dating from the time of Harald Finehair in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Most of them are addressed to kings and praise them for their generosity—notably for their generosity to the skalds themselves—and for their achievements in war. We know that such poems were composed at the time, as there are traces of them on rune stones, but can we really trust the sagas when they tell us that they have been transmitted orally from the time of their composition? The arguments in favor of this are their complicated meter, which would tend to discourage the kinds of changes that often infect prose narratives, and the fact that they were highly regarded by contemporary society and thus likely to be remembered. Then too, it would seem a more likely hypothesis that the saga writers transmitted genuine poems than that they composed all of them themselves, while attributing them to various poets in the past. However, this does not necessarily mean that all of the poems are genuine, or that the saga writers' interpretations of them and their context is correct. The value of the poems will therefore be a challenge for the modern historian in each particular case.

Eventually, the narrative sources were replaced by documentary ones. There are some charters and correspondence with the papacy and foreign monarchs from the late eleventh century onwards, but no great increase in material of this kind until the thirteenth century. Even then, we have mainly to deal with scattered remains; only during the last centuries of the Middle Ages do we find some instances of continuous records and various kinds of cameral material. Nevertheless, the amount of written material is considerably less than in the following period and less than what survives from this period in many other countries, notably England. There were also great changes over time. Despite a considerable increase in the number of documentary sources during the thirteenth century, they represent only a small percentage of what once existed. By contrast, a very high percentage of the extant material dates from the end of the Middle Ages, the period between 1500 and 1550. Particularly in Norway, but to some extent also in Denmark and Sweden, the vast majority of the material concerns land transactions. By contrast, political history is often difficult to trace, particularly in Norway, but also in the other countries, at least in the beginning of the period. In many cases, this leads to highly diverse scholarly interpretations of the same events or phenomena and even to extensive debates over a few documents, the most famous of which concerns the interpretation of the two foundational documents of the 1397 Kalmar Union.

REFERENCES AND GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

General

Most accounts of medieval Scandinavia deal with a single country rather than with the region as a whole. The main exception is Birgit and Peter Sawyer's
Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation
(Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press, 1993), which is the closest parallel to the present book. It is organized thematically in ten chapters, each covering one subject from the beginning of the period until the end. It contains much information in a concentrated form but is less concerned with the relationship between the various themes. It also focuses more strongly on the early than on the later period. Knut Helle (ed.),
The Cambridge History of Scandinavia
([=CHS], vol. 1 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 872 pp.) is an anthology in which a number of authors give extensive accounts of most aspects of Scandinavian history, dealing partly with the area as a whole and partly with the individual countries. There are also brief chapters in
The Cambridge Medieval History
(=CMH), by Niels Lund (vol. 2, pp. 202–27), Peter Sawyer (vol. 4.2, pp. 290–303), Sverre Bagge (vol. 5, pp. 720–42), and Thomas Riis (vol. 7, pp. 671–706). A brief survey in Swedish is Harald Gustafsson,
Nordens historia: en europeisk region under 1200 år
(Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2007).

On Norway, see most recently Sverre Bagge,
From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c. 900–1350
(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010). Nils Hybel and Bjørn Poulsen,
The Danish Resources, c. 1000–1550
(Leiden: Brill, 2007) covers important aspects of Danish social and economic history, including royal finances and administration. Nils Blomkvist,
The Discovery of the Baltic
(Leiden: Brill, 2005) is an ambitious attempt to discuss the Europeanization of the countries around the Baltic Sea, up to the early thirteenth century. Within Scandinavia, its focus is particularly on Sweden. Reference works include Philip Pulsiano (ed.),
Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia
(New York: Garland, 1993) in one volume, and the far more detailed
Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder
(Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1956–78, repr. 1980–82), 22 vols., in the Scandinavian languages.

There are a number of general histories of each country in the Scandinavian languages. Knut Helle,
Norge blir en stat
(Oslo, etc.: Universitetsforlaget, 1974, 2nd ed.); Inge Skovgaard-Petersen et al.,
Danmarks historie,
vol. 1:
Tiden indtil 1340
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1977); Kai Hørby and Michael Venge, vol. 2.1, 1340–1559 (
ibid.,
1980), and Gottfried Carlsson and Jerker Rosén,
Sveriges historia till 1718
(Stockholm: Bonnier, 1962) are all good surveys. On Iceland, see Jesse Byock,
Viking Age Iceland
(London: Penguin, 2001). There are also several series of national histories intended for a general audience, the most recent of which are
Gyldendals og Politikens Danmarks historie,
16 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal and Politiken, 1988–91);
Aschehougs Norges historie
(Oslo: Aschehoug, 1994–98); and
Norvegr,
4 vols. (Oslo: Aschehoug, 2011).

Most of the documentary material for Scandinavian history is published in the series
Diplomatarium Danicum/Danmark riges breve
in Denmark (Copenhagen: Det danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab, 1932–);
Diplomatarium Norvegicum
in Norway (Christiania/Oslo: Riksarkivet, 1849–) and
Diplomatarium Svecanum/Svensk diplomatarium in Sweden
(Stockholm: Riksarkivet, 1829–), all still incomplete.

Introduction

The quotation from
Ljosvetninga Saga
is taken from
Law and Literature in Medieval Iceland: Ljósvetninga Saga and Valla-Ljóts Saga,
trans. Theodore M. Andersson and William Ian Miller (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 198–99. On the general discussion of medieval state formation, see Joseph Strayer,
On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); R. W. Southern,
The Making of the Middle Ages
(London: Hutchinson, 1953); Charles Tilly (ed.),
The Formation of National States in Western Europe
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); and
Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990
(Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990); Susan Reynolds,
Kingdoms and Communities
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) and
Fiefs and Vassals
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Michael Mann,
The Sources of Social Power,
vol 1
: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); R. I. Moore,
The First European Revolution
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); and Gerd Althoff,
Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997). On Scandinavia from this point of view, see the works listed above. Robert Bartlett,
The Making of Europe
(London: Penguin, 1993) discusses the expansion of Europe in the High Middle Ages, including the Europeanization of Scandinavia, although its main focus is on military expansion in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.

Chapter 1: The Origins of the Scandinavian Kingdoms

There are chapters on the development of settlement, early political organization, and the Viking expeditions in
CHS,
pp. 15–234. See also Peter Sawyer,
Kings and Vikings: Scandinavia and
Europe, A.D. 700–1100
(London: Routledge, 1998). The examples of connections with The Roman Empire are derived from Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt V. Jensen,
Det danske imperium. Storhed og fald
(Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 2004). The publications of the recent excavations in Kaupang in southeastern Norway contain much information about Viking Age society; see Dagfinn Skre (ed.),
Kaupang in Skiringssal
(Århus: Aarhus University Press, 2007). For discussions of early Norwegian and Icelandic society based on the sagas, see William Ian Miller,
Bloodtaking and Peacemaking
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) and Sverre Bagge,
Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla
, (Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1991). Feuds and patronage during the internal conflicts in Denmark are dealt with in Lars Hermanson,
Släkt, vänner och makt. En studie av elitens politiska kultur i 1100-talets Danmark
(Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 2000). On later Scandinavian foreign policy: Erik Christiansen,
The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier, 1100–1525
(London: Macmillan, 1980); Espen Albrectsen, “700–1523,”
Konger og krige. Dansk udenrigspolitiks historie,
vol. 1 (Copenhagen: Danmarks nation-alleksikon, 2001); Narve Bjørgo et al.,
Selvstendighet og union. Fra middelalderen til 1905. Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie
, vol. 1 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995), pp. 19–132; Steinar Imsen (ed.),
The Norwegian Domination and the Norse World, c. 1100–1400
(Trondheim: Tapir, 2010); and Ane Bysted, et al. (eds.),
Jerusalem in the North: Denmark and the Baltic Crusades, 1100–1522
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2012).

Chapter 2: The Consolidation of the Scandinavian Kingdoms, c. 1050–1350

The development of the Scandinavian kingdoms is dealt with in a series of chapters in the
CHS
, pp. 345–462. There are different
interpretations of the process. The interpretation offered in this volume is presented in greater detail for Norway in Bagge,
From Viking Stronghold;
whereas Hans-Jacob Orning,
Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages
(Leiden: Brill, 2008) emphasizes more strongly the continuity from the early Middle Ages. S. Bagge et al.,
Statsutvikling i Skandinavia i middelalderen
(Oslo: Dreyer, 2012) contains various interpretations of the process in the Scandinavian languages. On Iceland, see Jon Vidar Sigurdsson,
Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth
(Odense: Odense University Press, 1999) and Sverrir Jakobsson, “The Process of State-formation in Medieval Iceland,”
Viator
40:2 (2009), 151–70.