The Scandinavian History Podcast

In 1848, Denmark faced uncertainty after king Christian VIII’s sudden death, just as political unrest started to spread across Europe. Would the inexperienced, and–frankly–incompetent, new king Frederik VII be able to handle the situation? Or would Denmark be swept up in the revolutionary chaos on the continent?

During the Golden Age, pressure mounted for political reforms in Denmark. The absolute monarchy was threatened by liberalism and nationalism, and the king feared that the smallest political reforms would start a process that would bring the whole kingdom down.

After the disasters of the Napoleonic Wars, state bankruptcy and losing Norway, Denmark was in bad shape. But even though the future looked bleak, a Golden Age was actually waiting right around the corner. Its writers and thinkers would shape Danish society for generations.

In 1818, Bernadotte became king of Sweden and Norway under the name Karl Johan. He was eager to develop his kingdoms economically and socially, but when his new subjects displayed dissatisfaction with his rule, the old revolutionary reverted to classic royal reactionary tactics.

In the fall of 1814, Norway had lost the war against Sweden. The defeat had come as an unpleasant surprise to many Norwegians, who had believed the rousing patriotic speeches about liberty or death. Even those who accepted that they’d have to enter into a union with Sweden were determined to give the Swedes as little influence over Norway as possible.

In the first half of 1814, Bernadotte had been busy wrapping up the war on the continent. But as summer arrived, the Swedes turned their full attention to Norway. Stockholm demanded that the Norwegians scrap their new constitution, ditch their new king and submit to Sweden. When the Norwegians refused, the Swedes threatened war.

During a few intense spring weeks in 1814, 112 representatives of the Norwegian people came together at Eidsvoll to draw up a constitution for Norway. They hoped the country would be an independent kingdom, but at the same time rumors of a Swedish invasion were swirling in the background.

The Napoleonic Wars strained the Danish-Norwegian union bringing starvation, unrest and a crisis of legitimacy. Even worse, Sweden exploited the fact that Copenhagen had sided with the losing French, and forced king Frederik VI to hand over Norway to Sweden. But the Norwegians didn’t want to join a new union with Sweden, and saw an opportunity.

After the death of Karl August, only five months after he had been elected crown prince, the Swedes needed to find another heir to the throne. The main candidate was yet another Danish prince, but there were those who had other ideas.

King Gustav IV Adolf was blamed for the loss of Finland, and even before the war against Russia ended, he was ousted in a coup. His uncle Karl was given the crown, but everyone knew this wasn’t a long term solution. Karl was old and childless, so the search for a new crown prince started immediately.

When peace returned in 1809, the population of Finland found themselves to be the newest subjects of the Russian emperor. In the years that followed, they reshaped their political and economic lives, turning away from Sweden but at the same time resisting Russification.

The Franco-Russian treaty at Tilsit in 1807 spelled trouble for Sweden as well as for Denmark. Just like the Danes, the Swedes underestimated the threat of the new alliance, and soon found themselves fighting yet another war against Russia in Finland.

The years following the French Revolution were plagued by seemingly endless wars. But the governments in both Copenhagen and Stockholm preferred to stay out of the fighting, instead making money trading with all sides. It worked for a while, but eventually the fires of war reached Scandinavia as well.

The French revolution was a cataclysmic event that changed the world forever, both politically and culturally. Even though it was far away, Scandinavia did not remain untouched by these continental developements. And perhaps that's only fair, since a dramatic Nordic event allegedly contributed to the revolution in the first place.

His war against Russia had shown Gustav III that the Swedish aristocracy was a real threat to his reign. He thought he could eliminate the threat by forcing a new set of laws through the riksdag, strengthening the crown and limiting the power of the nobility. But instead of rolling over and capitulating, the aristocrats decided to fight back.

A few years after his coup, the opposition against Gustav III was growing. In an attempt to improve his popularity–and to reclaim some of the land lost in the War of the Hats–he decided to start a war against Russia. Unfortunately for the king, he wasn’t allowed to start wars, but Gustav wasn’t going to let minor details like that stop him.

King Adolf Fredrik and queen Louisa Ulrika never managed to wrest power away from the Riksdag during the Age of Liberty. But Louisa Ulrika had high hopes that their son, Gustav, would follow in their footsteps and reassert royal authority–despite the best efforts of the politicians to train him to be a docile and powerless monarch.

If your system of government puts all the power in the hands of one man, you’d better hope the man holding all that power knows what he’s doing. If he doesn’t, things can quickly turn ugly. Unless, of course, there’s someone else standing in the wings discreetly guiding the power-holding hand to avoid disaster.

The Age of Liberty wasn’t only corruption, palace intrigues and failed wars. Thanks to a policy encouraging science and industry, significant progress was made, and some of the discoveries and inventions from those days are still with us today.

When the result of the War of the Hats became known in Sweden, it was met with dismay. Not only did the Russians take even more territory, but they also wanted to decide who’d be the next king of Sweden. In Dalarna, people weren’t having any of it.

In 1741, the Hats finally got the war against Russia that they’d been working so hard to achieve. Finally, they’d be able to recapture the territory lost during the Great Northern War and restore Sweden’s honor. Unfortunately, it soon turned out that even though they had spent years trying to start the war, they had done little to make sure that the army in Finland would be ready for it.

After the death of Karl XII, Swedish monarchs lost almost all their power. Instead, the Riksdag asserted itself as the most influential body in Swedish political life. Among bribes, personal vendettas and dreams of reestablishing the empire, two political parties emerged.

From the 16th century onward, Denmark and Sweden increased their efforts to assert control over northern Scandinavia, a territory where few Scandinavians had ever gone, and even fewer lived. But that doesn’t mean the region was uninhabited. The Sami people lived there, and as the Norwegians, Swedes and Finns moved north, the Sami way of life came under threat.

In the 18th century, when the triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas was booming, Denmark and Sweden established footholds in the West Indies. They tried to make money on trade, buying and selling sugar, tobacco, cotton–and people.

In the 1600s, both Denmark and Sweden joined the race to establish colonies overseas. The Danes returned to Greenland, but also set up outposts in India. These colonial projects were quite successful. The Swedes, on the other hand, were less fortunate trying to gain a foothold in North America.

In the early 18th century, Denmark was ruled by absolute monarchs, whose personalities left their marks on the country. When Frederik IV was young, he didn’t say no to anything life had to offer. In old age, he turned to religion, and demanded that the rest of Denmark do the same.

Karl XII had failed to get the Ottomans to ally with Sweden in the Great Northern War, but that didn’t mean he was willing to throw in the towel. As soon as he returned home, he decided to go back to fighting. This time, he had his sights on Sweden’s traditional enemy–Denmark.

After the disaster at Poltava, the Swedish empire started to unravel. But instead of hurrying home to try and save what he could, Karl XII spent years in the Ottoman Empire. He wasn’t enjoying an extended vacation in southern climes, though. He was trying to convince the sultan to attack Russia, thereby easing the pressure on Sweden.

After defeating Denmark and Poland, Karl XII only needed to crush the Russians in order to declare victory in the Great Northern War. So as soon as he was done with his side quest in Saxony, he marched on Moscow to face the Final Boss, Peter the Great.

In the year 1700, Sweden was ruled by an autocratic teenager with impulse control issues. That could have been bad enough, but then Denmark, Poland and Russia declared war and attacked simultaneously. Karl XII was going to have to shape up, and fast, if he wanted to remain king of anything at all in the years to come.

After the Scania War, Karl XI realized that Sweden was too weak to defend its northern European empire. To change this, he pushed through three important reforms that radically changed the Swedish army, economy and system of government. But would it be enough? And would the reforms survive the death of the king?

There had been a few witch trials here and there in Scandinavia since the Middle Ages, but it was only after the Reformation that they became a large-scale phenomenon. In the reign of Karl XI, Sweden became the scene for the greatest witch hunt in Scandinavian history.

In the second half of the 17th century, Swedish authorities initiated a campaign to turn the formerly Danish provinces of Blekinge, Halland and Scania Swedish. They used both carrots and sticks to change these new territories politically, economically and culturally. The process wasn’t always smooth.

Christian V may not have been particularly interested in books, administration or the French language. He didn’t care much about governing Denmark, but he was passionate about restoring its old borders. For that reason, he declared war on Sweden in 1675–a few weeks after he promised his sister could marry the Swedish king.

In a few days Christmas will be upon us. To mark the occasion, this episode of the Scandinavian History Podcast is dedicated to quirks of Nordic culture. It’s a totally subjective list of the five weirdest Scandinavian Christmas traditions–from the most normal to the weirdest.

The peace in Roskilde had been a triumph for Sweden. But Karl X Gustav wanted more, so he renewed hostilities hoping to capture Copenhagen and take over all of Denmark. The very reign of Frederik III hung in the balance.

When Frederick III became king of Denmark, he was determined to get revenge. Revenge on the scheming nobility, including his own extended family, who had robbed him of almost all royal powers. But most of all, he wanted revenge on the Swedes for the defeat in the Torstenson War.

Gustavus Adolphus’s daughter and successor Queen Christina had no time for fashion or suitors, but she loved culture and intellectual pursuits. She was mighty impressed by continental art, literature and philosophy. Maybe a little too impressed.

When Gustavus Adolphus died, Axel Oxenstierna was left to handle several thorny issues. One of the thorniest was what to do with the king’s widow Maria Eleonora. Oxenstierna wanted her to disappear from political life and into the footnotes of history. The dowager queen herself had other plans.

Christian IV was a real family man. In fact, he had multiple families. He was married twice, and had a string of mistresses to boot. He had at least 12 children, and he used them to solidify his rule. It didn’t always work, though. To put it mildly.

In the late 1630s, tensions were once again rising between Denmark and Sweden. The Danish king was spoiling for a war, and in 1643 he got it. But not in the way he’d expected. Or wanted. Still, the conflict is remembered as Christian IV’s finest hour.

The Swedes spent the early 1640s trying to win the war, but even if they were successful on the battlefield, every campaign season seemed to end with them retreating north with an Imperial army in pursuit.

After the death of Gustavus Adolphus, his trusted advisor and chancellor Axel Oxenstierna was left to pick up the pieces. In the years that followed, he worked tirelessly to avoid a total collapse of the Swedish positions on the continent. It was not an easy job.

1632 was a year of victories and triumphs for the Swedes. They moved through the Holy Roman Empire capturing everything in their way. In the fall, they were back where they had started a year earlier, on a muddy field outside Leipzig, ready to fight a new Imperial army.

In September 1631, the Swedish and the Imperial armies finally stood face to face. The battle took place just north of Leipzig, close to the village of Breitenfeld. It turned out to be the ultimate test for the new Swedish military tactics.

Most German Protestants weren’t particularly happy about the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. But Gustavus Adolphus didn’t care. He had come to save them–whether they wanted to or not.

After the wars in Russia and Poland finally started to wind down, the thrill-junkie on the Swedish throne decided he also wanted to try his luck playing the role of Savior of German Protestants.

Encouraged by his success in the war against Sweden, Christian IV decided to get involved in the developing conflict in the Holy Roman Empire. He was convinced that a military genius like him would be able to save his Protestant coreligionists from the Catholic threat.