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- Nordquist, Margaretha, 1972-
(författare)
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A Struggle for the Realm : Late-medieval Swedish rhyme chronicles as ideological expressions
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The period from the mid-fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century was characterised by recurrent political turmoil and conflict in Scandinavia in general, and in Sweden in particular. Political power was contested, not least because of the disputed conditions on which the Swedish realm should be governed as part of the Scandinavian union monarchy. Contenders for power based their claims on support from various factions of the ecclesiastical and secular aristocracy. Other groups within the realm played a crucial role as allies, supporters or armed levies.In A Struggle for the Realm, Margaretha Nordquist examines the late-medieval Swedish rhyme chronicles Sturekrönikan (c. 1496–1497) and Cronica Swecie (c. 1520–1523) as ideological responses to contemporary conflicts of power. The rhyme chronicles describe some of the key events and actors in the period, in ways that both differ and overlap. As partisan narratives written in support of particular political factions, the rhyme chronicles can be seen as verbal contributions in a struggle for the realm. Nordquist's analysis shows that the realm functioned as a fundamental ideological construct in the chronicles. The realm and the Swedish community were key mobilising elements in the efforts to legitimate and consolidate certain positions of power, but the precise meaning and implications of the Swedish realm and the Swedish community were not fixed. The community of Swedes is primarily envisioned as a political and social entity, although the common, ancient origin of the people is an important element in Cronica Swecie. The concept of regnal ideology is used to describe the creation of ideological meaning in the rhyme chronicles. While the realm possesses substantial ideological validity in both chronicles, they differ in the particular configuration of power they advocate as a basis for the government of the realm.
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| 2. |
- Charpentier Ljungqvist, Fredrik, 1982-
(författare)
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Kungamakten och lagen : En jämförelse mellan Danmark, Norge och Sverige under högmedeltiden
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation is a comparative study of the expansion of law-regulated royal power in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden c. 1150–1350. The aim is to examine how the king’s judicial and military authority and functions, and their effect on the power position of the regional legal assembly and the church, is expressed and how it changed over time in the extant law material. The starting point is the pan-European consolidation of royal power in the High Middle Ages, and the dissertation considers international research on the medieval state formation process and its driving forces. The processual concepts of centralization, institutionalization, hierarchization, and territorialization occupy a central place in the analysis.Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish laws all reflect a significant increase in royal power. A growing number of societal functions were vested in the increasingly institutionalized kingship, and there was a growth in its power resources. At the same time, it is possible to identify crucial inter-Scandinavian differences. A main finding is that the law-regulated royal power, in most respects, was strongest in Norway and weakest in Sweden. Another important conclusion is that executive royal power first emerged after the judicial and also legislative power had already to a large extent come under royal control.It is demonstrated that Scandinavian kingship in the High Middle Ages was characterized by increasingly centralized and institutionalized territorially based power, with a greater monopoly on the use of legitimate force, and thereby strengthened the ongoing state formation process. The expansion of law-regulated royal power primarily concerned the judicial sphere and only secondarily the military and fiscal spheres. That state formation was driven by judicial development rather than militarization is also shown by the fact that Norway, despite having the least professionalized and resource-demanding armed forces, was the Scandinavian country with the most centralized and institutionalized royal power.
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| 3. |
- Eriksson, Bo, 1970-
(författare)
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Statstjänare och jordägare : Adelsideologi i Per Brahe den äldres "Oeconomia"
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The starting point of this investigation into the Oeconomia eller Hushållsbok för ungt adelsfolk (“Householding book for young noblemen”) of Per Brahe (1520–1590) is that the 16th century was a time of change for the Swedish nobility. As the noble estate’s societal function changed – due to the successive development and establishment of the Vasa-dynasty state – new social roles emerged. Thereby the new roles acquired an ideological significance for the people intended to play them. This is the background against which Per Brahe’s decision to write the Oeconomia should be seen. When writing it in the 1580s, he had retired from public life. In the book he sums up his experiences as a nobleman over a lifetime characterised by civil service and landownership, and offers advice and instruction on the nobility’s way of life.I have reached results that allow us to speak of ideology in the Oeconomia and of clear-cut social roles tied to the aristocratic life project. Ideology emerges as a cohesive system of values and attitudes around a core social norm. This norm is expressed as an ideal of service that should be evident in people’s everyday life. A central idea is that all people serve their fellows and the whole of which they are part, the common good, and by extension, God. The ideal of service rests on a Christian foundation: every person is subject to God and the divine world order.This norm organises the other parts of the ideology, as the ideal of service forms the basis of recommendations for action (advice and instructions) and for how Per Brahe values society and humankind. The author offers a vision of a serving aristocracy with various social roles which is able, thanks to its resources, to assert itself as true nobility in relation to competing groups. This however leads to certain problems. Service at the royal court as means of subsistence is a source of great uncertainty. A nobleman must care for his own house and not neglect himself.
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| 4. |
- Holm, Olof, 1973-
(författare)
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Självägarområdenas egenart : Jämtland och andra områden i Skandinavien med småskaligt jordägande 900–1500
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes its departure from the fact that in the 16th century there were some regions in Scandinavia where almost all land was held by freeholders, while in other regions large areas of land were held by landlords. The aim of the study is to determine which factors had been decisive in the development of this regional variation. One factor is known from earlier research: the conditions for farming, dependent on climate and natural features. In this thesis the author points out another important factor, namely the conditions for people in the countryside to acquire surplus from trade. This is done through an in-depth investigation of the society of Jämtland in the period AD 900–1500, which is then compared with other freeholders’ regions, treated briefly.It is observed that the landownership had been small-scale or mostly small-scale in all these regions for many centuries before the 16th century, and that there are strong indications of the wealthiest farmers being traders and having their surplus mostly drawn from trade activities. It is reasonable to believe that the lack of willingness to invest in estates in these regions was due to the fact that those who had resources gave priority to investments in interregional and regional trade instead. They probably saw better chances of gaining more surplus from trade activities than from the agrarian economy, given the conditions for trading and crop cultivation, respectively, that were prevailing there. In such a region, hence, an important economic force for estate-formation was missing. This will explain why certain regions, like Jämtland or Gotland, developed into and remained as freeholders’ regions.Another observation concerns the social structure of freeholders’ regions. It is observed that the societies in these regions seem to have been less hierarchical on the local level than societies in regions dominated by landlords – even though the differences in fortunes could be great.
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| 5. |
- Tjällén, Biörn
(författare)
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Church and nation : The discourse on authority in Ericus Olai's Chronica regni Gothorum (c. 1471)
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Chronica regni Gothorum is the first Latin national history of Sweden. Completed after 1471 by a canon of Uppsala, Ericus Olai, it testifies to the articulation at the Swedish arch see of the dominant political issues of the day: the status of the Swedish realm in the union with Denmark-Norway, and the relations between the king, aristocracy and ecclesiastical leadership. This thesis analyses the discourse on authority in the Chronica. It investigates the normative basis of Ericus’s treatment of contemporary political issues as a source for the social-political outlooks of Sweden’s ecclesiastical power elite, a group not previously studied in this respect. In particular, it argues for the importance of two prescriptive assumptions on social order, which lie at the heart of the authority discourse in the Chronica: God divided the world into self-governing peoples and realms, and He instituted the lay and clerical orders as parallel hierarchies of societal authority.The thesis situates the production of the Chronica within the educational concerns of the Uppsala institution. It scrutinizes the commonplaces – derived from various fields of knowledge – through which Ericus articulated his dualist and nationalist assumptions. The realization of these notions in his historical account is examined in sections of the text where matters of importance for the Uppsala church are evident. Special attention is paid to Ericus’s account of the royal martyr, St Erik, the so-called Engelbrekt rebellion, and the contemporary strife between the Uppsala church and the kings. The thesis ends with a study of the reception of the Chronica in the 1520s, a time when the Reformation and the consolidation of a strong national monarchy in Sweden brought the authority issues addressed by Ericus to conclusion.
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| 6. |
- Jezierski, Wojtek, 1979-
(författare)
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Total St Gall : Medieval Monastery as a Disciplinary Institution
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How much was a medieval monastery reminiscent of a modern prison? Or insane asylum? And if it was in the least - what can such a metaphor tell us about power relations structuring the life of medieval monks?The purpose of this compilation thesis (sammanläggningsavhandling) is to render explicit and analyze relations of power and modes of control comprising the social tissue of early medieval Benedictine monasteries. By bringing up the examples of tenth- and eleventh-century monasteries of St Gall, Fulda, and Bury St Edmunds, this thesis seeks to understand what power was in medieval monasteries, how and between whom it was exercised, what and how it affected in terms of collective and individual identity.The thesis consists of three introductory chapters, four previously published empirical articles, and a concluding remarks section. Article 1 investigates the problem of surveillance and patterns of social control dispersed in the monastery of St Gall. Article 2 studies the early and high medieval institutional expectations and means of enforcement of the monk’s role. Article 3 scrutinizes an example of a persecution process and a set of defense measures in the hands of the St Gall community warding off an unwanted visitor. Article 4 examines a number of internal monastic conflicts from several monasteries and strategies, both political and cognitive, guiding them.In investigating these problems, the thesis proceeds in a manner of deliberate anachronism. It asks questions about how human subjectivity was manufactured in early medieval St Gall, what were a medieval monastery’s ‘conditions of possibility’ to operate as a social regime, or oral and literary means of conflict management etc. The crucial modern social theories on which the thesis hinges are: Erving Goffman’s notion of ‘total institution’, and Michel Foucault’s analysis of power, as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s logic of action.
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