In June 1397 the archbishops of Lund and Uppsala crowned 15-year-old Erik of Pomerania king of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The written agreement of the Kalmar Union stated that each country was to be governed by its own laws but was to give assistance to the others in case any one of them was attacked. The three countries agreed to be ruled by Erik, and his successors were to be chosen from his direct descendants. If his line died out, the counselors from the three kingdoms were to elect a king acceptable to all. An outlaw banished by one kingdom was banned also from the other two. All previous feuds were to be forgotten. Yet the agreement lacked legality because of Norway’s failure to sign.
Erik’s great aunt Margaret continued to rule the three kingdoms until her death on October 28, 1412. She had most of the forts built during the war taken down. She visited Sweden and appointed many Danes to Swedish and Norwegian fiefs, but she never appointed a Swede or a Norwegian in Denmark. Taxes could not be imposed without a written order from the government. She levied the “stake tax” on each home, the “rump tax” on each head of cattle, and the most criticized “Gotland’s release.” Prussians seized Gotland illegally in 1398, but she bought it back from the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order in 1407. Margaret arranged for Erik to marry Filippa, daughter of England’s Henry IV on October 26, 1406. Margaret also tried to get South Jutland back from the Holsteins; but her interference was resented, and the Holstein nobles rebelled in 1410. After a year of fighting, an armistice led to an agreement of arbitration shortly before she died. Margaret raised much revenue for herself, but she was generous to religious institutions, donating 26,000 marks in 1411.
A Court of Arbitration opened at Nyborg in 1413 with King Erik as prosecutor, and Chancellor Peder Lodehat for the Court awarded the duchy of Schleswig to Erik. By getting the hof to recall the fiefs of the Holsteiners in 1413 Erik started a long war. He fortified his position, and the war began in 1416. The fighting continued on and off until 1422 when Denmark only held the east coast and Flensborg. Heinrich Rumpold of Silesia ended hostilities in 1423, and on June 28, 1424 Emperor Sigismund decided that Schleswig and Frisia were part of Denmark. Erik had gone to Hungary to see the Emperor; he was happy and from there went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
King Erik brought the Carmelites and Carthusians to Denmark. He gave Danish merchants control over trade, limiting inland Hanseatic business and making peasants bring their goods to the market place. In 1425 he imposed a toll on every ship passing through the Sound, but this could not be enforced until he defeated a Hansa fleet four years later. In 1426 Lübeck and other Hansa cities began blockading Scandinavian ports. This especially affected miners, and they began rebelling in the early 1430s. Despite the Germans executing many of them, piracy continued. After Hanseatic merchants left Bergen in 1426 with all their goods, the Victuals Brothers sacked it two more times in 1428 and 1429. A Norwegian fleet of one hundred ships attacked the seven pirate ships; but the old Norwegian ships were so inferior that they were either sunk or fled. After losing the city of Schleswig, Erik’s powerful navy defeated the Hanseatic League in 1429, and the tolls on ships passing through the Sound were collected.
Queen Filippa had governed well as regent during Erik’s travels abroad, and she was a good influence on him. After she died in 1430, he reclaimed more lands from aristocrats as “reductions.” Swedes got tired of supporting his wars and resented the King’s cruel administrator Jens Erikson. Erik refused to bring him to justice, but the Swedish Council dismissed him. When Flensborg was lost in 1432, Erik began peace negotiations that were concluded at Vordingborg in 1435. After years of trying to keep England from trading with Norway’s colonies, he made a peace treaty with Henry VI in 1432.
News of a worse administrator coming provoked Engelbrekt Engelbrektson. He was from the mining region and appealed directly before King Erik in Denmark. The King gave him a letter to the Swedish Council so that they could investigate. When Engelbrekt came back with the results, Erik sent him away. So Engelbrekt led the angry Swedes. The noble Erik Puke supported the revolt and destroyed forts in Norrland. Soedermanland rose up on their own and destroyed Gripsholm. People in Vermland and Dal also rebelled. Jens Erikson was found hiding in the Cloister of Vadstena and was executed. There Engelbrekt accompanied by a thousand soldiers met with the Swedish Council, and on August 16, 1434 they renounced their allegiance to King Erik. Engelbrekt’s army grew to fifty thousand men as it marched, and by September three rebel armies were being led by Engelbrekt, Bo Stensson Natt och Dag, and Karl Knutsson Bonde. King Erik’s fleet attacked Stockholm in October and quartered royal troops in the castle. Erik and Engelbrekt met in November and agreed on an arbitration court, but military action continued.
In January 1435 the Arboga parliament proclaimed Engelbrekt the commander in Sweden. However, in October the Swedish Council affirmed their loyalty at Halsted if Erik would respect Swedish rights and privileges. Krister Nilsson Vasa of Viborg was appointed viceroy (Drots), and Karl Knutsson became marshal. Erik then made peace with the Hanseatic League and Holstein. Karl Knutsson led the Swedish nobles against Engelbrekt, who was murdered by Magnus Bengtsson on May 4, 1436. The peasants had lost, and the parliaments stopped meeting. A Norwegian revolt against the King began in 1436 and was led by Amund Sigurdsson Bolt and five other noblemen. They attacked Oslo but then withdrew. An armistice was made on June 23, and the Council met at Tunsberg to negotiate with the rebel leaders. They agreed to expel all foreign lords by July 29.
A conference was held at Kalmar in the summer of 1436, and Erik promised to recognize the rights of every state. He went to Gotland and then to Prussia to raise troops to support his choice of Duke Bogislaus of Pomerania as his heir. He returned to Denmark in the fall of 1437 and acted arbitrarily, giving fiefs to his Pomeranian relatives. The Danish Council refused to accept the nomination of his cousin Bogislav as his successor because it violated the Kalmar agreement. Erik sailed back to his castle in Gotland, and in October 1438 Karl Knutsson was appointed regent in Sweden. Norwegians led by Halvard Graatop marched on Oslo, but they were defeated by the royal forces commanded by Svarte-Jons of Akershus castle.
In Denmark peasants rebelled against the nobility and the clergy. The Council invited Erik’s nephew, Duke Kristofer of Bavaria, promising him the crowns of the three kingdoms. In March 1439 Erik appointed Nils Stensson marshal and commander of the Danish troops in Sweden, and they accused Karl Knutsson of treason. Bishop Thomas of Strangnas in response wrote a poem that described Erik’s tyranny and the quest for liberty led by Engelbrekt and Karl. In July the Danes deposed Erik and elected his nephew Kristofer king of Denmark. Erik left Denmark to live in Götland. For the next ten years he was at Visburg castle organizing raids against the Swedes. When the Swedes besieged him in 1449, he surrendered the castle to a Danish fleet commanded by Olaf Akselsen Thott and retired to his Rügenwald castle in Pomerania.
Kristofer III was crowned king of Sweden on September 14, 1441 and king of Norway and Denmark in the two succeeding years. Karl Knutsson renounced his claims and was given important fiefs that included Finland. Peasants in North Jutland led by the nobleman Henry Tageson were in rebellion against the Council, but they were defeated by Kristofer’s large army at St. Jorgensbjerg. Thousands of peasants were killed, and Tageson and other leaders were executed. In Sweden and Denmark the noblemen compelled Kristofer to accept a charter that reduced his power and strengthened the Council, and Sweden gained complete autonomy. Norway made no such agreement, but the King never came back there after he was crowned. People complained that taxes were so unjust that grain fed the King’s horses while they had to make bread from bark; so they called him Kristofer Bark-king. The Hanseatic League signed a ten-year commercial agreement. When Hanseatic merchants entered the Bergen city council with swords, the Norwegian Council at Bergen met in 1444 and decided to scale back German privileges to what they had been in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, in 1447 the King gave Rostock merchants unrestricted privileges in Oslo and Tunsberg. King Kristofer died on January 6, 1448 at Helsingborg at the age of 33.
Karl Knutsson went to Stockholm on May 23, 1448 with eight hundred men and was elected king of Sweden in June despite the opposition of the clergy and Oxenstjernas. Karl VIII began his reign by taking Gotland from Erik. Duke Adolph VIII of Holstein declined the throne of Denmark and proposed his 22-year-old nephew Kristian of Oldenburg, who promised to respect the rights of the Council. On October 28, 1449 at Copenhagen he was crowned king of Denmark and married the widowed queen Dorothea. In Norway the richest noble, Sigurd Jonsson, had been chosen regent; but he declined the throne even though he was descended from Haakon V. Archbishop Aslak Bolt favored union with Sweden, but Bishop Jens of Oslo and the baron Hartvig Krumedike were Danes and led the Denmark faction that wanted Kristian of Oldenburg to be king of Norway. The Swedish party met at Baahus in February 1449 and chose Karl Knutsson. The Danish party met at Oslo, and on June 3 they elected Kristian of Oldenburg. He granted Norway a charter in July, promising that they could keep their laws, liberties and privileges, that no foreigners could receive fiefs nor be members of the Council, and that no important matter could be decided without the advice of the Council. Karl was crowned king of Norway at Trondheim on November 20, 1449. He returned to Sweden, but in early 1450 he tried to seize Oslo which was held by Hartvig Krumedike. That failed, and they agreed on an armistice.
On May 1, 1450 the Swedish Council decided that Karl should surrender Norway to Kristian, and they made him cede his claim. After Norway’s Council nullified the crowning of Karl, Kristian went to Trondheim and was crowned king of Norway on August 2. Later that month representatives from the Councils of Denmark and Norway met at Bergen and agreed that both kingdoms should obey the same king and that a common election should be held by the two Councils after the death of a king. When Sweden did not provide Dorothea’s “morning gift” promised to Kristofer in properties or 15,000 guilders, old grievances led to a war between Denmark and Sweden that lasted several years. In 1452 Karl Knutsson with a large army invaded Skane. The Archbishop Jöns Bengtsson of Uppsala was secretly supporting Kristian, and he laid down his cross in his cathedral and picked up a sword, which he said he would not sheath until the tyrant was expelled from the country. Karl fled to Stockholm and then escaped to Danzig. Kristian would be crowned king of Sweden at Uppsala on July 3, 1457.
The Black Death came to Iceland in 1402, and in two years nearly two-thirds of the population was wiped out. In 1413 Arni Olafsson, the new bishop of Skalholt, was appointed hirostjori, putting him over all of Iceland, combining the secular and religious authorities. He collected property from all around but was considered generous for giving some of it away. He was succeeded by Jon Gerecksson, who had been bishop of Uppsala but was so vicious that he had been forced to resign. He arrived in 1425 with a band of adventurers who ravaged the country; he was eventually killed.
English fishermen and traders began to deal secretly with Icelanders, and they are first mentioned in the annals in 1412. The next year thirty English fishing-smacks came to Iceland. On April 13, 1419 the annals recorded that 25 English ships were wrecked on the coasts during a storm. In 1420 English traders attacked Bessastadir, arrested a royal official, and killed his assistant. Two years later two English captains killed some people at the same place, and in 1423 English buccaneers plundered northern Iceland and even took people into slavery. The next year the pirates John Percy, John Pasdal, and Thomas Dale plundered Bessastadir again and abducted several officials. John Selby led a band that captured Brand Halkdorsson at Fljot in northern Iceland and traded him for a ransom of codfish. In 1431 King Erik asked England to pay an indemnity of £40,000 for their crimes of the last twenty years in Iceland. King Henry VI prohibited trade with Iceland on April 28, 1433, but some illicit trade continued. In 1440 Henry allowed two ships belonging to the bishop of Skalholt to buy goods in England, but in 1449 Henry negotiated a treaty with Kristian I that prohibited English trade with Iceland without permission from the king of Denmark-Norway.
The Norwegian settlement on Greenland barely survived with one annual visit. About 1350 Eskimos destroyed the Godthab settlement, and in 1379 Julianehab was attacked. The last contact with Greenland for many decades was in 1410, and the Norsemen there eventually disappeared.