D E N M A R K , 1 5 1 3−1 6 6 0
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Denmark, 1513–1660
The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance
Monarchy
PAU L D O U G L A S LOC K H A RT
1
1
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Lockhart, Paul Douglas, 1963Denmark, 1513–1660 : the rise and decline of a renaissance state /
Paul Douglas Lockhart.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-927121-4 (alk. paper)
1. Denmark—History—1448-1660. I. Title.
DL183.8.L63 2007
948.9’03—dc22
2007023080
Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
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ISBN 978–0–19–927121–4
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To my brother, Keith,
with thanks for his love and encouragement
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Preface
To write a survey history of a single European state, covering a period of a
century and a half, is to undertake a daunting task. It is especially so for a state
like Denmark. In the century following the Reformation, Denmark—or rather
the dynastic state ruled by the kings of the Oldenburg line—was a conglomerate
state, consisting of three major components: Denmark, Norway (including its
vassal-state Iceland and the Færø islands), and the ‘Duchies’ of Slesvig and
Holstein. Thus a survey of the Oldenburg state must take into account the
historical literature and the historiographical traditions of all of these areas.
Although there have been many collaborative efforts in Nordic historiography,
like the magtstatsprojekt (‘power-state project’) of the 1980s and 1990s, there
have been only a very few attempts to examine the history of the Oldenburg state
as a whole, to bring Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and the Duchies together in a
single overview. The series Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, published in the late
1990s, is a notable exception.
My intent here is to provide a broader international audience with a history
of the Oldenburg state at the height of its power, namely in the period between
the Reformation and the introduction of absolute monarchy in 1660, a point
which also coincides with the first major partition of the conglomerate state
after the disastrous wars with Sweden in 1657–60. Although Denmark was a
major participant in European international politics during this period, it has
been poorly served in the English-language historiography, or indeed in historical
literature written in any language other than the Nordic tongues. Scandinavian
historians, in growing numbers, have taken up the habit of presenting the results
of their research in English, in order to reach a larger readership. Unfortunately,
much of this research is narrow in scope, reflecting the Scandinavian historiographical interest in agrarian, fiscal, and administrative history, and presuming a
background knowledge of Nordic history that outsiders generally do not have.
Historians outside Scandinavia, especially in the anglophone world, have written
off Scandinavia as ‘peripheral’ to the mainstream of early modern historiography.
As a result, those scholars and students of history who do not read the Scandinavian languages are hard-pressed to find survey histories of the region, and
especially of Denmark.
A few conventions should be noted from the beginning. I have eschewed the
use of the term ‘Denmark-Norway’, which is still in fashion among some early
modern scholars, since Norway was clearly not an equal partner in a dynastic
union. For most of the period under examination here, Norway was a mere
province of the Danish monarchy. Hence I have preferred to use the term
‘Denmark’ to refer to the entire Oldenburg monarchy, unless stated otherwise
viii
Preface
(e.g. ‘Denmark proper’ to refer to Denmark without including Norway), or the
term ‘Oldenburg state’ when discussing the entire conglomerate state. For place
names, I have generally employed common English-language equivalents where
they exist–e.g. Copenhagen instead of København–with the single exception
of Helsingør, which for various reasons I prefer to the English ‘Elsinore’. The
same holds true for titles of Danish and Norwegian political offices, except for
rigshofmester, simply because it does not translate well into English. See the
Glossary for brief explications of such terms. For the spellings of personal names,
I have relied on the standard versions employed in Povl Engelstoft and Svend
Dahl (eds.), Dansk biografisk leksikon, 23 vols. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1933–44).
Since Denmark did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1700, I have kept
all dates in the Old Style, in accordance with the Julian calendar. The basic
monetary unit used in this text is the Danish rigsdaler, closely equivalent both to
the Swedish riksdaler and the German Reichsthaler; four Danish rigsdaler were
the rough equivalent of one English pound.
Scandinavian orthography can cause some problems for those not familiar
with the language, especially since Nordic characters have changed over time. ‘Å’
is a modern convention for ‘aa’ (pronounced much like a long ‘o’ in English); ‘ø’
is close to the German ‘ö’; and the ‘æ’ ligature is very similar to the German ‘ä’.
In Icelandic names and terms, I have retained both the ‘eth’, or soft ‘d’ (‘ð’), and
the ‘thorn’ (‘þ’, instead of the transliteration ‘th’).
I would like to express my gratitude to the many individuals who have made
this work possible, through gifts of time, advice, and encouragement. My friends
in Denmark have been the most important source of counsel for me over the
twenty years in which I have pursued the study of Danish history. I cannot
possibly name all of them here, but I should extend special thanks to: Dr Michael
Bregnsbo, Professor Knud J. V. Jespersen, and the late Professor E. Ladewig
Petersen, all of the University of Southern Denmark, Odense; Professors KarlErik Frandsen and Martin Schwarz Lausten of the University of Copenhagen;
Leon Jespersen (Rigsarkivet), and especially Hans Kargaard Thomsen and his
wife, Yvonne, who have always been unstinting in their hospitality during our
visits to Denmark. Ms Diana Kaylor, head of inter-library loan at the Dunbar
Library, Wright State University, patiently and efficiently filled the scores of book
requests I made of her. The College of Liberal Arts, Wright State University,
granted me academic leave in 2004–5 to facilitate the writing of this volume.
Mr Daniel W. Studebaker of West Milton, Ohio, lent his considerable talents to
the production of the maps for the book.
Finally, I must recognize the contributions of my family: my mother-in-law,
Maria Beach, my brother-in-law, Ralph C. Beach III, and my parents, Newton
and Marilyn Lockhart, for their love and encouragement. My children—Kate,
Nicholas, Paige, Philip, and Alexander Lockhart—graciously put up with the
many times in which my writing intruded upon my time with them, as always.
My wife, Jo Anna Chu Lockhart, was of course my greatest source of inspiration.
Preface
ix
She sacrificed countless hours to allow me to work undisturbed, to listen to my
ideas and my readings of innumerable rough drafts. This book simply could not
have been written without her.
PDL
Kettering, Ohio
21 May 2006
Acknowledgements
Illustrations 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 and the cover illustration appear by courtesy of
the National History Museum at Frederiksborg Castle (Det Nationalhistoriske
Museum på Frederiksborg Slot), Hillerød, Denmark. I must extend my thanks
to Steffen Heiberg for his assistance in procuring these. Illustration 4 appears by
courtesy of the Royal Library (Det kongelige Bibliotek), Copenhagen, Denmark.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
List of Abbreviations
xii
xiii
xvii
Introduction
1
I . T H E D EV E LO P M E N T O F T H E C O N S E N S UA L S TAT E ,
1513 – 1596
1 The End of the Medieval Monarchy, 1513–1536
11
2 The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy, 1536–1596
29
3 Reformation and Culture
58
4 Commerce, Rural Economy, and the Structure of Society
83
5 The Mistress of the Sound: Denmark and Europe, 1513–1596
104
I I . T H E AG E O F C H R I S T I A N I V, 1 5 9 6 – 1 6 6 0
6 The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
127
7 Baltic and German Hegemonies: Denmark and Europe, 1596–1629
148
8 Church and Court: Culture in the Age of Christian IV
173
9 The Death of Government by Consensus, 1630–1648
194
10 State and Society, Centre and Periphery
211
11 War and Absolutism, 1648–1660
226
12 Epilogue
248
Glossary
Bibliographic Essay
Index
258
261
269
Illustrations
(Between pp. 147 and 148)
1 Christian II, king of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, 1513–23. Painting by
Mesteren for Magdelene-Legenden, 1521.
2 Frederik I, king of Denmark and Norway, 1523–33. Painting by Jacob
Binck, 1539.
3 Christian III, king of Denmark, 1536–59. Painting by Jacob Binck, 1550.
4 Frederik II, king of Denmark, 1559–88. Copper plate, 1573.
5 Christian IV, king of Denmark, 1596–1648. Painting by Abraham Wuchters,
1638.
6 Frederik III, king of Denmark, 1648–70. Painting by unknown artist, c.1650.
Maps
1 The kingdom of Denmark and the Duchies, c.1600
2 Norway and Iceland, c.1600
3 The Danish islands and the Baltic passages
Map 1. The kingdom of Denmark and the Duchies, c.1600
Map 2. Norway and Iceland, c.1600
Map 3. The Danish islands and the Baltic passages
Abbreviations
DFH
DNT
GDH
GDH 2/1:
GDH 2/2:
GDH 3:
HTD
Grethe Ilsøe, Tim Knudsen, E. Ladewig Petersen, and Ditlev
Tamm (eds.), Dansk forvaltningshistorie: stat, forvaltning og
samfund, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: Jurist- og økonomforbundets
forlag, 2000).
L. Laursen (ed.), Danmark-Norges Traktater 1523–1750
med dertil hørende Aktstykker, 8 vols. (Copenhagen: Gad,
1907–23).
Gyldendals Danmarks historie
Kai Hørby and Mikael Venge, Tiden 1340–1648, part 1:
1340–1559 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980)
Helge Gamrath and E. Ladewig Petersen, Tiden
1340–1648, part 2: 1559–1648 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1980)
Knud J. V. Jespersen, Tiden 1648–1730 (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 1989)
Historisk Tidsskrift (Denmark)
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Introduction
The kingdom of Denmark has paid the historiographical price for failure
and decline. It is not alone in this regard. Denmark is but one of several
polities—Poland and Saxony also spring to mind—that played a major role in
European politics during the early modern period but subsequently slid into the
ranks of the lesser states of Europe. Such states have, as a general rule, been left
out of the grand narrative of early modern history. Even Habsburg Spain, though
arguably Europe’s first ‘superpower’, has not received the scholarly attention
heaped upon Tudor–Stuart England and Valois–Bourbon France. As Robert
Frost has wryly observed, ‘History, it is often suggested, is written by the winners.
Yet losers also write history; they just don’t get translated.’¹ Perhaps more than
any other region of Europe, Scandinavia is written off as being peripheral or
marginal. Even within the limited context of Scandinavian history, Denmark
has taken a back seat to its neighbour and rival Sweden. Sweden, at least, had an
anglophone advocate in the late Michael Roberts.
At first glance, Denmark’s story is not quite so dramatic as Sweden’s. Sweden’s
history in the early modern period makes for a compelling tale, framed by its
rapid and unlikely rise to great-power status and its equally precipitous fall less
than a century later. Denmark experienced these things as well, but its rise
was less improbable and its decline more gradual than Sweden’s. Early modern
Denmark merits detailed examination regardless. In the period between 1536
and 1660, it was—next to the Spanish empire—Europe’s largest polity in terms
of sheer land mass. Denmark was also Europe’s first truly Protestant kingdom.
Denmark’s break with Rome predated the more famous apostasy of Henry VIII.
While England still vacillated between the old faith and the new, Denmark was
already thoroughly Lutheran. For more than a century, Denmark was the leading
power in the Baltic Sea region; for at least half a century, it played a leading
role in European affairs, acting as a leader of the Protestant states in an age of
religious war. It may never have been a ‘great power’, but there is no denying
that Denmark was a great regional power. The kingdom of Denmark managed
to hold its exalted position despite the fact that its resource base was a modest
one, and its political organization was antiquated.
¹ Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721
(London: Longman, 2000), 14.
2
Introduction
What makes early modern Denmark, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially worthy of study is its constitutional transformation during this
period. In the first half of the sixteenth century, Denmark traded its unstable
medieval monarchy, in which the aristocracy was the real power broker, for a
stable and productive partnership between king and aristocratic elites. Oldenburg
Denmark is thus a good case study for the efficacy of ‘limited monarchy’. From
1536 to around 1630, Denmark demonstrated that ‘limited’ or ‘consensual’
monarchy was not inherently weak and unstable, and that king and nobility—if
set on an equal footing—could work together to promote the welfare of the state
as a whole with little if any internal conflict. Eventually that partnership would
fail, allowing the introduction (1660–1) of princely absolutism on a scale not
seen elsewhere in Europe. Another, more subtle transformation was also at work
during this same period. In 1500, Denmark was a backward, parochial state,
outwardly similar to the better-established polities of Western and central Europe
but without actively participating in European life; by 1660, its former cultural,
economic, and political isolation was over. During the intervening decades,
Denmark had become integrated into the mainstream of European civilization.
Several factors conditioned Denmark’s ‘European integration’, its rise to
prominence in European affairs, and its decline into international insignificance.
Three stand out as being particularly decisive. The first was a matter of geopolitics: Denmark straddled the narrows that connect the Baltic and North seas.
The straits between Jutland and the Danish island groups to the south, and the
Scandinavian peninsula to the north, serve as a maritime funnel between the
North Sea and the Baltic, becoming progressively narrower from west to east.
The widest and westernmost of these connecting waterways, the Skagerrak, is
situated between the northern tip of Jutland and the southern coast of Norway;
immediately to the east lies the smaller Kattegat, lying between the Danish
central island group and the Scandinavian peninsula. The easternmost segment
of the passage, the Sound (Øresundet), runs between the Danish island of
Sjælland and the southern coast of Skåne. The Sound is the narrowest portion;
at the Danish town of Helsingør, opposite the town of Helsingborg (present-day
Swedish Hälsingborg), the straits are only a few kilometres in breadth. It would
be possible for ships passing in or out of the Baltic to circumvent the Sound
altogether, via one of two passages snaking through the Danish islands. The
Great Belt (Storebælt) runs between the islands of Sjælland and Fyn, and the
Lesser Belt (Lillebælt) separates Fyn from the Jutland peninsula. The Lesser Belt,
however, is almost unpassably slender, and passage of the Great Belt could be
quite treacherous. Regulating or prohibiting traffic through the Belts was not a
difficult task. The Sound was the only passage that was suited to heavy seagoing
shipping, and with a minimal investment in fortifications and naval vessels it too
could be closed off. Denmark, in short, could use the Sound as a commercial
valve, regulating the ingress and egress of Baltic shipping as it desired. As the
Baltic trade became increasingly important to northern Europe during the course
Introduction
3
of the sixteenth century, Denmark’s influence grew accordingly. Moreover,
control over the Sound allowed the kings of Denmark to profit indirectly from
the lucrative Baltic trade, through the imposition of commercial dues on all
merchant vessels passing through the straits at Helsingør. It was this iron grip
on the Baltic trade that contributed the most to Denmark’s high international
profile, and it was for this reason that Denmark was both courted and hated
by its neighbours. Danish dominion over the Baltic trade occasioned jealousy
and resentment in those powers that depended on the trade. Denmark could
maintain this position only so long as it could defend it, or so long as more
powerful nations had motivation to tolerate it.
The second factor, the possession of Slesvig and Holstein—collectively called
‘the Duchies’—is more nebulous but of great importance nonetheless. The
connection between Denmark and the German lands immediately to the south
of Jutland was an ancient one. The Duchies were prosperous, and did add to
Denmark’s agrarian and commercial wealth, but their main significance was
less tangible. The Duchies, Holstein in particular, constituted a ‘bridge’ of sorts
between Denmark and the Germanies, in terms of culture and politics as well
as of trade. Holstein gave the Oldenburg kings a foothold in the northern
reaches of the Holy Roman Empire, ultimately permitting Denmark to usurp the
commercial predominance of the Hanseatic ports in the region. The geographical
connection also facilitated cultural interchange between Denmark and Germany.
The most profound ramifications of the Danish–German connection, however,
were political. Through their claim to Holstein, the Oldenburg kings of Denmark
were princes of the Empire and therefore vassals of the Habsburg emperors. As
the wealthiest princes of the Lower Saxon Circle of the Empire, Denmark’s
rulers had a very real stake in Imperial politics, and hence frequently found
themselves—willingly or not—dragged into the innumerable constitutional and
confessional disputes that characterized German politics before the Peace of
Westphalia. For Denmark, involvement in German politics was not a policy
option; it was an unavoidable necessity. The Danish–German tie allowed
Denmark to participate in European culture, and forced it to participate in
European politics, with results that were not altogether beneficial to the kingdom.
The third conditioning factor was the Protestant Reformation. The establishment of a Lutheran state church completely changed the nature of politics in
Denmark. It strengthened royal authority, but not so much that it crippled the
aristocracy, and for a century after the Reformation the king and the aristocracy
functioned as equal partners in the governance of the realm. The civil war that
brought about the Reformation forged a more intimate union between Denmark
and Norway, greatly enlarging the Oldenburg dynastic state, and a shared religion
drew Denmark closer still to the Protestant states of the Empire. It also bolstered
the kingdom’s reputation, for as long as the states of Europe divided along
confessional lines, then Denmark was bound to be a leader among the Protestant
states. But like possession of the Sound, Denmark’s Protestant identity was a
4
Introduction
two-edged sword. It brought power and prestige to Denmark, but it also drew
the kingdom into at least one disastrous war. And once religious affiliation ceased
to be a major determinant of foreign policy, as it would in the mid-seventeenth
century, Denmark would no longer be assured a position of leadership.
1 . T H E M E D I EVA L B AC KG RO U N D
Only a couple of decades before the Reformation, the kingdom of Denmark
was a component, albeit the primary one, of a Scandinavian confederacy. The
Union of Kalmar, assembled by Denmark’s great medieval queen Margrethe I
(regent, 1377–1412) and formally established in 1397, held Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden together under a single crown. A protective measure designed to
safeguard the Nordic kingdoms against German domination, the dynastic union
was also a reflection of the strong cultural, economic, and even familial ties that
bound the Scandinavian peoples together.
In practice, the Union never functioned very well for very long. The main
problem with the Kalmar Union was that it was driven by Denmark. Danish
sovereigns ruled it from the moment of its inception, or at least attempted to do
so. This in itself was not a problem; for the great landed magnates of Sweden
and Norway, an unobtrusive foreign king in distant Denmark was far preferable
to a more demanding king closer to home. But when royal policies ran counter
to local economic interests—the anti-Hanseatic stance of Denmark’s King
Erik of Pomerania (1396–1439), for example—or when Danish rule implied
heavy taxation, trouble was sure to ensue. Kings Erik of Pomerania, Christian
I of Oldenburg (king of Denmark, 1448–81), and Hans (king of Denmark,
1481–1513) overtly and sometimes brutally exerted their authority in Sweden
and Norway, and made extensive use of unpopular foreign bailiffs to enforce
their decrees and collect their taxes. The result was a gradual strengthening of
separatist tendencies, particularly within Sweden, and the predictable emergence
of local anti-kings and frequent insurrections. The Swedish popular uprising led
by Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson in the 1430s culminated in the deposal of Erik
of Pomerania in 1439. Major aristocratic families in Sweden, anxious to have
some say in the succession of Union kings, defiantly elected their own king (Karl
Knutsson) on three separate occasions in the period 1448–70, and took up arms
to resist the authority of Christian I.
In the second half of the fifteenth century, this separatism became infused with
a kind of populist patriotism, and consequently grew more dogged and violent. It
was during these decades that the Swedish resistance coalesced around the Sture
family of Dalarna. Under the leadership of three successive Sture regents—Sten
Sture the Elder, Svante Nilsson Sture, and Sten Sture the Younger—the Swedes
fought back against the heavy-handed, centralizing policies of kings Hans and
Christian II (1513–23). Ultimately, between 1520 and 1523, the Swedes would
Introduction
5
gain their independence, and it would not be an amicable parting. The Union
of Kalmar demonstrated the curious depth of the yearning for Scandinavian
unity, which would not end with the death of the Union, but its demise also
shaped the relationship between Denmark and Sweden for at least the next two
centuries. The clashes between the Swedes and the Danish crown, especially
in the years around 1520, bred a mutual and lingering distrust between the
two Nordic kingdoms. The fortunes of both lands between 1520 and 1721 can
be understood only in this context, the Union’s seemingly contradictory twin
legacies of fraternity and visceral hate.²
By 1536 the Oldenburg state—that is, the dynastic state ruled by the kings
of the Oldenburg dynasty, which governed Denmark from 1448 to 1863—had
assumed its basic territorial configuration, which would persist with only minor
changes until its partition in 1660. The revolt led by Gustav Ericsson Vasa in
1520–3 liberated Sweden from Danish rule and destroyed the Kalmar Union;
the forceful introduction of Protestantism in 1536, at the end of a two-year
civil war, fused Norway to Denmark. The resulting conglomeration of lands was
vast. The kingdom of Denmark itself—consisting of the Jutland peninsula, the
central island group around Fyn, the eastern island group centred on Sjælland,
several smaller islands further east in the Baltic, and the ‘Scanian’ provinces
of Skåne, Blekinge, and Halland, located at the southern tip of modern-day
Sweden—comprised around 61,000 km2 of land. The addition of Norway
increased the size of the dynastic state drastically. Norway was somewhat bigger
then than it is today, for it still possessed the districts of Härjedalen, Jämtland,
and Båhuslen, which were ceded to Sweden in 1660. Altogether, the kingdom of
Norway accounted for some 320,000 km2 in surface area. To this must be added
Iceland (100,000 km2 ) and the Færø Islands, which though self-ruling were
technically Norwegian fiefs, and hence were also incorporated into the Danish
monarchy in 1536. Finally there were the Duchies. The extent of land in Slesvig
and Holstein under the direct rule of the Oldenburg kings fluctuated during the
sixteenth century, but the so-called ‘royal portion’ of the Duchies added around
19,000 km2 to the lands of the Oldenburg dynasty. Even without counting the
bleak expanse of Greenland, claimed by Denmark but not yet under Danish
occupation, the total land mass under Danish rule was colossal. Only the empire
of Charles V surpassed it in size.³
Colossal it may have been, but it was sparsely populated. In the middle of
the sixteenth century, the population of Denmark proper stood at no more than
600,000 souls. Norway accounted for no more than 200,000 inhabitants, Iceland
² Vivian Etting, Queen Margrete I (1353–1412) and the Founding of the Nordic Union (Leiden:
Brill, 2004); Michael Roberts, The Early Vasas: A History of Sweden, 1523–1611 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968), 1–45; Poul Enemark, Fra Kalmarbrev til Stockholms blodbad:
den nordiske trestatsunions epoke 1397–1521 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979), 17–107.
³ Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 32.
6
Introduction
50,000, and the Duchies 400,000.⁴ With a total population of around 1,250,000,
Denmark did not compare favourably with England (around 4,000,000) or
France (16,000,000). The size of the population was roughly on par with that of
Vasa Sweden and Finland. Large amounts of central and northern Norway, and
much of the Icelandic hinterland, were uninhabited. The harsh environment in
the northernmost extremes of the Oldenburg state precluded cultivation, but the
temperate climate and fertile soils of the Duchies, Denmark itself, and the Scanian
provinces allowed for reasonably productive farming. Extensive coastlines and
vast forests provided other important resources: naval stores, including timber
and pitch, from Norway, fish from Denmark, Norway, and Iceland.
Late medieval Denmark shared with Norway and Sweden a common political
tradition, often called ‘council-constitutionalism’ or ‘aristocratic constitutionalism’. The concept, which can be traced back to Germanic notions of kingship
and governance from antiquity, involved the joint stewardship of political power
by the king and representatives of the foremost families of the realm. In Denmark, the king shared power with an aristocratic Council of State (Rigens råd or
Rigsråd), which ranged in size from a dozen to twenty-odd members. Prior to the
Reformation, each of Denmark’s seven Catholic bishops was included de facto
in the Council’s membership. The Council of State was not truly a ‘council’
in the more familiar, bureaucratic sense of the word; it was not permanently
constituted, and met only when summoned by the king. Together, the king and
the Council constituted ‘the Crown of Denmark’ (Danmarks krone), which held
all executive and legislative power, as well as the final authority in judicial matters.
By tradition, the king appointed new members to the Council of State as
necessary, and the Council in turn had the responsibility of electing kings. After
the accession of Christian I, the first king of the Oldenburg line, in 1448,
royal elections became almost mere formalities, but the principle of elective
monarchy—a safeguard against tyranny—was observed rigorously until the
succession of Christian V in 1670. There was no written constitution per se;
the respective duties and powers of the king and the Council were instead
spelled out in a ‘coronation charter’ (håndfæstning), which were drafted by the
Council, were negotiated with the king-elect, and had to be signed by the king
before he could be crowned. The terms of the charters varied from king to king
depending on the whim of the Council. In general, the charters required the
king to consult with the Council on all matters that touched on the welfare of
the realm, limited his ability to ennoble foreigners or commoners, and required
him to uphold the liberties of the privileged orders. Danish historians often
refer to this constitutional structure as adelsvælden—roughly translated, ‘noble
rule’—though, as we shall see, the term is not entirely accurate when applied to
Danish government from 1536 to 1660.⁵
⁴ Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 30–1.
⁵ Poul J. Jørgensen, Dansk retshistorie, 5th edn (Copenhagen: Gad, 1971), 336–48.
Introduction
7
Representative institutions did exist, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century they were limited in scope and importance. The regular medieval parliament
(Danehof ), an exclusively noble institution, had fallen into disuse, to be replaced
by more informal gatherings called herredag. Held roughly once annually, the
herredag brought together the king and the Council, plus any other nobles who
were invited or who cared to attend. Provincial diets (landsting) of representatives
from all estates had, like the Danehof, diminished before the sixteenth century;
national diets, or ‘meetings of the Estates’ (stændermøder), were introduced in
the late fifteenth century and then only on a very limited scale.⁶
Beneath the king and the exalted Council of State, the bureaucratic structure
was quite rudimentary. According to the terms of the coronation charters, the
kings were usually required to retain several leading ‘officers of state’ (the rigsembedsmænd). The most important of the ‘officers of state’ were the rigshofmester,
who supervised the kingdom’s finances and served as the representative of the
crown in the king’s absence; the chancellor (kongens kansler), the chief intermediary between the king and the Council; and the marshal (rigsmarsk), who
was responsible for the defence of the realm. Other posts would be added later.
The king appointed the officers of state, who by tradition were drawn from the
ranks of the Council. A Chancery, under the direction of the chancellor, handled
all of the routine paperwork of the administration. In the provinces, royally
appointed fiefholders (lensmænd ) represented the central authority, supervising
the administrative districts (len, usually translated as ‘fiefs’) into which Denmark
was divided.⁷
Such was the basic structure of the Danish monarchy at the dawn of the
sixteenth century. It did retain some features that were peculiar to the Nordic
lands; the peasantry, for example, was considered a separate ‘fourth estate’,
distinct from the town dwellers, the nobility, and the clergy. Overall, however, it
at least outwardly resembled the other monarchies of late medieval Europe. It was,
after all, affected by most of the same forces that shaped the late medieval world.
The Roman Catholic Church dominated cultural and religious life; the Black
Death exacted as ghastly a toll in the North as it did anywhere else in Europe.⁸
Danish knights, in limited numbers, participated in the Crusades. Denmark was
more closely tied to the Continent, owing to geographical proximity more than
anything else, than were Norway and Sweden, and yet there was little intercourse
between the Danish monarchy and the rest of Europe. Few merchants—or
⁶ Ibid. 484–505; DFH, i. 24–6; Thomas Riis, Les institutions politiques centrales du Danemark
1100–1332 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1977), 252–60; J. E. Larsen, ‘Om Rigsdage og Provindsialforsamlinger samt Rigsraadet i Danmark, fra det 13de Aarhundrede indtil Statsforandringen
1660’, HTD, 1st ser., 1 (1840), 303–20.
⁷ Jørgensen, Retshistorie, 336–76; DFH, i. 24–90.
⁸ Esben Albrectsen, Fællesskabet bliver til, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 1 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 53–7; Lars Walløe, Plague and Population: Norway 1350–1750 (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1995), 22–4; Erik Ulsig, ‘Pest og befolkningsnedgang i Danmark i det 14.
århundrede’, HTD, 91 (1991), 21–42.
8
Introduction
anyone else from the West, for that matter—visited Denmark, and Danish
merchants did not stray outside the Baltic region; the Hanseatic towns acted
as the commercial intermediary between Scandinavia and a larger Europe. The
Scandinavian kingdoms had no universities before the end of the fifteenth
century, and only a handful of Scandinavians studied at the great universities on
the Continent. Denmark was, in brief, inward-looking, and the great kingdoms
of Europe reciprocally evinced little interest in the North. As Pope Pius II
remarked in the 1450s, ‘Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians live at the end of the
world, and they do not take an interest in anything outside of their homes.’⁹
That isolation, however, would come to an end in the first half of the sixteenth
century. The twin forces of the Reformation and the Baltic trade would rudely
push Denmark into the midst of European life. It was a transition for which
Danish society and government were not wholly prepared.
⁹ Janus Møller Jensen, ‘Denmark and the Crusades 1400–1650’, Ph.D. thesis, Syddansk
Universitet, Odense, 2005, 1.
I
T H E D EV E LO P M E N T
O F T H E C O N S E N S UA L S TAT E ,
1513−1596
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1
The End of the Medieval Monarchy,
1513–1536
Any discussion of Denmark’s ‘European integration’ must begin with the reign
of Christian II (1513–23), more for its intentions than for its actual results.
When Christian II left Denmark in 1523, the Danish Reformation was more
than a decade away, the Baltic trade was only beginning to show glimpses of
its potential vitality, and the Kalmar Union was still in its death-throes. Yet
Christian seemed to recognize that change was coming to Denmark, that Europe
was coming to Denmark, and he strove to meet those challenges.
Christian II is something of a puzzle to Danish historians. On the one hand,
he was a reformer, a ‘progressive’ whose policies showed a genuine concern for
the peasantry and burghers of Denmark; on the other, he was a brutal tyrant, who
flouted tradition and law, and cut down those who dared to stand in his way. He
was both things, and he was also an abject failure as a ruler. Christian was unable
to bring about the kind of social, political, religious, and commercial revolutions
that his policies seem to have anticipated. He was the last Danish monarch to be
deposed; and after his deposal—even after his death more than thirty-five years
later—he caused more problems for Denmark than any other single individual
in its history. But even in its failures, Christian II’s reign had a lasting significance
for his kingdom and his successors. His actions dealt the final coup de grâce to the
Kalmar Union and were indirectly responsible for Swedish independence. In the
decades that followed Christian’s deposal in 1523, the constitutional conflicts
spawned by his governance would redefine the relationship between king and
aristocracy. For at least four subsequent generations of Oldenburg rulers, the
sad fate of Christian II served as an object lesson, highlighting the dangers of
tyranny and the importance of collaboration with the power elite. ‘Christian the
Wicked’, as Arild Huitfeldt would later style him in a clever pun,¹ would serve
posterity as the model of a bad king, and a reminder of the evil that could come
from pernicious foreign influences.²
¹ In Danish, ‘Christian the Second’ (Christian den Anden) does not sound terribly dissimilar to
‘Christian the Wicked’ (Christian den Onden).
² Nils Ahnlund, ‘Kristiern II i svensk och dansk historieskrivning’, in Nils Ahnlund, Från
medeltid och vasatid: Historia och kulturhistoria (Stockholm: Geber, 1920), 126–48; Paul J. Reiter,
12
The Development of the Consensual State
1 . T H E FA I L E D R EVO LU T I O N O F C H R I S T I A N I I
When his father, King Hans, died on 20 February 1513 after a fall from a
horse, Christian inherited a very troubled triple crown. The Danish aristocracy
resented Hans’s authoritarian manner, and wanted to ensure that his successor
did not follow in his footsteps. Hans had striven to bring Norway and Sweden
to obedience, with some positive results, but the anti-Danish opposition in
Sweden re-emerged with Hans’s death. Even in the Duchies, the Oldenburgs’
German patrimony, there was trouble. Here Hans’s ambitious younger brother, Duke Friedrich (Frederik to the Danes), had shared joint rule with the
royal line; but Friedrich chafed at his inferior position, and there was good
reason to suspect that he would not cooperate with his nephew Christian.³
Christian had already been hailed as heir apparent in Denmark, Norway, and
Sweden, but he could not be crowned until the aristocratic councils of each
kingdom tendered him their fealty, and this was not immediately forthcoming. In Denmark, where Christian’s succession should have been assured, the
Council of State did not support him unanimously. In the end the dissenters
relented, but the Council’s wariness was reflected in the strict coronation
charter it drafted for Christian’s signature. According to its terms, the king
would be prohibited from bestowing fiefs (len) upon anyone who was not a
native-born Danish nobleman; he could not buy up nobly owned land; he
could not name his successor in his lifetime. As an added guarantee against
royal tyranny, the charter contained an ominous ‘rebellion-paragraph’: if the
king overstepped his bounds, his subjects were obliged to ‘instruct’ him of
the error of his ways. Despite these restrictions, Christian signed the charter, and was crowned in the cathedral at Copenhagen (Vor Frue Kirke) in
July 1514.⁴
The new king was neither ingenuous nor inexperienced. Christian was nearly
32 years of age when his father died, and had already served an apprenticeship
of sorts under his father’s tutelage. Although subject to bouts of ‘melancholy’,
Christian was gifted and bright. Hans entrusted the prince with great responsibilities from an early age: in 1502, Christian led Danish troops to crush
the Norwegian rebellion of Knut Alvsson, and four years later he was viceroy
in Norway. Here Prince Christian carried out his father’s heavy-handed policies to the letter, crushing Swedish-supported resistance and replacing native
Christiern 2.: Personlighed, sjæleliv og livsdrama (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1942); Erik Arup, ‘Kong
Christiern 2: et portræt’, Scandia, 18 (1947), 73–80.
³ Mikael Venge, Christian 2.s fald: spillet om magten i Danmark januar–februar 1523 (Odense:
Universitetsforlag, 1972), 58–70.
⁴ Reiter, Christiern 2., 47–82; Samling af de danske Kongers Haandfæstninger og andre lignende
Acter (Copenhagen: Bianco Luno, 1856–8), 56–65.
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
13
bishops and administrators with Danish officials over the protests of local
elites.⁵
When Prince Christian returned to Denmark in 1512, he brought back more
than just executive experience. He also brought a new family. While in Bergen
in either 1507 or 1509, Christian fell in love with one Dyveke, the young and
beautiful daughter of an Amsterdam merchant. He made no effort to conceal
the affair, and Dyveke lived openly with the prince after their journey back to
Denmark. The liaison between the heir apparent and a mere burgher’s daughter
must have raised a few eyebrows, but the Danish nobility was far more troubled by
another member of the king’s household: Dyveke’s mother, Sigbrit Willemsson,
more familiar to Danes as Mother (Mor) Sigbrit. Dyveke was Christian’s love,
but Mother Sigbrit would become his closest confidante and adviser.⁶
Nonetheless, the first seven years of the reign proceeded without incident.
Mother Sigbrit advised the king, informally, on matters of trade and finance,
and nurtured his fondness for the Dutch, but in general Christian worked
closely with leading Danish noblemen. He showed no inclination to disregard
the sensitivities of the noble estate. Perhaps he neglected to fill vacancies among
the ‘officers of state’ in a timely fashion—something that would become a
habit for the Oldenburg monarchs—and perhaps he was too assiduous in
appointing burghers and lesser nobles to positions in his bureaucracy, but overall
the aristocracy viewed him as a welcome change from his overbearing father.
Certainly no one faulted him for his decision, reluctantly taken, to find a suitable
bride. Dyveke would remain the king’s mistress until her death in 1517, but
in 1514 Christian married Elisabeth (Isabella) of Habsburg, the 13-year-old
granddaughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, and sister of the
future Charles V. The importance of this match cannot be overestimated.
Elisabeth’s dowry was not generous, nor was it ever paid in full, but the marriage
was Denmark’s first marital tie to a major European dynasty. The connection
would be of great personal benefit to Christian during his years in exile, and a
major source of distress to his successors.⁷
Neither the exile nor its aftershocks were visible in 1514. There were, however,
concrete dividends to be reaped from the Oldenburg–Habsburg match. Most
probably inspired by Mother Sigbrit, Christian planned an ambitious commercial
project: a Danish-directed trading company intended to eclipse the powerful
Hanseatic League. With staple-towns at Copenhagen, Stockholm, Viborg, and
Antwerp, the Danish monarchy could monopolize Western European trade with
the Baltic region. Christian’s marital ties to the Habsburgs would give him access
⁵ Esben Albrectsen, Fællesskabet bliver til, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 1 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 267–8.
⁶ Benito Scocozza, Kongen og købekonen: om Christian 2. og Mor Sigbrit (Copenhagen: Gad,
1992), 7–38; Mikael Venge, Bondekær eller tyran? (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1992), 11–25.
⁷ Else Kai Sass, Studier i Christiern II’s ikonografi (Copenhagen: Bianco Luno, 1970), 24–6;
Scocozza, Kongen og købekonen, 21–32.
14
The Development of the Consensual State
to sources of venture capital that otherwise might not have been attainable. It
was, in the words of Michael Roberts, an example of Christian II’s ‘capacity for
bold and imaginative planning’, but its successful execution would depend on
many things: the king’s ability to bring Sweden, with its untapped stocks of iron
and copper ore, to heel, and to secure the cooperation of the Danish nobles,
many of whom profited from Denmark’s trade with the Hanseatic towns.⁸
That cooperation was hardly assured, and in fact the relationship between
the king and his aristocratic elite began to sour upon the death of Dyveke in
September 1517. If Christian had harboured any ill will towards the aristocracy
prior to this point, he had not shown it, but after Dyveke’s death his distaste
for the great magnates became manifest. Combined with the king’s almost
pathological suspiciousness—a feature of his personality that heretofore had
been subdued—this antipathy was bound to cause problems. Mother Sigbrit
convinced Christian that Dyveke had been poisoned. For some reason, the king
suspected that Torben Oxe, a high-ranking aristocrat, was the author of Dyveke’s
demise. According to tradition, Oxe was not condemned by the Council of State
as his station warranted that he should be; rather, Christian put him on trial
before a jury of peasants. This extra-legal court sentenced Oxe to death, and on
November 1517 he was beheaded and his remains burned in public. With this
act, Christian alienated the powerful conciliar aristocracy, and drew even closer
to Mother Sigbrit.⁹
The fissure that resulted from the execution of Torben Oxe came at a bad
time, for just then Sweden became a real problem for Christian II. Christian
had inherited his father’s determination to make the Kalmar Union a more
centralized federation under Danish control, and was willing to use military force
and political terror to accomplish this end. The anti-Danish regent in Sweden,
Sten Sture the Younger, used the occasion of King Hans’s death in 1513 to
revive the struggle for independence from Danish rule. Sture had much support,
but the nobility was not united behind him. Soon Sture became embroiled in a
dispute with the pro-Danish archbishop of Uppsala, Gustav Trolle. To Christian
II, this presented an opportunity to crush Swedish resistance once and for all.
Over two successive summers, in 1517 and 1518, the king dispatched fleets to
Stockholm with the intent of toppling the Sture faction, but to no avail. The
first expedition was a profitless disaster, while the second resulted in nothing
more than a two-year armistice. When Sture’s forces ignored the armistice and
stormed Trolle’s castle Almare-Stäket, deposing and imprisoning the archbishop,
Christian reacted more sharply.
⁸ Scocozza, Kongen og købekonen, 42–6; Michael Roberts, The Early Vasas: A History of Sweden,
1523–1611 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 26–7.
⁹ Lauritz Weibull, ‘Dyvekekatastrofen og Torbern Oxe’, Scandia, 5 (1932), 17–55; Povl Bagge,
‘Torben Oxe sagen’, in Povl Bagge, Smaaskrifter tilegnede Professor, Dr. phil. Aage Friis (Copenhagen:
Schultz, 1940), 33–48; Stig Iuul, ‘Nogle retshistoriske Bemærkninger til Dommen over Torben
Oxe’, in Smaaskrifter tilegnede . . . Aage Friis, 49–62.
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
15
In January 1520, Christian’s mercenary army, led by Otte Krumpen, crashed
across the Scanian frontier and drove towards Västergötland. On the frozen
waters of Lake Åsunden, it confronted and destroyed Sten Sture’s peasant levies
on 19 January. Sture himself, severely wounded, died two weeks later. The
enemies of the Sture clan within Sweden flocked to Christian II’s banners, and
in April Krumpen’s army destroyed the last remaining rebel army. By the end
of the summer only Stockholm had yet to be pacified. The city capitulated in
September 1520; Christian, who was present in person for his triumph, entered
the city and received his due homage as king of Sweden. He was crowned on 4
November, with the coerced blessing of the Swedish Council. A grateful Gustav
Trolle, newly liberated from prison and restored to his episcopal dignities, placed
the crown on Christian’s brow himself.¹⁰
This should have been the shining moment of Christian II’s reign. In one
brief campaign, he accomplished more than his father had done in thirty years.
Sweden had been cowed, the Sture faction was gone, and Christian was one
step closer to fulfilling his dream of a Nordic trading empire. It would prove
to be, however, the nadir of Christian’s career, the one moment at which his
hold over both Sweden and Denmark was lost forever. The initial impetus for
the king’s fatal mistake came from Archbishop Trolle, who sought vengeance
on his enemies and recompense for his sufferings. Three days after Christian’s
coronation in Stockholm, Trolle accused the late Sten Sture, a handful of Sture
loyalists, and the citizenry of Stockholm of heresy for their actions against the
archbishop. It was a minor matter, but it grew to be much worse. Sture’s
widow, Christina Gyllenstierna, hoped to deflect the blame from her husband’s
supporters. She pointed out that the decision to attack Trolle had the stamp of
national approval: a meeting of the Diet in November 1517 had produced a
‘swearing in common’ (sammansvärjning), binding the estates together with Sten
Sture against Trolle.¹¹
Had it not been for Christina Gyllenstierna’s defence, Christian II might have
satisfied his bloodlust with the men whom Trolle had accused. But he was a
suspicious man, and Gyllenstierna had handed him the excuse he needed to
eliminate all of his potential enemies at one stroke. He rapidly convened a church
court, with Trolle at its head; the court condemned not only those on Trolle’s
list, but all of those who had been party to the ‘swearing in common’ of 1517.
The retribution commenced immediately. On the afternoon of 8 November
1520, eighty-two Swedish noblemen were arrested on the king’s orders, hauled
to Stockholm’s castle, and beheaded within the space of three hours. The bodies
¹⁰ Lars Sjödin, Kalmarunionens Slutskede (Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1943), 63–92; Lizzie
Wie Andersen et al., Uppsala-Overenskomsten 1520: magtstruktur og magtkamp i Sverige, januar–oktober 1520 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1975); Poul Enemark, Fra Kalmarbrev til Stockholms
blodbad: den nordiske trestatsunions epoke 1397–1521 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979), 108–42.
¹¹ Curt Weibull, ‘Christina Gyllenstierna och Stockholms blodbad’, Scandia, 35 (1969), 272–83;
Curt Weibull, ‘Gustav Trolle, Christian II och Stockholms blodbad’, Scandia, 31 (1965), 1–54.
16
The Development of the Consensual State
of Sten Sture the Younger and his infant son were exhumed and burned alongside
the corpses of the decapitated nobles. Still more were hunted down and executed
elsewhere in Sweden over the next few weeks. The executions were almost
indiscriminate. Many of the victims were members of the Sture faction, but
others were innocent bystanders, and some even belonged to the group that
had spurned Sture and welcomed the king. ‘The Swedish union party’, observed
Henry Bruun, ‘went to the grave that it had dug for its opponents.’¹²
The ‘Stockholm Bloodbath’, far from bringing the Swedes to their knees,
practically guaranteed revolt. Political murder was hardly unusual in late medieval
Scandinavia, but the scale of the Bloodbath was unprecedented. Christian,
however, did not stop there. To govern Sweden in his absence, he appointed a
regency council, headed by one Didrik Slagheck, a German in his service who
had formerly been a papal secretary. Slagheck, who had played a leading role in
the Bloodbath, proved to be a brutal incompetent whose actions alienated even
his fellow regents. Yet Christian rewarded him with lucrative ecclesiastical posts
all the same, and punished those who spoke out against him. The Bloodbath and
the Slagheck regency spurred many Swedes into even more dogged resistance.
The Stures were no more, but there were men who could take Herr Sten’s place.
Foremost among them was young Gustav Eriksson Vasa, who—ironically—had
been one of six Swedish hostages taken by Christian II to guarantee the ceasefire
of 1518. Gustav Vasa escaped from his loosely guarded cell at Kalø Castle in
Jutland, fled to Lübeck, and after the massacre—in which he lost his father, two
uncles, and a brother-in-law—he returned to Sweden. There he took Sture’s
place. The Swedish Diet elected Gustav Vasa regent of Sweden, and two years
later he would be hailed as the first king of an independent Sweden.
The Bloodbath shocked Danish sensibilities as much as it did Swedish ones.
Christian had not become any more popular in Denmark since the execution of
Torben Oxe. Since that time, he had broken one after another of the promises
he had made in his coronation charter. He intervened in the selection of new
bishops; he appointed men of humble birth to important fiefs; he relied on the
daily counsel of Mother Sigbrit and other non-noble outsiders, while virtually
ignoring the Council of State. Increased taxation, levied to support the costly
military actions in Sweden, added to the king’s unpopularity. Returning to
Denmark in February 1521 from what he regarded as a great triumph in Sweden,
Christian II was utterly unrepentant. He showed unhesitating favour towards his
foreign creatures without regard for the terms of his charter. When the Council
recalled Slagheck from Stockholm to answer charges relating to his conduct in
Sweden, Christian dismissed all accusations against his favourite, jailed Slagheck’s
¹² Lauritz Weibull, Stockholms blodbad (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1965), 120–83; Rudolf
Bergström, Studier till den stora krisen i Nordens historia 1517–1523 (Uppsala: Almqvist och
Wiksell, 1943), 49–100; Niels Skyum-Nielsen, Blodbadet i Stockholm og dets juridiske maskering (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1964). See GDH 2/1, 253–5, for a good overview of the
debate.
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
17
principal accuser, and shamelessly installed Slagheck as archbishop of Lund. Were
it not for the legislation that Christian II put at the centre of his domestic agenda
in 1521–2, it would be easy to dismiss Christian as an irresponsible tyrant, who
arrogantly abused the prerogative powers at his disposal.¹³
The two great bodies of decrees promulgated in 1521–2, though they would
be short-lived, must stand as the great positive accomplishments of Christian II’s
reign. Historians have been wont to view these two legislative packages—called
the Land (or Spiritual) Law and the Town (or Secular) Law—as evidence
of a species of proto-democratic sentiment on the part of the king. The label
‘democratic’ may be ill-applied, but certainly the new legislation favoured burgher
and peasant interests at the expense of the landed nobility. Much of the thought
behind the Land and Town laws must have come from Mother Sigbrit and Hans
Mikkelsen, but the king also found personal inspiration in the Dutch example.
He had shown some partiality for the Dutch since his days as viceroy in Norway,
something to which Mother Sigbrit and Dyveke contributed, but he became
truly enamoured of the prosperity, social climate, and sophistication of the Low
Countries when he paid a prolongued visit to his brother-in-law, Charles V, in
the summer of 1521.¹⁴
Immediately upon his return to Denmark, Christian II drafted the details
of the Land and Town laws after consulting with Mother Sigbrit and Hans
Mikkelsen, the mayor of Malmø. The new laws were not only binding on the
entire kingdom—a first in Danish legal history—but they were also truly radical
in their political, social, and economic implications. According to the terms of
the laws, all trade would have to be conducted through the licensed market towns
(købstæder), and no one—nobleman, clergyman, or commoner—was exempt.
The towns themselves would be answerable only to the king, who would appoint
a scultus to oversee royal interests in each town. In the countryside, peasants
were now accorded the right to negotiate the lengths of their tenures with noble
landlords. The nobility, moreover, was prohibited from mistreating the peasants
residing on their lands; in eastern Denmark, where villeinage (vornedskab) still
existed, noblemen were strictly forbidden to buy or sell peasants as chattel.
Christian II decided also to follow the recent trend towards the nationalization
of churches. A series of laws regulated the behaviour of the clergy to an
unprecedented extent, but most important were the decrees allowing clerical
marriage and forbidding clergy from seeking justice outside the kingdom, in
ecclesiastical courts. Even legal appeals to the papacy were outlawed.
Christian strong-armed the Council of State into adopting most of the
proposed legislation, but nonetheless the Land and Town laws of 1521–2 were
¹³ Venge, Bondekær eller tyran, 24–5; Reiter, Christiern 2., 83–121.
¹⁴ Johan Hvidtfeldt, ‘En nyt haandskrift til Christiern den andens landlov’, Scandia, 7 (1934),
160–6; Mogens Rathsack, ‘Christiern den andens landlov’, HTD, 12th ser., 2 (1966–7), 293–334;
Jakob Pasternak, ‘Omkring Christiern II’s landlov’, Scandia, 30 (1964), 191–216.
18
The Development of the Consensual State
the last straw for the privileged orders in Denmark. The aristocracy had suspected
that Christian had long since given up any intention of following the guidelines
set forth in the coronation charter; the new laws simply confirmed that suspicion.
From the viewpoint of the nobility and the episcopacy Christian aimed at nothing
short of their destruction. Perhaps he did plan to eliminate the elective principle
and create a hereditary monarchy, as some historians have contended. Certainly
the nobility thought it a strong possibility, and they were not prepared to wait
for another bloodbath closer to home.
The Council’s first target in its opposition to Christian II was the hated Didrik
Slagheck. Slagheck’s behaviour as regent in Sweden was truly odious, and—as
a base-born foreigner—he represented everything that the conciliar aristocracy
hated about the regime. Late in 1521, Slagheck was arrested on the Council’s
orders and dragged back to Copenhagen to face justice. Here he was sentenced
to death—on grounds of heresy, curiously enough—and on 24 January 1522
was hanged as if he were a common thief, and his body burned to ashes. Precisely
why Christian II allowed this to happen to his loyal if unprincipled servant is
unknown, but he may have seen Slagheck as a convenient scapegoat. Christian
was not above sacrificing his supporters to serve his own ends.¹⁵
Slagheck’s death did not satisfy the Council, and events outside the kingdom
only served to exacerbate the civil discord in Denmark. In Sweden, the Vasa
rebellion showed no signs of weakening, and the Hanseatic towns had grown
hostile towards Denmark. The Hanse sympathized with Gustav Vasa and resented
Christian II’s embargo on Hanseatic trade with Sweden. By August 1522, Lübeck
and Danzig were at war with Denmark, lending their support to the Swedish
uprising. Anti-royal sentiment blossomed in Jutland, and not just among the
nobility; here even the mercantile classes, the beneficiaries of Christian’s domestic
reforms, grew to hate the king. The war in Sweden and with the Hanse promised
higher taxes, prohibitions on exports, and something much worse—the collapse
of the herring trade with the Hanseatic ports.
An uprising was bound to follow. A meeting of the Jutish councillors at
Viborg in December 1522, after carefully enumerating all of King Christian’s
transgressions, proposed unseating the king and replacing him with Duke
Friedrich, his uncle in Holstein. Friedrich gladly accepted the invitation, and
one month later—on 20 January 1523—the annual herredag at Viborg publicly
renounced its allegiance to the king and proclaimed rebellion. The notables
assembled at Viborg justified their actions on the basis of the ‘rebellionparagraph’ in Christian’s charter. Of course, that passage stipulated only that the
king’s subjects ‘instruct’ their sovereign in the error of his ways, and this they
had neglected to do, but it was justification enough. Duke Friedrich enlisted the
support of Lübeck and joined with the rebels in Jutland.¹⁶
¹⁵ Reiter, Christiern 2., 121–6.
¹⁶ Venge, Christian 2.s fald, 14–78.
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
19
Faced with rebellion in Sweden and Jutland, and with a war against Lübeck,
Christian II felt completely overwhelmed. On 13 April 1523 he left Copenhagen
with his family, Mother Sigbrit, and a handful of loyalists, on a ship bound for
the Netherlands. It was not his intention to abdicate, but rather to muster the
forces he needed to counter his enemies at home and abroad. Still, by leaving the
kingdom at this critical juncture, Christian II had admitted defeat. He would
never again return to Denmark as a free man.¹⁷
2 . F R E D E R I K I A N D T H E A R I S TO C R AT I C S TAT E
The victory of Duke Friedrich was gradual but sure. Not all of Denmark was
happy to see Christian II depart—he still held the affections of eastern Denmark
and much of the peasantry—but most of the nobility of Jutland and Fyn
eagerly came to Friedrich’s aid in the early months of 1523. Moreover, Friedrich
had been prepared for the event. He had been recruiting an army of German
mercenaries from his ducal seat in Gottorp since the end of 1522. His army moved
into Denmark in March 1523, under the command of the Holstein nobleman
Johann Rantzau. Friedrich, Rantzau, and their supporters had subdued nearly all
of Denmark by that summer; only the towns of Copenhagen and Malmø held
out for Christian II. These, too, capitulated in January 1524. After receiving
homage in Viborg and Roskilde, the duke was crowned as King Frederik I
(1523–33) in Copenhagen that August.
Scholars have often depicted the reign of Frederik I as the height of noble
power within the Oldenburg state, and with good reason. Though Frederik had
become king by conquest, and though a large portion of the resources used to
effect this conquest had been his own, still he was justifiably dissatisfied with his
lot. As one biographer wrote, ‘The victory in 1523 was jointly that of Frederik
and the conciliar aristocracy, but in the division of the prize the king came up
short.’¹⁸ The aristocratic elite, after all, had made use of their ‘right of resistance’
to rid themselves of an over-mighty king, his low-born and foreign advisers, and
policies that reduced their privileges and threatened to ruin them economically.
They were not prepared to countenance another monarch who might attempt
the same thing. The coronation charter that the Council presented to a reluctant
and bitter Frederik was accordingly severe, even more so than that signed by
Christian II. None but noblemen of Danish birth could receive appointments
as bishops or fiefholders; the nobility, through the Council, was to be consulted
on all issues, great or small; noble landowners could treat their peasants as they
wished without fear of royal interference. The right of resistance, which had been
expressed rather cryptically in Christian II’s charter, was clarified: if the king
¹⁷ Ibid. 71–181; Scocozza, Kongen og købekonen, 106–11; Reiter, Christiern 2., 126–36.
¹⁸ DBL, vii. 227.
20
The Development of the Consensual State
should overstep his bounds, his subjects could withdraw their allegiance. It was
not an enviable position for such a proud and ambitious man.¹⁹
It was well that Frederik accepted his new position with only a minimum
of grumbling, for Denmark was not yet entirely at peace, and within Denmark
his authority was not universally accepted. Christian II was, for the moment,
neutralized. He had fled to the Netherlands, where he quickly found that his
dynastic connections were of little practical use. The Habsburg regent, Margaret,
favoured Frederik I and hence was disinclined to aid the dethroned Christian.
Charles V was more sympathetic, but was too deeply immersed in war with
France to be able to lend assistance. Appeals to Henry VIII of England proved
similarly fruitless. After a failed attempt to raise an army in northern Germany,
and a stay in Wittenberg that inspired the exiled king to convert to Lutheranism,
Christian retreated with his family to the Brabant town of Lier. There, alienated
from his in-laws because of his apostasy, he lived in poverty with his court-inexile. Elisabeth died in 1526, and her family took custody of Christian’s three
young children so that they would not be brought up as heretics. Christian II
was a ruined man.²⁰
Ruined, perhaps, but not entirely forgotten or defeated, for in Skåne and
Norway Christian II still had numerous adherents who refused to give up on
him. His reputation, deserved or not, as ‘the peasants’ friend’ earned him the
undying loyalty of many in the lower orders. The threat of popular uprisings in
Christian’s name did not end with the coronation of Frederik I. Frederik hoped
to head off the danger by making generous legal concessions to the peasantry;
his Ordinance of May 1523, for example, protected all leaseholding peasants
from eviction, provided they met all their obligations. The concessions did
not make Frederik any more popular, and oppressive fiscal measures worsened
popular discontent. Frederik’s German resources were not sufficient to meet
the demands of fighting a war in Denmark, much less preparing for war with
Sweden and Lübeck. Denmark would have to pay for its own ‘liberation’. Hence
the introduction of a spate of new extraordinary taxes, added atop an already
heavy tax burden imposed by Christian II. Most hated was the ‘Royal Tax’
(kongeskat) of July 1524, levied throughout Denmark to pay for the king’s
German troops.²¹
Passive hostility turned into open revolt in Skåne. The peasants there flatly
refused to pay the Royal Tax, and actions by local officials to enforce obedience
¹⁹ Samling af de danske Kongers Haandfæstninger, 65–79; Esben Albrectsen, Fællesskabet bliver til,
Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 1 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 307–9.
²⁰ Martin Schwarz, Lausten Christian 2. mellem paven og Luther (Copenhagen: Akademisk
Forlag, 1995).
²¹ Albrectsen, Fællesskabet bliver til, 311–12; Aksel E. Christensen, ‘Senmiddelalderlige Fæsteformer som Forudsætning for Forordningen om Livsfæste af 1523’, in Astrid Friis and Albert Olsen
(eds.), Festskrift til Erik Arup den 22. November 1946 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1946), 134–56.
The best overview of Frederik’s coup is Mikael Venge, ‘Når vinden føjer sig . . . ’: spillet om magten i
Danmark marts–december 1523 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1977).
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
21
only exacerbated the unruliness of the peasantry. All that was lacking to spur the
peasants to action was a leader, and in March 1525 they found one, or rather
he found them. Søren Norby (d.1530) was a well-known and popular naval
officer who had served under kings Hans and Christian II. He had remained
loyal to Christian II during the 1523 coup, holding the island of Gotland for
his king, but early in 1524 he accepted the inevitable and offered his fealty
to Frederik I. Frederik readily accepted, but then he betrayed him, expelling
him from Gotland in exchange of Swedish promises to withdraw all claims to
the island. Norby struck back at Frederik in March 1525, landing his private
army in Blekinge. His great reputation, combined with widespread hatred of
Frederik’s regime, brought the peasants of Blekinge and Skåne flocking to his
standard. Norby’s horde ravaged the countryside in the region in the spring
of 1525, until a punitive expedition led by Frederik’s general Johann Rantzau
quelled the rebellion. Even then, Frederik so respected Norby that he pardoned
him, allowing him to reoccupy Gotland. But Norby proved to be more trouble
than he was worth. His overt hostility to Sweden and Lübeck made him a
real liability to Frederik’s efforts at peacemaking. In August 1526, a combined
Danish–Swedish–Lübecker fleet finally smashed Norby’s private navy in a sea
battle off the coast of Blekinge. Norby escaped, ending his days in Italy in the
service of Charles V.²²
Norby’s defeat did not end popular agitation for Christian II. The Jutish
peasants, angered by the financial demands of the Church, refused to pay their
tithes in a bloodless act of civil disobedience known, curiously, as the ‘peasant
onslaught’ (Bondestormen). In Norway, the threat of a bloody uprising in the
name of the exiled king was more palpable. To bolster Denmark’s authority
over the northern kingdom, Frederik in 1523 sent Henrik Krummedige and
Vincens Lunge, two Danish nobles with ties of blood and marriage to the
Norwegian nobility. Lunge betrayed the king’s trust almost immediately; after
joining the Norwegian Council of State, he sided with the anti-Danish elements
who expelled Krummedige and drew up a highly restrictive coronation charter
for Frederik. Frederik accepted; he had no other choice if he wanted to secure the
Norwegian crown against the return of Christian II. After the Norby uprising,
however, Frederik took a more aggressive stance, and the Norwegian elite
played into his hands. In 1527, several Norwegian nobles—including Vincens
Lunge—gave sanctuary to a Swedish rebel who claimed to be Nils Sture, heir
of Sten the Younger. This pretender, known only as the Daljunker, had already
fomented an insurrection in Sweden, so his presence on Norwegian soil was
a great embarrassment to Frederik I. The king dispatched loyal Danes to take
²² Lars-Olof Larsson, Sören Norby och Östersjöpolitiken 1523–25 (Malmö: Gleerup, 1986),
112–53; Lars-Olof Larsson, ‘Sören Norbys skånska uppror’, Scandia, 30 (1964), 217–71; LarsOlof Larsson, ‘Sören Norbys fall’, Scandia, 35 (1969), 21–57; A. Heise, ‘Bondeopløb i Jylland i
Kong Frederik den førstes Tid’, HTD, 4th ser., 5 (1875–7), 269–332.
22
The Development of the Consensual State
control of the most powerful castles; he recalled Lunge to Copenhagen to answer
for his support of the Daljunker. To give teeth to his authority in Norway,
Frederik sent his eldest son, Duke Christian of Holstein, to Oslo with a fleet and
an army.²³
Norway was still fertile ground for plots and cabals. Frederik’s actions had
shaken the opposition in the Norwegian Council, but they also aroused more
daring resistance from the bishops. The opposition, which centred on Olav
Engelbrechtsson, archbishop of Nidaros (Trondheim), bided its time, hoping
against hope for the return of Christian II. They did not have to wait long.
Christian, now restored to the Catholic faith, succeeded in obtaining aid from
Charles V in 1531. Poorly defended and in disorder, Norway was a perfect
target for invasion, and in November 1531 Christian II’s fleet sailed into Oslo
Fjord. Without hesitation, southern Norway hailed Christian as its rightful
king; Archbishop Engelbrechtsson convinced Trondheim to do the same. The
Norwegian Council formally abjured its fealty to Frederik I, and declared that
upon Christian’s death, his son Hans would succeed him as hereditary king, a
surprising statement from a Council that had insisted so firmly on the elective
principle. It was a stunning victory for Christian II, but he made no further
progress. The castles of Akershus and Båhus held firmly for Frederik, and when
a Danish fleet came to challenge him in May 1532 Christian was ready to
negotiate. Naïvely he accepted an offer of safe conduct from Frederik I for
passage to Copenhagen. Frederik was not prepared to take any chances with
his dangerous nephew. Immediately he had Christian clapped in irons and
shunted off to Sønderborg Castle in south Slesvig. At Sønderborg, and later at
Kalundborg, Christian II would remain in comfortable captivity until his death
in 1559, a prisoner of three successive Danish kings.²⁴
Apart from the constant threat presented by Christian II and his adherents, the
ten-year reign of Frederik I was politically uneventful. Though Frederik confided
primarily in a small group of German advisers, this did not stir opposition within
the Council because he restricted himself to the diminished role prescribed
for him by his charter. He rarely involved himself in the day-to-day affairs
of the monarchy. He spoke little Danish; he maintained his court at his old
residence in Gottorp, and hence was far removed from the administrative centre
at Copenhagen. Frederik’s only significant legacy, aside from passively restoring
a measure of constitutional harmony to the realm, was the important if tacit
part he played in the furtherance of the Lutheran religion in Denmark. He
contributed little to the kingdom, and received little in return; as he is said to
²³ E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Frederik I, Tyge Krabbe og Vincens Lunge: studier over den danske
regerings norske politik 1525–30’, HTN, 51 (1972), 101–49; Alex Wittendorff, ‘De danske
reformationer og den folkelige bevidsthed’, in Anders Bøgh, Jørgen Würtz Sørensen, and Lars
Tvede-Jensen (eds.), Til kamp for friheden: sociale oprør i nordisk middelalder (Ålborg: Bogsmedjen,
1988), 215–31.
²⁴ A. Heise, Kristiern den anden i Norge og hans Fængsling (Copenhagen, 1877), 5–176.
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
23
have groused in frustration, ‘I own no more in this realm than I can gamble away
in one evening.’ The nobility, in the meantime, dismantled most of Christian
II’s legislative achievements. The Council nullified both the Land Law and the
Town Law, ceremoniously burning their texts in public.²⁵
Between the accession of Christian II in 1513 and the death of Frederik I in
1533, the Oldenburg dynastic state had changed in many regards. It was smaller,
for one; Sweden had departed from the Kalmar Union, and Denmark let it go.
Frederik and his Council had neither the will nor the resources to crush Gustav
Vasa’s rebellion, and certainly not while Christian II remained free to stir up
trouble. Resistance in Norway had been crushed, but the kingdom’s allegiance
to Denmark was only nominal. Within Denmark proper, the steady growth of
Lutheranism in the larger towns threatened confessional disunity. The spread of
spiritual revolt against Rome was only one of the ways in which the previous two
decades had factionalized Denmark. The populist reforms of Christian II had
given the lower orders a taste of freedom from the all-powerful landowning class;
the nullification of Christian’s reforms could not altogether destroy the hope that
such freedoms might be regained.
Constitutionally speaking, though, Denmark was much the same in 1533
as it had been in 1513, at least on the surface. After a brief period under
an assertive and nearly independent monarch, the Council of State was once
more in control. Indeed, the victory of the aristocratic reaction in the 1523
coup had been perhaps too complete. The Council had removed one king
and placed another on the throne, and the aristocracy had no intention of
giving up the advantages of elective monarchy. The experience of the period
1513–23 also helped to shape the way in which the Danish political elite
perceived kingly behaviour. Christian II and Frederik I became, for the next
three generations of kings and councils, models of good and bad kingship.
As the later councillor and historian Arild Huitfeldt viewed it in the 1590s,
Christian II was the practitioner of ‘monstrous tyranny’, whose perpetration of
the Stockholm Bloodbath—like that of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre,
in Huitfeldt’s own time—revealed a ruler who had broken all faith with his
subjects. Frederik I, on the other hand, Huitfeldt praised as a monarch who
ruled by the law, who restored peace and harmony to Denmark by honouring
the privileges of the elite and the rights of the Council. Interestingly, this would
become a shared interpretation and not a point of contention between king and
aristocracy. Even the most avowed royalists agreed that Christian II’s rule had
been irresponsible, bloody, tyrannical, and unlawful. Wolfgang von Utenhof,
a German-born adviser to Frederik I, noted that while Christian II had been
‘mild, just, equally gracious towards everyone’ early in his reign, he soon fell into
²⁵ DBL, vii. 229; Johan Hvidtfeldt, ‘Kanslere og kancelliembedsmænd under Frederik I’, in
Hans H. Fussing (ed.), Til Knud Fabricius 13. August 1945 (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1945),
30–43.
24
The Development of the Consensual State
‘tyranny, immoral living, and [a predilection for] bloodshed’.²⁶ The lesson was
clear: good kings worked with the Council, and those who did not do so were
tyrants.
3 . I N T E R R E G N U M , C I V I L WA R , A N D R E S TO R AT I O N
At the time of Frederik I’s death at Gottorp on 10 April 1533, the Council
had failed to resolve two issues of overriding importance: the line of succession
and the spread of the Lutheran faith. The succession had not been established
because Frederik’s coronation charter had prohibited the king from naming his
heir apparent. The Council had promised only to pick a successor from amongst
the king’s sons, but it had not been overly eager to strengthen the king’s dynastic
position by selecting an heir while the king was yet alive. Lutheranism seemed to
be the more pressing of the two problems. In the eyes of the spiritual members
of the Council of State, Frederik had not satisfactorily performed his role as
defensor fides. He had allowed Lutheran clergy to preach in Viborg, Malmø, and
Copenhagen, and their efforts at proselytization were meeting with great success.
Relatively few nobles had yet converted, and the countryside remained firmly
Catholic, but the new faith was growing rapidly in the towns.
The situation in 1533 was especially dangerous because these two problems—succession and Reformation—were intimately linked. Frederik had sired
four sons in his two marriages: Christian, Hans, Adolf, and Friedrich. The eldest,
Duke Christian of Holstein, was the natural choice to be successor. Already
29 years old in 1533, he was mature, serious, and experienced. Besides, the
Council, for all its attachment to the principle of elective monarchy, still clung to
the tradition of heredity and primogeniture. Christian’s major flaw was that he
was a devout Lutheran. With the zeal of the recently converted, he had forcibly
introduced the Reformed faith into the districts of Tørning and Haderslev
(southern Slesvig) in the late 1520s, with all that that entailed: secularization
of Church property, removal of Catholic bishops, and the imposition of state
control over church affairs. He demonstrated some inclination to do the same
while in Norway in 1529. The duke’s reforming ardour was well known to the
Council. Duke Christian’s candidacy as king was near anathema to the Catholic
majority on the Council, particularly the bishops. They preferred instead Duke
Christian’s younger half-brother Hans, who was being brought up as a good
Romanist. Hans, however, was not yet 12 years of age when his father died,
and hence there were significant objections to his candidacy as well. When the
²⁶ Arild Huitfeldt, Historiske Beskriffuelse om hues sig haffuer tildragit under Kong Christiern
den Anden (Copenhagen: Matz Vingaard, 1596), B.1; Arild Huitfeldt, Konning Friderich Den
Førstis . . . Histori (Copenhagen: Matz Vingaard, 1597), A.1–A.2; Venge, Bondekær eller tyran,
24–5.
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
25
Council convened in the herredag at Copenhagen in June and July 1533, it could
not come to a decision regarding the succession. Instead, the councillors resolved
to postpone the election for one year. In the meantime, the Council would rule
Denmark.²⁷
It would prove to be a fatal error, at least in retrospect. Maybe the Council
should be faulted for its procrastination in this most important matter, but in its
defence it should be pointed out that there was no substantial reason for alarm
at the time. The danger of usurpation was comfortably remote in the summer
of 1533. Christian II was safely tucked away at Sønderborg, and the one thing
that had made him truly dangerous was gone: Hans, his only son, had died the
previous summer at Regensburg at the age of 14. With Hans’s death, Charles
V lost interest in helping his brother-in-law reclaim his lost throne, and so the
cause of Christian II was little more than a harmless dream. This may have
affected the way in which the episcopacy viewed the issue of Lutheranism as
well, since Christian II’s adherents had been foremost among those clamouring
for the new creed. Most important was the Council’s well-reasoned conviction
that it could weather an interregnum. The Council had for all practical purposes
ruled Denmark without a king while Frederik I had been alive. There was no
reason to think that another year with no sovereign would make much of a
difference.²⁸
An unforeseen confluence of events in the summer of 1533 made the Council’s
decision seem foolhardy. The Lutheran mayor of Lübeck, Jürgen Wullenwever,
was in Copenhagen at the time of the herredag, in hopes that he could get the
Danish crown to restore some of the trading privileges that the Hanseatic towns
had lost. Unfortunately, the Council was not interested in doing any such thing.
Much as the aristocracy had opposed Christian II’s Dutch leanings, the Council
feared that showing favour to the Hanse over the Netherlands would anger
Charles V and persuade him to take up the cause of Christian II. Wullenwever,
his hopes dashed, looked desperately for a more insidious way of reaching his
goals. He found a sympathetic ear in Ambrosius Bogbinder, former mayor of
Copenhagen, and Jørgen Kock, current mayor of Malmø. Both Bogbinder and
Kock were favourably inclined towards the Hanse, both were Lutheran, and
both had been supporters of Christian II. At the time of the 1533 herredag, the
two mayors and a few disaffected Lutheran nobles had offered to help Duke
Christian seize the crown, but the painfully conscientious duke had refused to
participate in such an act. Now Wullenwever presented Bogbinder and Kock
with another option. The three men secretly conspired to accomplish what the
²⁷ H. V. Gregersen, Reformationen i Sønderjylland (Aabenraa: Historisk samfund for Sønderjylland, 1986); E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Omkring herredagsmødet i København 1533’, Kirkehistoriske
samlinger (1972), 24–57.
²⁸ GDH 2/1, 301–4; Paul-Erik Hansen, Kejser Karl V og det skandinaviske Norden 1523–1544:
en historisk Oversigt over Skæbneaar for Danmarks Selvstændighed (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1943),
120–55.
26
The Development of the Consensual State
Council feared most: the restoration of Christian II to the throne, enlisting the
support of Lübeck and diehard loyalists in Denmark and Norway.²⁹
Over the next few months, Wullenwever assembled men, money, and ships
for his projected coup. The governing council in Lübeck was eager to support the
venture, since Wullenwever had promised them that—if he succeeded—Lübeck
would share the proceeds of the Sound Dues with Denmark and have a say in
Danish royal elections. Wullenwever also enlisted the aid of Count Christoffer of
Oldenburg as military commander. Count Christoffer—after whom the ensuing
conflict, the ‘Count’s War’ (Grevens fejde), would be named—was a distant
relation of the Danish Oldenburgs, a grandson of King Christian I’s brother
Gerhard. He may have had a dynastic interest in Wullenwever’s designs, but
for the most part he was a soldier of fortune. In the spring of 1534 the count
attacked, leading his army across the Elbe into Holstein on 21 May. The invasion
was both a diversion and a signal to Wullenwever’s confederates that the time
had come to take action. Exactly one week later, on 28 May 1534, Jørgen Kock
led an urban uprising in Malmø, seizing the castle of Malmøhus and arresting the
king’s fiefholder there. Meanwhile, Count Christoffer’s army pushed through
Holstein to Travemünde, embarked on a waiting fleet, and made landfall at
Skovshoved, on Sjælland just north of Copenhagen, on 22 June. Sjælland, and
with it the central administration, was caught wholly unawares. The nobility and
those members of the Council then in the area timidly bowed to Christoffer. By
the end of July, Copenhagen and nearly all of Sjælland had fallen to the count’s
army. Soon Skåne succumbed as well. The local nobility had hoped to secure
the aid of Gustav Vasa (now King Gustav I), but they could not hold out for
very long. Fearing that Count Christoffer and the Malmø rebels would spark
a widespread insurrection—the memory of Søren Norby’s revolt still burned
bright—the Scanian nobility folded. On 10 August 1534, the provincial estates
of Skåne offered Christoffer homage in the name of King Christian II.
So far, Wullenwever’s plot had been a stunning victory. In less than three
months, Christoffer of Oldenburg had seized the eastern half of Denmark,
forcing those elements of the Council caught in the path of the invasion to
break the oath they had made to Frederik I by swearing loyalty to Christian II.
Yet in allowing Christoffer to attack Holstein first, Wullenwever had committed
a grave mistake. The invasion forced Duke Christian to act. He raised an
army in Holstein just after the invasion. It was too late to stop Christoffer in
Holstein, but at the very least it made Duke Christian a viable champion for the
councillors and fiefholders in western Denmark who stubbornly refused to give
in to Christoffer. What remained of the Council’s Lutheran minority, including
Johan Friis and the rigshofmester Mogens Gjøe, pressed hard for offering the
²⁹ Caspar Paludan-Müller, Grevens Feide, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1853–4), i. 1–166;
Georg Waitz, Lübeck unter Jürgen Wullenwever und die europäische Politik, 3 vols. (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1855–6).
The End of the Medieval Monarchy
27
crown to Duke Christian. Faced with the choice between a regime headed by
the hated Christian II and dominated by Lübeck on the one hand, and on the
other a legitimate Lutheran claimant, even those hardline Catholics who had so
vociferously opposed Duke Christian’s candidacy in 1533 now warmed to the
idea. In meetings at Ry and Hjallese (Jutland) in July 1534, the defiant remnants
of the Council pledged themselves to Duke Christian. The duke accepted, and
on 18 August 1534 he formally received their fealty—and the title of King
Christian III—at Horsens.³⁰
If Christian III was king it was in name only, for even in western Denmark
his claim did not go unchallenged. The civil war in Denmark was turning out
to be a general if sporadic class war bolstered by foreign support, as one town
after another—and many peasants, too—took up the cause of Christian II.
The rebellion had spread throughout Fyn by the summer of 1534, and though
Christian III’s supporters scored some minor victories there they were quickly
overcome by the forces of Count Christoffer in August. In the northernmost part
of Jutland, in the region known as Vendsyssel, the rebellion took a particularly
disturbing turn. Egged on by one ‘Skipper Clement’, a privateer in Christian II’s
service, peasants and townspeople in Vendsyssel took up the cause of the captive
king, seizing Ålborg and defeating a noble levy at Svenstrup in October. The
intended target of Skipper Clement’s mob was not so much the pretender from
Holstein as it was the nobility in general, and consequently the Vendsyssel rebels
engaged in an orgy of class-based violence, burning noble manors and hunting
down local magnates. As if this were not enough to occupy Christian III, fighting
continued in the Duchies, as detachments of Christoffer’s army fought to keep
reinforcements in Holstein from reaching Christian III.³¹
Despite the grim prospects for victory, Christian III prevailed. It was Lübeck’s
support that kept him from crushing the scattered uprisings, and Lübeck’s
resources—though substantial—were not inexhaustible. With a little help from
princely allies in the Empire, Christian III’s forces under Johann Rantzau defeated
the Lübecker forces still in Holstein. With its troops pinned down, and facing
increasing pressure from Christian III’s German allies, Lübeck was forced to
negotiate. The city made peace with Christian III, as duke of Holstein but not
as king of Denmark, in November 1534. With the fighting in Holstein at an
end, Johann Rantzau was free to come to Christian III’s aid in Jutland. Rantzau,
perhaps one of the most underappreciated field commanders of the sixteenth
century, made brilliant progress. His army poured into Jutland, crushing Skipper
Clement’s ill-disciplined rabble and taking Ålborg in December 1534. By the
year’s end, Jutland was under royal control and Skipper Clement was in irons.
³⁰ Paludan-Müller, Grevens Feide, i. 194–264; GDH 2/1, 305–8.
³¹ Lars Tvede-Jensen, ‘Clementsfejden: det sidste bondeoprør i Danmark’, in Bøgh et al. (eds.),
Til kamp for friheden, 232–50; Lars Tvede-Jensen, Jylland i oprør: Skipper Clement-fejden 1534
(Århus: Historisk Revy, 1985), 14–41; Paludan-Müller, Grevens Feide, i. 234–307.
28
The Development of the Consensual State
Rantzau then continued eastwards to Fyn. Crossing the Lesser Belt, he pushed
aside a rebel army at Favreskov Bjerge, outside Assens, on 20 March 1535, and
destroyed a larger force at Øksnebjerg on 11 June. His timing was perfect. Only
two days before the bloody triumph at Øksnebjerg, a Danish royal fleet under the
command of Admiral Peder Skram defeated the combined naval forces of Lübeck
and Copenhagen off the island of Bornholm, forcing their retreat and allowing
Rantzau safe sea passage to Sjælland. Skram’s fleet promptly sailed to Fyn and
ferried Rantzau’s army to the main island in July. Rantzau pacified nearly all of
Sjælland within the month, and in August his forces laid siege to Copenhagen.³²
Skåne, too, fell to Christian III. In large part, this owed to the support of
an unlikely ally: Sweden. In Stockholm the Bloodbath was not forgotten, and
Swedish hatred for Christian II still smouldered. The Swedes, moreover, had
good reason to fear Lübeck. Gustav I and Christian III fashioned a pact of
mutual assistance in August 1534. Most of Blekinge and Halland fell to the
Swedes shortly thereafter, and only Malmø held out for Christian II and Count
Christoffer.³³
Wullenwever’s plans had completely unravelled by the summer of 1535. He
and his allies clung desperately to Copenhagen and Malmø, but everywhere
else the rebellion had been extinguished. The fall of Wullenwever’s regime
in Lübeck that August, and finally the execution of the mayor himself in
January 1536, ended Lübeck’s participation in the Danish civil war. In a treaty
signed at Hamburg in February 1536, Lübeck formally withdrew its support
for Christian II and Christoffer of Oldenburg. Christian III could not yet rest
easy, for renewed Habsburg interest in the succession dispute threatened to
bring Charles V into the war, but the conflict was over. Malmø surrendered
to Christian III on 7 April 1536, and Copenhagen followed suit on 29 July.
Christian III entered his capital city as a conquering lord, a rightful king who
had been forced to wield fire and sword to correct his faithless subjects. Royal
power had returned to Denmark in such a way that the king could set his
own terms.³⁴
³² Lars Tvede-Jensen, i. 308–445.
³³ Ibid. i. 167–93.
³⁴ Ibid. ii. 86–158, 305–82; Hansen, Kejser Karl V, 156–205.
2
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy,
1536–1596
The Count’s War had been a great calamity for Denmark. It disrupted the
normal patterns of trade in Denmark and throughout the Baltic, not to
mention agricultural production in the most fertile parts of the kingdom.
Scores of noble estates had been plundered and put to the torch, particularly along the Limfjord, where Skipper Clement’s rebels had focused their
anger. Less tangible but no less problematic was the damage done to the
relationships between the orders. Perhaps the tension between the privileged
and unprivileged had been building for generations, but the Count’s War
brought the raw resentment of the dispossessed out into the open. Nor
should the effects of confessional division be forgotten. The leaders of both
sides were Lutheran, but in Copenhagen and Malmø there were many who
associated the old order with the old religion. Lives had been taken and property destroyed in the name of Martin Luther and the pure teaching of the
Gospel.
Denmark was fortunate that its new monarch was well equipped, in temperament and in ability, for the task of restoring harmony to the kingdom. It
was more fortunate still that the leading men of the new regime, those who
made up the upstart Lutheran faction of the Council in 1533, were similarly
inclined. Christian III may have been fully mindful of his elevated position,
but he was also pragmatic, pious, and sincere. Like Gustav Vasa, he was an
old-fashioned warrior-king in the medieval Nordic tradition, who had had to
overcome great obstacles on his path to the throne. And like Gustav Vasa,
Christian was intelligent, yet neither an academic nor an aesthete. The similarities between the two sovereigns, however, ended there. Where the Swede was
flexible, even Machiavellian, in his political morality, Christian III was open,
generous, and merciful. True, Christian was parochial in his grasp of European affairs, but at least he made sure that Denmark was adequately prepared
to defend itself. His unambitious foreign policy was by no means a liability,
for there was much work to be done at home and little time to spare for
distractions.
30
The Development of the Consensual State
1 . R E F O R M AT I O N A N D M O N A RC H Y
Historians of Denmark are divided on the precise significance of the events
of 1536 and of Christian III’s reign. To the ‘traditionalist’ school of Danish
historiography, espoused by scholars such as Kristian Erslev and Knud Fabricius,
Christian III’s ascent to the throne was an unqualified triumph for kingly power.
The king’s decisive military and diplomatic victory allowed him to rewrite the
constitution and define his place therein; the seizure of Church lands gave him
a measure of fiscal independence from the Council of State. To the anti-royalist
scholars of the twentieth century, notably Erik Arup and Astrid Friis, the
aristocracy was the real beneficiary of the Reformation. Christian III, Arup and
Friis argued, did not dismantle or diminish the Council; indeed, he accorded more
expansive powers to the Council, and left the task of governance to representatives
of the same families who had served on the Council before the Count’s War.¹
Both arguments contain much that is valid, but both also have severe
limitations. They both proceed from the assumption that conflict was the normal
state of affairs in Danish constitutional history, that the king and the Council
were continually locked in a battle of wills. Constitutional conflict was indeed
characteristic of the period up to 1536, and from 1625 to the imposition
of absolutism in 1660–1, but it was not so during the intervening nine
decades. Neither approach takes into account the role of royal and aristocratic
mentalities, or the role played by political ideologies. The motives and actions of
individual ‘players’ in this political drama are shunted aside. The Erslev school
neglects the role of the Council; the Arup school displays an almost whiggish
tendency to equate the Council with progressive and representative government.
Unfortunately, both approaches leave only two interpretational options: either the
king ruled or his Council ruled. They ignore a third possibility: that the Danish
monarchy achieved a constitutional balance, that king and Council ruled together
as nearly equal partners in a consensual monarchy. And this, as E. Ladewig
Petersen has demonstrated, is precisely what the evidence for the century following
1536 suggests. During most of this period, common interests and a shared vision
of ideal governance permitted Denmark’s ‘limited monarchy’ to function, in
practice, in the manner in which it was supposed to function in theory, with
neither king nor Council dominating the other in a decisive or lasting way.
Constitutional harmony, not conflict, was the defining characteristic of the age.²
¹ Kristian S. A. Erslev, Konge og lensmand i det sextende Aarhundrede (Copenhagen: J. Erslev,
1879); Erik Arup, Danmarks Historie, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1925–55); Astrid Friis,
Kansler Johan Friis’ første aar (Copenhagen: Universitetet, 1970).
² DFH, i. 50–1; E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Indledning om det 16. århundrede’, in Per Ingesman
and Jens Villiam Jensen (eds.), Riget, magten og æren: den danske adel 1350–1660 (Århus:
Universitetsforlag, 2001), 275–7.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
31
When Christian III made his formal entry into Copenhagen on 6 August
1536, there was no question as to who was in charge. It was the king, and he was
in a unique position. Not only had he won his rightful place by the sword, but
he also had been hailed as king without having first submitted to a coronation
charter. Two years earlier, when he had first negotiated his election with the
rump Council, he had promised only that he would respect the privileges of the
nobility and maintain the religious status quo. Once the civil disturbances had
ended, he vowed, he would work with the Council to fashion a suitable charter.
Now, in late summer 1536, Christian was in no hurry to produce or sign such
a document. Instead, he moved quickly to eliminate his enemies. The core of
any opposition to Christian III would probably have come from the ‘spiritual’
members of the Council. On 12 August 1536, the king ordered the arrest of all
seven Danish bishops, and summoned the remaining councillors to meet with
him at Copenhagen Castle. Here Christian announced his demands: the Council
would have to submit to the king’s decision to remove the episcopacy from the
secular administration, and each councillor must pledge to uphold the Lutheran
faith; if anyone refused, he would be imprisoned with the bishops. With that,
Christian called for a meeting of the Estates, not the ordinary herredag of nobles
and councillors.³
Two months later, the Diet convened in Copenhagen. Over 1,200 men,
representing the burghers and peasants as well as the nobility, gathered to hear
the king’s dictates and to give their stamp of approval, however coerced. The
minutes of the Diet are not extant, but the two major documents produced by
that body are sufficient to outline what was accomplished there. The first of these
was the long-awaited coronation charter; the second, the ‘Recess’, delineated the
religious settlement. The coronation charter contained a mixture of traditional
and almost revolutionary elements. There were restrictions on royal authority:
the nobility was allowed to exercise complete legal jurisdiction over peasants
residing on noble estates, and the king was forbidden from intervening in such
matters. The Council kept the exclusive right to levy taxes, and the king was
enjoined to retain the services of the three main ‘officers of state’—rigshofmester,
chancellor, and marshal. But in most other matters, the charter allowed for a
much greater degree of royal power than ever before. Denmark would remain
a ‘free elective monarchy’, but the choice of candidates for heir apparent would
be limited to the king’s immediate heirs. Immediately upon the king’s death,
possession of all royal castles would pass directly to his heir, and not revert to the
Council. The ‘rebellion-paragraph’, so prominent in the charters of earlier kings,
was noticeably absent from Christian’s charter.⁴
³ Samling af de danske Kongers Haandfæstninger og andre lignende Acter (Copenhagen: Bianco Luno, 1856–8), 79–82; Martin Schwarz Lausten, Christian den 3. og kirken 1537–1559
(Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1987), 20–7.
⁴ Samling af de danske Kongers Haandfæstninger, 82–9.
32
The Development of the Consensual State
While the charter was an agreement between king and Council, the Recess was
intended to be a pact between Christian and all of his subjects, and hence was
brought to the entire Diet for approval. At the heart of the Copenhagen Recess
was the new ecclesiastical order. The Recess blamed the Count’s War on the
bishops, for it was their hesitation to crown their rightful king that had provoked
God to righteous anger. The Recess then proceeded to make provisions for the
dissolution of the Catholic Church in Denmark. Seven bishop-superintendents,
appointed by and responsible to the king, would replace the old episcopacy. The
superintendents would have no place at the Council table, and their competence
was strictly limited to ecclesiastical affairs. All Church lands and properties were
remanded to royal ownership, to be used for the maintenance of the state church
and the ‘common good of the realm’. Though the Recess abolished a number
of extraneous church taxes and fees, the tithes remained. The apportionment of
the tithe, however, changed, with the one-third formerly reserved for the bishops
now being earmarked for the royal coffers.⁵ With the Catholic hierarchy went
the old religion itself, for the king would tolerate no religious teaching other than
that which was based on the ‘true and pure Word of God’—the Lutheran faith,
in other words.
The political import of these two documents is self-evident: Christian III would
not be a puppet of his aristocracy. He alone set the agenda for the Reformation in
religion. Perhaps Christian gave away something when he proclaimed Denmark
to be a ‘free elective monarchy’ in his charter, but there is the intriguing possibility
that the clause was more than just a means of placating the aristocracy. At the
Imperial Diet at Regensburg in 1541, Christian III’s representative Wolfgang
von Utenhof would point to the elective principle to reject the dynastic claims
of Christian II’s heirs. The clause, in other words, may have been intended as
a legal safeguard against counter-usurpation. Either way, the line of succession
within the dynasty would be followed, and therefore the Council could not use
the succession issue for political leverage against the king. The Recess, likewise,
worked to the king’s political advantage. The seizure of monasteries and other
Catholic properties added immeasurably to his personal resources. The extent of
the ‘bishops’ estates’ (bispegodser) in Denmark was vast. About one-third of all
15,000 peasant households in Skåne were located on Church land, and about
38 per cent of all arable land in Jutland belonged to the Church. Now this land
and the attached domain incomes were the king’s. The results were dramatic.
Within Denmark itself, royal landholdings more than tripled, and in Norway
they increased sevenfold, and the king owned close to half of all the land in his
realm. Because of the Reformation, the royal house had made the transition from
minor landowner to the greatest of all landowners in the realm, and the king
⁵ Ejvind Slottved, ‘Studier over kongetienden efter 1536’, in Grethe Christensen et al. (eds.),
Tradition og kritik: festskrift til Svend Ellehøj den 8. september 1984 (Copenhagen: Den danske
historiske forening, 1984), 121–48.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
33
now enjoyed economic parity with the entire noble estate. The Council’s control
over taxation, while still a great political advantage for the aristocracy, was not so
great a restriction on the king’s political freedom as it had been.
There were concessions to the Council, which was by no means left powerless.
Its control over the state fisc remained unassailed. Christian had also promised to
reserve the key positions in the administration for native-born Danish noblemen.
But these were voluntary acts on his part. Christian dictated the content of the
charter and the Recess; they were not forced upon him by a jealous aristocracy.
Certainly the language employed in the Recess shows that Christian wanted his
subjects to know that had he decided to chastise them more harshly, he would
have been perfectly justified in doing so. All of his subjects, not just the Council,
had acted like a ‘pack of mad dogs, bereft of reason’, in the absence of a legitimate
king. This they had no right to do, as ‘God gives them no political power, but
much more the obligation to be attentive and obedient to authority in love and
fear.’ Rebellion against the king’s rightful authority merited punishment, but
Christian—as a kind and indulgent father to his erring subjects—would not
mete out the discipline his subjects deserved, provided that they remain faithful
and obedient to him.⁶
Christian III could have imposed a much more rigid regime. That he did not
do so says much about the character and pragmatism of the man. Despite the
fact that he had had to fight for his crown, and regardless of the fact that he
was not really a Dane, Christian had deep respect for the ancient liberties of the
Danish nobility and for the law of the realm. He had already demonstrated this
in 1533, when he had rejected the crown illicitly proffered him by Wullenwever,
Bogbinder, and Kock. 1536 witnessed not so much the strengthening of royal
or conciliar power in opposition to each other, but rather that of the central
authority as a whole.
In distinct contrast to the previous two decades, the reign of Christian III was
tranquil and uneventful. The practical execution of the Reformation absorbed
most of the king’s energies. That Reformation, in addition to the complications
stemming from the claims of Christian II and his heirs, required that the Danish
government involve itself more than ever before in European affairs and pay
closer attention to national defence. Still, Christian III’s regime built up an
impressive record of domestic legislation and reform, made possible by the
absence of constitutional strife and his close cooperation with his chancellor
Johan Friis. During the twenty-two years of the reign, Christian and Friis
promulgated no fewer than eight Recesses, most of which were incorporated
into the eighth, the Kolding Recess of December 1558. The Recesses were
⁶ Hal Koch and Bjørn Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie, 8 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1950–66), iv. 14–19; GDH 2/1, 324–6; DFH, i. 55–9; Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten
1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 43–56; Erik Ulsig,
‘Ods herreds ejendomme på reformationstiden’, HTD, 103 (2003), 82–114.
34
The Development of the Consensual State
collections of laws binding on all subjects in the entire monarchy, negotiated at
the herredag instead of being authored solely by the king. They included a myriad
of detailed ordinances, ranging from the restructuring of the judicial process to
the regulation of commerce. Many of their provisions dealt with matters that
heretofore had been left to ecclesiastical authorities—divorce, prostitution, and
sexual promiscuity, for example. Others attempted to provide some basic rights
for the peasantry, at least those residing on crown lands.
Taken together, the Recesses of Christian III’s reign constitute an important
landmark in Danish legal history. They reflect a growing interest in following the
German trend towards establishing a ‘well-ordered society’ through pragmatic
legislation. In addition, the Recesses point to a desire to craft a single uniform
law code to replace the several regional law codes, like the Jutish Law of 1241,
which were still observed in the provinces. The councillor Erik Krabbe would
make it his life’s work to compile the regional codes into a single law book, but
the Kolding Recess would be the closest approximation to a Danish national
code for at least two generations. In both regards, the Recesses demonstrate
the determination of the reinvigorated central authority to impose a structured
harmony from above. It should also be pointed out that while the crown did not
find it necessary to summon a true Diet for the approval of the Recesses, the
individual orders were nonetheless consulted on matters that touched upon their
corporate interests. The crown, in other words, made a genuine if paternalistic
effort to take popular sentiment into account, to shape a legal framework that
was at least tolerable to all.⁷
The transition to the new order was a smooth one. The few minor civil
disturbances of the period 1536–59 were occasioned more by economic setbacks
that were temporary and localized, and not by substantial opposition to the
growing power of the central authority. Since the reform of both state and church
was the joint product of royal and conciliar initiative, the constitutional strife of
earlier decades faded into memory. The rich dividends of this cooperation between
king and Council must be reckoned in financial terms as well, for the condition
of the state fisc was much healthier in 1559 than it had been in 1536. Reforms
in the administration of the royal fiefs, engineered by the king and Johan Friis,
made the collection of domain incomes more regular and efficient. The flowering
of the Baltic trade and the overall rise in prices that characterized the European
economy after 1540 stimulated commerce throughout the Oldenburg realm,
bringing unprecedented prosperity to all orders but especially to the nobility.
The need to maintain mercenary troops during the 1540s and early 1550s meant
that the king and Council had to resort to the levying of ‘extraordinary’ taxes
⁷ DFH, i. 55–9; Poul J. Jørgensen, Dansk retshistorie, 5th edn (Copenhagen: Gad, 1971), 24–33,
81–3; V. A. Secher (ed.), Corpus Constitutionum Daniæ: Forordninger, Recesser og andre kongelige
Breve, Danmarks Lovgivning vedkommende, 6 vols (Copenhagen: Rudolph Klein, 1887–1918),
i. 1–50.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
35
on a regular basis, but the tax burden on the peasantry and the towns was never
intolerable. As European dynastic and confessional tensions eased, all too briefly,
in the mid 1550s, the necessity of keeping men under arms lessened, so even
this drain on national and royal resources diminished. Christian’s household,
moreover, was a frugal one. Apart from rebuilding the royal residence at Nyborg
(Fyn), and some minor renovations at Koldinghus, Sønderborg, and Ålborghus,
the king invested little time or money in monumental architecture. Life at court
was modest and unpretentious. The huge debts incurred during the Count’s War
were quickly paid off. By the end of the reign, the state treasury could boast a
surplus that has been estimated at more than 231,000 rigsdaler, a tremendous
nest egg by the standards of the time.⁸
2 . T H E R E N A I S S A N C E S TAT E
The Oldenburg state, or at least Denmark itself, had achieved an enviable
harmony and balance by the close of the 1550s. The state was solvent, the
nobility was prosperous and content, the peasantry was at least quiet, and the
new state church was firmly established. Among the members of the Council,
however, there was some trepidation regarding the succession as Christian III
neared the end of his days. It was not because the line of succession was uncertain,
but rather because that line was assured. For the man who was due to succeed
the careful and almost saintly Christian III, the man, whom the Council had
promised in 1536 to support and had elected as heir apparent in 1542, was
obviously not going to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Prince-Elect Frederik, the eldest of Christian III’s three sons, was not prepared
to be king. He was sufficiently advanced in years—nearly 25 at the time his father
lay dying at Koldinghus over the Christmas holidays in 1558—but his education
had been inadequate. In part, this was Christian’s fault, for the schooling he
provided for his son consisted of little but instruction in theology. Nor did
the king entrust Frederik with any administrative duties. Worse yet, there was
a wide emotional gulf separating Prince Frederik from his parents. Christian
III and his consort, Dorothea of Lauenburg, continually upbraided their son
for his frivolous behaviour, and bitterly opposed Frederik’s youthful love affair
with the noblewoman Anna Hardenberg. The only political education—and
the only strong emotional support—that Frederik received came from his close
friendship with his brother-in-law, Elector August of Saxony (reigned 1553–86).
The husband of Frederik’s elder sister Anna, August took Frederik under his
wing, chaperoning him on a trip through the Empire in 1557–8. Here Frederik
made the acquaintance of the new emperor, Ferdinand I (reigned 1558–64),
⁸ Søren Balle, Statsfinanserne på Christian 3.s tid (Århus: Universitetsforlag, 1992), 51–4,
79–187.
36
The Development of the Consensual State
his son and heir apparent Maximilian (emperor 1564–76), William of Orange,
and a host of the more prominent German Protestant princes. The experience
nurtured in Frederik a lasting appreciation of the complexity of German politics
and a taste for all things military. This was most troubling to the ageing Christian
III, who feared that in the Germanies Frederik would develop ambitions that
would exceed both his abilities and the resources of his kingdom, and that the
trip would ultimately drag Denmark into the maelstrom of German princely
politics. Events would prove Christian’s fears to be well grounded, though not
precisely in the way that the king had imagined.⁹
Frederik’s character also appeared to make him unsuitable as a sovereign. He
was a poor student who never mastered German, Latin, or even Danish. He was
willful and impatient, was easily moved to anger, and by his early twenties had
exhibited a weakness for strong drink and an addiction to the hunt. Perhaps
this was the fashion in German princely courts at the time, but it was not
Christian’s habit. These are the traits upon which Danish historians have most
often focused, resulting in the prevailing portrait of Frederik as a man and as king:
an unlettered, inebriated, brutish sot, who virtually abdicated his responsibilities
of king in favour of hunting and binge drinking. In the words of an English
visitor to the court in the 1560s, Frederik surpassed all of his predecessors
in ‘insolency and monstrous manners’. This portrayal is, however, unfair and
inaccurate, and thanks to the research of Frede P. Jensen it has been redrawn.
Frederik was indeed no scholar, owing largely to the fact that he was dyslexic.
Throughout his entire life he would struggle with his difficulty in reading and
writing, and it embarrassed him immensely. But he was, as those close to him
would attest, highly intelligent; he craved the company of learned men, and in the
correspondence and legislation he dictated to his secretaries he showed himself to
be quick-witted and articulate. Frederik was also open and loyal, and had a knack
for establishing close personal bonds with fellow princes and with those who
served him. These qualities would make him an ideal politician. Indeed, Frederik
would soon take the chief legacy of his father’s kingship—the close symbiosis
between king and aristocracy—to its logical limits, and simultaneously would
bring Denmark to the height of its power and influence in European affairs.¹⁰
None of this was visible on New Year’s Day 1559, when Christian III quietly
passed away at Koldinghus. Frederik was not even present at his father’s bedside
when he died, a circumstance that did not endear the new king, now Frederik
II, to the councillors who had grown to revere Christian. And Frederik, for his
part, did little to reassure the Council that Denmark was not poised on the brink
⁹ Poul Colding, Studier i Danmarks politiske Historie i Slutningen af Christian III.s og Begyndelsen
af Frederik II.s Tid (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1939), 51–67; Paul Douglas Lockhart, Frederik II
and the Protestant Cause: Denmark’s Role in the Wars of Religion, 1559–1596 (Leiden: Brill, 2004),
29–36.
¹⁰ Frede P. Jensen, Bidrag til Frederik II’s og Erik XIV’s historie (Copenhagen: Den danske
historiske forening, 1978), 13–44; Lockhart, Frederik II, 33–5.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
37
of disaster. Within weeks of Christian’s passing, he joined with his uncles in
Holstein, Hans and Adolf, in a campaign to conquer the Ditmarschen. Frederik
II’s great-grandfather, King Hans, had failed to subjugate the peasant republic
in 1500, but the 1559 campaign was a quick and relatively painless victory for
Danish arms. The brevity and low cost of the campaign were cold comforts to
the members of the Council, Johan Friis in particular. Friis had warned Frederik
that a very real threat of conflict with Sweden loomed just over the horizon, but
the king had not listened, and had not even consulted with the Council about
the Ditmarschen. Where Christian III had been cooperative and respectful of the
Council’s collective opinion, Frederik was inconsiderate; where Christian had
been cautious and frugal, Frederik was reckless and prodigal. The reign was not
making a promising start.
The members of the Council moved quickly to show Frederik II that while
they respected royal authority, they would not let him run roughshod over
their liberties. From the Council’s perspective, the timing for the negotiation
of a coronation charter was perfect. The king had not yet been crowned when
he returned home from the Ditmarschen in triumph, nor had he signed a
charter; moreover, he was still a bachelor and had no heir, and hence was at
a disadvantage. The charter, which took more than a month to hammer out,
reflected the Council’s distrust of the young king. According to its terms, those
who felt abused by the king could present their grievances directly to the officers
of state, and if the king refused to be ‘instructed’ by them he would be brought
to account before the entire Council. The king could not purchase or mortgage
nobly owned land under any circumstances. The nobility retained all its old
privileges, plus a new set of commercial concessions, including the right to trade
directly with foreign merchants. It was hardly a return to the conditions of
the period before the Count’s War, but the charter was more restrictive than
Christian III’s had been. The fact that Frederik managed to score some minor
victories in the charter negotiations, however, demonstrates that the process was
not entirely one-sided, that the Council did not simply impose its will on a
misbehaving monarch. The nobility, for example, was forbidden to acquire the
landholdings of free peasants, and the king was no longer restricted from calling
up the noble knight-service (rostjeneste) for military duty outside the kingdom.
Frederik signed the charter, and on 20 August 1559 he was crowned king in an
elaborate ceremony in Copenhagen.¹¹
The adversarial king–Council relationship improved relatively quickly, and
not because Frederik caved in to conciliar opposition. Rather, the two parties
learned to work together because their interests, and Denmark’s, required
that they did so. Much credit must go to the Council of State. Even before
Frederik had the chance to reshape the Council in his image, before the
ageing councillors of Christian III’s generation died off, the Council as a body
¹¹ Colding, Studier, 68–167.
38
The Development of the Consensual State
wanted to cooperate with the king, and had no desire to go back to the
destructive near-anarchy of the pre-civil war years. Frederik, for his part, soon
learned to play the constitutional games required in a consensual monarchy,
to humour the Council without sacrificing royal interests. This meant showing
generosity to the conciliar aristocracy through gifts and concessions, which
he did in grand style. Shortly before the signing of the coronation charter,
Andreas von Barby, leader of the German Chancery, died. Barby was not well
liked in the Council, but he was fabulously wealthy. The extensive fiefs in
his possession reverted to the king, and Frederik was careful to parcel out
these properties among the leading members of the Council. Throughout his
reign, Frederik would reward the conciliar aristocracy generously. Fiefs were
distributed on highly favourable terms. When Frederik became king in 1559,
the vast majority of royal fiefs were ‘account fiefs’ (regnskabslen), in which
the fiefholder received a fixed income and the king received the surplus, an
arrangement that usually benefited the king more than it did the fiefholder. In
the period 1559–88, the proportion of account fiefs fell from 76 per cent to
49 per cent, a decrease of around 35 per cent. During the same period, fiefs
held on terms that favoured the fiefholder over the king—‘fee fiefs’ (afgiftslen),
in which the fiefholder paid a flat fee to the king, and ‘free fiefs’ (fri len),
from which the king received nothing—increased dramatically in number: by
200 per cent for the former and 50 per cent for the latter. Perhaps Frederik
was purchasing the loyalty of his Council, but in a respectable and traditional
manner.¹²
The warmer relationship between king and Council after the Ditmarschen
campaign is best illustrated by the central administration’s performance in the
greatest national crisis of the reign, the Seven Years War of the North (1563–70)
against Sweden. The leading councillors, Johan Friis foremost among them, had
feared a Swedish onslaught for several years, and after the succession of the
ambitious and unbalanced Erik XIV (reigned 1560–8) to the Vasa throne a
confrontation appeared inevitable. Still, few councillors wanted war, and they
preferred to wait until it was forced upon them, while Frederik preferred a
pre-emptive strike. Despite its initial opposition to the war, the Council went
along with the king. Frederik II, wisely, made no effort to exclude the Council
from the direction of the war, and though he retained chief operational control
he entrusted much responsibility to his councillors, including Holger Ottesen
Rosenkrants, Marshal Otte Krumpen, and Admiral Herluf Trolle. From time
to time the Council might complain of the expensive and protracted nature of
the conflict, but in the main it supported the war effort with frequent grants
of taxation, from which the nobility itself was not wholly exempt. The king, in
return, was careful to show his gratitude and to reassure the Council that such
¹² DFH, i. 78–80; Colding, Studier, 68–77; Peder Enevoldsen, ‘Lensreformerne i Danmark
1557–96’, HTD, 81 (1981–2), 343–98.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
39
taxes did not set a precedent that would endanger the privileges of the nobility
in the future.
Only one constitutional crisis emerged during the war, and its resolution says a
great deal about the king–Council relationship and about Frederik’s managerial
style. In late 1569, after six years of war, the Council decided not to provide the
king with further grants of taxation. The war had been costly, in lives and in
gold, but since 1565 Denmark had made no appreciable gains. The Council had
already asked Frederik to make peace, and he had made a half-hearted attempt
to do so in 1568, but neither Frederik nor his Swedish opponent was willing to
concede defeat. The Council, in cutting off financial support, hoped to coerce
the king into ending the war. Frederik felt betrayed. After some reflection, he
penned a plaintive letter to the Council. He was fighting the war for Denmark,
not for himself, and while he was grateful that the Council and his subjects had
made sacrifices for the war effort, he had made sacrifices too. Clearly he had failed
his people, he continued, and there was nothing more he could do, so he felt that
the only honourable recourse was abdication. With his letter of resignation in
the hands of the councillors, he left the capital to go hunting in the countryside.
The king, still unmarried, had no heir, and consequently the Council had good
reason to fear another leaderless interregnum and even a civil war. It played into
the king’s hands, begging his return to the throne and allowing him to summon
a Diet to consider additional tax levies.¹³
Frederik II learned a great deal about kingship during the war with Sweden. He
learned to include the Council in most matters of policy, but he also learned that
it was possible to manipulate the Council, even to bend it to his will, without
humiliating it or undermining its authority. During the eighteen remaining
years of his reign, Frederik drew extensively on these lessons. In the peacetime
years, he maintained a peripatetic court, moving from residence to residence
throughout the countryside, spending a fair share of his time in hunting. This
allowed him the opportunity to meet members of the Council individually and
informally, in their home regions. As was required of him, he did summon the
Council once annually to meet at the herredag, but most of his business with
the Council was done on a one-to-one basis. This ensured a close personal bond
with each member of the Council while minimizing the opportunity for the
Council to oppose him as a body. Frederik’s personable disposition undoubtedly
helped. So, too, did the informal nature of court life under Frederik II. The
king hunted, feasted, and drank with his councillors and advisers, and even
with visiting foreign dignitaries, treating them as his peers and companions
rather than as political opponents or inferiors. The eighteenth-century chronicler
Ludvig Holberg claimed that when dining at court, Frederik would frequently
announce that ‘the king is not at home’, which signalled to his guests that
¹³ Frede P. Jensen, Danmarks konflikt med Sverige 1563–1570 (Copenhagen: Den danske
historiske forening, 1982), 286–94; Jensen, Bidrag, 13–43.
40
The Development of the Consensual State
all court formalities were temporarily suspended, and that they could talk and
joke as they pleased without restraint. The Danish court may have appeared
unsophisticated to outside observers, but the openness and bawdiness of court
life served Frederik’s political purposes.
The political climate under Frederik improved even more as new councillors
rose to fill the vacancies created by retirement and death. Some of the new
appointees, like Erik Hardenberg, were colourless yes-men whom Frederik had
befriended in his adolescence. Most, however, were somewhat more distinguished. The king’s most prominent advisers and officers of state—the new
chancellor, Niels Kaas til Taarupgaard, the treasurer, Christoffer Valkendorf,
the rigshofmester, Peder Oxe, and the councillor Arild Huitfeldt—were highly
learned men who had worked their way to the king’s attention through stellar
performances as Chancery secretaries and fiefholders. Though all were members
of the native-born power elite, they tended to come from the secondary families
of that elite, and owed their positions to bureaucratic competence and loyalty
to the king. Some, such as Kaas and Valkendorf, were unabashed monarchists.
They imparted an administrative efficiency that had heretofore been lacking;
Valkendorf, for example, was personally responsible for the overhaul of Danish
state finances in the 1570s and 1580s. None of them, however, would be
so powerful or independent as Johan Friis had been. They were the king’s
advisers, not his partners, and while Frederik treasured their counsel he never
allowed them to dominate in the making of policy. In foreign affairs, Frederik
relied upon a small group of German expatriates with diplomatic experience,
primarily the Pomeranian Heinrich Ramel and the Mecklenburger Heinrich
Below. The core of this inner circle, especially Kaas and Ramel, accompanied
the king on his constant journeys through the realm. It was here, in this travelling court, that policy was made and ordinances were authored, and not—as
foreign visitors often mistakenly assumed—by the councillors and bureaucrats
in Copenhagen.¹⁴
The system was so successful that Frederik II managed to accomplish a great
deal with few if any clashes with the Council. The king’s priorities lay in the
consolidation of his father’s religious settlement and in his foreign policies, which
aimed at countering the persistent threat from Sweden and at assembling an
international Protestant coalition to guard against the perceived ambitions of
Counter-Reformation Rome. Frederik, Kaas, Valkendorf, and the others did not
contemplate domestic reform on the scale that had characterized the previous
regime; the comprehensiveness of the Kolding Recess of 1558 had made truly
thoroughgoing reform unnecessary. Nonetheless, especially in the two decades
following the end of the war with Sweden, Frederik succeeded in improving the
state bequeathed to him by his father. Thanks to Peder Oxe and Christoffer
Valkendorf, fiscal planning became far less chaotic than it had been in the
¹⁴ Lockhart, Frederik II, 46–54.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
41
past. The consolidation of the royal fiefs into fewer but larger ‘great fiefs’
(hovedlen), accomplished through a flurry of landed property trading with noble
landowners—the so-called ‘Great Land Exchanges’ (mageskifter)—augmented
the productivity of crown lands. More thorough exploitation of the Sound
Dues, culminating in the controversial but effective lastetold of 1567, more than
doubled annual commercial revenues, reducing the royal household’s dependence
on domain income and grants of extraordinary taxation through the Council
of State. These grants, which had risen from an average of 67,000 rigsdaler
before the war with Sweden to 234,000 rigsdaler in wartime, were reduced
almost to ante-bellum levels after 1571. Even so, the greater income accruing
from the fief reforms and the lastetold made it possible to pay off the enormous
debt it had incurred during the Seven Years War of the North—some 1.1
million rigsdaler —by the end of the reign, even with the drastic reduction in
extraordinary taxation.¹⁵
The greater financial liquidity of the crown and the king’s decreased dependence on the Council for funding did not mean that Frederik was actively seeking
to sidestep conciliar control, but it did allow him to be less frugal than Christian
III had been. Considerable funds were devoted to an expansion of the fleet and
of the facilities for its support, not merely for security purposes but also to aid
Frederik’s active endeavours to rid the Baltic sea lanes of pirates. The increased
revenues likewise enabled Frederik to undertake the construction of Denmark’s
first national road network, the so-called kongevej, connecting the larger towns
and the royal residences. The most visible area of expenditure, however, was the
court itself. Frederik spent freely on the reconstruction of several royal residences,
most notably the former cloister of Antvorskov (near Slagelse, Sjælland), but
his crowning achievement was the building of Kronborg Castle (1574–7). In
practical terms, Kronborg was but a revamping of the crumbling fortress Krogen,
guarding the western entrance to the Sound at Helsingør, but it was also a visible
token of Denmark’s might and the majesty of its king. For all his egalitarian
behaviour at court, Frederik was acutely aware of his elevated status. Like most
monarchs of his day, he sought to bolster his international reputation through
a measure of ostentatious display, in his patronage of artists and musicians, as
well as in the elaborate ceremonies staged for royal weddings and other public
celebrations. From 1572 to 1588, spending on the court accounted for an
average of 43 per cent of overall annual expenditures, peaking at 72 per cent
in 1580.¹⁶
¹⁵ T. B. Bang, ‘Kronens Mageskifter under Frederik 2.’, HTD, 9th ser., 1 (1918–20), 1–42;
Enevoldsen, ‘Lensreformerne’, 343–98.
¹⁶ Alex Wittendorff, Alvej og kongevej: studier i samfærdselsforhold og vejenes topografi i det 16. og
17. århundrede (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1973), 164–207, 244–57; Otto Norn, Kronborgs
bastioner (Copenhagen: J. H. Schultz, 1954), 19–37; Johann Grundtvig, Frederik den Andens
Statshusholdning (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1876), pp. CLXXVI–CLXXVII; Ole Kongsted et al.,
Festmusiken fra renaissancen (Copenhagen: Det kongelige Bibliotek, 1990).
42
The Development of the Consensual State
3 . T H E R E G E N C Y, 1 5 8 8 – 1 5 9 6
It is difficult to see how the reign of Frederik II could be viewed as anything
other than a resounding success. Yet it is equally difficult to state precisely
what the legacy of the reign was. The overall tranquillity of the years 1571–88
evaporated upon the king’s death on 4 April 1588. Frederik’s passing was sudden
and unexpected—recent historians speculate that his health deteriorated very
rapidly as the result of lung cancer—and hence the central administration was
unprepared. The royal succession was not in doubt, for Frederik’s marriage
to Sofie of Mecklenburg had been most fruitful dynastically, producing seven
children altogether. The Council had already hailed the eldest of Frederik’s three
sons, Duke Christian, as prince-elect in 1580. But Christian was still a mere
boy, not quite 11 years of age, when Frederik II died at Antvorskov. The king’s
minority necessitated a regency government, and this task fell to the Council of
State.
A four-man Regency, appointed by the Council and headed by Niels Kaas,
found itself confronted with three major problems even before Frederik II’s
funeral ceremonies were over. The first was an international one: the Spanish
Armada, which many Danes believed to be the spearhead of an assault on
Denmark and the Sound. The threat proved to be a chimera, of course, but
the Armada undoubtedly caused the Regency a few sleepless nights. The second
problem, far more trivial than the first, was a succession dispute in the Duchies,
where the Council, the Dowager-Queen Sofie, and the dukes of the Gottorp
line clashed over the division of Holstein. Like the threat of the Armada, the
dispute in Holstein ultimately came to nought, but at the very least it gave rise
to a lingering ill will between the Gottorp and royal branches of the Oldenburg
dynasty.¹⁷
The third problem facing the Regency would prove to be the most disturbing
of the three, for it seemed to belie the socio-economic harmony of Frederik
II’s reign. The lesser nobility had not profited from Frederik’s governance;
the conciliar aristocracy had been the sole beneficiaries of the king’s generosity.
Frederik’s consolidation of royal lands, and his reconciliation with the aristocracy,
had come at a high cost to the lower nobles. The large fiefs created by the Great
Land Exchanges of the 1570s and 1580s were major political plums, which
Frederik reserved for members of the conciliar families and, on rare occasions,
for foreigners who had distinguished themselves in his service. The smaller royal
fiefs, traditionally entrusted to men from the middling and lesser noble families,
were swallowed up in the Land Exchanges. These minor fiefholders consequently
¹⁷ Lockhart, Frederik II, 299–316; Steffen Heiberg, Christian 4: monarken, mennesket og myten
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1988), 10–35, 41–7; Troels Frederik Troels Lund, Christian den Fjerdes
Skib paa Skanderborg Sø, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1893).
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
43
found themselves deprived of their livelihoods, excluded from the distribution of
the larger fiefs, and therefore denied their greatest chance for upward mobility.
Their resentment burst forth on the occasion of King Frederik’s elaborate funeral
in 1588. In a protest petition to the Council, a group of seventy-one lesser
nobles demanded a more equitable distribution of fiefs and other rewards.
The noble Protest of 1588 also reflected some xenophobia on the part of the
signatories, who took umbrage at their late sovereign’s employment of Germans.
The Protest called for the dismissal of all foreign-born fiefholders, and over
the next two years the nobility at large pressured the Council into removing
Christoffer Valkendorf—though not a foreigner, Valkendorf took the blame for
the Land Exchanges—from the Regency, and Heinrich Ramel from his post
as tutor to the young prince-elect Christian. The latter, they argued, would
ensure that Christian would be educated as a Dane and not polluted by foreign
influences. The Council caved in. The fall of Valkendorf and Ramel, though
only a temporary inconvenience to both, seemed to placate the nobility for the
time being, but it was a troubling portent of social unrest from an unexpected
quarter.¹⁸
4 . T H E D A N I S H R E A L M B EYO N D T H E S K AG E R R A K
The Kalmar Union was lost in 1523, and with it Denmark’s pretensions to
pan-Scandinavian rule. The ‘revolution’ of 1536, however, not only created a
new order in Denmark itself; it also gave rise to a new union, one that was far
stronger and more one-sided than that forged in 1397, one that would stand
with few changes in boundaries until 1660. It was in 1536 that Norway lost its
status as an affiliated but independent kingdom, and that the Duchies, or at least
Holstein, became more than just an Oldenburg patrimony, useful for keeping the
younger sons of Danish kings out of trouble. The two regions would be linked
to the kingdom of Denmark in very different ways—Norway as a mere Danish
province, Holstein as a royal appanage—but both would leave a distinctive and
indelible imprint on Danish politics, economics, and culture.
Given the overall direction of royal policy under Christian III and Frederik
II, above all the drive towards centralization and towards the augmentation of
the state’s resource base, it was only natural that both kings would turn their
attention to their lands north of the Skaggerak and south of the Eider River.
In these areas, both monarchs met with mixed success. The limited resources of
¹⁸ DFH, i. 78–80; E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Rigsråd og adelsopposition 1588: en socialhistorisk
studie’, in Knud J. V. Jespersen (ed.), Rigsråd, adel og administration 1570–1648 (Odense:
Universitetsforlag, 1980), 123–59; Susanne Krogh Bender, ‘Omtaksationen af lenene 1593 og
formynderregeringens lenspolitik 1588–93’, in Ebba Waaben et al. (eds.), Fromhed og verdslighed i
middelalder og renaissance: festskrift til Thelma Jexlev (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1985), 135–50.
44
The Development of the Consensual State
Oldenburg Denmark were not sufficient to allow either Christian III or Frederik
II to impose a distinctly Danish order in Norway and Iceland, or even to carry
out the Reformation as thoroughly as they had done within Denmark itself.
In older Norwegian and Icelandic historiography, 1536 is frequently taken
as the point at which a ‘dark age’ in the history of the two lands began, when
proto-nationalistic aspirations were crushed under the heel of Danish oppression.
This is hardly a fair assessment, being influenced by the strident nationalism of
the Scandinavian states in the mid nineteenth century, and recent historians have
discarded this interpretation in favour of a more balanced and finely nuanced
view of the new union created at Christian III’s accession. Taken at face value,
the relationship between Denmark and Norway-Iceland does indeed appear
to have been rather one-sided. Christian III’s coronation charter made clear
Norway’s position within the Oldenburg state: because Norway had welcomed
Christian II in 1531 and sided with him in the Count’s War, it would now
be ranked as a constituent element of Denmark, with a status no higher than
that of Sjælland, Fyn, Jutland, or Skåne. With that declaration, Christian III
permanently dissolved the Norwegian Council and dismantled the Catholic
episcopacy. Archbishop Olav Engelbrechtsson of Nidaros diocese (Trondheim),
loyal to the last to Christian II and hoping for aid from Emperor Charles V, fled
the country; the bishops of Stavanger and Bergen were arrested, later dying in
captivity. Only the bishop of Oslo, Hans Rev, who had sided with Christian III
and converted to Lutheranism, retained his post.
The fate of the Norwegian bishops helps to illustrate why Oldenburg Norway
defies pat generalizations. The conflict that ended in Christian III’s victory in
1536 did not pit Norwegian against Dane, but rather separatist Norwegians
against Norwegians who favoured closer ties with Denmark. Pockets of obdurate
resistance to Danish rule lingered on after 1536: in the north, the followers of
Olav Engelbrechtsson held out until Christian III’s mercenaries crushed their
uprising in the spring of 1537. By and large, however, Christian III did not have
to conquer Norway as he had Denmark. The major castles were already in the
hands of Danes and Danish sympathizers. The dissolution of Norway’s Council
was similarly anticlimatic, as it had long since ceased to perform any meaningful
role in the governance of the realm. For the vast majority of Norwegians, life
after 1536 continued in the same manner as before, with little real change save
in one important regard, and that was the forced introduction of Lutheranism.¹⁹
The character of Denmark’s rule over Norway for the remainder of the
sixteenth century—and for much of the next—could best be described as
ambivalent. On the one hand, Norway had little collective input into the making
¹⁹ E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Norgesparagrafen i Christian III’s håndfæstning 1536’, HTD, 12th
ser., 6 (1972–3), 393–462; Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 15–40, 66–76; Sverre Bagge and
Knut Mykland, Norge i dansketiden (Copenhagen: Politiken, 1987), 79–132; Leon Jespersen, ‘The
Constitutional and Administrative Situation’, in Leon Jespersen (ed.), A Revolution from Above? The
Power State of 16th and 17th Century Scandinavia (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 2000), 85–7.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
45
of state-wide policy. The upper levels of the administration were entirely in
Danish hands. The king’s principal representative in Norway, the fiefholder at
Akershus Castle (and then, after 1572, the governor at Akershus), was invariably
a Dane. In the void left by the disappearance of the Norwegian Council, the
Danish Council of State technically assumed the same authority in Norway as
it held in Denmark. Though Norway was considered a province of Denmark
from 1536, Norwegians were conspicuously absent from the Council’s ranks,
and Norwegian magnates were not invited to take part in the annual herredage
in Denmark. The kings themselves seemed to have had little personal interest
in Norway apart from the timber it produced. Christian III never returned to
Norway after his stay in 1529, as his father’s agent; Frederik II went to Norway
twice—once to receive homage as prince-elect in 1548, and again for a brief visit
to Båhus in 1585.
If the Danish administration was indifferent to Norway, on the other hand,
at least it was a benign indifference, for despite the reproving tone of the
‘Norway paragraph’ in Christian III’s charter the Danish presence in Norway
was not punitive or oppressive. Under Christian III and Frederik II, far fewer
extraordinary taxes were levied here than in Denmark. Frederik, for example,
levied forty-four taxes that were binding on all of Denmark, but only nine in
Norway. The Regency, perhaps more sensitive to Danish opinion after the 1588
Protest, taxed Denmark and Norway at roughly the same level. The northern
kingdom was largely self-determinate in local affairs. Norway continued to
convene its own herredag, primarily as the court of final appeal for Norwegian
legal cases. Half of the fourteen herredage held between 1539 and 1585 much
more closely resembled Diets; they were attended by members of the Danish
Council, and representatives of the peasantry and the burghers presented their
grievances to the Danish authorities. Positions in the clergy and local government,
at least at the middle and lower levels, were staffed by Norwegians. Norwegian
students studied alongside Danes at the university in Copenhagen; some rose into
the ranks of the upper clergy, and others—such as the theologians Cort Aslakssøn
and Jørgen Dybvad—later became prominent figures in the faculty. Much of
Denmark’s naval officer corps was Norwegian by birth. Danish landowners
who administered fiefs in Norway not infrequently married into the local elite.
If Norwegians were excluded from the inner circle of power in Denmark, it
was not because of a deliberate policy of exclusion, but rather because there
was no deliberate policy of inclusion. The Danish administration evinced little
interest in subjugating Norway, in squelching local dialects or other traditions, in
making Norway Danish. Only in one regard—religion—did the kings demand
conformity.²⁰
²⁰ Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 135–8; Oscar A. Johnsen, De norske stænder: Bidrag til
oplysning om folkets deltagelse i statsanliggender fra Reformationen til enevældet (Christiania: Jacob
Dybwad, 1906), 58–110.
46
The Development of the Consensual State
Norwegians as a group did exhibit a species of national identity that
distinguished them from regional groups within Denmark proper: while Jutlanders, though coming from a province that considered itself distinctly different
from the rest of Denmark, would still think of themselves as Danes, Norwegians
saw themselves as Norwegians, under the rule of a foreign king. There would
be moments of friction between the Danish administration and the Norwegian
populace, but on the whole Norwegians passively accepted Danish rule. Neither
did they show much inclination for loyalty towards Denmark, especially in the
centre and north of the country. When Swedish forces under Claude Collart
invaded Jämtland and the Trøndelag at the beginning of the Seven Years War
of the North in 1563–64, the citizens of Trondheim did not hesitate to swear
allegiance to Sweden once Danish forces in the area had been defeated. The
Danish fiefholder at Trondheim, however, found that the peasants in the area
refused outright to fight for Frederik II, even when threatened.²¹
Iceland was a different case altogether. Technically, the sparsely populated
island was a vassal-state of Norway, but the two had very little in common.
Where Norway had an established political infrastructure centred on the greater
fiefholders, Iceland had none; where the Norwegian nobility had ties of blood
and marriage to Denmark, in Iceland there was no noble class as such; while
in Norway Danish authorities could count on some grudging allegiance to
Denmark, in Iceland the population had no use for the Danes. Iceland’s was an
insular society, and there was no Danish presence there whatsoever prior to 1536.
The ancient Diet, the Alþing (Althing), met regularly to deal with larger issues
and to adjudicate disputes, but the real power brokers were the two bishops,
who held sway over the entire island from their episcopal seats at Hólar and
Skálholt. Christian III and Frederik II would have to count on individual Danish
administrators, backed up with what little force Copenhagen could afford for
something as distant and unremunerative as Iceland. In Iceland the establishment
of royal authority and of the Lutheran religion would go hand in hand, but both
would proceed slowly and with some effusion of blood.²²
Perhaps the dynastic politics of the Duchies were virtually incomprehensible
by the mid nineteenth century, when Otto von Bismarck would bewail their
complexity, but in the sixteenth century the situation was not terribly complicated. Much of Slesvig was still Danish at this point, and only Holstein remained a
foreign land. Holstein, unlike Norway, was never a sovereign realm. Despite its
close connections with Denmark, Holstein was a typical minor German territorial
state, with political traditions and institutions that bore little similarity to those
of the Nordic kingdoms. Holstein also held a much different kind of attraction
²¹ Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 26–9; Bagge and Mykland, Norge i dansketiden, 108–11.
²² Vilborg Auður Ísleifsdóttir, Siðbreytingin á Íslandi 1537–1565: byltingin að ofan (ReykjavÍk: Hið Íslenska Bókmenntafélag, 1997), 225–354; Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 128–37.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
47
for the Oldenburg kings. Norway offered some important resources, but in
the main it served as a buffer against Swedish expansionism; Holstein, on the
other hand, as the wealthiest part of the dynastic state, offered tremendous trade
benefits. It gave the kings of Denmark immediate access to the Elbe and Weser
estuaries, making possible the expansionist commercial policies of Christian IV
in the next century. And unlike Norway, it was the personal property of the king,
at least as a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. Here the Council held no sway,
and the king could tax, spend, and act as he chose—but only within the limits
established by Holstein itself.
In Holstein, the Danish kings had to contend with two political factors that
constrained their actions and consumed their time and energies: the Holstein
nobility and the dukes of the cadet Oldenburg lines. The collective power of the
local nobility found expression in the diet, or Landtag. Although the Landtag’s
authority could not be taken for granted, during the sixteenth century it caused
few problems for the Danish kings. It helped that the Oldenburg kings were
not absentee landlords, at least not until the reign of Frederik II. King Hans
remained actively involved in Holstein politics, Frederik I made Holstein his
home, and Christian III spent much of his time at royal residences—Koldinghus,
Sønderborg, and Haderslevhus—that were either in Slesvig or very near it. Even
Frederik II, the first of the Oldenburg kings who should by all rights be
considered a Dane, devoted much time and effort to the affairs of the Duchies.
The kings, moreover, had powerful allies in Holstein, especially the Rantzau clan,
who served the monarchy faithfully throughout the early modern period. Most
valuable was Heinrich Rantzau, son of Christian III’s general Johann Rantzau.
Heinrich was an accomplished humanist scholar who was held in high regard
even in Rome, and he was the Oldenburgs’ right-hand man in the Duchies.
Until his death in 1598, he served as governor (Statthalter) in the Duchies for
Christian III, Frederik II, and Christian IV. Danish and German nobles alike
accepted him as one of their own. As the king’s political manager in the German
lands, he successfully guided the deliberations of the Landtag, ensuring that
royal policies met with little or no opposition. His personal connections with
statesmen and scholars all over the Continent made him the Oldenburgs’ chief
source of information and advice on European affairs. No one would dispute
that Heinrich Rantzau was one of the principal architects of Frederik II’s foreign
policy. The Holsteiner presence in the Danish central administration, however,
did not end with the Rantzaus. The educated elite from Holstein, both nobles
and burghers, was perhaps the most important source for the trained bureaucrats
who staffed the German Chancery in Copenhagen. Many of the learned jurists
and diplomats in Frederik II’s service, such as Dr Veit Winsheim and Hans
Blome, were Holsteiners.²³
²³ H. V. Gregersen, Slesvig og Holsten før 1830 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1981), 229–80; Otto
Brandt, Heinrich Rantzau und seine Relationen an die dänischen Könige (Munich: Oldenbourg,
48
The Development of the Consensual State
The second constraining factor came from within the Oldenburg family itself.
Because Holstein was the personal patrimony of the Oldenburg house, it was
only natural that the kings of Denmark should use them as a means of supporting
younger sons, since Denmark could not be used for this purpose. Initially, neither
could Holstein; in the Ribe Agreement of 1460, Christian I had vowed that the
Duchies would remain indivisible in perpetuity. Yet the temptation to parcel
out the Duchies to satisfy the demands of cadet lines was simply too great. On
Christian III must fall the blame for the partition of the Duchies, an act that
would ultimately have such disastrous consequences for Denmark, repeatedly
throughout the seventeenth century and of course in the Austro-Prussian invasion
of 1864. To be fair, Christian III—who doted more on his younger half-brothers
than he did on his own son—was only attempting to appease his troublesome
siblings, and the repeated subdivision of principalities was hardly an unknown
occurrence in the Empire. Meeting with his three half-brothers, Hans, Adolf, and
Friedrich, at Rendsburg in 1544, Christian presided over a tripartite division of
Slesvig and Holstein. The Holstein nobility opposed the plan; Johann Rantzau,
who preferred an undivided Slesvig-Holstein under Danish rule, resigned in
disgust from his position as governor. Christian proceeded regardless. The king
kept that portion that centred on Sønderborg; Hans acquired Haderslev, Adolf
received Gottorp, and Friedrich—still a minor—was promised the bishopric
of Bremen. Friedrich soon became irrelevant, as the plan to secure Bremen fell
through and Friedrich died in 1556. Hans and Adolf were more difficult. At
Rendsburg, the three brothers vowed to rule the Duchies jointly, each brother
taking a turn as sole duke annually, but the ambitions of Hans and Adolf quickly
made the system unworkable. It was not until 1579 that Frederik II could coerce
his uncles into honouring their fealty to the Danish royal house.
The death of Hans in 1580, without an heir of his own, further complicated
the matter, for Adolf—a singularly acquisitive man—demanded that Hans’s
portion of the inheritance pass to him. This Frederik II would not allow. Duke
Adolf ’s loyalty was questionable, his actions an embarrassment to the king: he
had sought the hand of Elizabeth I of England, and had served as a soldier
in Spanish pay in the Netherlands. Only Frederik’s willingness to use force
dissuaded Adolf from staking his claim to Hans’s lands. In September 1581,
Frederik and Adolf divided Hans’s inheritance between themselves. Frederik
himself was not blameless in the partition of the Duchies, for by 1582 he had
given his youngest brother, Hans (‘the Younger’, 1545–1622), one-third of the
royal portion of the Duchies. By the mid 1580s, the Duchies had assumed
boundaries that would last for a very long time. The kings of Denmark ruled
Holstein-Segeberg, known as the ‘royal portion’; Hans the Younger, duke of
1927). For a brief overview in German, see Jörg Rathjen, ‘Die geteilte Einheit—Schleswig-Holstein
zwischen König und Herzog 1490–1721’, in Jann Markus Witt and Heiko Vosgerau (eds.),
Schleswig-Holstein von den Ursprüngen bis zur Gegenwart (Hamburg: Content, 2002), 175–87.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
49
Holstein-Sønderborg, was founder of the lineage that led to King Christian
IX (1863–1906) and the current Danish royal house. Adolf’s legacy would be
the most problematic, for his duchy—Holstein-Gottorp—would prove to be a
nuisance to Denmark early in the next century and an outright enemy shortly
thereafter.²⁴
5 . C O N S T I T U T I O N A N D A D M I N I S T R AT I O N
More than one Danish historian has described the transformation of the Oldenburg state after 1536 as a ‘revolution’. Indeed it was, at least in the obvious
confessional sense—the introduction of the Lutheran faith—and perhaps in
constitutional terms as well. The period 1536–96 witnessed the creation of a
functioning ‘dyarchy’, in which the king shared near-political parity with the
conciliar aristocracy. There was no revolution, however, in the structure of the
administration. For a realm of such vast size and complexity, the state apparatus
of Oldenburg Denmark was overall quite primitive, and was still the same in
its basic elements as it had been in the late Middle Ages. Like most European
monarchies of the period, Denmark’s was a ‘conciliar monarchy’, but only in
that the king worked with—rather than over—a council representing the power
elite. Oldenburg Denmark did not follow the contemporary European trend,
with multiple advisory councils serving the king and a multitude of court officers
crowding the king’s household, as there were in the Spain of Philip II. Even
in comparison with early Vasa Sweden, the Danish central administration was
monolithic. King and Council were the heart of central authority in Denmark;
there was no other competitor for power. Instead of revolutionary change in
the mechanics of government, what we see in sixteenth-century Denmark is
the refinement of an antiquated system. The Swedish kings had the (sometimes
dubious) advantage of having to create a state apparatus ex nihilo, which granted
them some freedom in shaping that apparatus to their own ends and to those
of the state. Neither Christian III nor Frederik II had the motivation to do
such a thing. Still, for the better part of a century, Denmark’s unsophisticated
administrative structure would prove itself adequate to the tasks that confronted
it. This is all the more remarkable because Denmark’s role in European political
life would change so drastically during this period. That role would strain the
capabilities of the central administration, and yet somehow the system managed
to weather the storm.
The greatest degree of change in the Oldenburg political system was in the
nature of the king–Council relationship. Because of the Reformation, the king
and the aristocracy were near equals in power and wealth. The shared experience
²⁴ Gregersen, Slesvig og Holsten, 254–80.
50
The Development of the Consensual State
of civil war and interregnum, coupled with a shared political ideology, gently
nudged the two partners to collaborate in expanding the powers of the state
over those of corporate interests, be they geographical or social. It was this
collaboration that made possible the implementation of legal reform under
Christian III, religious reform and a brash foreign policy under Frederik II, and
the extensive restructuring of the fief system under both kings.
Surprisingly, the three kings who ruled Denmark at the height of its greatness—Christian III, Frederik II, and Christian IV, at least until around
1630—never found it necessary to change their style of kingship. All three
would cling to the model of Germanic tribal kingship from late antiquity. Each
was a primus inter pares within the upper ranks of the noble order, sharing their
lands, their table, and their private lives with the aristocracy. The personal bonds
created by the rough-hewn fellowship of the court was undoubtedly a major
factor allowing the smooth exercise of state power. The peripatetic nature of the
court helped as well. Copenhagen was clearly fixed as the administrative centre
of the Oldenburg state, and yet the kings were not sedentary. It must have made
some of the day-to-day chores of running the kingdom problematic, and foreign
ambassadors frequently complained of the difficulties they encountered in the
seemingly simple task of finding the king. John Herbert, on an errand from
Elizabeth I to Frederik II in 1583, noted with some annoyance that the king
‘remayneth not above the night in a place’, but he also observed the political
advantages of the king’s wanderlust: when the king ‘was occupied in hunting with
the nobility of those partes with familiar waye’, it was his method of ensuring
that those same nobles ‘could assure their mynde unto him’. Royal progresses,
so commonplace elsewhere in Europe, were unnecessary in Denmark because
the king’s life was one continual progress. Certainly such mobility could be
expensive, but it also restricted the size of the royal household to modest levels.
At the Danish court there were few if any court officers, and no elaborate ranking
of gentlemen of the bedchamber and other such courtiers, as there were in the
Tudor and Valois households.²⁵
Another noteworthy feature of Danish kingship was the absence of royal
favourites. This is not to say that Christian III and Frederik II did not rely heavily
upon the advice of a few chosen men—Friis, Utenhof, and Barby for Christian
III, Kaas, Ramel, and Valkendorf for Frederik. But none of these men exercised
the same degree of autonomous power and influence routinely wielded by, say,
Leicester or Lerma. The rudimentary character of the Danish bureaucracy made
‘minister favourites’ unnecessary: without the multiplicity of councils and juntas
that made the Spanish administration so unwieldy, the king did not need the
²⁵ Lockhart, Frederik II, 48–9; Peter Burke, ‘State-Making, King-Making and Image-Making
from Renaissance to Baroque: Scandinavia in a European Context’, Scandinavian Journal of
History, 22 (1997), 1–8; Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, ‘Statsceremoniel, hofkultur og politisk magt i
overgangen fra adelsvælde til enevælde—1536 til 1746’, Fortid og nutid (1996), 3–8.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
51
services of a professional manager. The king and his chancellor could oversee
the workings of the entire administration without undue stress. For this reason,
the distribution of patronage was controlled by the king and not by one of his
lackeys. This was another factor contributing to political harmony, for the king’s
control over the assignment of fiefdoms helped to keep faction at court to a
minimum. Between the Count’s War and the 1640s, political ‘parties’ were all
but unknown in Denmark. The Council’s role in engineering the fall of Peder
Oxe in 1557 stands out as the only notable example of court intrigue during this
period.²⁶
Representative institutions at the national level were insignificant. The annual
herredage were exclusively noble assemblies, and on only two occasions—in
1536 and 1570—did Christian III or Frederik II summon a true Diet with
representatives of all classes. This stands in stark contrast to the habits of the Vasa
kings, who increasingly relied on regular meetings of the estates as a means of
countering the power of the aristocracy, of pressuring their councils into accepting
unpopular policies by giving those policies the stamp of national approval. In
Denmark, Diets were a means by which the king and the Council could assess
the interests of the lower orders; and since this same information could be had by
means of informal consultations, as Christian III had done before promulgating
the Recesses of the 1540s and 1550s, Diets were not imperative. Not until the
1620s would an Oldenburg king make use of the estates as a constitutional
weapon to be used against the aristocracy. Only at the local level, where village
and county assemblies met regularly to settle disputes and air grievances, did
a strong quasi-democratic tradition persist throughout the entire early modern
period.²⁷
The bureaucracy in Copenhagen was similar in nature to the ‘crown of
Denmark’: simple and monolithic. The first layer of the administration, the
rigsembedsmænd, did not change much in form or function after the Reformation.
These ‘officers of state’ were selected from the membership of the Council. Hence
they did not constitute a separate interest group, but merely held additional
responsibilities within their particular areas of competence. The growth of the
fleet and the reform of the judiciary gave slightly greater prominence to the
lesser officers, the Admiral of the Realm and the Chancellor of the Realm (rigens
kansler). The other three officers—the rigshofmester, the chancellor (kongens
kansler), and the marshal—still held pride of place, and in the coronation
charters of both Christian III and Frederik II the Council stipulated that these
positions were to be kept filled at all times. This was not always observed;
Frederik II, for example, never appointed a rigshofmester after the death of Peder
²⁶ Knud J. V. Jespersen, ‘The Last Favourite? The Case of Griffenfeld’, in J. H. Elliott and L. W.
B. Brockliss (eds.), The World of the Favourite (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 269–78;
Colding, Studier, 13–46.
²⁷ DFH, i. 80–3; Edward Kleberg, De danska ständermötena intill Kristian IV:s död (Göteborg:
Zachrisson, 1917), 9–20; Jørgensen, Retshistorie, 498–501.
52
The Development of the Consensual State
Oxe in 1575, leaving the rigshofmester’s fiscal duties to the treasurer, Christoffer
Valkendorf. Though a violation of the charter, this did not arouse much suspicion
or ire from the Council, for the post of rigshofmester was not so important as
it had been prior to 1536. In the late sixteenth century, the post of chancellor
rose in standing. Officially no more than the chief of the Danish Chancery,
the chancellor became the unofficial spokesman of the Council and its primary
intermediary with the king.
After the officers of state came the chanceries themselves. In function, these
were little more than secretarial pools, receiving incoming correspondence
and petitions, working out draft responses with their leaders and the king,
and producing the fair copies for expedition. There were two chanceries,
whose duties were apportioned by language rather than by subject matter: the
Danish Chancery and the German Chancery. Throughout this period, the main
body—the Danish Chancery—was responsible for all domestic correspondence,
edicts, and other documents written in Danish. This meant that this chancery
dealt with Norwegian and Icelandic as well as Danish affairs. The dozen or so
secretaries of the Danish Chancery were native and nobly born, though not
necessarily from the greatest families in the realm. Few secretaries stayed in
the Chancery for very long: the length of service was around seven years on
average during the period 1571–96. Service in the Chancery was not seen as
a career in itself, but rather as a professional ‘fast track’ to appointment as a
fiefholder or even as a member of the Council. The German Chancery was far
more dynamic during this period. Its membership swelled in the decades after
the Reformation, and it assumed a greater role in royal governance than it had
done previously. Its secretaries, recruited from educated Germans with extensive
university educations and bureaucratic experience, were legally astute and well
versed in Roman law, and hence tended to be unswervingly devoted to the king.
Their education and linguistic abilities made them well suited for diplomatic
service, and hence the German Chancery emerged from this period as the rough
equivalent of a foreign office. The extent of its influence on foreign policy,
however, should not be overestimated. Though Christian III and Frederik II
counted on the leaders of the German Chancery for advice, the Council did not
simply surrender its authority in this area to the Germans.²⁸
The most obvious difference between the sixteenth-century bureaucracy and
its pre-Reformation predecessors was in the degree of professional competence
and education. Perhaps we should not make the mistake of assuming that there
was a deliberate effort to professionalize the central administration, but the
overall educational profile of these men was much more impressive than that of
their forebears a century before. Most members of the Council, and nearly all
²⁸ DFH, i. 62–3, 101; Daniel O. Fisher, ‘Kongens unge mænd: Christian 4.s kancellisekretærer
1596–1648’, in Jespersen (ed.), Rigsråd, adel og administration, 169–75; Heinz Lehmann, Die
deutsche Kanzlei zu Kopenhagen (Hamburg: Paul Evert, 1936), 12–32; Jensen, Bidrag, 13–44.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
53
members of the Danish Chancery, had received some sort of education within
Denmark; a large proportion had also acquired some university experience on
the Continent. This was not a matter of policy, but reflected broad educational
trends among the Danish nobility at large. The professionalism was especially
evident in the German Chancery. Not only were the German secretaries better
educated, as a group, than their Danish Chancery counterparts, but they also
tended to view their positions as careers and not as mere stepping stones to better
appointments.²⁹
Growing bureaucratic professionalism and a good working relationship
between king and Council paid immediate dividends. The age of Christian
III and Frederik II was an age of domestic reform, in two areas in particular:
the state fisc and the judiciary. Denmark’s newly active role in European affairs
demanded a thoroughgoing reform of the state fisc. Embassies, military institutions, and the perceived need to maintain a respectable and illustrious court all
put unprecedented strains on the treasury. The confiscation of Catholic properties and incomes after 1536 helped to offset some of these novel expenditures, but
domain incomes could be chaotic and unpredictable. Hence the drive, initiated
by Christian III but engineered by Johan Friis and Peder Oxe, to consolidate
the smaller fiefs into larger ones, with a higher proportion of them operating on
an account basis—a definite boon to the treasury. Though Frederik II would
subsequently reverse some of these reforms, the balance was still a favourable one
for the monarchy. Rising prices for grain and other agricultural products also
contributed to the rise in domain revenues. Between 1559 and 1577, aggregate
fief incomes rose from 37,170 rigsdaler to 121,930 per annum, which represented
an increase of 228 per cent. The rise in commercial revenues was even more
dramatic. The introduction of aggressive collections procedures in the toll station
at Helsingør made the Sound Dues much more profitable. The lastetold, first
implemented in 1567, assessed ships passing through the Sound on the basis of
weight and type of cargo. It was invasive, and therefore highly unpopular with
foreign merchants, but highly remunerative: the lastetold more than tripled the
returns of the Sound Dues almost overnight. Although extraordinary taxes would
still have to be levied in times of war, in peacetime the monarchy was financially
self-sufficient by the 1580s. Sound debt management and increased incomes,
supervised by knowledgeable policy-makers such as Peder Oxe and Christoffer
Valkendorf, laid the foundations for the massive state surpluses during the early
years of the next century.³⁰
²⁹ DFH, i. 62–4; Grethe Ilsøe, ‘Det danske rigsråd 1570–88’, in Jespersen (ed.), Rigsråd, adel og
administration, 9–27; Hans C. Wolter, Adel og embede: embedsfordeling og karrieremobilitet hos den
dansk-norske adel 1588–1660 (Copenhagen: Den danske historiske Forening, 1982); Vello Helk,
Dansk norsk studierejser fra reformationen til enevælden 1536–1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag,
1987), 41–75.
³⁰ GDH , 2/2, 456–8; Grundtvig, Statshusholdningen, pp. CXXXVIII–CXXXIX; Enevoldsen,
‘Lensreformerne’; Bang, ‘Kronens Mageskifter’; Mikael Venge, Fra åretold til toldetat: middelalderen
54
The Development of the Consensual State
Reform in Denmark’s judiciary entailed the introduction of a standardized
procedure and a measure of decentralization. For this, Christian III, Johan Friis,
and the jurist Erik Krabbe deserve most of the credit. The new procedure, which
took shape in the Kolding Recess of 1558, reduced the administrative burden on
the central authority by assigning broader legal responsibilities to the localities.
Civil and criminal cases would first be tried in the county or manorial courts
(herredsting, birketing) in the countryside, or by municipal courts (byting) in the
towns. The rural courts were frequently juried, with a quasi-permanent group of
local men—called sandemænd (‘truth-men’)—serving as jurors. When a verdict
had been determined, and only then, the decision of the local court could be
appealed to the local fiefholder and heard before the provincial court (landsting).
Capital cases required a hearing at the landsting. Those wishing to contest the
decision of the provincial magistrate (landsdommer) could petition the king and
the Chancellor of the Realm for a hearing. If the latter decided that the case
merited such attention, then the parties involved would appear before the king
and Council, assembled annually as the king’s court of final appeal (kongens
retterting). The system was by no means perfect. High-ranking offenders, such
as abusive fiefholders and landlords, might be brought to account only with
great difficulty. And there were alarming examples of procedural injustice. Søren
Jensen Quist, the lowly Jutish parson who was later immortalized in Sten Stensen
Blicher’s 1829 novella Præsten i Vejlby, was falsely convicted of and executed
for murder in 1626; his personal enemies manipulated the jury system in the
herredsting to their own ends, and royal officials assigned to investigate the
accusations woefully neglected their duties. Still, there is no indication that
the Danish court system was in any way inferior to its European contemporaries.
The lower courts were remarkably democratic, and even kongens retterting did
not automatically close ranks with its social peers in cases where aristocrats had
been accused of misconduct towards the lower orders.³¹
Three other salient features of Denmark’s central administration merit some
explanation. One is the extensive presence of Germans within all levels of the
bureaucracy. The personnel employed in the German Chancery were exclusively
German by birth, and this is where most of the foreigners in Danish service
began their careers. The German Chancellor Wolfgang von Utenhof and senior
secretaries Andreas von Barby and Heinrich Ramel would rank among the most
indtil 1660, Dansk Toldhistorie, 1 (Copenhagen: Toldhistorisk selskab, 1987), 194–219; Aksel
E. Christensen, Dutch Trade to the Baltic about 1600 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1941), 293–6;
Arthur Hassø, Rigshofmester Kristoffer Valkendorf til Glorup (Copenhagen: Levin og Munksgaard,
1933), 76–101.
³¹ DFH, i. 84–7; Jespersen, ‘Constitutional and Administrative Situation’, 117–20; Ditlev
Tamm and Jens C. V. Johansen, ‘Kongens ting, byens ting og bondens ting—studier over det
danske retssystem 1500–1800’, Fortid og nutid (1992), 73–100. On the Quist case, see Severin
Kjær, Præsten i Vejlby: Søren Jensen Quist, hans Slægt og Samtid (Copenhagen: Pio, 1894), and A. P.
Larsen, Sagen mod præsten i Vejlby og de sager, der fulgte (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1951).
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
55
influential royal advisers in matters of war and diplomacy. A significant few
managed to climb into positions that should have been reserved for native Danes.
Some, such as Barby and Ramel, received choice appointments as fiefholders;
others, notably Christoph von Dohna, Breide Rantzau, and Heinrich Below,
were ennobled and elevated to membership of the Council of State. Surprisingly,
even though these appointments—most common under Frederik II—were
explicitly prohibited by Danish constitutional law, they elicited little comment
from the Danish nobility the Protest of 1588. There were moments of friction,
to be sure; neither Utenhof nor Barby was popular with the Council, and the
Ditmarschen campaign made Barby and Johan Friis into bitter enemies. But these
were the exceptions. That the Germans did not cause a constitutional uproar
before 1588 was due to several mitigating circumstances. First, the Germans
who rose to prominence had been carefully assimilated into the ruling elite.
Frederik II, for example, promoted Ramel, Dohna, and Below to their positions
only after first granting them noble status, and that happened only after they
had proved themselves as capable and loyal administrators. More often than
not, these Germans married into Danish noble families and in effect became
Danes, sharing the same interests and outlook as the established native-born elite.
Second, neither Christian III nor Frederik II tried to use his German bureaucrats
as a counter to Danish aristocratic influence. The Germans were educated,
multilingual, and worldly, and hence they filled a pressing need. There is no
evidence that Frederik II tried to ‘pack’ the Council or the fief administration
with Germans, or to assemble the Germans into a kind of royalist faction.
The Council accepted the ‘naturalized’ Germans without complaint. Only the
lesser nobility, in the 1588 petition, expressed dissatisfaction with the German
presence, and their objections stemmed more from anti-aristocratic feeling and
plain xenophobia than from a fear that the Germans were taking over the state.³²
A second significant feature—one that would ultimately prove to be a
constitutional stumbling block—was the uncertain line demarcating the king’s
personal resources from those of the state. It was assumed in Denmark that
the king would ‘live of his own’—in other words, that domain incomes and
commercial revenues would support the royal household, while extraordinary
taxation would be levied only with the authority of the Council and only for
special purposes. Yet there was no formal division between the king’s treasury and
that of the realm. In the absence of a rigshofmester, which was usually the case,
the treasurer (rentemester) and a handful of non-noble accountants (renteskrivere)
supervised the collection of taxes, dues, and tithes and the processing of fiefholders’
accounts. The treasury, called Rentekammeret, was not an independent branch of
³² Lehmann, Die deutsche Kanzlei, 12–32; Poul Colding, ‘Om Andreas von Barbys stilling som
leder af Tyske kancelli’, in Hans H. Fussing (ed.), Til Knud Fabricius 13, August 1945 (Copenhagen:
Arnold Busck, 1945), 44–56; A. Heise, ‘Wulfgang von Utenhof, Kongerne Frederik den 1stes og
Kristian den 3dies tyske Kansler’, HTD, 4th ser., 6 (1877–8), 163–311.
56
The Development of the Consensual State
the administration, but functioned as part of the Danish Chancery, answerable
to the Council of State. As if this were not confusing enough, there existed a
second treasury within Rentekammeret: the royal treasury (kongens eget kammer,
or literally ‘the king’s own treasury’). This was not a separate institution, for
indeed it was not an institution at all, but a fiction that existed only on paper. It
had no personnel and no account books; the royal treasury was simply the king’s
assertion that some incomes were his private property and therefore his to use as
he saw fit without consulting the Council. Although conflict over what was the
king’s property and what was the crown’s did not become problematic until the
later reign of Christian IV, signs of impending controversy were already emerging
as early as the 1588–96 Regency. Immediately after the death of Frederik II
in 1588, the Dowager-Queen Sofie demanded from the Council all of her late
husband’s liquid assets. The Council gently refused her request. Sofie already
enjoyed the profits of a generous ‘pension’ (livgeding), consisting of Nykøbing
Castle and the islands of Lolland and Falster; all other state income, even if the
king had had the right to dispose of it while he was alive, was not his private
property and therefore could not be transferred to his widow. In the end, the
Council bought off Sofie with an additional cash pension, but the issue would
resurface with a vengeance in the next half-century.³³
The third distinguishing feature of Danish governance, though intangible
and therefore immeasurable, is utterly necessary for understanding the exercise
of power in Denmark. That the king and Council cooperated so well, despite
the presence of conditions that could well have engendered internal conflict,
was due to the existence of a common political ideology and a common
outlook. It would be tempting to label this mentality the ideology of adelsvælden,
but since adelsvælden implies noble—as opposed to royal—power, this would
be inaccurate. Perhaps the term ‘dyarchism’, though clumsy, would be more
appropriate. The king and the aristocracy worked for the most part towards the
same goal, the welfare of the state, regardless of their individual interests, because
this responsibility had been entrusted to them by God. Unlike the political
ideologies that had taken root elsewhere on the Continent and in England at the
same time, this dyarchism was not formally rooted in Aristotelian or neo-Stoic
philosophy, nor did it stem from a quasi-scholarly examination of the history
and traditions of the land. Indeed, it did not have a single defining text or
proponent. Although dyarchism would be most eloquently expressed in the
prefaces to Arild Huitfeldt’s Danmarks Riges Krønike (Chronicles of the Kingdom
of Denmark) (1595–1604), the basic ideas behind this ideology first surfaced in
a theological work, The most remarkable stories, passages and examples, drawn from
the Holy Scripture, on the duty, regiment, and practice of authority, written in 1567
by the Jutish cleric Niels Nielsen Colding. Colding’s speculum regale was based
³³ DFH, i. 109–11; Jespersen, ‘Constitutional and Administrative Situation’, 91–2; Lockhart,
Frederik II, 306.
The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy
57
purely on Scripture, but its arguments combined Luther’s views on temporal
authority with elements of French monarchomach thought. The king ruled with
God’s authority, and was in fact chosen by God to rule; ordinary subjects could
not disobey their king without incurring divine wrath. Yet kings were likewise
required to rule within the confines of the law of the land, and had to do so
through the foremost men of the realm. A king who overstepped his bounds
was a tyrant, and God did not suffer tyrants. Whether Frederik—not known
to be a voracious reader—or any member of the Council ever read the work
is impossible to ascertain, though it is known that Niels Nielsen stood in high
favour at court. Nonetheless, the book is a suitable theoretical framework for
interpreting the mindset of the ruling elite in late sixteenth-century Denmark. It
helps to explain why Frederik II, for example, did not try to fight with his Council
over foreign policy in the 1570s and 1580s, and why the Council acquiesced to
measures that compromised aristocratic interests if those measures contributed
to the welfare of the state.³⁴
At the close of the sixteenth century, the administration of the Oldenburg state
was not ‘modern’ when compared with its European contemporaries. In many
regards its bureaucracy was even more rudimentary than that of Vasa Sweden,
which is hardly a flattering comparison. Denmark’s government, rather, was a
highly developed medieval monarchy, with an uncomplicated but unsophisticated
administrative structure. Its chief positive attributes were an absence of internal
strife, a balanced state budget, and a measure of professionalism among its leading
statesmen. It was, in the words of E. Ladewig Petersen, a ‘domain state’ rather
than a ‘tax state’, in which the primary source of income derived from sources
other than taxation of its subjects. It accomplished virtually everything that was
required of it, and managed to hold its own in an age of great dynastic and
confessional strife. This in itself was no mean achievement. But that structure was
also inflexible. It offered few options for expansion. The constitutional harmony
that allowed the system to work depended too much on the personality of the
king and those of his councillors. Denmark may have been at the height of its
power and influence in 1588, but its government was ill equipped to cope with
the greater burdens and challenges it would face in the coming century.
³⁴ Leon Jespersen, ‘Knud Fabricius og den monarkiske bølge: nogle kommentarer til de
statsretlige brydninger i 15–1600-tallets Danmark’, Historie (1997), 54–85; Jørgen Stenbæk, ‘Niels
Hemmingsen og den kirkelige disciplin’, in Ingmar Brohed (ed.), Reformationens konsolidering
i de nordiska länderna 1540–1610 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1990), 417–18; Knud Fabricius,
Kongeloven: Dens Tilblivelse og Plads i Samtidens Natur- og Arveretlige Udvikling (Copenhagen:
Hagerup, 1920), 72–7; Lockhart, Frederik II, 45–6.
3
Reformation and Culture
When Christian III rode into humbled, starving Copenhagen in August 1536
and proclaimed the end of Catholic religious dominance, Denmark became not
just the only Lutheran kingdom in Europe; it became the one truly Protestant
kingdom. In Denmark the Reformation was effected more rapidly and more
completely than in any of its Protestant contemporaries. Sweden remained
confessionally ambiguous until the end of the century; England can hardly be
said to have been ‘Protestant’ at the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558. While Mary
Tudor was still queen of England, while confessional strife wracked France, the
Netherlands, and the Empire, the Lutheran state church was flourishing virtually
unopposed in the Oldenburg state. Only in the remote corners of the realm did
any subjects of the Danish king dare to resist the new religion, and that resistance
was insignificant. It was with good reason that Protestant statesmen later in the
century would look to Denmark for support and often for leadership. The king
of Denmark ruled over the largest, most solidly Protestant state in all of Europe.
Denmark’s ties with the German princes gave its rulers undeniable influence in
the heartland of the Reformation.
In religious life, as in politics, the most striking characteristic of the Oldenburg
state was its near absence of internal conflict. The Reformation settlement of 1536
had been accomplished almost painlessly and with extraordinary thoroughness.
The existence of a common religious mindset, binding king to ruling elite,
prevented the emergence of troublesome religious minorities led by men of
influence. The crown’s control over clergy and doctrine meant that the population
at large did not get much opportunity to hear dissenting voices. The Crown
of Denmark demanded—and got—outward conformity. Neither Christian III
nor Frederik II had to resort to violence or widespread persecution to accomplish
this. Rather, they sought to prevent the appearance of confessional disunity, by
discouraging public debate over potentially controversial points of faith. Perhaps
this may seem to have been a false or superficial solidarity, but it worked. Facing
little or no religious strife for the first full century of its presence in Denmark,
Lutheranism thrived, giving the Oldenburg state a degree of confessional stability
that must have been the envy of its neighbours.
Reformation and Culture
59
1 . T H E E A R LY R E F O R M AT I O N I N T H E O L D E N BU RG
LANDS
The Roman Catholic Church in late medieval Denmark was disproportionately
wealthy, with about one-third of Danish land, and nearly one-half of Norway, in
its possession. The episcopacy wielded enormous political power, holding twelve
of the thirty-six seats—a full third—on the Council of State under Frederik
I. The concentration of so much power and wealth into the hands of so few,
extreme even by the standards of the aristocracy, was bound to excite envy and
antipathy. Given the social tensions that arose during the reign of Christian
II, the lower orders were particularly resentful of the privileged position of the
upper clergy. A host of other conditions exacerbated this dislike: the heavy tithes
and church fees levied on the peasantry, absenteeism and widespread ignorance
among the clergy. The bishops were, with few exceptions, indistinguishable from
other aristocrats despite the loftiness of their calling. There were bright spots
in this otherwise dismal picture, however. Erasmian humanism had adherents
among the Catholic clergy, and found its most eloquent Danish exponent in
Poul Helgesen (Paulus Helie), professor of theology at Copenhagen. Helgesen
was fiercely critical of Rome and of the venality of the bishops. His many
students, future leaders of Danish Lutheranism, listened intently; unfortunately
for Catholicism, his superiors in Denmark did not.¹
Oblivious to calls for reform, the Catholic episcopacy was already beginning to
lose its grip on political and spiritual power, but it would take more than the dire
warnings of men like Helgesen to change the ecclesiastical order. The Reformation
in Denmark followed the same basic pattern as it did in the German states: a
combination of grass-roots religious revolt and an assault on the privileges of the
Church, led by secular authorities, brought down Catholicism and permitted
the creation of a Protestant state church. In Denmark, the process began with
the royal house—not from any interest in promoting a new theology, but rather
with the intent of fashioning a national Catholic church, answerable to the king
and not to Rome. This aim dovetailed perfectly into the general political agenda
of Christian II, whose policies sought to subordinate all functions of the state
to the royal will. Later in life, while in exile, Christian II would dally for a
few years with the Lutheran faith, but while he ruled he was uninterested in
other creeds. What he wanted was a reformed Catholicism placed firmly under
royal control, and he attempted to do just that in his ‘Land Law’ of 1521–2.
The Land Law nearly cut off all ties with Rome: clergy could no longer appeal
¹ Kai Hørby, ‘Humanist Profiles in the Danish Reform Movement’, in Leif Grane and Kai Hørby
(eds.), Die dänische Reformation vor ihrem internationalen Hintergrund (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
und Ruprecht, 1990), 28–38; P. G. Lindhardt, Nederlagets mænd: det katolske bispevældes sidste dage
i Danmark (Copenhagen: Gad, 1968).
60
The Development of the Consensual State
to the Holy See; with the king, not the Pope, would rest the final authority for
the investiture of bishops. Christian did aspire to higher goals than the mere
expansion of his authority, for he supported the right of priests to marry and
set forward strict standards for the education and behaviour of clergy. It is a
remarkable document, presaging the first acts of Henry VIII’s break with Rome
in many ways. The religious clauses of the Land Law met with considerable
resistance, in the Council and in the clergy.
Christian II’s attempts to implement his proposed state church proved to be
enormously damaging to Catholicism in Denmark. He tried his best to pack the
most important ecclesiastical posts in the realm with political appointees who were
likely to support him from the pulpit and at the Council table. A sharp controversy
arose over the highest church office in the realm, that of the archbishop at Lund.
Christian tried to force the cathedral chapter at Lund to accept his personal
nominees for the post. The chapter and the papacy each put forward their own
candidates, but Christian persisted in nominating three unsuitable men in quick
succession. Two of them the chapter refused, with papal support. The third,
and most objectionable, was the king’s favourite Didrik Slagheck, whose brief
and undignified career as archbishop would end in his execution at Copenhagen.
Such actions could not help but arouse suspicion among the members of his
Council. Christian readily confirmed these suspicions in 1520 by asking his
uncle, Duke Friedrich (‘Frederick the Wise’) of Saxony, for the services of a
few good preachers. The timing was poor, of course; anyone recommended by
Luther’s protector was not likely to be a loyal servant of Rome. In 1520 and
1521, both Martin Reinhardt and Andreas von Karlstadt came to Christian’s
court to preach. They were not well received, and even the king was disappointed
by the tone of their sermons. Both of them left Denmark in a hurry—Reinhardt
stayed for a mere three weeks—but their appearance cannot have allayed the
Council’s fears that their king was treading dangerously close to heresy.²
To the ruling elite, Christian’s religious policies added to the general social
disruption that the king had already caused in Denmark and Sweden. They would
not allow Frederik I the same latitude. Accordingly the religious provisions of
Frederik’s coronation charter—penned by Bishop Ove Bille, the most moderate
of the churchmen—made it plain that the Council would not tolerate heresy in
Denmark. Frederik must defend the old faith; heretics would have to be driven
from the kingdom or forfeit their lives and property. Frederik readily agreed. If
the Council and the bishops thought that Frederik’s word protected them from
the onslaught of Lutheranism, they were fatally mistaken.
Shortly after Frederik’s coronation in 1524, popular support for the new
faith grew in Denmark. The primary means of transmission between Wittenberg
² Allan Green, Biskopar i Lunds stift 1060–1637 och händelser kring dem (Lund: Gleerups, 1973),
123–26; Martin Schwarz Lausten, Reformationen i Danmark (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag,
1987), 10–20.
Reformation and Culture
61
and the Nordic kingdoms were the Duchies—the ‘gateway’ of the Danish
Reformation, as P. G. Lindhardt called them. Lutheran writings and preachers
were already circulating throughout the Duchies, but in 1522 they had begun
to receive at least tacit encouragement from secular authorities. Frederik I, who
still formally ruled in the Duchies, did not lift a finger to stop the movement.
When the Lutheran preacher Herman Tast began to preach in the Lutheran
fashion at Husum in 1522, Frederik did nothing, despite the protests of the
Catholic clergy of the town. Nor did the king do anything to discourage
his eldest son, Duke Christian. When Frederik gave Christian administrative
responsibility over Haderslev and Tørning, the 22-year-old duke—already a
zealous Lutheran—unseated the Catholic dean in Haderslev, seized Church
property, and installed Lutheran preachers. Now that it had an official foothold
in the Duchies, Lutheranism spread quickly. The Holstein nobility openly
attacked the clergy in the Diets at Rendsburg and Kiel in 1525–6. One by one,
the towns in the Duchies went over to the new faith. Still Frederik did not try to
stop the movement. Even a personal appeal from the Pope fell on deaf ears.³
Slesvig and Holstein had fallen to the new faith; Denmark would be next.
By 1524, Lutheranism was already winning souls in the larger towns of Jutland,
as Lutheran pamphlets—printed in Germany but written in Danish—made
their way into the hands of burghers in Denmark. Christian II, then in exile in
Wittenberg, lent a hand as well. He and his long-suffering wife had just converted
to Lutheranism, to the consternation of his Imperial brother-in-law, and the
deposed king commissioned a Danish translation of the New Testament. It was
poorly executed but proved to be popular all the same. The spirit of religious
rebellion spread throughout the rural areas as well, since it fed the peasantry’s
deep-seated anger towards the privileged orders. It was this, more than anything
else, that the Council feared; for the 1525 peasants’ war in Germany had
demonstrated what the marriage of religious fanaticism and socio-economic
malaise could to do desperate peasants.⁴
Frederik I did not convert to Lutheranism, nor would he displace Roman
Catholicism as the official faith of the realm. But neither would he do anything
to discourage the Lutheran zealots. He shocked the Council by marrying two
of his children into Lutheran princely families: Duke Christian to Dorothea of
Sachsen-Lauenburg, and his daughter Dorothea to Duke Albrecht of Prussia,
grand master of the Teutonic Order. By 1525, Frederik had gone from tacitly
allowing Lutheran preaching to openly encouraging it. He extended his personal
guarantee of protection to Hans Tausen, a former monk and a disciple of Luther’s
³ H. V. Gregersen, Reformationen i Sønderjylland (Aabenraa: Historisk samfund for
Sønderjylland, 1986), 49–166; Bjørn Kornerup, ‘Fra Hertug Christians Reformation i Tørning
Len’, Kirkehistoriske samlinger, 6th ser., 5 (1945–7), 545–8; Martin Schwarz Lausten, Christian den
3. og kirken 1537–1559 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1987), 17–20.
⁴ Martin Schwarz Lausten, Christian 2. mellem paven og Luther (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag,
1995), 17–137.
62
The Development of the Consensual State
who had been preaching to large crowds in Viborg. Soon Frederik would extend
this protection to all Lutherans. In two successive herredage at Odense in 1526
and 1527, he finally broached the religious issue directly with the Council of
State. At the first meeting, he announced that bishops in Denmark would not
seek papal investiture, and the fees that new bishops traditionally paid to the
papacy would hereafter go to the king. The king, not the Pope, was the head of
the church in Denmark. Frederik had thereby violated one of the most sacrosanct
provisions in his coronation charter. Council protests would not move him. The
following year, when the Council met again at Odense, begging him to subdue
heresy, Frederik was even more unyielding. Lutheranism was now beginning to
take root in the aristocracy, splitting the Council; Frederik took full advantage of
the Council’s disunity. In a statement remarkable for its expression of religious
toleration, he announced that he would undertake no action against those who
deserted the Catholic faith. He would not force anyone to leave the Catholic
Church, but neither would he force anyone to remain. He would not lift a
hand to stop clerical marriage, nor would he persecute anyone who preached the
‘true Word of God’. Lutheranism, in other words, now had the stamp of royal
approval.⁵
The Odense herredage of 1526–7 opened the floodgates. Over the next
three years, the larger towns of the realm gave themselves wholly over to
Lutheranism. Native-born preachers, many of them accomplished theologians
who had studied under Helgesen and later at Wittenberg, attracted huge
crowds. In Viborg, the birthplace of the Lutheran movement in Denmark,
all twelve of the city’s Catholic parishes housed Lutheran congregations by
1529, and the following year Lutheran worship services were held in Viborg
Cathedral itself. Jørgen Jensen Sadolin, Hans Tausen’s brother-in-law, founded
an academy for the training of Lutheran clergy there, with the royal blessing.
Malmø, which did not have a strong ecclesiastical presence within its walls,
had completely succumbed to Lutheranism by 1529. The process was slightly
slower in Copenhagen, where the defiant bishop of Sjælland, Joachim Rønnow,
held great influence. Copenhagen would not be a Lutheran town until the
outbreak of the Count’s War, but some of the greater parishes in the city were in
Protestant hands by 1531. Popular anticlericalism was so strong that monasteries
and other Catholic institutions dissolved by themselves without provocation.
The mendicant orders were especially hard hit. In 1528, there were twenty-eight
Franciscan houses in the kingdom; four years later, there remained a mere
seven.⁶
⁵ Suno Scharling, ‘Frederik I’s kirkepolitik’, Kirkehistoriske samlinger (1974), 40–88; Walter
Göbell, ‘Das Vordringen der Reformation in Dänemark und in den Herzogtümern unter der
Regierung Friedrichs I.’, in Peter Meinhold (ed.), Schleswig-Holsteinische Kirchengeschichte, 6 vols.
(Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1977–98), iii. 35–113.
⁶ Martin Schwarz Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, 2nd edn (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1987), 120.
Reformation and Culture
63
It seems entirely plausible that Frederik could easily have carried the Reformation through to its logical conclusion and in doing so have spared his son
the trouble. Certainly Frederik had already done most of the preliminary work.
Although he was in so many ways a puppet of his aristocracy, at the Odense
herredage he brazenly threw aside his coronation charter, revealing that the Council’s control over his actions was more ephemeral than it had initially appeared.
Perhaps that was his motive all along, to break the power of the Council by
gradually embracing the popular reform movement. He was clearly prepared to
do so. He had temporarily abolished Catholic worship services at the cathedral
in Copenhagen in 1530. That same year he also summoned a herredag to meet at
the capital, the primary purpose of which was to host a religious disputation and
settle the religious strife. Although the leading Danish evangelicals did meet in
Copenhagen that summer, hammering out a collective statement of faith—the
Copenhagen Confession (Confessio Hafniensis) of 1530—the herredag otherwise
came to nought. The threat of war loomed that summer, as Christian II returned
to Catholicism and the emperor’s good graces. Under such circumstances, Frederik I did not dare alienate the Catholic majority on the Council any further.
The hoped-for disputation did not take place, and the official Reformation was
shelved.⁷
Lutheranism was nonetheless well established in the kingdom when the
Count’s War erupted in the spring of 1534, with or without official sanction.
It was well that it had been, for otherwise the civil war might have assumed a
bitter confessional nature that could well have rendered it even more bloody and
divisive. Christian III in 1536 would not face the task of mass proselytization,
but rather that of organization. As he worked to heal the wounds caused by two
years of civil war, he would also have to impose order upon chaos, to reshape a
disorganized popular movement into a well-ordered state church.
2 . T H E C R E AT I O N O F T H E S TAT E C H U RC H
Organization was a task for which Christian III was well suited. The creation of a
state church went smoothly and rapidly. In large part, this owed to the character
of the king. Christian III gained a great deal, in wealth and power, from the
Reformation, but there is no denying that he was a pious man who believed that
he was doing the Lord’s work. He was a capable administrator and statesman,
but he considered the rebuilding of the church to be his most important duty.
Though zealous, Christian III was no fanatic; he personally despised Catholicism,
but he was sufficiently pragmatic to recognize that he could not force his subjects
to accept a new religion by fiat. His practical approach to religious reform
⁷ Niels Knud Andersen, Confessio Hafniensis: den københavnske Bekendelse af 1530 (Copenhagen:
Gad, 1954).
64
The Development of the Consensual State
imparted to the first official stages of the Danish Reformation a gentle and
coaxing character, with little or no active persecution of non-believers. It was a
great asset, too, that the king had been through this before, in his reformation
of Haderslev and Tørning. His previous experience gave him a blueprint of sorts
for effecting the reformation of the kingdom. In this regard, Christian III is
probably unique in Reformation Europe: he created not one, but two Protestant
state churches in his lifetime.
Christian III did not act alone. He was cautious in everything, and took
action only after extensive consultation with ‘experts’. Denmark had a core
of highly educated and devoted Lutheran preachers. All of them had studied
at Wittenberg; most of them, such as Hans Tausen, Frans Vormordsen, and
Jørgen Jensen Sadolin, had been instrumental in the evangelical movement of
the 1520s and early 1530s. Christian relied above all on a relative newcomer,
Peder Palladius (1503–60), who held a doctorate in theology and was one
of Luther’s most distinguished pupils. As bishop-superintendent of Sjælland
(1537–60)—unofficially the highest post in the new hierarchy—Palladius
was utterly dedicated to the pursuit of his master’s vision. Christian III was
careful, however, not to rely exclusively on native-born talent. He wanted the
counsel and approval of the leading men of the faith. Throughout his life, he
would keep up a lively correspondence with both Martin Luther and Philip
Melanchthon, but it was Luther’s disciple Johannes Bugenhagen (1485/6–1558)
who would come to play a direct part in the establishment of the state church.
On Christian’s invitation, Bugenhagen came to Denmark in 1537 and resided
there for nearly eighteen months. Bugenhagen and the king became close friends
as well as working partners. When Christian III and Queen Dorothea formally
received their crowns on the king’s thirty-fourth birthday (coincidentally, the first
anniversary of the arrest of the Catholic bishops, 12 August 1537), Bugenhagen
presided over the ceremonies and crowned the royal couple himself. The first
official ecclesiastical ‘constitution’ of the new order, the Church Ordinance of
1537, came largely from the pen of the Wittenberg divine.⁸
The Copenhagen Recess of October 1536 sketched the outlines of the reformed
church; the Church Ordinance of September 1537 provided the details. The
Ordinance was vague on matters of theology and liturgy, which were initially
left up to the clergy. Instead, it dealt primarily with organizational matters.
Seven superintendents—presiding over the episcopal sees of Sjælland (Roskilde),
Fyn-Lolland-Falster (Odense), Vendelbo (Ålborg), Århus, Viborg, and Ribe in
Jutland, and Skåne (Lund)—replaced the defunct Catholic episcopacy. They
were to be elected by the priests in the larger towns and the deans, while
⁸ Lausten, Christian den 3. og kirken, 20–31; Martin Schwarz Lausten, Peder Palladius og
kirken 1537–1560 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1987), 17–30, 35–185; Martin Schwarz
Lausten, ‘König und Kirche: über das Verhältnis der weltlichen Obrigkeit zur Kirche bei Johannes
Bugenhagen und König Christian III. von Dänemark’, in H.-G. Leder (ed.), Johannes Bugenhagen:
Gestalt und Wirkung (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1984), 144–67.
Reformation and Culture
65
the priests themselves would be selected by the individual congregations. The
bishop-superintendents were to keep a watchful eye over their districts by
means of annual visitations. A system of regular meetings would allow for the
governance of the church: national synods, at which the king would meet all
of the superintendents; regional assemblies (landemoder), where the individual
bishops could consult with their deans and a few priests from the larger parishes;
and priestly assemblies (kalenter), local meetings at which lesser clergy could voice
their concerns and hear news from the synods and the landemoder. The Ordinance
made a sharp distinction between the secular authority of the king and Council
and the spiritual authority of the bishop-superintendents. Though the monarchy
had created the church, it would not meddle in theological matters, reserving
to itself only the right to approve the appointment of new superintendents and
the responsibility of supporting the church financially. Conversely, the clergy
would play no role in the making of policy, being explicitly barred from posts
as councillors or fiefholders. This was the theory; in practice the bifurcation of
authority was not quite so well defined.⁹
The 1537 Ordinance reflected Christian III’s desire to reform the church
while keeping bitterness and strife at a minimum, especially in the treatment
of Catholics and Catholic institutions. Parish priests could choose between
abandoning their congregations or adopting the new religion, and many chose
the latter course; given the shortage of qualified preachers, it was well that so
many did so. Other Catholic religious personnel were free to leave their cloisters
or to stay. If they opted to remain in their cloisters, however, they would
have to live upright lives and receive instruction in the Lutheran faith from an
approved parson. Christian III and his successors honoured this promise: the
last operational cloister, the convent at Maribo on Lolland, did not close its
doors until the death of its last nun in 1588. Only the abandoned cloisters and
churches were physically dismantled—in Roskilde, all but three of the town’s
twenty-odd churches and chapels fell into disuse after the Reformation and were
gradually taken down stone by stone—but in the countryside the parish churches
remained intact. So as not to offend the sensibilities of reluctant converts, the
1537 Ordinance enjoined the clergy to allow some Catholic liturgical practices
to continue; parsons were also requested not to include anti-Catholic diatribes
in their sermons unless local circumstances warranted them. There was some
minor resistance to the new faith nonetheless, as for example when the cathedral
chapters at Roskilde and Lund refused to accept Lutheran teachings in the mid
1540s. A couple of the cloisters, similarly, disregarded the prescriptions of the
Ordinance. Popular opposition to Lutheranism was limited to Vendelbo, the
⁹ Lausten, Christian den 3. og kirken, 41–57; Steinar Imsen, Superintendenten: en studie i
kirkepolitikk, kirkeadministrasjon og statsudvikling mellom reformasjon og eneveldet (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982), 113–53; Terje Ellingsen, ‘Det nye embetet i kirken: superintendentens plass
i norsk reformasjonshistorie’, in Ingmar Brohed (ed.), Reformationens konsolidering i de nordiska
länderna 1540–1610 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1990), 178–97.
66
The Development of the Consensual State
diocese based at Ålborg, where even at the century’s end relations between clergy
and laity were tense. But these were isolated occurrences. The gentle persistence
of clerics such as Sadolin and Palladius generally wore down such resistance.¹⁰
Christian III had declared that the sole theological yardstick of the state
church was to be the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and with this sentiment the
theologians did not argue. Their common educational background, at Wittenberg
with Luther, gave them a common outlook on matters theological. It would
not be until the 1550s and 1560s, as a flood of refugees from abroad imported
more radical religious ideas, that heterodoxy would pose a problem for the
Danish church fathers. Differing ideas on proper liturgy, however, abounded.
Peder Palladius, who was as prolific a writer as he was dutiful a superintendent,
compiled the more common liturgical practices in his Altar Book of 1556, but
it did not yet have official sanction as a standardized liturgy binding on the
entire kingdom. In fact, until the end of Christian III’s reign the state church
did not even have an official Bible. Christian II’s translation of 1524 had been
well received despite its flaws, but it was in short supply. Christiern Pedersen
received the king’s commission to translate Luther’s Bible into Danish. The
result, the ‘Christian III Bible’, was printed in Hamburg in a single folio edition
in 1550. Still, a general shortage of suitable religious books—Bibles, catechisms,
and psalters—would plague the church well into the next century.
Shortages of books and of suitable preachers were directly related to financial
concerns. Christian III had promised to protect and support the church, but he
and the Council were tight-fisted where it came to funding the needs of their
creation. This parsimony is understandable, for the central administration was
also trying to pay off the debts incurred in the Count’s War and to bankroll a
growing military establishment. These were important mitigating circumstances,
but the church was the most obvious victim of the king’s spending priorities.
The letter-books of the Chancery abound with complaints, from priests as well
as bishops, about the parlous financial condition of the church. Unmarried
Catholic priests had barely been able to eke out a living on their meagre incomes;
Lutheran parsons, most of them supporting families of their own, found the task
almost impossible. Priests whose parishes were situated on nobly owned lands,
where noble families held ‘rights of patronage’ to the churches, suffered even
more. The bishops pointed out that their own salaries were roughly equal to
those of more modest artisans. Royal support for educational institutions was
minimal. The University of Copenhagen could not support a respectable faculty
and could do little to help students from humbler origins. The lower schools
fared even worse, as Christian III had left the Latin schools in the cathedral towns
to their own devices. This was a truly short-sighted policy, as Denmark’s most
pressing ecclesiastical need was for parish priests. Without a viable educational
¹⁰ Hal Koch and Bjørn Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie, 8 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1950–66), iv. 46–7.
Reformation and Culture
67
system, open to all orders, it would be all but impossible to keep the churches
supplied with trained clergy.¹¹
3 . T H E S TAT E C H U RC H A N D T H E M O N A RC H Y
I N T H E ‘ C O N F E S S I O N A L AG E ’
The Copenhagen Recess and the Church Ordinance drew a firm line between
the secular authority of the crown and the spiritual authority of the bishopsuperintendents. A true separation of these authorities, however, was an
impossibility in the confessional climate of late sixteenth-century Europe. The
church was in fact part of the state, and the confessional integrity of the
realm required a strong hand. Post-Tridentine Catholicism was streamlined and
aggressive, and presented a threat to the very existence of Protestantism, or at
least Protestant statesmen sincerely believed that it did. Protestantism itself was
becoming fragmented and ridden with faction. As new and potentially dangerous
ideas circulated by means of the printed word, all states would have to confront
the problems of heterodoxy. Maintaining confessional unity within Denmark
was essential if the Oldenburg state were to avoid the bloody path that in France
and the Netherlands had led to civil war. Neither Christian III nor Frederik II
would use his clergy as civil servants as extensively as their Vasa cousins were
already doing, but the twin swords of secular and divine authority would cross
all the same.
The necessity of maintaining order within the church meant that royal
intrusion into ecclesiastical affairs was unavoidable. There was no longer an
archbishop within the hierarchy, so the king—as ‘father to the superintendents’,
in Christian III’s words—was the final authority in matters that could not be
settled by the bishops alone. As protector of the church and therefore of the clergy,
the king not infrequently intervened in disputes between clergy and laity, even
when the issues involved were trivial ones. Frederik II, for example, repeatedly
came to the defence of new parish priests whose congregations tried to force them
to marry their predecessors’ widows, and sometimes to protect preachers from
the wrath of overbearing noblemen. Conversely, the king—especially Frederik
II—would see to it personally that unruly, incompetent, or disreputable priests
lost their parishes, or would pardon those who had been disciplined by their
superintendents for minor infractions if their transgressions were the result of
old age or infirmity. Protecting and disciplining the clergy was, after all, part
of the king’s obligation to the state church. Appointing clergymen to vacant
posts, however, was not, and yet both Christian III and Frederik II did just this
repeatedly. It should be pointed out, though, that neither king did this with an
¹¹ Lausten, Christian den 3. og kirken, 109–28; Lausten, Peder Palladius, 50–93, 225–311;
Koch and Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie, iv. 57–80, 98–100.
68
The Development of the Consensual State
intention of rewarding political supporters or influential families as Christian II
had done.
Frederik II was far more active than his father in extending royal authority into
areas that the 1537 Ordinance had protected from secular power. As in his habit
of intervening in clerical appointments, this should not be interpreted as the
exercise of power for power’s sake, but rather as an expression of genuine concern
that the state church not descend into chaos. Frederik dutifully consulted with
members of the theological faculty at the university—the so-called ‘most learned
ones’ (høilærde)—but he did not shy away from making changes in the most
minute liturgical matters. He stipulated the books that every parish priest should
have in his library, set standardized times for worship services in the towns, and
set minimal standards of competence for all preachers.
The line separating spiritual from secular authority was even more blurred
where it came to the regulation of public morals. Again, this was an area that
had previously been within the purview of the Catholic Church, but which
now fell to the king. Adultery, promiscuity, fornication, and other—mostly
sexual—transgressions were now civil matters as well as spiritual, which involved
the fiefholders and other local officials as much as they did the clergy. The
annual fief account books (lensregnskaber) are filled with the lurid details of
moral crimes. Special courts, the so-called tamperretter, were supposed to be held
quarterly in each diocese to rule on cases involving domestic relations, sexual
improprieties, and blasphemy. At the tamperretter, both secular and ecclesiastical
authorities presided over the proceedings. Penalties for lesser infractions were
generally administered by local clergy, and would be more humiliating than
painful—commonly consisting of public penance before the offender’s fellow
parishioners. More serious moral crimes, like incest, were disciplined by civil
authorities, and the punishments could be ferocious. Although some scholars note
a tendency towards greater severity in public morals cases after the Reformation,
it should be pointed out that, in some areas at least, the demise of Catholicism
prompted leniency in morality legislation. Frederik II’s ‘Marriage Ordinance’
of 1582, inspired by Niels Hemmingsen’s writings on the institution, allowed
divorce for a wide range of reasons, including infidelity, impotence, leprosy,
venereal disease, and outlawry.¹²
Nothing required royal supervision and guidance more than the maintenance
of theological purity. This had not been much of a problem under Christian III;
the clergy shared a common theological outlook, and Lutheranism was not yet
riddled with faction. By the late 1550s all that had changed. The Catholic revival
in the bishoprics of the Empire, closely associated with the Jesuit order, aroused
¹² Lausten, Christian den 3. og kirken, 129–213; Imsen, Superintendenten, 156–223; Troels
Dahlerup, ‘Den kirkelige disciplin i Danmark 1536–1610’, in Brohed (ed.), Reformationens
konsolidering, 390–408; Anne Riising, ‘Tamperrettens funktion og domspraksis’, in Peter Kristjan
Iversen, Knud Prange, and Sigurd Rambusch (eds.), Festskrift til Johan Hvidtfeldt på halvfjerdsårsdagen
12. december 1978 (Copenhagen: Arkivvæsenet, 1978), 393–412; DFH, i. 58–9, 87–90.
Reformation and Culture
69
much concern among Danish theologians and the ruling elite. Worse yet,
Protestantism was beginning to crack under the pressure of its own success.
The spread of Calvinism inevitably caused some friction within the Protestant
ranks, and soon even Lutheranism itself began to pull apart. A new generation
of Lutherans had drawn inspiration from Luther’s younger associate Philip
Melanchthon. Melanchthon’s followers, frequently called ‘Philippists’, took a
much more indulgent attitude towards Calvinism than did those Lutherans
who stuck faithfully by Martin Luther’s theological views. The rift between
Philippists and orthodox Lutherans, which focused on the interpretation of the
Holy Eucharist, grew visibly during the 1560s and 1570s. To the Philippists,
Calvinists might have been ‘erring brethren’, but they were also potential allies in
the struggle against Rome all the same. To the orthodox faction, Calvinists were
heretics whose ideas were just as repugnant as those of Catholics, and Philippists
were insidious ‘crypto-Calvinists’.
The rift within Lutheranism, though largely a German phenomenon, would
have its repercussions in Denmark as well. As the theologians of Christian
III’s day began to die off in the 1550s and 1560s, they were supplanted by
younger men, men who had studied under Melanchthon or his disciples at
Wittenberg and Rostock. Within a decade of Frederik II’s accession, the entire
episcopacy was uniformly Philippist in its sympathies. So, too, was the bulk
of the theological faculty at the University of Copenhagen. Chief among the
Philippist intellectuals was Niels Hemmingsen (1513–1600). Hemmingsen,
who had studied under Melanchthon at Wittenberg, was a popular professor at
Copenhagen with a large following and a significant corpus of published writings.
His students included not only some of the more prominent Danish churchmen
of the later sixteenth century, but also a number of influential statesmen; Niels
Kaas, Frederik II’s chancellor, had been a member of Hemmingsen’s academic
household. Hemmingsen was as well respected at court as he was at the university,
and was an important member of the circle of intellectuals who were so often in
Frederik’s presence. Frederik’s favourite court chaplains, Anders Sørensen Vedel
and Christoffer Knoff, were among Hemmingsen’s closest associates. It should
come as no surprise, then, that Frederik’s personal piety leaned in the direction
of Philippism. Several visitors to the court came away with the impression that
the king, who spurned the cult of saints and eschewed much of the formality of
Lutheran liturgy, was actually an avowed Calvinist.
Like his father before him, Frederik II asserted that the unalterable theological
foundation of the Danish state church was the Augsburg Confession; and like
Christian, he was served by a clergy that shared his beliefs. Keeping that kind of
solidarity intact was no easy job. There was a vocal orthodox minority among
the clergy, including the court chaplain Heinrich von Bruchofen. Because of
Denmark’s position astride the Sound, a constant flow of foreign merchants and
refugees fleeing religious persecution passed through the country, bringing the
Danish population into contact with a bewildering variety of sects and creeds.
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The Development of the Consensual State
The juxtaposition of so many competing religious beliefs, Frederik knew, could
lead to disruption, even to war or rebellion, as had happened in France and the
Low Countries. Frederik’s overriding goal was harmony, and the means to that
end, he reasoned, was not persecution. Nor was the answer to be found in a
state religion that was so vague on major points of theology that virtually anyone
could embrace it. Frederik’s chosen solution was instead to prevent controversy
by simply banning controversy. The state and the church must work together
to control the flow of religious ideas into the realm, and squelch any attempt
to dispute controversial issues in public. Frederik II, in other words, was not
interested in dictating conscience. He wanted only to prevent useless religious
disputes, disputes that could weaken the kingdom and leave it vulnerable to
Catholic aggression.¹³
This policy of enforced non-controversy was surprisingly successful. It was not
entirely new, for Christian III had already been forced to deal with heterodoxy
on a limited scale. In 1553, a group of Sacramentarians, led by the Pole Jan Laski
(Johannes a Lasco), left England, seeking refuge in Denmark. This Christian
III gently but firmly refused; Laski’s followers, unwilling to swear allegiance to
the Augsburg Confession as Christian demanded, left. No disputes arose over
the incident, save for some international criticism of Christian’s ‘uncharitable’
conduct, but the lesson was not lost on the king. He proclaimed immediately
thereafter that henceforth all foreigners wishing to reside in Denmark would have
to abide by the Lutheran faith, at least outwardly. Under Frederik II, the number
of non-Lutheran foreigners in Denmark swelled considerably. Many of these were
transients, passing through the Sound or awaiting a berth on a ship at Helsingør,
but a growing number were refugees seeking asylum. After the outbreak of revolt
in the Netherlands in 1566, scores of Dutch Anabaptists, Sacramentarians, and
Calvinists came to Helsingør and Copenhagen to start a new life, and many of
them fully expected to be able to practise their religions without interference.
Frederik reacted swiftly and decisively. A royal edict of 1562 decreed that all
books published in Denmark would have to be examined by the høilærde and
could not go into print before they received the faculty’s imprimatur. Foreign
religious literature would have to undergo the same process before it could be
sold or distributed within Denmark, so that alien theologies would not result in
‘the introduction of many sects and much damage to the true religion’. Seven
years later, Frederik revised his father’s ‘Foreigner Articles’ of 1553, adding that
resident aliens who subscribed to the Articles and failed to live up to them would
forfeit their property and their lives. The king’s drive for confessional unity did
not stop with books and heterodox foreigners. He wanted to ensure that his
own clergy did not engage in endless debates over heated issues like that of the
Real Presence. And so, in June 1574, he prohibited debate. Theological disputes
in other lands, he argued, came from ‘troublesome people’ who sought only
¹³ Koch and Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie, iv. 69–73, 103–4, 129–56, 177–9.
Reformation and Culture
71
to further ‘their own ambitions more than they do God’s praise and honour’.
Priests, therefore, were not to preach anything that contradicted the Augsburg
Confession, nor were they to engage in disputations on divisive issues.¹⁴
Nothing illustrates Frederik’s stubborn resistance to religious controversy
better than his response to the late sixteenth-century Lutheran statement of
faith, the Formula and Book of Concord. The ‘Concord’, written by leading
Saxon divines and sponsored by Frederik II’s brother-in-law, Elector August of
Saxony, was an attempt to promote unity among the German Lutheran princes.
As a unifier, however, the Concord was an abject failure. August had recently
purged his court of Calvinists and Philippists, and orthodox Lutherans like Jacob
Andreae composed the document. The Concord was overtly orthodox; its clauses
tacitly shut out Calvinist and Philippist alike. Frederik II had already clashed with
his old friend August over theological issues: in 1575, August had complained
bitterly about the Calvinist sentiments expounded by Hemmingsen in the treatise
Syntagma institutionum christianarum (1574). Though Frederik tried to defend
his favourite divine, he also wanted to keep August’s friendship, and he dismissed
Hemmingsen—with honour—from his post at the university in 1579. Frederik
was not nearly so receptive to August’s promotion of the Concord. Like many
of his contemporaries, he believed that the Concord promoted not harmony
but discord. Ignoring August’s warnings that a Calvinist plot had taken root
in Denmark’s clergy, he banned the Concord from his lands in July 1580.
Possession of the book, or even discussion of its contents, would be punished
severely. The king burned his personal copies, sent to him by his sister Anna.
The Concord, he argued, contained ‘teachings which are foreign and alien to us
and to our churches, [and which] could easily disrupt the unity which . . . these
kingdoms have hitherto maintained’.¹⁵
Royal control over the state church allowed the monarchy to promote good
order in society, maintain high standards in the clergy, and minimize confessional
disorder. This control also paid more subtle, but no less rich, political dividends:
it gave the monarchy a means by which it could promote state policy, a channel
for the dissemination of propaganda. Both Christian III and Frederik II employed
the clergy in this capacity by reviving the old Catholic practice of ‘prayer days’
(dies rogationum, or bededage in Danish), special penitential ceremonies intended
to calm divine wrath in hard times. Both Christian III and Frederik II made
frequent use of the prayer days—Christian ten times in twenty-two years,
Frederik twenty-three times in twenty-nine years—and the two kings took a
leading role in designing these special devotions. Most often, the motivation
behind the calling of prayer days stemmed from natural calamities such as
¹⁴ Lausten, Peder Palladius, 206–24; Paul Douglas Lockhart, Frederik II and the Protestant Cause:
Denmark’s Role in the Wars of Religion, 1559–1596 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 77–8.
¹⁵ Ibid. 163–74; Bjørn Kornerup, ‘Danmark og Konkordienbogen’, Kirkehistoriske samlinger,
7th ser., 3 (1957–9), 217–48.
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The Development of the Consensual State
pestilence or famine, but increasingly the kings decreed prayer days for more
blatantly political ends. Christian III, for example, announced bededage in 1546
to pray for German Protestants during the Schmalkaldic War; later on Frederik II
would do the same to beg God’s help for beleaguered Calvinists in France and the
Netherlands, and to thank the Almighty for victory over Sweden. They could also
be used as a means of enforcing social discipline, reprimanding the laity for their
sinful behaviour and calling them to repentance. Not until the reign of Christian
IV in the next century would the prayer days become an instrument for glorifying
the royal house and defending controversial policies, but still their purpose was
clearly political even in this earlier time. The prayer days further extended the
reach of the central authority, and of the king in particular, into the minds of
individual subjects. They made plain the king’s aspirations and values, giving them
a veneer of divine approval, and in a way that the Council could not control.¹⁶
4 . T H E R E F O R M AT I O N I N T H E PE R I PH E R A L L A N D S
The creation of the Lutheran state church in Denmark is one of the great success
stories of the Reformation. Outside Denmark itself, the results of the Oldenburg
Reformation were mixed at best. In the Duchies, of course, the change in religion
had already been effected before the Count’s War, and the new faith was already
solidly established by the time of Christian III’s victory. Although jurisdictional
disputes over parishes in Slesvig caused some contention between ecclesiastical
authorities in the Duchies and those in Denmark proper, in general the Duchies
did not present any confessional problems for the Oldenburgs. Philippism was as
pervasive in the German lands of the monarchy as it was in late sixteenth-century
Denmark; the outspoken hostility of Slesvig’s superintendent, Paul von Eitzen,
to the Concord accorded well with Frederik II’s doctrinal policies.¹⁷
In Norway, religious change was slower and more erratic. After Olav Engelbrechtsson’s ill-fated uprising in the Trondheim region, the northern kingdom
did not offer much resistance to Christian III. Once Danish authority was
established in Norway, however, the new faith did not progress at an encouraging
pace. The overall ambivalence of the Danish government towards Norway did
not help; nor did the reluctance of Christian III to start a war of religion by
pushing the new order by force on the Norwegians. Christian’s subtlety was
perhaps well meant, but without a genuine zeal for promoting the Reformed
¹⁶ Lausten, Peder Palladius, 187–200; Martin Schwarz Lausten, ‘Samarbejdet mellem Christian
d.3. og biskop Peder Palladius om de ekstraordinære bededage’, in Brohed (ed.), Reformationens
konsolidering, 45–56.
¹⁷ H. V. Gregersen, Slesvig og Holsten før 1830 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1981), 246–53;
Gregersen, Reformationen i Sønderjylland, 185–235; Erich Hoffmann, ‘Das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment im königlichen Anteil der Herzogtümer Schleswig und Holstein 1544–1721’, in Meinhold
(ed.), Kirchengeschichte, iv. 73–92.
Reformation and Culture
73
religion an unobtrusive church policy would yield unsatisfactory results. Norway,
unlike Denmark, had not undergone a popular, grass-roots reform movement
before 1536. Only in cosmopolitan Bergen, frequented by merchants from
the Hanseatic towns, was there a Lutheran community, and although some
landowning aristocrats (like Vincens Lunge) had paid lip-service to Lutheranism
this was primarily an excuse to loot the monasteries and grab church properties.
The common folk had no reason to embrace the teachings of the Wittenberg
reformer. In this regard, the woeful inadequacy of the Norwegian episcopacy
hindered the Reformation. Not one of the four bishop-superintendents who
replaced the five Catholic bishops was really a Lutheran. Their qualifications
were that they were vaguely familiar with the tenets of the Lutheran faith and that
none of them had objected to that faith. They were well intentioned but passive;
their priests, on the other hand, were often outright hostile to Protestantism.
Catholic worship services went on unhindered in the countryside. Only in the
late 1550s did the situation improve, as the second generation of superintendents rose to occupy the episcopal seats. Men such as Frants Berg (Oslo), Hans
Gaas (Trondheim), Jens Schjelderup (Bergen), and Jørgen Erikssen (Stavanger)
were young, Norwegian-born, zealous, and well educated. They had studied at
Wittenberg, Copenhagen, Rostock, and other Lutheran strongholds, and came
to office eager to reform their fatherland. As a group, they worked assiduously
to rebuild the neglected cathedral schools, conduct visitations of their dioceses,
and eliminate ‘papist superstitions’ among the laity. But they had only slightly
better luck than their sedentary predecessors. Their parish priests proved to be
only marginally better than those of the 1530s and 1540s. Some continued to
hold Mass in the Roman fashion, apparently without fear of punishment. The
Regency in Copenhagen complained in 1593 that the Norwegian priesthood
on the whole was guilty of ‘leading immoral lives in perpetual drunkenness and
fornication’.¹⁸
Given the prospective working conditions confronting the clergy in Norway,
it is small wonder that life as a parish priest did not attract the best men.
Educational opportunities were poor for Norwegians; pay was worse even than in
Denmark, and the workload was heavier. The average Norwegian parson served
twice as many parishioners as his Danish counterpart did, and over a geographic
area five times as large as the typical Danish parish. Worst of all, the Norwegian
people—whom one parson characterized as ‘priest-haters’—were not at all
cooperative. In the more remote regions, they stubbornly defied any attempt to
make them give up their old ‘superstitions’, frequently resorting to violence. Jens
Droby, a rural parson in Stavanger diocese, reported in 1576 that three of his
predecessors had been attacked, maimed, and even murdered by resentful laity.
Lutheranism would not make substantial inroads into the Norwegian hinterland
¹⁸ Regency to the superintendents in Norway, 30 July 1593, in Norske Rigs-Registranter tildeels i
Uddrag, 12 vols. (Christiania: Brögger & Christie, 1861–91), iii. 304.
74
The Development of the Consensual State
until the next century. Still, the Reformation had its benefits, at least for the
ruling elites. The confiscation of gold and silver ornaments from the cloisters
resulted in the near extinction of medieval Norwegian art, but it swelled the
royal coffers in Copenhagen, and the Norwegian nobility lost its only rival for
social and economic supremacy when the Catholic Church lost its properties and
privileges.¹⁹
And Iceland was worse, far worse, than Norway. Catholicism there was
hopelessly corrupt, even by the standards of the day. The bishops at Skálholt
and Hólar sired illegitimate children with their mistresses, practised simony and
nepotism without shame, and were confident that they were untouchable. Why
should they not have been confident? Iceland was too remote to merit anyone’s
attention. Neither Rome nor the archbishop of Nidaros, to whom they owed
direct obedience, had so much as lifted a finger to correct them; there was no
reason to think that the king in distant Denmark would behave any differently.
Protected by large bands of armed retainers, the Icelandic bishops were as much
warlords as clerics. They were no more learned than the unlettered priests over
whom they presided. In such conditions, imposing a new religion, and with it
obedience to Denmark, would not be easy. Iceland was wild, and the blood feud
was yet the final arbiter of political disputes.²⁰
Still, thanks to frequent visits to the island by merchants from Hamburg,
Lutheranism had already gained a toehold in Iceland even before the Count’s
War. Bolstered by a handful of priests who had studied in northern Germany
at the beginning of the Reformation, a secretive and scattered community of
Lutherans emerged. The population at large, however, found nothing wrong
with its peculiar brand of Catholicism and hence was not receptive to change. In
1533, the Alþing publicly condemned Lutheranism as heretical and prohibited
priests from preaching anything that contradicted Roman doctrine. Those with
Lutheran sympathies were forced to keep their convictions to themselves. The
popular distrust of foreign influences was so deeply ingrained in Icelandic society
that even when native Icelandic Lutherans took up positions of authority, backed
with the threat of force from Copenhagen, the Icelanders remained defiant.
Ögmundur Pálsson, the last Catholic bishop in Skálholt, inexplicably picked the
21-year-old Gissur Einarsson—a Lutheran—as his successor in 1536. The next
year, a commissioner from Christian III arrived to present the 1537 Church
Ordinance to the bishops and the Alþing. Gissur Einarsson’s presence did not
¹⁹ Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 141–71; Sverre Bagge and Knut Mykland, Norge i dansketiden
(Copenhagen: Politiken, 1987), 95; Ingun Montgomery, ‘Synoden som ett led i reformationskyrkans
inre konsolidering: synoderna i Bergen 1584 og 1589’, in Brohed (ed.), Reformations konsolidering,
74–95; Gudmund Sandvik, Prestegard og prestelønn (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1965); Gunnar
Christensen, Om Claus Billes og Truid Ulfstands misjon til Norge 1539 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget,
1975); Lausten, Peder Palladius, 380–6.
²⁰ Vilborg Auður Ísleifsdóttir, Siðbreytingin á Íslandi: byltingin að ofar (Reykjavik: Hið Íslenska
Bókmenntáfelag, 1997), 63–119.
Reformation and Culture
75
ease the transition. A committee of twelve churchmen in the Alþing rejected the
Ordinance, and Bishop Ögmundur—old and blind but still in power—declared
it to be heresy.
To enforce the Ordinance, Christian III dispatched Didrik von Minden to
Iceland with a small army. Minden, who was not actually a Dane—he came from
a merchant family in Hamburg—would serve as the king’s ‘officer’ (embedsmand )
in Iceland. He wasted no time, attacking the wealthy cloister at Viðey in May
1539, driving out the monks, plundering the abbey, and sending the confiscated
treasures to Copenhagen. The Icelanders were not intimidated, and they did
not bear grudges well. When Minden attempted to negotiate with Ögmundur
Pálsson, the bishop’s men butchered Minden and his entire party. Ögmundur’s
actions following the massacre at Skálholt defy explanation. He stepped down
as bishop in favour of the Lutheran Gissur Einarsson, and then collaborated
with his former enemy, Bishop Jón Arason of Hólar, to sabotage Bishop Gissur’s
efforts to introduce Lutheranism in southern Iceland. Another show of force from
the king ended Ögmundur’s intrigues. The new royal governor (høvedsmand ),
Christoffer Huitfeldt, seized Ögmundur and shipped him off to captivity in
Denmark. The old bishop died en route. The news of his death aroused great
anger in his former diocese, and much of the blame fell on Bishop Gissur, who
surrounded himself at all times with an armed guard. Still, Gissur’s firm but
kindly influence paid off. When he assembled his priests at Miðdalur in June
1542, only six out of the thirty-four present refused to bow to the Church
Ordinance. In the north, Bishop Jón Arason submitted to Danish authority that
same year.
Gissur Einarsson died only six years later—divine judgement, it was said,
for his personal war on crucifixes—and with his death at the age of 33 the
tenuous armistice in Iceland dissolved. The proponents of the old religion took
it as a signal to rebel against the Lutheran heresy and the foreign rule that
accompanied it. Having failed to block the nomination of Gissur’s appointed
successor at the Alþing, Bishop Jón Arason—who was both power-hungry and
an obdurate Catholic—led his private army south to take Skálholt by force. He
captured the new Lutheran bishop, Marteinn Einarsson, and reclaimed Skálholt
for Rome. Jón Arason then drove out the Danish secular administration from its
seat at Viðey. Clan rivalries prevented Bishop Jón from doing further damage.
A powerful chieftain and enemy of Jón, one Daði Guðmundsson, allied himself
with the Danish administrator Christian Skriver. They attacked and defeated Jón
Arason’s army at Sauðafell in 1550. After taking Jón prisoner, Daði and Christian
Skriver condemned and beheaded Bishop Jón and two of his sons at Skálholt
that November. This act made a martyr of Jón Arason, and prompted the killing
of Christian Skriver in retaliation, but with Jón Arason gone the rebellion was
easily crushed. Skálholt was already Lutheran and under Danish control; only the
north remained to be cowed. The appearance of another Danish mercenary army
in 1551 quickly brought Hólar to its knees; an assembly of priests at Oddeyri
76
The Development of the Consensual State
in June 1551 pledged its allegiance to Denmark and the Ordinance. The official
Reformation of Iceland was complete.²¹
There was much work to be done, however, in winning the hearts and
souls of the Icelandic people. Curiously, the Danish leadership paid more
attention to Iceland than it did to Norway, and with better results—at least
spiritually. In Denmark, two successive bishops of Sjælland—Peder Palladius
under Christian III, Poul Madsen under Frederik II—took a keen and paternal
interest in Icelandic affairs, ensuring that at least some Icelandic priests had the
opportunity to study in Copenhagen. The new Lutheran bishops in Iceland,
like their Catholic predecessors, were not learned men, but they were diligent
and they understood the value of promoting learning. Marteinn Einarsson and
Gísli Jónsson in Skálholt, and Ólafur Hjaltason in Hólar, were instrumental in
opening Latin schools in the cathedral towns and in providing liturgical texts
written in Icelandic. The greatest share of the credit for Lutheran success in
Iceland must go to Guðbrandur Þorláksson, a student of Niels Hemmingsen
and the bishop of Hólar from 1571 to 1627. Zealous and almost saintly in
demeanour, Guðbrandur understood the importance of the printed word, and
with Poul Madsen’s assistance he reopened Iceland’s first printing press. The
first complete Icelandic Bible (1584) and psalter (1589) rank foremost among
his achievements. Guðbrandur Þorláksson was vital to the popularization of
the Lutheran faith not only in Hólar but throughout all Iceland, and with it
acquiescence to Danish suzerainty, but it must be noted that neither goal could
be achieved to Denmark’s satisfaction. Even under Guðbrandur’s guidance,
Catholicism still persisted, and it was rumoured that in the most remote districts
there were Icelanders who continued to worship the pagan Norse gods. The
situation would not improve substantially in the next century.²²
The progress of the Reformation in Norway and Iceland illustrates the
problems that confronted the Oldenburg monarchs vis-à-vis the fashioning of
a composite monarchy into a cohesive state. Norway and Iceland shared a
common ancestry with Denmark, and had been linked by a common faith
and similar languages. The differences, however, were much greater than the
similarities. Wealthier, more populous, and more closely tied to the European
continent, Denmark had developed along very different lines from its northernmost possessions. Iceland was as alien to Danes as Danes were to Icelanders.
The clash of cultures is especially evident in the conflict over marriage law in
²¹ Jón Helgason, Islands Kirke fra Reformationen til vore Dage (Copenhagen: Gad, 1922), 15–48;
Vilborg Auður Ísleifsdóttir, Siðbreytingin á Íslandi, 141–338; Tryggvi Þórhallsson, Gissur biskup
Einarsson og siðaskiptin (Reykjavík: K. Tryggvason, 1989). A good English-language account can be
found in Michael Fell, And Some Fell into Good Soil: A History of Christianity in Iceland (New York:
Peter Lang, 1999), 89–98.
²² Hjalti Hugason, ‘Evangelisk traditionalism—Gudbrandur Thorlákssons konsolideringssynoder under 1570- och 1590-talen’, in Brohed (ed.), Reformationens konsolidering, 96–118; Jón
Helgason, Islands kirke, 48–58; Lausten, Peder Palladius, 313–33.
Reformation and Culture
77
late sixteenth-century Iceland. Just as in Denmark, the Reformation transformed
moral offences into secular matters. This was made official in Iceland with the
‘Great Judgement’ (Stóridómur) of June–July 1564, which though passed by
the Alþing was clearly a Danish initiative. The Stóridómur dealt extensively with
sexual offences, including incest, according to Danish standards. But Icelandic
standards were very different. Marriages between cousins were commonplace in
Iceland: owing to the seclusion and minuscule size of the settlements in Iceland’s
vast hinterland, the pool of prospective mates for any individual was limited. A
certain degree of inbreeding was unavoidable. Yet Frederik II and later Christian
IV persisted in their efforts to ban incestuous unions in Iceland, with little success.
As the bishops of Skálholt and Hólar pointed out in exasperation, the clannish
nature of Icelandic society offered few options. The Oldenburg kings did not
have the time, men, or resources to practise cultural or political imperialism in
Iceland or Norway, to make them Danish.²³
5 . L E A R N I N G A N D T H E A RTS , AT C H U RC H ,
A N D AT C O U RT
It would be tempting to think of Denmark as a sort of cultural wasteland in
the sixteenth century. It was bucolic and unsophisticated in comparison with
Tudor England or Valois France. Though foreign visitors found the Danish
court to be a warm and hospitable place, they frequently commented upon
the meanness of its trappings and the ordinary fare served at banquets. The
bleak, dreary ‘Elsinore’ of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is an accurate reflection of the
prevailing European perception of Denmark. Such comparisons, however, are
unfair, if only because they lose sight of just how far Denmark had come in
cultural sophistication during the course of the sixteenth century. Before the
Reformation, Danish culture may have been parochial and backward, only one
or two steps removed from its Viking past, but by the end of the century it
had truly begun to integrate into the mainstream of European high culture,
producing writers, theologians, and men of letters of international renown. Two
factors encouraged this development: first, the Reformation, which stimulated
learning and strengthened cultural ties with the Continent; second, the growth
of the central authority, and the concomitant increase in the size of the royal
court.
The Reformation, with its emphasis on correct teaching in accordance with
the Gospel, left an indelible mark on education within the Oldenburg realm
as it did nearly everywhere in Europe. The change was not so perceptible in
²³ Már Jónsson, Blódskömm á Íslandi 1270–1870 (Reykjavík: Háskóli Íslands, 1993), 100–27;
Davíð Þór Björgvinsson, Stóridómur (Reykjavík: Félag áhugamanna um réttarsögu, 1984).
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The Development of the Consensual State
the lower schools, which functioned after the Reformation much as they had
before, as it was in the Latin schools and the university. The Latin schools,
located in the cathedral towns such as Viborg, Århus, and Odense, provided a
basic grounding in languages and theology, primarily aimed at those desiring
a career in the clergy. The same could be said, though at a higher level, for
the university in Copenhagen. Founded by Christian I in 1479, the university
was neither well endowed nor well attended. It closed its doors on order of
Frederik I during the Lutheran ‘riots’ that broke out in the capital in 1530–1,
and remained closed until 1537, after Christian III and Bugenhagen had decided
that a school for priestly education was an absolute necessity. Still, it hardly
lived up to its distinguished sobriquet. Four separate faculties—of theology,
philosophy, medicine, and law—taught there, but the latter two were weak in
numbers. The University of Copenhagen was a ‘priests’ academy’, and a small
one at that. Christian III devoted a mere 1,400 daler to its annual budget, taken
from permanently allocated domain incomes and special parish taxes on Sjælland
and in Skåne. He did try to encourage students who were not wealthy to attend,
though not generously; twenty students would be granted room and board
through the Cloister of the Holy Spirit (the Helligaandskloster). Ostensibly
it was modelled on Wittenberg, but it was not a successful emulation. The
university was still out of reach for students of lesser means, while young men
from wealthier families tended to matriculate at Wittenberg or Rostock. Besides,
the dearth of qualified clergy was so great that lack of a university education
was no obstacle to ordination, and the university had little to offer to those who
wished to study anything other than theology.
The true rebirth of the university would have to wait for the accession
of Frederik II. Educational reform in the 1570s and 1580s was a venture
directed jointly by the king and his more erudite ministers, especially Peder
Oxe, Niels Kaas, and Christoffer Valkendorf. Frederik increased the university’s
working budget almost exponentially, expanding the size of the teaching staff
and providing substantially higher salaries. While demanding higher educational
standards from the priesthood, the king and his advisers provided more support
for impoverished students. One hundred students, selected by the faculty, received
room and board gratis from the crown, each for a period of five years. Four
especially promising students would be awarded the stipendium regium, which
paid all costs for study abroad so long as the recipient returned to Copenhagen
to finish his doctorate. The trend towards greater government support for the
university continued under the Regency: Valkendorf personally established the
first student college (Collegium Regium), housed in an old Carmelite cloister, in
1589. Leading figures from the faculty, like Niels Hemmingsen and Bishop Poul
Madsen, became respected members of the court intelligentsia, and Frederik’s
habit of referring sticky theological questions to the høilærde bolstered the
faculty’s reputation. The university, however, was still first and foremost a
seminary. All 100 of those supported by the ‘community’ were obliged to study
Reformation and Culture
79
theology, and three of the four stipendia were awarded to theology students.
Frederik stated explicitly that the university’s mission was to train priests who
could ‘further the word of God and the holy ministry of the Gospel in this
land’.²⁴
The university’s limited purpose was, in a way, a boon to intellectual life
in Denmark, for it forced budding academics to look elsewhere. The grand
tour was already an established rite of passage for young noblemen well before
the Reformation, but in the sixteenth century it attracted students from a
broader social spectrum and took on more serious overtones. The tour became
less of an extended vacation for young noblemen, punctuated by military
service and sporadic terms at leading European universities, and more of a
purely academic experience for students of burgher and noble origins. In
the decade 1541–50, ninety-four Danish and Norwegian students studied
at universities abroad, thirteen (13.8 per cent) of them nobles; in the last
decade of the century, this number jumped to 430 Danes, Norwegians, and
Icelanders—an increase of over 350 per cent—of whom seventy-nine (18.4
per cent) were nobly born. A fair proportion of these students still pursued
study in theology, but an increasing number went on to study jurisprudence
or medicine. Of course, service in foreign armies and foreign bureaucracies
remained an important component of the grand tour. The demand for educated
administrators meant that study and work experience abroad could be invaluable
for young men seeking a career in the Danish Chancery and ultimately as
fiefholders.²⁵
The rebirth of the university and the professionalization of the central
administration, coupled with the prominence of learned men within the king’s
inner circle, gave the court of Frederik II a refined and scholarly character that
was lacking in his father’s court. This, in turn, gave rise to increased intellectual
activity throughout the realm. Literature, mostly theological, blossomed in the
second half of the century. Most of this literature—scores of devotional tracts
and prayer books, often mere translations of older German works—was highly
derivative, but Denmark nonetheless produced several theologians of note during
this period. Standing above all others was Niels Hemmingsen. Well before his
Syntagma aroused the ire of the Saxon divines, Hemmingsen’s published works
were well known throughout Protestant Europe. The Syntagma alone went
through several editions, including one printed in Geneva—a misfortune for
‘Master Niels’, as it was a sure sign to his enemies that he was indeed a
²⁴ Lausten, Peder Palladius, 225–72; Koch and Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie, iv. 64–8,
166–71; Peter Brask et al., Lærdom og magi 1480–1620, Dansk litteratur historie, 2 (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 1984), 309–67.
²⁵ Vello Helk, Dansk norske studierejser fra reformationen til enevælden 1536–1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1987), 42–5; Vello Helk, ‘Den danske adels dannelsesrejser i Europa 1536–1660’,
in Per Ingesman and Jens Villiam Jensen (eds.), Riget, magten og æren: den dansk adel 1350–1660
(Århus: Universitetsforlag, 2001), 524–56.
80
The Development of the Consensual State
crypto-Calvinist. Foreign dignitaries visiting the Danish court, among them
James VI of Scotland, frequently sought audience with Hemmingsen.
The university at Copenhagen attracted few students from outside the Oldenburg lands, but the steady flow of Danish students to universities on the
Continent kept the educated elite up to date with the latest trends and helped to
impart a measure of intellectual diversity. It was in the sciences that Denmark
would make its deepest mark on European intellectual life, and here—as in
theology—the royal court was the main source of inspiration and patronage. To
Christian III, theology was synonymous with learning, but the interests of Frederik II and his intellectual circle were more wide-ranging. Frederik had a strong
proclivity for Paracelsian medicine: in 1571 he appointed Johannes Pratensis
(Hans Filipsen du Pré of Århus) to the medical faculty at Copenhagen, and in the
same year Petrus Severinus (Peder Sørensen of Ribe) became his personal physician. Severinus wielded considerable influence among Paracelsian practitioners,
following the publication of his Idea medicinæ philosophicæ (1571).²⁶
Frederik II’s fascination with alchemy and astrology, common to sovereigns
of his day, sped the rise of the astronomer Tyge (Tycho) Brahe Ottesen to
international renown as a pioneer in Europe’s ‘scientific revolution’. Tyge Brahe
came from the highest ranks of the ruling elite: his father, Otte Brahe til
Knudstrup, was a fiefholder in Skåne and a member of the Council of State, as
was Tyge’s brother Axel. After an extensive (and tumultuous) education abroad,
Tyge Brahe returned to Denmark not to pursue a career in state service as men
of his blood typically did, but instead retreated to the cloister at Herrevad, where
he and his uncle Sten Bille experimented with the manufacture of paper and
glass and maintained a private observatory. Brahe’s treatise on the supernova
that appeared in Cassiopeia in November 1572, published at the behest of the
rigshofmester Peder Oxe, brought his activities to the attention of Frederik and
his court. At the king’s insistence, Brahe took up a lectureship at the university
in 1574, and two years later he was granted the island of Hven as his fief. As
a fiefholder, he turned out to be a minor disaster, but the observatory at his
residence, Uraniborg, drew students from all over Europe. From 1576 until his
expulsion by Christian IV in 1597, Brahe supervised the first publicly funded
scientific research institute in European history.²⁷
Hemmingsen, Severinus, and Brahe were, without a doubt, Denmark’s chief
contributions to the culture of the northern Renaissance, but there was also a
host of other, lesser-known authors and humanists, whose work continues to
hold some significance within the history of Danish literature. There was Rasmus
²⁶ Ibid. 53; Jole Shackelford, A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual
Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus: 1540–1602 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2004),
23–139, 211–359.
²⁷ John Robert Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and his Assistants, 1570–1601
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Victor E. Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg: A
Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Reformation and Culture
81
Glad (Erasmus Lætus), one-time professor of theology at Copenhagen, a writer
of Latin verse; Hans Christensen Sthen, parish priest at Helsingør, best known
for his play Kortvending; and Peder Hegelund, one of many Danish intellectuals
to come from the Jutish cathedral town of Ribe, who penned the ‘school plays’
Calumnia, David and Goliath, and Susanna for the entertainment of Frederik II’s
court. Denmark’s most prolific author was the court chaplain Anders Sørensen
Vedel. Frederik II and Niels Kaas, both of whom admired Vedel and included
him in the academic circle at court, commissioned the chaplain to undertake what
could have been one of the great literary achievements of the reign: a chronicle
of the history of Denmark. But Vedel never completed the task. He fell into
disfavour during the Regency, and Christian IV would rescind the commission
and entrust it to Niels Krag.²⁸
The thing that bound together all of these cultural endeavours—the university’s renaissance, the writings of Hemmingsen, Vedel, and Guðbrandur
Þorláksson, the researches of Tyge Brahe—was the patronage of the court and
the inspired curiosity of Frederik II. Frederik was fiscally cautious, but gave
unstintingly of royal support when it was directed towards the life of the mind.
Even after he dismissed Hemmingsen from the university in 1579, for example,
he made sure that the theologian still had a generous salary and the opportunity
to study. Tyge Brahe received not only Hven as a ‘free fief’, but also several other
fiefs, canonries, and farms in Skåne to fund his work at Uraniborg. Frederik
himself picked out Hven as a place where Brahe could conduct his experiments
without distraction. Perhaps the king was driven, in part, by a desire to enhance
Denmark’s reputation among the great nations of Europe, but even so he demonstrated a finely tuned appreciation for intellectual talent. As he is alleged to have
said to Brahe: ‘I will sail over to the island [Hven] from time to time and see
your work in astronomy and chemistry, and gladly support your investigations,
not because I have any understanding of astronomical matters . . . but because
I am your king and you my subject . . . . I see it as my duty to support and
promote something like this.’²⁹ Frederik II may have been a near illiterate—at
the age of 49 he was struggling to read the Psalms—but nonetheless he was
enlightened as few monarchs of his generation were. It is difficult to see how
Danish historians for so long laboured under the impression that he was little
better than a drunken fool.
The court was gradually becoming a significant consumer of music or art.
Although the court of Frederik II was tangibly more opulent than that of
²⁸ Karen Skovgaard-Petersen and Peder Zeeberg (eds.), Erasmus Lætus’ skrift om Christian IVs
fødsel og dåb (1577) (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1992), 9–22; Allan Karker, Anders Sørensen Vedel og den
danske krønike (Copenhagen: Branner og Korch, 1955); Harald Ilsøe, ‘Svaning, Vedel, Huitfeldt
og Krag: omkring spørgsmålet om den første historiografudnævnelse’, in Grethe Christensen et al.
(eds.), Tradition og kritik: festskrift til Svend Ellehøj den 8. September 1984 (Copenhagen: Den dansk
historiske forening, 1984), 235–58; Brask et al., Lærdom og magi, 322–56, 368–525.
²⁹ Quoted in Christianson, Tycho’s Island, 22–3.
82
The Development of the Consensual State
Christian III, it was still quite modest in comparison to its contemporaries to
the west and south. The palace and fortress of Kronborg, though an imposing
edifice, was Frederik’s entire architectural legacy. Frederik did hire the Flemish
tapestry-weaver and painter Hans Knieper (d.1587) to produce a series of
tapestries, depicting the history of the kings of Denmark, for the decoration
of the ‘Long Hall’ at Kronborg. He purchased the services of English acting
troupes and both English and German musicians on a limited scale. But
overall expenditures on the arts were small in comparison to those of Frederik’s
successors.³⁰
Even if its court did not quite keep pace with those of France or England,
Denmark was nevertheless a very different state in 1596 from that which it
had been in 1513. The Reformation forged the Oldenburg state into a union
far more tightly controlled than the Kalmar confederacy; it strengthened the
central authority without diminishing the power either of the king or of the
aristocracy. Most of all, the Reformation marked the beginning of Denmark’s
gradual integration into European life, culture, and politics. Now Denmark was
the centre of a Baltic empire, poised to exercise dominium maris, and most
important it was a Protestant power, a leader of a major confessional bloc. But
while Denmark grew in prestige and wealth, it also drew to itself the attention
of all Europe, Protestant and Catholic alike. As the European state system
destabilized in the decades to come, Denmark’s kings and ruling elite could no
longer ignore political developments to the south and west. Denmark would be
involved, like it or not, in the conflicts that wracked the Continent between
1555 and 1648. What remained to be seen was whether or not the resources of
the state, and its ability to marshal those resources, were up to the task.
³⁰ Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, ‘Statsceremoniel, hofkultur og politisk magt i overgangen fra
adelsvælde til enevælde—1536 til 1746’, Fortid og nutid (1996), 3–8; Hanne Honnens de Lichtenberg, Tro, håb og forfængelighed: kunstneriske udtryksformer i 1500-tallets Danmark (Copenhagen:
Museum Tusculanum, 1989), 141–61; Steffen Heiberg, ‘Samtidige portrætter af Frederik II’,
in Christensen et al. (eds.), Tradition og kritik, 183–204; Ole Kongsted et al., Festmusiken fra
renaissancen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Bibliotek, 1990).
4
Commerce, Rural Economy,
and the Structure of Society
Sweden in its ‘Age of Greatness’ is often held forward as an example of a great
power that lacked the sinews of power. It was poor, and yet it marshalled the
few resources it had at its disposal so thoroughly, and organized itself for war
so effectively, that it managed to exert military and diplomatic might that was
entirely disproportionate to its meagre material wealth. The Oldenburg state
does not provide quite so stark a contrast between poverty and power. Although
viewed as a major, if not the major, Protestant power at the close of the sixteenth
century, it would never equal Sweden at its height; nor was it ever as destitute
as Sweden was. That there was poverty in the land is beyond doubt, but on the
whole Denmark had a thriving rural economy, an active export trade, and the
advantages of self-sufficiency in the most basic commodities. Still, the verdict
of the seventeenth-century intellectual Ole Worm on Denmark’s wealth—that
‘the Danes have no need of others, while all have need of them’—should not
be taken at face value. Denmark’s power and influence came from its position
astride the Sound and its solidly Protestant identity. Its resources, as the Thirty
Years War would reveal, were anything but inexhaustible.
What wealth the Oldenburg state did possess was, over the course of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, becoming concentrated in the hands of
fewer and fewer people. Perhaps Danish historians have exaggerated the political
predominance of the aristocracy in the age of adelsvælden, but there is no denying
that in this period the upper echelons of the noble estate dominated the Danish
economy. The key feature of social and economic development in the Oldenburg
state after the Reformation was polarization, as the gap between rich and poor,
between and within the legally defined estates, yawned ever wider. So, too, did
the gap widen between the wealthier lands of the conglomerate state and the
lands on the periphery, between Denmark and the Duchies on the one hand and
Norway-Iceland on the other.
1 . T H E R E F O R M AT I O N E C O N O M Y
The Oldenburg state was overwhelmingly rural in the early modern period. Nearly
90 per cent of the population laboured on the land in one way or another. There
84
The Development of the Consensual State
is nothing remarkable about this statistic within the context of pre-industrial
Europe. What is noteworthy is the direction and geographical concentration
of the rural economy in the realm. Oldenburg agricultural production centred
exclusively on the cultivation of cereal grains and the husbandry of cattle. Wheat
was all but unknown in Denmark, for although it fetched a high price at market
it was insufficiently hardy to withstand the rigours of the Scandinavian climate.
Barley had been the chief crop of medieval times, but rye was the grain of choice
thereafter. Oats and buckwheat were frequently grown in the least fertile areas.¹
The production of cereal grains was concentrated almost entirely within
Denmark itself, including the Scanian provinces. Together, Blekinge, Halland,
Skåne, Jutland, and the Danish islands made up the most fertile portion of the
Oldenburg monarchy, and probably in all of Scandinavia. Approximately 20
per cent of Denmark’s total surface area was under cultivation at the dawn of
the sixteenth century. In Norway, the proportion was much smaller, amounting
to 0.2 per cent of all land. And since Norway was more than five times the
size of Denmark—320,000 km2 in surface area as opposed to Denmark’s
61,000 km2 —cultivated land in Denmark outstripped that in Norway by a
factor of twenty to one. The cultivation of cereal grains in Iceland was negligible.
Population densities reflected this fact, and probably helped to account for it as
well: in the mid sixteenth century, there were approximately 9.8 inhabitants per
km2 in Denmark, as opposed to 0.625 in Norway and 0.5 in Iceland. Only in
the Duchies, with an estimated 21.0 souls per km2 , did the population density
exceed that of Denmark proper. Much of Norway and Iceland was desolate,
even uninhabitable, while in topography and climate Denmark was much
more like northern Germany. Agricultural production, therefore, was heavily
tilted in favour of Denmark and the Duchies. Danish peasants harvested a
modest quantity of rye and barley for export, while Norwegian and Icelandic
grain production was unable even to meet the needs of the local populations,
necessitating the large-scale importation of Danish or foreign grain. Danish
peasants collectively harvested twenty times more grain than their Norwegian
counterparts did.²
The emphasis on grain production in Denmark was a conscious choice by the
landowning nobility. Grain prices rose steadily during the last two-thirds of the
sixteenth century, a direct result of growing demand in Western Europe and of
the inflation associated with the ‘price revolution’; the prices would not begin
their precipitous decline until well into the next century. Although the rising
price of grain did not profit the peasantry very much, it was a great boon to
¹ David Gaunt, ‘The Peasants of Scandinavia, 1300–1700’, in Tom Scott (ed.), The Peasantries
of Europe from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (London: Longman, 1998), 317; Fridlev Skrubbeltrang, Det danske landbosamfund 1500–1800 (Copenhagen: Den danske historiske
forening, 1978), 57–9.
² Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 30–4, 174.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
85
the nobility and to the crown, the chief landowners in the realm. In Denmark,
noble landowners found all sorts of ways to discourage their tenant farmers from
seeking profit elsewhere, and the Danish nobility were quite knowledgeable in
business matters.³
Still there were other ways to turn a profit from the land. In Denmark and
the Duchies the leading secondary rural industry was the cattle trade. Danish
peasants and landowners exported fattened steers, generally through Gottorp
and Rendsburg, to markets in northern Germany and the Netherlands. It
was a lucrative trade, for peasant and noble lord alike, and the skyrocketing
prices realized in cattle sales during the sixteenth century fully justified Danish
interest in cattle production. Just during the last two-thirds of the century, cattle
prices in northern Europe rose by nearly 600 per cent. In this trade Denmark
dominated northern Europe. By the 1550s, Denmark was regularly exporting
35,000–45,000 head of cattle annually, and the trade continued to grow in
volume until the time of the Thirty Years War. During the period 1601–20, it
has been estimated, the aggregate value of cattle exported from Denmark came
close to one-half of the value of all cargoes of Baltic grain transported through
the Sound. Danish horses were also prized; exports from Denmark amounted to
some 3,000 to 5,000 horses per year.⁴
In Norway, the most significant export article was timber. Norwegian timber
was in great demand for shipbuilding and general construction throughout
northern Europe. Like the cattle trade, the Norwegian commerce in timber
accelerated dramatically during the sixteenth century. Only fourteen cargoes of
timber sailed for foreign markets from Nedenes in 1528, but by 1613 that
number had increased to 277. Even as the volume of timber exports grew with
each passing year, reaching a peak of around 0.5 million cubic metres in the
1590s, the demand for this commodity was so great that prices continued to
climb steadily. The central administration in Copenhagen tightly controlled this
trade, however, since Denmark’s forests—like those of Western Europe—were
becoming seriously depleted. The numerous building projects of the king and
the aristocracy, and more importantly the material demands of the burgeoning
royal fleet, required a steady and assured source of lumber. On a few occasions
after 1536, the crown put temporary prohibitions on all foreign timber sales, and
as the century wore on the central administration became far more restrictive
regarding the sales of certain speciality items of strategic importance, masttimbers in particular. Under Frederik II the government repeatedly asserted
itself in the trade; in 1587, for example, the king prohibited private sales of
³ Poul Enemark, ‘Herremandshandel i senmiddelalder og 16. århundrede’, in Per Ingesman
and Jens Villiam Jensen (eds.), Riget, magten og æren: den danske adel 1350–1660 (Århus:
Universitetsforlag, 2001), 398–425.
⁴ Karl-Erik Frandsen, Okser på vandring: produktion og eksport af stude fra Danmark i midten af
1600-tallet (Ebeltoft: Skippershoved, 1994), 23–6; John P. Maarbjerg, Scandinavia in the European
World-Economy, ca. 1570–1625 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 64–5, 72–9.
86
The Development of the Consensual State
timber on crown land, putting timber production there into the hands of royal
agents.⁵
Fishing remained an important component of the Oldenburg economy, as
it had been for all of Scandinavia since the Middle Ages. Fish was a common
supplement for the diet of coastal Denmark, and for grain-starved Icelanders and
Norwegians it could mean the difference between life and death. The Danish
fisheries were, by the Reformation, not nearly so rich as they had been in the
fourteenth century, when—so it was said—a man could walk from Helsingør
to Helsingborg on the backs of the herring that clotted the waters of the Sound.
But Norway and Iceland still possessed some of the richest fishing grounds in
all of Europe. Wind-dried cod (stokfisk) was a staple of Norway’s trade with
Bergen and the Hanse, and salt cod was undoubtedly the only significant export
of Iceland. Cod had eclipsed herring as the principal export fish by the sixteenth
century, but sales of the latter remained strong. In the south-eastern Norwegian
fief of Båhuslen alone, the annual export of salt herring reached annual volumes
as high as 100,000 barrels.⁶
Saltwater fishing was strictly a lower-class endeavour, but the export of grain,
timber, and fattened steers proved to be so profitable that the upper and
middling ranks of the Danish and Norwegian nobility engaged in the trade as
well. They sought to increase production of these valuable commodities—and
their share in that production—by increasing their landholdings at the expense
of the lesser nobles and freeholding peasants. The pattern of noble estate
management in Denmark itself was in a transitional stage in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. At the time of the Reformation, it most closely
resembled the model that agricultural historians have called Grundherrschaft:
landlords leased most of their holdings to tenant farmers, who cultivated
their plots in return for rents and other fees and services. Starting in the
mid sixteenth century, however, Danish noble landowners began to adopt
features of East European Gutswirtschaft, which placed greater emphasis on the
demesne lands, farmed by the compulsory labour of peasants. Danish nobles
were certainly familiar with the current trends elsewhere in Europe, and since
large-scale, demesne-based farming was already catching on in Holstein, there
were examples close at hand. More than anything, the Danish nobility’s move
towards large-scale farming was a logical response to changing commodity
prices—particularly for grain and cattle—after 1520. Already favoured by
the fact that peasant land-rents were paid in kind, the nobility as a group
hoped to exploit the ‘price revolution’ by increasing the proportion of demesne
land to rented farms within their estates. This profit motive also drove the
⁵ Ståle Dyrvik, Norsk økonomisk historie 1500–1970 (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1979), 41–7;
Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 183, 193; Johan Schreiner, Nederland og Norge 1625–1650:
Trelastutførsel og handelspolitikk (Oslo: Dybwad, 1933).
⁶ Dyrvik, Norsk økonomisk historie, 34–40; Maarbjerg, Scandinavia in the European WorldEconomy, 242–9.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
87
crown’s policy of consolidating fiefs in the Great Land Exchanges of Frederik
II’s reign.⁷
The sixteenth century also witnessed Denmark’s first tentative steps towards
industrialization. The primary direction for this came from the royal house,
and the main motivation was a strategic one: to make the Oldenburg state
self-sufficient in the manufacture of military matériel. Christian III made the
initial foray, expanding the naval facilities at Bremerholm and encouraging iron
production in Jutland, but the main impetus came from the military aspirations
of Frederik II. The results were mixed. Production of raw iron was limited to
small concerns in south Jutland and in Skåne, and despite Frederik II’s efforts
to increase that production—necessary because Sweden, which heretofore had
supplied most of Denmark’s raw iron needs, was now the enemy—did not pay
off in quantity or quality. Copper, necessary for the making of bronze, likewise
had to be imported. King Frederik was somewhat more successful in promoting
the manufacture of artillery and armour, and by the end of the Seven Years War
of the North there were cannon-foundries at Copenhagen and Helsingør. Even
so, the native foundries could not keep the border fortresses and the fleet fully
supplied with artillery, so imports from England and the Netherlands had to
make good the difference. In shipbuilding, the Oldenburg state could meet its
own needs, having all of the raw materials close at hand and possessing some of
the finest shipyards in northern Europe. Gunpowder could also be made at home
without difficulty. All the ingredients for this vital substance could be acquired
locally: charcoal from the forests of Norway; saltpetre, extracted from the soil
at stalls on royal estates, was produced at the saltpetre works at Nysted after
1563; Iceland was rich with sulphur, and in 1560 Frederik II established a royal
monopoly on Icelandic sulphur exports. Although the Oldenburg realm would
not, at least in this period, achieve complete self-sufficiency in the industries
of war, it came far closer to reaching this goal than most of its European
counterparts. In other areas the results were far less positive. Frederik II tried his
hand at establishing state-supported manufactures in textiles, glass, and paper,
‘importing’ German and Dutch artisans to aid him in these endeavours, but none
of these furtive attempts outlived the king himself. The hurdles were too great,
and the demand insufficient, to sustain these home-grown industries for very
long. Then, too, royal support was half-hearted. A concerted effort to promote
domestic manufactures would not emerge until the reign of Christian IV.⁸
⁷ Gunnar Olsen, Hovedgård og bondegård: studier over stordriftens udvikling i Danmark i tiden
1525–1774 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1957), 72–87; Svend Aage Hansen, Adelsvældens
grundlag (Copenhagen: Gad, 1964), 84–111; Eino Jutikkala, Bonden—adelsmannen—kronan:
godspolitik och jordegendomsförhållanden i Norden 1550–1750 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979),
35–7; Eino Jutikkala, ‘Large-Scale Farming in Scandinavia in the 17th Century’, Scandinavian
Economic History Review, 23 (1975), 159–66.
⁸ Poul Colding, Studier i Danmarks politiske Historie i Slutningen of Christian III.s og Begyndelsen
af Frederik II.s Tid (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1939), 402–03; Aksel E. Christensen, Tiden indtil
88
The Development of the Consensual State
The agricultural output of the Oldenburg lands was more than sufficient
to meet the needs of the entire population, even for those in the peripheral
regions who could not grow enough crops to stave off starvation. Denmark’s
balance of trade was a favourable one: as E. Ladewig Petersen has estimated,
the aggregate value of exports from the monarchy exceeded the value of imports
sixfold at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the export of two
vital commodities—cattle and timber—Denmark and Norway surpassed all
of northern Europe, and exports of fish were not far behind. Yet we should
not exaggerate this wealth. Crop yields, even in fertile Denmark, were hardly
phenomenal. Though no precise figures exist for the sixteenth century, we can
make approximate inferences from seventeenth-century data. According to the
research of Gunnar Olsen, the average crop yield for rye (between 1610 and
1660) was about 2.1-fold, and rarely exceeded threefold; in one year out of ten
the yield was less than onefold—in other words, the amount of grain harvested
was less than the amount sown. Not counting sales to Norway and Iceland,
Denmark was able to export no more than 5 to 6 per cent of its grain each year,
or around 200,000–250,000 barrels (tønder), and on the average Danish grain
made up no more than 10 per cent of all grain shipments passing from the Baltic
through the Sound. Poland and Baltic Germany far outstripped Denmark in
grain production. Nor did Danish or Norwegian merchants figure large in the
export trade. A few enterprising Danes shipped their grain directly to Amsterdam
and Antwerp in their own vessels, but most of that which was exported from the
Oldenburg lands left the realm in the holds of Dutch or Hanseatic ships.⁹
The real commercial significance of the Oldenburg state, seen within the
larger context of the northern European economy, was—to quote a Spanish
observer in 1579—as a ‘turnstile’ through which all Baltic commerce had to
pass. The volume of the Baltic trade had swollen to enormous proportions by the
late sixteenth century. Fewer than 800 ships passed through the Sound in either
direction in 1497, but the figure rose dramatically thereafter: 1,897 ships in 1537,
2,731 in 1560, and no fewer than 5,400 ships in 1583. Most of the merchant
vessels that registered at the customs house in Helsingør were English, Dutch,
Hanseatic, or Polish, but French, Spanish, and Portuguese shipping frequented
the Baltic sea lanes as well. Salt, fine cloth, and wine were the principal items
brought by foreign merchants into the Baltic, while cheaper bulk goods—grain,
timber, and naval stores like tar and hemp—constituted the larger part of the
cargoes exported from the Baltic ports. The Dutch were most dependent on
c. 1730, Industriens Historie i Danmark, 1 (Copenhagen: Gad, 1943), 17–32; Arthur G. Hassø,
‘Et Minde om Frederik II’s Papirmølle ved Hvidøre’, in Hans H. Fussing, ed., Til Knud Fabricius
13. August 1945 (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1945), 57–67.
⁹ E. Ladewig Petersen, Godsdrift og magtstat: det danske ressourcesystem 1630–1730 (Odense:
Universitetsforlag, 1987), 182–3; Maarbjerg, Scandinavia in the European World-Economy, 79–87;
Gunnar Olsen, ‘Studier i Danmarks Kornavl og Kornhandelspolitik i Tiden 1610–60’, HTD, 10th
ser., 6 (1942–4), 437–9; Skrubbeltrang, Det danske landbosamfund, 58.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
89
the Baltic trade. For Dutch merchants, that unglamorous trade was not just a
convenient and nearby venue for turning a profit, but an absolute necessity. At
the time of the outbreak of the revolt against Spain in the 1560s, the Dutch
imported a full 23 per cent of their grain—for their own consumption, that
is, and not merely for further sale—from the Baltic. At least two-thirds, and
perhaps as much as three-quarters, of Danish grain exports went directly to
Amsterdam and Antwerp. Small wonder, then, that Denmark was so important
in the foreign policy of the fledgling Republic, or that the Dutch worried so
about the possibility of a Danish–Spanish alliance. Denmark’s dominance over
the Sound was a matter of life or death for the Dutch economy.¹⁰
2 . T H E S T RU C T U R E O F D A N I S H S O C I E T Y:
THE NOBILITY
The period 1513–1660 was the golden age of the Danish nobility. The economic
and political power of the elite was at its peak in these decades, so much so
that Danish historians have frequently succumbed to the temptation to view the
Oldenburg state—mistakenly—as a noble republic in which the king ruled only
at the whim of the aristocracy. As we have seen, royal authority in the age of
Christian III and Frederik II was actually much greater than this interpretation
would allow. Nevertheless, the Danish nobility was never so prosperous as it was
in the century following the Reformation, and it would never again reach that
same degree of wealth and prestige.
It was a proportionately tiny group, even reckoned by contemporary European
standards. At the time of Christian III’s accession in 1536, there were approximately 250 noble families in Denmark, totalling about 3,000 individuals and
therefore around 0.5 per cent of the population. In Norway, the estate was smaller
still: about 400 individuals, or 0.2 per cent of the Norwegian population. Collectively, this minuscule fraction of the Oldenburg population owned a tremendous
amount of land—just over 40 per cent in Denmark, around 15 per cent in Norway. The two national subgroups were not, however, firmly separated one from
the other. Some of the greater noble families had both Danish and Norwegian
roots, and many of the larger Norwegian landowners also held land in Denmark,
often preferring to reside in the south in order to be closer to the seat of power.¹¹
¹⁰ Milja van Tielhof, The ‘Mother of All Trades’: The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam from the Late
16th to the Early 19th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1–5, 40–50; Aksel E. Christensen, Dutch Trade
to the Baltic about 1600 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1941), 34–42, 291–325, 414–17; Henrik
Zins, England and the Baltic in the Elizabethan Era, trans. H. C. Stevens (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1972), 8–34, 153–286; Nina Bang, Tabeller over Skibsfart og Varetransport gennem
Øresund 1497–1660, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1906–33), i. 2, 6, 98.
¹¹ Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 34–5; E. Ladewig Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund 1500–1700, Dansk socialhistorie, 3 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980), 187–98, 261–77.
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The Development of the Consensual State
Like that elsewhere, the nobility of the Oldenburg state was defined by the
privileges and obligations attached to noble status. The privileges were in the
main political and economic. Noble families were exempt from all ordinary
and extraordinary taxation, at least where they established manors, as were most
peasants residing on nobly owned lands. The chief positions in the central
government, namely seats on the Council of State and posts as fiefholders, were
reserved explicitly for native noblemen, and this was made clear in all royal
coronation charters as a basic right. Noble families were also exempt from paying
import duties on luxury goods purchased for personal consumption, such as
Spanish wine and German beer. The crown did not make any serious attempt
to restrict noble privileges, and in fact extended these privileges into commercial
activity.
In return, the nobility had an obligation to serve the state when called upon to
do so, as soldiers or as administrators. The feudal knight-service, the rostjeneste,
required noblemen to furnish armed retainers at the king’s request, the number
of armed men varying in direct proportion to the amount of land owned by each
nobleman. The knight-service had lost much of its meaning by the late sixteenth
century, for though it was mobilized for nearly all of Denmark’s wars prior to
1660, it was clearly secondary to the hired mercenaries and native military units
that made up the core of Denmark’s military forces. Despite the persistence of
the knight-service, the nobility had already surrendered its monopoly over the
use of organized violence to the crown by the time of Frederik II. No longer able
to legitimize its existence through its warrior-class status, the nobility defended
itself by becoming ossified and caste-like. Provisions in the various coronation
charters, restricting the transfer of nobly owned lands only to other nobles and
limiting the king’s ability to grant noble status, sealed off the noble estate from
the rest of Danish and Norwegian society. Perhaps there was a degree of social
mobility within the estate, but—as Knud Jespersen observes—‘in Denmark one
could be noble, but only in quite exceptional circumstances become noble or
merit being ennobled’.¹²
Privilege and duty—and little else—bound the Oldenburg noble class together. The Danish nobility was deeply stratified within. No formal divisions existed,
for apart from the special titles bestowed upon the king’s offspring there were
no distinctions of title within the Danish nobility until 1671. Regardless of
the absence of legal ranking, there was clearly a sharp economic barrier within
the noble estate that moved gradually upwards, concentrating more land into
the hands of fewer and fewer families. The aristocracy dominated the noble
estate in terms of landownership, wealth, access to educational opportunities,
and therefore political power. This trend would reach its zenith in the first half
¹² Knud J. V. Jespersen, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Danish Nobility 1600–1800’, in H. M.
Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2 vols. (London:
Longman, 1995), ii. 43–4; Hansen, Adelsvældens grundlag, 178–98.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
91
of the seventeenth century, but it was already apparent in the middle of the
sixteenth. Recent research on the assessment of the knight-service reveals just
how profound this concentration was: by 1588, a mere third of those nobles
assessed for knight-service possessed nearly two-thirds of all nobly owned land in
Denmark; by 1625, the same proportion of nobles would own three-quarters of
this land.¹³
This uppermost group, the conciliar aristocracy, would reap the benefits of
noble dominance almost exclusively. Naturally, the most important administrative posts went to the most prominent landowners. The appointments as
fiefholders in the larger and more lucrative fiefs were awarded to aristocrats, and
the Council was monopolized by this group. Of the total number of noble families in existence during the period 1536–1660—282 altogether—only seventy
were ever represented on the Council, and a very exclusive subgroup of twelve
families held 41 per cent of all Council appointments. Seats on the Council were,
in other words, practically hereditary.¹⁴
This tendency towards ‘aristocratization’, which continued and even accelerated up to the imposition of absolute monarchy in 1660–1, was but the most
obvious aspect of a general polarization of the entire noble estate. As the small top
layer of the noble order increased in wealth, the middling ranks of the nobility
shrank in numbers and in collective landholdings. The concentration of land
into the hands of the aristocracy forced many of the middling noble families
down to the level of the lowest, most destitute nobles, whom Danish historians
have labelled the ‘noble proletariat’. At the same time, the noble estate as a whole
was in numerical decline. In 1536, there were 249 noble families in Denmark; by
1560 only 222; only 197 noble families remained in 1600, representing a total
decline of 21 per cent in less than seven decades. Thirty-five noble lines either
died out or lost their privileged status during the period 1580–1619 alone. No
one emerged to take their places. Frederik II naturalized and ennobled a small
number of Germans as a reward for dedicated service, but this was not enough
to make good the losses in the native nobility.
Why the stratification and decline? It would be tempting to blame the
numerical downturn on the noble estate’s failure to procreate; indeed, some of
the most powerful noble houses of the late Middle Ages simply died out in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the Oxe family in 1575, the Brock dynasty
in 1625. In the main, the polarization of the Danish nobility must be attributed
to a combination of crown policies and the economic vicissitudes of Europe
¹³ Knud J. V. Jespersen, Rostjenestetaksation og adelsgods: studier i den danske adelige rostjeneste
og adelens godsfordeling 1540–1650 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1977), 135–76; Petersen, Fra
standssamfund til rangssamfund, 265–71.
¹⁴ Grethe Ilsøe, ‘Det danske rigsråd, 1570–88’, in Knud J. V. Jespersen (ed.), Rigsråd, adel og
administration 1570–1648 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1980), 9–33; Svend Gissel, ‘Frederik II.s
jyske råder’, in Svend Ellehøj, Svend Gissel, and Knud Vohn (eds.), Festskrift til Astrid Friis på
halvfjerdsårsdagen den 1. august 1963 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1963), 99–122.
92
The Development of the Consensual State
on the brink of a general crisis. Danish noblemen were avid entrepreneurs,
leaping enthusiastically into the export trades in grain and cattle. The drive
for greater profits through agricultural production, through demesne farming
and the raising of cattle, prompted individual noblemen to increase the size of
their holdings, paralleling the crown’s land exchanges under Frederik II. From
mid-century on, the Danish nobility engaged in speculation in landed property
with gusto. This trend, like the concomitant emphasis on large-scale farming,
was based on rational economic considerations. The absence of primogeniture
in Danish inheritance law, for example, motivated many nobles to assemble
the largest blocks of land possible, so that their estates could be parcelled out
among their heirs without impoverishing any of them. The primary stimulus,
however, was the profit motive, predicated on a seemingly bottomless faith that
the upward trend in grain and cattle prices would continue indefinitely, making
the additional investment in land worthwhile. Few noblemen could afford to
buy up other noble lands on their own resources, and the market became more
exclusive as the century wore on. Between 1540 and 1600, the sales value of
nobly owned lands increased sixfold. When added to ostentatious living habits,
the construction of grand manor houses, and the tradition of sending noble
sons to the Continent on the grand tour, the expenditures could easily wreck
the financial well-being of all but the wealthiest families. As the court chaplain
Anders Sørensen Vedel lamented in 1591, Danish noblemen practically clogged
the streets of Kiel as they sought to secure loans from Holstein financiers.¹⁵
The land policies of the crown exacerbated this trend. This was not intentional,
for indeed the central government tried in vain to get the nobility to curb its
wasteful spending habits. Frederik II attempted to set limits on noble extravagance
at weddings and funeral feasts. But as Christian III and Frederik II consolidated
royal fiefs in the land exchanges, the number of small fiefs decreased rapidly. Since
the larger fiefs were customarily reserved for the highest nobles and especially
the conciliar elite, there were accordingly fewer opportunities for middling and
lesser nobles to gain a foothold in the central administration. The resentment of
the lower nobles towards the conciliar elite is not difficult to fathom: the upper
nobility impoverished the lower, and denied them what few chances they had for
upward mobility. The great noble Protest of 1588 was but the first manifestation
of this discontent.
As we have seen, the administrative demands of the central government
helped to begin the transformation of the Danish nobility from a class of
¹⁵ Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 179; E. Ladewig Petersen and Ole Fenger, Adel forpligter:
studier over den danske adels gældsstiftelse i 16. og 17. århundrede (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1983),
171–89; Hansen, Adelsvældens grundlag, 75–111, 223–9; Jespersen, Rostjenestetaksation, 153–76;
E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Adelig godsdrift 1560–1620’, in Ingesman and Jensen (eds.), Riget, magten
og æren, 426–50; Jens Villiam Jensen, ‘Arv og godssamling: skifte af adeligt jordegods 1400–1660’,
in Ingesman and Jensen (eds.), Riget, magten og æren, 415–77.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
93
warriors into one of landowners and service professionals. The Chanceries in
particular required nobles who were well educated, multilingual, and more
erudite than the typical nobleman of the late Middle Ages. Yet while the
Danish nobility was becoming more professionalized, and began in growing numbers to seek careers in state service, there existed as yet no professional ethos, no notion that dedication to state service was in itself a
valuable thing. There may have been more than a few individuals who
subordinated their personal interests to those of the monarchy—Johan Friis, Niels Kaas, and Christoffer Valkendorf stand out in this regard—but
these examples constitute the exception rather than the rule. Employment
in the central administration remained more a part-time obligation than a
career. Even members of the Council received no salary for their labours,
but were rewarded instead with fiefs, and herein lay the chief incentive to
serve on the Council. Since the Council did not convene more than once
annually—except perhaps in wartime—and since the royal court was so frequently on the move, few councillors spent much time in the capital. The
demands of fief administration and the management of personal lands came
first.¹⁶
For the lesser nobility, the economic outlook was grim. A really well-off
aristocrat might have four to six manors, supporting as many as 900 peasant
farms; a much larger number of nobles had 100 or fewer peasant farms; lesser
nobles averaged around fifty farms each, and some fewer than that. An alarmingly
large proportion owned no land at all. In later years, military service offered
a way out and possibly a way up, but as sixteenth-century Denmark did not
have a significant military establishment there was no need for a peacetime
officer corps. A few ‘noble proletarians’ with maritime experience managed to
carve out careers in the fleet; others sought employment in the state church
or as academics. Local administration offered some prospects. Lesser nobles,
traditionally, held most of the positions as magistrates at the regional courts,
but even these positions came to be dominated by the greater families. It was
not unheard of for poorer noblemen to serve as bailiffs on the great fiefs,
even though such offices were meant for well-to-do peasants. For the majority,
many of whom lived little better than the peasants, there was no escape except
through advantageous marriages or war. Bereft of the means to acquire an
education, such men were implicitly denied access to careers at court or in the
Chanceries.¹⁷
¹⁶ See the example of Bjørn Andersen Bjørn, councillor 1567–83: Karl Nielsen, Vor mand og
råd: Bjørn Andersen til Stenalt, Bjørnsholm og Vår 1532–83 (Viborg: Landsarkivet for Nørrejylland,
1991), 55–104.
¹⁷ Skrubbeltrang, Den danske landbosamfund, 13; Jens V. C. Johansen, ‘Den danske adel og
retsvæsenet 1537–1660’, in Ingesman and Jensen (eds.), Riget, magten og æren, 557–75; E. Ladewig
Petersen, ‘Landsdommerkorpset under adelsvælden: rekruttering, karrieremønstre, status’, HTD,
93 (1993), 279–94.
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3 . T H E RU R A L LOW E R C L A S S
The peasantry in the Oldenburg lands was simultaneously better off and less
fortunate than its counterparts in Vasa Sweden and Finland. Danish peasants
had the good fortune to work the most fertile land in Scandinavia, but in terms
of personal and economic freedom they were far worse off than Swedish peasants;
peasants in Norway enjoyed a much greater degree of freedom from crown and
noble authority, but had the bad luck to work some of the most unproductive
land in all of Europe. There existed a similar contradiction in the political status
of the peasantry. Though utterly subject to the whims of the landowning class,
and—unlike the Swedes—denied even the smallest share of political power at
the national level, in local politics and justice the peasants of the Oldenburg state
were in many ways self-governing.
The class was anything but an amorphous mass, varying both across and
within the diverse regions of the conglomerate state. The peasantry was by
far the largest estate, making up around 80 to 85 per cent of the aggregate
population and working some 75,000–80,000 farms in Denmark alone. There
existed within the order tremendous variations in wealth and obligations, and
a bewildering multiplicity of subclasses, based on differing conditions of land
tenure. Landowning peasants (selvejerbønder) were distinctly in the minority.
They were more commonly found in Jutland than elsewhere in Denmark, but
we know little of their actual numbers. Collectively the independent peasants
owned no more than 10 per cent of arable land in Denmark, but noble land
speculation reduced that proportion to around 6 per cent by the time of Christian
IV. The vast majority of Danish peasants were leaseholding farmers (fæstebønder
or gårdfæstere). Some of the leaseholders were fortunate enough to rent plots that
were not only adequate to meet the immediate needs of their families and to
support a hired hand or two, but also to tender a surplus that could be sold
at market. By Continental standards, Danish farms were quite large, averaging
between 10 and 20 hectares, as opposed to the 3–8 hectare average for Sweden
and Finland. Other peasants, like the so-called husmænd (cottagers), worked
much smaller plots and accordingly spent more of their time as hired labour.
Cottagers made up perhaps 5 per cent of the peasant population in 1536, though
that number would rise substantially in the following century. Peasants living in
close proximity to a manor house, royal or noble, were of special importance for
large-scale farming. These ugedagstjenere (‘weekday labourers’) were tenants who
were obliged to provide weekly labour for the landowner on demesne lands.¹⁸
¹⁸ Maarbjerg, Scandinavia in the European World-Economy, 57–9; Skrubbeltrang, Den danske
landbosamfund, 72–3; Jutikkala, Bonden—adelsmannen—kronan, 43–51; Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund, 171–86.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
95
Peasants, like burghers, were legally considered ‘unfree’ (ufri) and had no
privileges and few if any rights. Nearly all fæstebønder paid some form of rent,
called landgilde, at least once annually. Normally, landgilde was assessed at onethird of the crops sown at planting; so if a peasant were sufficiently fortunate
to harvest a threefold crop, then the landgilde would amount to one-ninth of
the grain harvested. Peasants just beginning their tenures usually paid an initial
fee, called stedsmål or indfæstning. The most crushing burden on the peasantry,
however, was the labour obligation. Most Danish peasants were subject to this
obligation (hoveri) in one form or another. The hoveri could take several forms:
occasional day-jobs for the landlord, including seasonal work on the estate
owner’s land at planting and at harvest (avlingshoveri); and cartage (ægt), the
obligation to provide transport for freight for the landowner or the crown, or
even for individuals travelling on the crown’s business. The ægt was hated above
all other burdens. Peasants subject to the ægt could be called upon to transport
goods for distances as great as 4 to 16 Danish miles (30 to 120 kilometres). The
greatest weight of the ægt fell upon those who lived near construction sites for
royal residences, fortresses, and noble manor houses, since to them would go the
gruelling task of hauling bricks, sandstone, and large timbers for long distances
without remuneration. Again, it should be pointed out that extraordinary tax
levies were irregular in the sixteenth century, but when levied they could be
both incessant and heavy. Day-labourers serving on noble estates were, as a rule,
exempt from extraordinary taxes, while those on crown lands paid at half-rate.¹⁹
As if the burden of rents, tithes, taxes, and compulsory labour were not enough
to cow the Danish peasantry, there were many other ways in which a landlord
or the king’s fiefholder could keep the peasants under control. Most notorious
of these was the limited form of villeinage (vornedskab) characteristic of peasant
tenures on Sjælland and the surrounding island group. Throughout Denmark,
tenancies usually fell under one of two broad categories: ones that held the tenant
to his farm for a fixed term, usually three or six years (årfæste), and those that
ran for the lifetime of the peasant (livsfæste). The latter form was more common.
On Sjælland, however, vornedskab required that the sons of the current tenant
would remain at the same manor as their father. This measure, a fifteenth-century
reaction to the demographic ravages of the Black Death, was viewed at the time as
being advantageous to landlord and tenant alike, as it assured the former a steady
supply of labour and the latter a degree of security. In addition, noble landowners
enjoyed exclusive rights of discipline over their peasants (hånd- og halsret), though
the crown—most ambitiously in the Kolding Recess—attempted to set limits
on this. Peasants residing on crown estates were at a disadvantage in comparison
¹⁹ Hans H. Fussing, Herremand og Fæstebonde: Studier i dansk Landbrugshistorie omkring 1600
(Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1942); Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 176–80; Svend Gissel,
Landgilde og udsæd på Sjælland i de store mageskifters tidsalder (Copenhagen: Landbohistorisk selskab,
1968), 121–69; Haakon Bennike Madsen, Det danske skattevæsen: kategorier og klasser: skatter på
landbefolkningen 1530–1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1978), 62–87.
96
The Development of the Consensual State
to those working nobly owned lands where it came to the payment of taxes,
but had the advantage of serving a more predictable and indulgent master. Still,
although there are plenty of recorded instances of harsh treatment at the hands
of overbearing landlords—Tyge Brahe and the Norwegian fiefholder Ludvig
Munk are but the most famous examples—in general peasants in pre-absolutist
Denmark were far better off than their descendants in the eighteenth century,
when the ‘wooden horse’ (træhest), which disobedient peasants could be forced
to straddle with weighted ankles, became a symbol of noble oppression.²⁰
Proximity to forests or the coastline allowed many peasants to supplement their
agrarian livelihoods, most often by fishing and charcoal-burning, and all over
Denmark peasants raised cattle for market. Indeed, perhaps the only significant
right enjoyed by the peasantry was the freedom to sell their surplus—grain,
fish, butter, cattle, and so forth—to whomever they chose and not exclusively
to their landlords. Still, the landowning nobility managed to place limits on the
entrepreneurial activities of their peasants. On at least one occasion, the king
stepped in to regulate the sale of peasant surpluses: in 1574, Frederik II required
peasants to sell their cattle and grain only to their landlords and not to merchants,
but the popular outcry against this measure was so great that it was rescinded the
following year. Hunting was also tightly restricted, both in order to reserve wild
game for the elite, and to ensure that the peasants were not distracted from their
more mundane duties in the fields. The nobility as a group also fiercely resisted
any attempt to commute rents paid in kind into cash payments, for high grain
prices meant that rents collected in natura were potentially more profitable.
Despite all of the pressures, burdens, and day-to-day hardships of their lives,
the Danish peasants were remarkably compliant and resilient. Scholars of early
modern society have described Scandinavia as a ‘low-pressure zone’ in terms of
peasant uprisings. Even within this context, the Danish peasantry stands out as
being especially placid. The last significant peasant insurrection in early modern
Denmark—not counting risings against foreign armies of occupation—was
the Skipper Clement insurrection in the Count’s War. Perhaps the slaughter at
Favreskov Bjerge and Øksnebjerg, at the hands of Johann Rantzau’s Landsknechte,
had been burned into the folk memory, pushing away any thought of armed
resistance. Perhaps the Danish peasantry, though heavily burdened, did not
feel the heavy hand of war quite so much as had so many of its Continental
counterparts. It may be, too, that political factors had something to do with
the peasantry’s inclination towards obedience—or, rather, disinclination towards
outright resistance. Though denied a voice in national representative institutions,
at the local level the rural masses wielded considerable corporate power. Peasant
participation was absolutely vital in the proceedings of the assemblies and
²⁰ Thomas Munck, The Peasantry and the Early Absolute Monarchy in Denmark 1660–1708
(Copenhagen: Landbohistorisk selskab, 1979), 175–7; Jutikkala, Bonden—adelsmannen—kronan,
48–9.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
97
courts in the counties. In the villages, the quasi-democratic gatherings known
as bystævner allowed peasants to adjudicate disputes, air grievances, and even
determine common responses to crown policies.²¹
The king’s paternal attitude towards the peasantry may have been another
factor contributing to this evident self-restraint. While on occasion the king and
the Council closed ranks with the landowning elite to uphold the nobility’s legal
authority over its tenant farmers, more often than not the central authority intervened to prevent the worst disciplinary excesses of the landowners. Fiefholders
and noble lords who gained a record of abuse could be harshly punished for
their actions. In the collection of taxes, the king and the Council tried to soften
the blow by encouraging communal distribution of the tax burden. The crown
assessed extraordinary taxes not on individual peasant households, but in groups
of ten households, who were enjoined to cooperate with one another and divide
the burden equitably according to the economic circumstances of the individual
households: ‘the rich are to help the poor’ was a phrase that customarily appeared
in tax decrees. Tradition dictated that all who had grievances, no matter how
lowly their station, could approach the king himself to seek justice.
4 . T H E BU RG H E R S A N D T H E TOW N S
The size, both relative and absolute, of the Danish urban population remained
steadily modest throughout the course of the sixteenth century. That population
made up no more than 10 per cent of the aggregate, or around 60,000 individuals,
living in fewer than ninety privileged market towns (købstæder). The vast majority
of the towns had populations of 1,000 or under. Only Copenhagen and Malmø
(and in Norway, Bergen) had populations greater than 5,000 souls. A steady
influx of peasants and foreigners moved into the Danish towns during the period,
but the urban population did not increase appreciably, since mortality in the
towns tended to surpass the birth rate by a considerable margin. New blood,
from the countryside and abroad, made good the losses. Foreign merchants
and artisans—mostly Dutch or German—came to Denmark in ever-growing
numbers after the 1560s, attracted by the lucrative opportunities offered by trade
and the needs of the court, or driven by the desire to escape religious persecution
at home.
The privileged market towns in Denmark enjoyed a special relationship with
the monarchy. Until 1561 they were beholden to the king himself, but in that
²¹ DFH, i. 82–4; Kimmo Katajala (ed.), Northern Revolts: Medieval and Early Modern Peasant
Unrest in the Nordic Countries (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2004), 26–31; Rian, Den
aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 126–9; Fussing, Herremand og Fæstebonde, 423–56; Lars Tvede-Jensen,
Jylland i oprør: Skipper Clement-feiden 1534 (Århus: Historisk Revy, 1985), 54–91; Knud E. Korff,
Ret og pligt i det 17. århundrede: retspraksis samt økonomiske, sociale og kriminelle forhold i Åsum
herred 1640–48 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1997), 24–8.
98
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year Frederik II subordinated the towns to the fiefholders. Unlike the rural
population, inhabitants of the towns paid regular annual taxes to the crown
(byskatter), which typically amounted to around 0.5 per cent of the crown’s
annual revenues. They were not highly remunerative in this regard, but their
contributions to the state went far beyond the tax money they generated. The
towns, even the smaller ones, were vital for commerce and for the collection of
import and export duties. Here peasants and nobles alike could sell their surpluses
to merchants, foreign or native; many of the medium-sized regional centres held
annual market fairs, which drew large crowds from the hinterland. The port
towns also provided an important service for the crown in the conscription of
sailors for the royal fleet. In return, the crown accorded the towns a great deal
of freedom and self-governance. Town councils (byråd), headed by one or more
elected mayors (borgmestre) and composed entirely of merchants, supervised most
aspects of governance. Legal affairs were the province of the town assembly and
the town court, the byting, upon which ordinary burghers sat with a representative
of the crown.²²
Town life would become much more vibrant during the reign of Christian IV,
but even in the sixteenth century the towns grew in importance (if not in size)
as Christian III and Frederik II sought to free Denmark from the commercial
dominance of the Hanseatic cities. Yet even as these kings whittled down the
Hanseatic trading privileges, the commercial profile of the native mercantile
classes did not rise accordingly. Few Danish merchants achieved international
prominence. There were exceptions, like the Copenhagen merchant Marcus
Hess, whose fleet of ships ranged as far as France and Iceland, but in the main
Danish merchants restricted themselves to the local carrying trade, leaving most
commerce with the world outside the Baltic to foreign, especially Dutch, trading
houses. Of the approximately 200 exporters registered in Denmark in 1550,
twenty were responsible for nearly two-thirds of all exports.²³
5 . S TAT E A N D S O C I E T Y I N T H E PE R I PH E R A L L A N D S
The Duchies, as the king’s personal possessions, in theory lay outside the
jurisdiction of the central administration in Copenhagen. Norway, and with it
²² DFH, i. 78–82; GDH 2/2, 419; Leon Jespersen, ‘The Constitutional and Administrative
Situation’, in Leon Jesperson (ed.), A Revolution from Above? The Power State of 16th and 17th
Century Scandinavia (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 2000) 93; Ole Degn, ‘Fairs as Periodical Regional
Centres in Denmark, 1600–1900’, in Finn-Einar Eliassen et al. (eds.), Regional Integration in Early
Modern Scandinavia (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 2001), 140–61.
²³ Ole Degn, ‘Byer, byhierarkier og byudvikling i Danmark 1550–1700’, Historie, 17 (1989),
527–46; Albert Olsen, Bybefolkningen i Danmark paa Merkantilismens Tid (Copenhagen: Reitzel,
1932), 1–12; M. Mackeprang, Dansk Købstadstyrelse fra Valdemar Sejr til Kristian IV (Copenhagen,
1900), 229–32; Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund, 128–32.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
99
Iceland and the Færø Islands, was on the other hand a province of overt the
kingdom. It was a treasured possession, not least because of the vital resources
it provided and the strategic advantage it gave Denmark over Sweden. As we
have seen, the crown did not, however, attempt to carry out a policy of overt
centralization with regard to Norway and Iceland, and was content to ensure
that Copenhagen received the lion’s share of timber and the proceeds from
fief incomes, taxes, and customs duties. Except in economic and confessional
matters, the peripheral lands were left to their own devices: Norway and Iceland
because they were distant, impoverished, and highly independent in spirit; the
Duchies—or, rather, Holstein—because of their long-standing relationship with
the Oldenburg house, and because Holstein was an Imperial fief.
On the surface, the structure of Norwegian society closely resembled that of
Denmark, but there were a number of subtle differences. The native nobility was
much smaller. In the late Middle Ages it did not exceed 800 individuals, and it
had suffered a loss of nearly 50 per cent by the time of the Reformation. The
peasantry was correspondingly larger, proportionately, than in Denmark, making
up nearly 95 per cent of the population. In sharp contrast to the Danish peasantry,
the majority of Norwegian peasants were freeholders and owned their own land.
This should not be taken as a mark of wealth, for on the whole Norwegian
peasants were not as prosperous as the Danes. What little of Norway’s surface was
arable—notably the flatter lands of the Østland and Trøndelag regions—was
not fertile. Grain production in Norway was insufficient to meet local demand,
and peasants found it imperative to find additional income through fishing,
the timber trade, and mining to supplement their meagre harvests of oats and
barley. In southern and western Norway, the timber trade eclipsed farming as
the principal source of income. The construction of sawmills was something that
even peasants of modest means could afford; peasants and nobles alike devoted
their energies to timber production, and in these regions all classes enjoyed a
slightly higher standard of living than rural society elsewhere in the Oldenburg
state. North of Bergen, where the population tended to cluster around the
coastline, the production and export of wind-dried cod was the primary source
of income.
A native mercantile class was virtually non-existent in Norway. The eight to ten
settlements that could possibly be considered ‘towns’ were pitifully small. Oslo
at its peak in the sixteenth century was home to no more than 2,000—3,000
inhabitants. The permanent union with Denmark in 1536 served to retard
urbanization in Norway, for the Reformation—by removing the Catholic
bishops—dealt a death blow to the episcopal seats. Hamar, for example, had
in medieval times been a prosperous ecclesiastical centre with a magnificent
cathedral, but it declined rapidly after 1536: Christian III merged Hamar diocese
with Stavanger, taking away Hamar’s greatest claim to significance; the ravages
of Swedish troops during the Seven Years War of the North did the rest. By
1568 Hamar lost its status as a chartered market town. The one exception—a
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The Development of the Consensual State
major one—was Bergen. Bergen was the largest and wealthiest town in Norway,
rivalling even Copenhagen itself. Its population, between 6,000 and 10,000,
was ethnically diverse; Copenhagen by comparison was provincial. An unusual
mix of Norwegians, Danes, Germans, Dutch, English, and Scots made up the
population of the main town, to which must be added the Hanseatic trading
post, Kontoret, whose 1,500 members and dependents constituted a separate and
independent community. Bergen was the main entrepôt for the timber trade and
dominated the trade in fish for nearly all of western and central Norway.²⁴
There were profits to be made in Norway, and the Danish crown was
determined to get its share. Although, as we have seen, the Danish kings were
not interested in centralization there per se, they did maintain a continuous
administrative presence in Norway to make sure that the crown received its half
of Norway’s fief incomes (about 60,000 rigsdaler per annum by 1600, as opposed
to Denmark’s 350,000 rigsdaler) and secured its share of the timber harvest. That
administrative presence was accordingly sparse. At the top, after 1572, sat the
Danish governor (stadholder) at Akershus Castle outside Oslo, who was directly
responsible to the king and the Council. The governor acted as the intermediary
between the Danish crown and the fiefholders. Norway’s fiefs were geographically
larger, fewer in number, and more thinly populated than were Denmark’s. In
1540, there were approximately 350 fiefs in Denmark, seventy of them ‘great
fiefs’; the administrative reforms of Christian III and Frederik II reduced these to
130 fiefs, of which sixty were great fiefs. Norway’s fiefs at mid-century numbered
around fifty, and these were reduced through consolidation to twenty-five at the
century’s end. Ten of these fell under the rubric of great fiefs; four of the great
fiefs—the so-called ‘castle fiefs’ (slotslen) of Akershus, Bergen, Trondheim, and
Båhus—were particularly large. The average fiefholder on a Danish great fief
administered a territory of approximately 900 km2 , while each of the three largest
Norwegian slotslen covered as much as 100,000 km2 , an area as large as all of
Iceland. Close supervision of the local populations within these monstrous fiefs
would be next to impossible, even with a sizable bureaucracy.²⁵
On the whole, Norway prospered under Danish rule, at least during the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. Between 1520 and 1600, the
Norwegian population grew by perhaps as much as 50 per cent, as did the
number of farms under the plough. Owing to the small size of the Danish
administration in Norway, Norwegian peasants enjoyed a much greater degree of
personal freedom than Danish peasants did. They also played a more prominent
role in politics at the ‘national’ level. Peasant representatives were allowed a voice
at the Norwegian herredage. To be sure, Danish rule was not entirely benign, and
²⁴ Dyrvik, Norsk økonomisk historie, i. 16–78; Maarbjerg, Scandinavia in the European WorldEconomy, 246–9; Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 183–7, 191–203.
²⁵ Bagge and Mykland, Norge i dansketiden, 114–16, 124–6; Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten,
111–39.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
101
there were moments of friction between overlords and subjects. Peasants in the
Telemark and Agder regions, drafted to work on silver mines after 1538, rebelled
violently against Danish authorities; in the Trøndelag, extraordinary taxes and
the autocratic administration of the fiefholder Ludvig Munk sparked minor rural
uprisings in the 1570s.²⁶
Active Norwegian resistance to Danish authority came to an end with the
Telemark-Agder revolts. The disturbances in the Trøndelag in the 1570s were a
response more to local grievances than to the Danish presence in general. The
peasantry acquiesced to their foreign king, and for their part the Danish kings
took a paternalistic stance towards Norway. Norwegians would have to wait for
the reign of Christian IV before a Danish king would make regular visits to their
land, but in the meantime Copenhagen demonstrated some concern for Norway.
Once the Norwegian herredag became an established institution in 1568, the
Council made a habit of sending a couple of its members to attend. Some Danish
administrators, notably Erik Ottesen Rosenkrantz, fiefholder at Bergenhus from
1559 to 1568, took enthusiastically to their adopted homeland. Rosenkrantz,
arguably the most powerful lord in Norway during the Seven Years War of the
North, established close ties with local Norwegian elites; his actions against the
Swedes during that war, at the head of a peasant army, earned him a reputation
as a Norwegian patriot. Christoffer Valkendorf, Rosenkrantz’s predecessor at
Bergen, brought the German merchant community there under strict Danish
control, returning much control over local trade to Norwegian merchants. Not
all of the Danish administrators were quite so diligent or well liked, but the
crown endeavoured to remove the worst offenders from office. Erik Munk
(fiefholder at Nedenes) and Ludvig Munk (fiefholder at Trondheim and later
royal governor), for example, gained notoriety for their abuses of the peasants
in their charge in the 1570s and 1580s. Though authorities in Copenhagen
did not react immediately to the misconduct of the two Munks, a constant
stream of grievances from Norway eventually brought about their fall. Frederik
II dismissed Erik Munk in 1585 and incarcerated him at Dragsholm Castle the
following year; Christian IV removed Ludvig Munk—the man who was fated to
become the king’s father-in-law, albeit posthumously—from his post in 1596,
confiscating his lands in Jutland.
If the monarchy exploited the Norwegian peasants it was because it was in the
nature of early modern governments to do so, and it did not exploit them any
more than it did the peasants of Denmark proper. If anything, the Oldenburg
kings were more indulgent of their Norwegian subjects. Even when levying
taxes, both Christian III and Frederik II urged their lieutenants in Norway to
²⁶ Sverre Bagge and Knut Mykland, Norge i dansketiden (Copenhagen: Politiken, 1987), 100–1;
Magne Njåstad, Bondemotstand i Trøndelag ca. 1550–1600 ( Trondheim: Universitetsforlag, 1994);
Magne Njåstad, ‘Resistance in the Name of the Law: Peasant Politics in Medieval and Early Modern
Norway’, in Katajala (ed.), Northern Revolts, 103–8.
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negotiate with representatives of the peasantry, requesting their aid rather than
demanding it!²⁷
The monarchy did not manifest quite so much indulgence or patience when
dealing with its subjects in Iceland. The great distances involved, the difficulties of
travelling to and within the island, the minuscule size of the population, and the
alien and uncontrollable nature of Icelandic society precluded a concerted effort
to tame the fiercely independent Icelanders. The Danish government’s concern
for Iceland was strictly limited to ensuring the observance of the Lutheran faith
and establishing control over the export trade. Both were easier said than done.
Iceland was not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but there was still
profit to be made there. Its chief attractions were its unique products: sulphur for
making gunpowder; luxury goods like falcons, frequently given as gifts to fellow
royalty by the Danish kings; wool and to a lesser extent mutton; but above all
salt cod. Prior to the Reformation, English and Hanseatic traders had reaped
the benefits of the Iceland trade, and English fishermen had been harvesting
cod from the waters off southern Iceland since the beginning of the fifteenth
century. Unable to regulate foreign merchants and fishermen, King Hans allowed
them virtually free access to Iceland (1490), but with Christian III’s accession
the crown set about the task of eliminating foreign competition in its small
fiefdom. The Danes officially expelled the English from Iceland in 1558, when
they confiscated the last English trading post in the Westman Islands. Hamburg
merchants maintained a permanent trading station at Hafnarfjörður well into the
sixteenth century, and German merchants would remain active in the Icelandic
trade until Christian IV enacted the Danish trade monopoly in 1602. In the
meantime, Christian III and Frederik II sought to reduce the foreign presence,
but without substantial naval forces in the area it was impossible to effect this.
As many as sixty English vessels illegally fished the area each year in the later
sixteenth century, sometimes trading with or even plundering Icelandic towns
and farmsteads.²⁸
The Danish administration in Iceland was inconsequential. A royal governor
resided at Bessastaðir, near Reykjavík on Iceland’s west coast, but apart from
a bailiff and a handful of troops the governor did not keep a substantial staff.
Hence there were few opportunities for the Danes to interfere in Icelandic affairs
in a significant way. Local affairs and legal cases still fell to the ancient Diet,
the Alþing, and a handful of native landowners. But for Denmark’s limited
purposes, a strong presence in Iceland was not imperative. Nor would it have
been worthwhile for Denmark to divert military and naval resources to guarantee
Iceland security from attack. Iceland’s remote location ensured that it would
²⁷ Bagge and Mykland, Norge i dansketiden, 102–16; Arthur Hassø, Rigshofmester Kristoffer
Valkendorf til Glorup (Copenhagen: Levin og Munksgaard, 1933), 12–39, 56–61.
²⁸ Helgi þorláksson, Sjórán og siglingar: ensk-íslensk samskipti 1580–1630 (Reykjavík: Mál og
menning, 1999); Jón J. Aðils, Den danske Monopolhandel på Island 1602–1787, trans. Friðrik
Ásmundsson Brekkan (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1926–7), 3–67.
Commerce, Rural Economy, and Society
103
not be the target of a major foreign invasion. The strongest bulwark protecting
Iceland, and Norway for that matter, was the reputation of the Danish monarchy.
As the Oldenburg state assumed a more redoutable diplomatic stature in the
later sixteenth century, its influence in European affairs served to discourage
excessive foreign meddling in Iceland. As one Icelandic historian has observed,
‘the cannons at Krogen [Kronborg’s predecessor] [were] more effective than
anything else for Iceland’s defense’.²⁹ For Denmark—under forty years after
the Reformation—was no longer an inward-looking medieval kingdom, but a
leading Protestant power that commanded international respect.
²⁹ Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000),
122.
5
The Mistress of the Sound: Denmark
and Europe, 1513–1596
Prior to 1536, Denmark was on the fringe of European affairs. Continental
statesmen scarcely took notice of it, and conversely the Danish ruling elite did
not look beyond the Baltic. The earliest Oldenburg kings and their Councils
were immersed in the impossible task of keeping the Kalmar Union intact. The
Baltic trade had not yet assumed its sixteenth-century proportions, and hence
Denmark’s possession of the Sound did not have the geopolitical importance
that it would have when that trade peaked. In commercial affairs, Denmark was
still consistently bullied about by the towns of the Hanse.
With the Reformation, however, Denmark’s international significance changed
almost overnight. The forging of a larger Oldenburg state was in itself a latent
threat to its neighbours in the Baltic: Poland, the Hanse, and the fledgling Vasa
monarchy. As northern Europe became dependent on the Baltic trade, and as
the Danish kings exploited their control over the Sound, the real possibility of a
Danish dominium maris Baltici emerged, potentially restricting the commerce of
England, the Netherlands, and the Hanseatic League. The usurpation of Frederik
I and the apostacy of Christian III were at the very least insults to Habsburg
pretensions, and Habsburg displeasure was not something to be taken lightly.
Moreover, Denmark’s affiliation with Protestantism instantly made it a leader
of a major confessional bloc at a time when religious passions were rendering
the European state system highly unstable. And within Denmark, those who
made policy were shedding their earlier parochialism. Cultural contacts with
the Continent gave Denmark’s ruling elite a greater appreciation for political
happenings outside the Baltic. Denmark had no choice but to assume a different
role in European affairs.
It has often been asserted that the Sueco-Danish rivalry was the most important
factor guiding Danish foreign policy during the period 1536–1721. It is a
misleading argument. True, Denmark would fight no fewer than six wars with
Sweden during this period, and would come to the brink of war countless times.
To analyse foreign policy strictly on the basis of the frequency of armed conflict,
however, is to ignore the fact that statecraft is not conducted solely by the
sword. From the Reformation until the catastrophe of 1658–60, the makers of
foreign policy in Denmark pursued three distinct sets of goals, which frequently
The Mistress of the Sound
105
overlapped but which required three separate diplomatic and military approaches.
The first was the protection and expansion of Denmark’s trade interests, which
set the Oldenburg state at odds with the Western maritime powers as much as it
did with the Hanse, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and Sweden. The second priority
was the maintenance of Denmark’s position within the Baltic region. The third,
and perhaps the most neglected in the historiography, was the defence of the
monarchy’s confessional integrity and the pursuit of its dynastic aspirations.
1 . M I L I TA RY R E S O U RC E S
The navy was Denmark’s first line of defence and its primary means of exerting
control over the Sound. Its development paralleled the growth of the navies
of other northern European powers, like England, and was conditioned by the
intensification of the Baltic trade. The royal fleet was quite small at the beginning
of the sixteenth century. It enjoyed no more than mere numerical parity with the
navies of the individual Hanseatic towns, and could have been easily overwhelmed
by the assembled Hanseatic ‘fleet’. The ruling elite was satisfied with this state of
affairs, regardless of the security concerns arising after the usurpation of Frederik
I. When, in 1525, Frederik I asked the Council of State for funds to create a
standing army and a respectable navy, the Council saw no reason to expand the
king’s modest fleet of seven warships and a few smaller vessels.
The Count’s War demonstrated the importance of sea power for Denmark’s
survival. Had it not been for the intervention of the Swedish and Polish fleets,
and the brilliant leadership of Admiral Peder Skram over the tiny Danish royal
fleet, Christian III would have found it difficult to isolate and contain Skipper
Clement’s rebels or the armies of Count Christoffer. Christian III was no
mariner, but the lesson was lost neither on him nor on the Council. Worsening
relations with Sweden, plus the fear of an Imperial assault on Denmark, lent
some urgency to the issue. With the Council’s blessing, Christian III embarked
upon a radical expansion of the navy. By 1550, the royal fleet numbered some
thirty medium-to-large ships of war, and it increased to at least fifty by the
close of the decade. Frederik II had an even keener interest in naval affairs, and
the construction of new vessels continued at a steady pace even after the end
of the war with Sweden in 1570. At the time of Frederik’s death in 1588, the
Danish fleet was in its prime. The Danish warships, mostly built in shipyards at
Copenhagen, Malmø, Oslo, and Flensborg, but also supplemented with some
captured or purchased foreign vessels, were on the cutting edge of European naval
technology. English observers, no mean judges of naval strength, were favourably
impressed when Frederik II’s new ‘racing galleons’ Gideon, Josafat, and Rafael
visited England in 1586. An extensive naval complex in Copenhagen, called
Bremerholm (or simply Holmen, ‘the island’), provided dry-dock, rope-making,
provisioning, and cannon-foundry facilities for the growing fleet. Regular drafts
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The Development of the Consensual State
of mariners, and of tax revenues specially earmarked for the navy, kept the
fleet supplied with funding and experienced crewmen. The officer corps—drawn
largely from the lesser nobility and from seagoing merchant families, both Danish
and Norwegian—was dedicated and professional. With a collective displacement
of 13,000 to 15,000 English tons, its ships and crews tested and battle-hardened
in the war with Sweden and the campaigns against Baltic pirates, the Danish fleet
in 1588 was by far the largest and most modern in north-eastern Europe. Only
the highly vaunted Elizabethan navy could rival it in strength and quality.¹
Denmark’s land-based military establishment was less satisfactory. Like Elizabethan England, Denmark relied upon a professional and technically proficient
fleet for naval defence but on temporary expedients for land warfare. Both
Christian III and Frederik II invested heavily in the construction of modern
fortifications, erected in the Duchies, the major Danish ports, and the Scanian
provinces. Denmark’s armed forces on land, however, were of indifferent quality
in the sixteenth century. The feudal knight-service could no longer muster in
strength, and the urban militias (borgerbevæbning)—though mobilized at royal
command in times of pressing military need—were neither well trained nor very
numerous. Frederik II abandoned his attempt to improve and enlarge the native
levies after 1576. In the short term, there was no need for them. The Oldenburg
kings after 1536 had a fair degree of liquid wealth, and in a way this would be
Denmark’s undoing. While Sweden, crippled by crushing want, was forced to
rely upon native troops to fight its wars, the kings of Denmark could afford to
hire the services of mercenary troops as the need arose. Recruited in England,
Scotland, and the German states, Denmark’s mercenary forces demonstrated
their tactical superiority to Sweden’s home-grown levies during the Seven Years
War of the North. But Denmark would not have the advantage for long. Sweden’s national army improved steadily in quality, and could be kept in a state of
near readiness in peacetime, while Denmark persisted in hiring foreign soldiers
on an ad hoc basis. The practice proved to be extraordinarily expensive, and it left
Denmark dangerously exposed to an attack by better-prepared Sweden. In this
way, Denmark’s wealth proved to be a liability, and Sweden’s poverty an asset.
The rationale behind Denmark’s dependence on mercenary troops was as much
constitutional as it was strategic, reflecting the nobility’s fear of standing armies
as socially disruptive and politically dangerous, as potential tools of tyranny.²
¹ Jørgen H. Barfod, Christian 3.s flåde, Den danske flådes historie, 2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1995); Jørgen H. Barfod, ‘Den danske orlogsflåde før 1560’, HTD, 94 (1994), 261–70; H. D.
Lind, Fra Kong Frederik den Andens Tid: Bidrag til den dansk-norske Sømagts Historie 1559–1588
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1902); Jan Glete, Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State-Building
in Europe and America, 1500–1860, 2 vols. (Stockholm: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1993), i. 130–5.
² Paul Douglas Lockhart, Frederik II and the Protestant Cause: Denmark’s Role in the Wars
of Religion, 1559–1596 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 55–8; Otto Norn, Christian IIIs borge (Copenhagen: Selskabet til udgivelse af danske mindesmærker, 1949); Otto Norn, Kronborgs bastioner
(Copenhagen: J. H. Schultz, 1954); Søren Balle, Statsfinanserne på Christian 3.s tid (Århus: Universitetsforlag: 1992), 240–7; Jesper Bering Asmussen, ‘Bonden og den nationale fodfolk: træk af
The Mistress of the Sound
107
2. TRADE AND FOREIGN POLICY
The sixteenth century witnessed a confluence of events that favoured Denmark’s
dominion over trade in the Baltic region. As the power of the Hanseatic League
waned, the cohesion and strength of the Oldenburg state rose; as the Baltic
trade attracted greater international interest, Denmark developed the capability
to defend itself against stronger foes. The decline of Poland’s influence in
Baltic affairs, and the failure of Muscovite Russia to realize its ambitions in the
eastern Baltic, further bolstered Denmark’s reputation in the region. Neither the
Netherlands nor England was yet in a position to exert much force in the Baltic.
Only Sweden presented a credible threat to Danish supremacy in the Baltic, and
that threat had not yet materialized. Perhaps possession of the Sound did not
translate immediately into dominium maris Baltici, but when Christian IV came
to the throne in 1596 it seemed as if Denmark had indeed achieved this aim.
Hegemony, however, came at a cost. As Denmark grew rich from the Baltic
trade, it also acquired for itself an unenviable reputation as a parasitical power.
Success breeds enemies; and as Denmark used the Sound as its own private
tollbooth, those nations dependent on Baltic commerce found that Denmark
stood squarely between them and their most vital interests. The results, seen
from the middle of the seventeenth century, would prove tragic.
Denmark’s chief rival in the Baltic prior to 1563 was the Hanseatic League.
The Hanse had the benefit of extensive trading privileges in the Nordic lands.
Wealthy, and possessed of a gigantic merchant fleet, the Hanseatic cities were able
to dominate not only the Baltic export and import trades, but also commercial life
in the leading towns of the Oldenburg realm. Hanseatic merchants—especially
from Hamburg and Lübeck—controlled the Norwegian timber and fish trades,
and Hamburg merchants had an unofficial monopoly on Icelandic commerce;
Hanseatic ships had the rare privilege of exemption from the Sound Dues. This
predominance allowed the League to act as kingmaker in the Nordic states,
compromising the political autonomy of the Scandinavian kingdoms as well.
Neither Christian II nor Frederik I was able to break the Hanseatic hegemony.
Christian II tried very hard to do so, unilaterally revoking Hanseatic privileges
throughout the Union in favour of Netherlands merchants. Christian’s plan to
create a Baltic staple within his realm would have constituted a death blow
to Hanseatic pretensions in the Baltic had it been practicable. It was not, and
Christian’s failure in this regard revealed the weakness of his authority: he was
opposed both by the Hanse and by his own aristocracy, as many Danish elites had
close economic ties to Lübeck. Indeed, Lübeck’s aid was instrumental in effecting
landalmuens deltagelse i krigsførelsen i det 16. århundrede’, Historie, 2nd ser., 15 (1985), 611–32;
Knud J. V. Jespersen, ‘Fra ridderhær til kavalleri: det 16. århundredes ‘‘militære revolution’’ og den
adelige rostjeneste i Danmark’, Krigshistorisk tidsskrift (1974), 20–38.
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The Development of the Consensual State
Christian’s fall in 1523. This, in turn, restrained Frederik I, who in part owed
his crown to Hanseatic goodwill, and Frederik had no intention of repeating the
mistakes that had led to his nephew’s downfall. The position of the Hanse in
1533 was just as strong as it had been two decades before. Wullenwever’s action
in 1533–4 can be understood only in this context. Wullenwever may have been
both overly ambitious and arrogant, and in siding with Count Christoffer he was
tacitly taking up the cause of Christian II, the same king who had earlier tried
to shut Lübeck out of Danish affairs; but in trying to set up a puppet regime in
Copenhagen he was only seeking to protect Lübeck’s trade interests in the north.
The failure of Lübeck’s intervention in the Count’s War marked the point
at which the town’s, and therefore the League’s, commercial hegemony in
the Nordic lands began to dissipate. Christian III forced Lübeck out of the
war by sheer military might, causing a great humiliation for the proud town.
The significance of Christian III’s victory in 1536 was nearly as great for
Denmark’s commercial status as it was for the constitutional balance within the
kingdom. Although the foreign policy crafted by Christian III and Johan Friis
was a cautious one, designed to avoid any action that might compromise the
king’s legitimacy, Christian III took advantage of the Hanse’s declining military
strength and increasing factionalism. In a series of negotiations with Hanseatic
delegates, he dictated the new trade arrangements to the Germans. The Hanse’s
privileges in the south-eastern Norwegian towns and in Denmark itself would
be abrogated, and Hamburg’s contact with Iceland would be strictly limited.
Norwegian fishermen along the coastline north of Bergen no longer had to bring
their surplus catches to Bergen, where the Hanseatic merchants could purchase
them exclusively; instead, Norwegians could export their hauls from the local
fisheries however they liked. And as the king sought to remain on good terms
with Emperor Charles V, he also granted more privileges to Dutch merchants,
allowing them in 1549 to participate in the jealously guarded Norwegian timber
export trade. Only in Bergen did the Hanse retain favoured status, and even
there its activities were tightly circumscribed. With Christian’s encouragement,
Christoffer Valkendorf—then fiefholder in Bergen—forced the German-born
artisans in Kontoret to accept the same legal status as Norwegian burghers, so
that they had to submit to local Danish authorities.³
This trend continued, only more aggressively, under Frederik II. Though
overbearing and haughty in his dealings with the Hanse, Frederik took care not
to break off relations entirely. The Germans were valued customers, and in the
early 1560s Frederik hoped to entice Lübeck into an alliance against Sweden.
This, however, did not lead to wholesale concessions to the Hanse. Quite the
contrary: Frederik did little more than make vague promises to the towns without
³ Johan Schreiner, Hanseatene og Norge i det 16. århundrede (Oslo: Dybwad, 1941); Øystein
Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 101–3.
The Mistress of the Sound
109
ever honouring them, counting on their shared fear of Sweden to keep them
loyal to Denmark. Indeed, he was not content to defend Danish commerce
against the Hanse, and took the offensive against Hamburg. Hamburg, located
within the borders of Holstein, was a natural target, and for years the dukes
of Holstein had—in vain—claimed suzerainty over this imperial ‘free city’.
Hamburg’s claim to the exclusive right to export Holstein grain was therefore
a hotly contested issue. Frederik was determined to humble Hamburg, and he
did not hesitate to resort to intimidation. When, in 1561, Hamburg confiscated
a Danish ship laden with Holstein grain, he retaliated, arresting all Hamburg
ships passing through the Sound. The city government took the hint, freeing the
confiscated ship and paying Frederik a huge cash indemnity as an apology. Near
the end of his days, Frederik even planned to lay claim to Hamburg as a personal
possession, by force if need be. Only his death prevented the plan from going
forward.⁴
The Hanseatic challenge to Denmark, then, had been rendered ineffectual by
the 1560s. Hanseatic emissaries protested their losses vigorously, but to no effect;
the very shrillness of their complaints to Frederik II belied their weakness. But the
Baltic trade was growing in the diversity of its participants as well as in volume,
and hence Denmark’s prominent position in the flow of that trade forced the
Danish crown to confront two more intimidating maritime powers: England
and the Netherlands. After 1550, English merchants came to play a much larger
role in the Eastland trade, as well as in the Archangel trade to the north. Mostly
it was the Dutch who filled the vacuum that was left by the diminishment of
the Hanse, and the dynastic ties of the Netherlands to the Spanish Habsburgs
meant that they could not be bullied in the same fashion as the Hanse had been.
The outbreak of the Dutch Revolt after 1566 further complicated Denmark’s
relationship with the Low Countries.
It was not the expansion of the Baltic trade, but rather the expansion of Danish
claims to Baltic dominion, that put the Danish crown at loggerheads with the
maritime powers of northern Europe. In the decades after 1560, the Danish
government radically redefined what was meant by the phrase ‘the king’s waters’
(kongens strømme). In Danish eyes, the territorial waters of the Oldenburg state
now included not only the Sound and the seas immediately off the Danish and
Norwegian coasts, but also the entire Baltic and the northern reaches of the North
Sea, between Greenland and the North Cape (dominium maris septentrionalis).
The claim imposed on Denmark a responsibility to keep these seas safe for traffic,
by maintaining lighthouses and by keeping the sea lanes clear of pirates, but
it also placed restrictions on foreign shipping that other powers found costly,
inconvenient, or humiliating. Starting with the reign of Frederik II, the crown
⁴ DNT, i. 627–33, ii. 12–15; Poul Colding, Studier i Danmarks politiske Historie i Slutningen
of Christian III.s og Begyndelsen of Frederik II.s Tid (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1939), 313–27,
374–412.
110
The Development of the Consensual State
refused to tolerate the presence of foreign warships in Danish waters; after 1570,
Denmark recognized only Sweden as having an equal right to maintain a Baltic
fleet. The unannounced arrival of the French warship Concordia at Copenhagen
in July 1573 caused a great stir in Denmark. Although the ship was on a harmless
diplomatic errand—carrying to France the news of the duke of Anjou’s election
as king of Poland—its appearance was enough to prompt Frederik to impound
the ship and threaten stern reprisals. Foreign ships, moreover, would have to
salute Danish warships they encountered anywhere within ‘the king’s waters’.⁵
Perhaps most disturbing to Denmark’s neighbours was the king’s self-assumed
right to close off the Baltic to all traffic at his pleasure (mare clausum). Frederik II
had contemplated many schemes to tighten Denmark’s grip on the eastern seas,
including a proposal to make Helsingør a staple-town for all Baltic commerce.
He did not actually attempt this, but he did close the Sound to all foreign
shipping for several months in 1565. The sole purpose of this closure was to shut
off the flow of imported foodstuffs and munitions to Sweden during the Seven
Years War of the North, but it had a devastating impact on those regions—the
Netherlands in particular—that had become dependent on regular shipments
of Baltic grain. The king relented after a storm of international protest, but the
point had been made: whether or not Denmark had the right to shut down the
Baltic trade, it clearly had the ability to do so.⁶
The universally negative international reaction to the lastetold and the Sound
closure of 1565 demonstrated that Denmark would have to tread carefully
if it were to exploit commercial tariffs, like the Sound Dues, to produce
maximum yields, and to use its control over the Sound to fulfil Denmark’s
strategic requirements. Unfortunately, it was all but impossible to mulct the
Sound without offending someone. Perhaps because of the greater power of
the Habsburgs, perhaps because the Danes took English and Dutch friendship
for granted, Frederik II and his councillors showed greater indulgence towards
Spanish commercial interests. Danish warships regularly seized English whalers
and fishing vessels off the Norwegian and Icelandic coasts, and did their best
to prevent English merchants from traversing the North Cape to trade at
Archangel. The Danish crown frequently negotiated with English ambassadors
over these thorny issues, but rarely gave in to English demands for fair treatment
or restitution. Only during the period 1577–88, as Frederik II and Elizabeth
I tried to fashion a Protestant alliance, did this cool relationship warm up
a little, and even then (in 1583) the Danes strong-armed the English into
recognizing Denmark’s claim to dominium maris septentrionalis. The Council
⁵ E. I. Kouri, England and the Attempts to Form a Protestant Alliance in the Late 1560s (Helsinki:
Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1981), 81–6; Frede P. Jensen, ‘Øresund i 1500-tallet’, in Johan
Engström and Ole L. Frantzen (eds.), Øresunds strategiske rolle i et historisk perspektiv (Lund: Blom,
1998), 35–50; Lockhart, Frederik II, 119–23.
⁶ Mikael Venge, Fra åretold til toldetat: middelaldere indtil 1660, Dansk Toldhistorie, 1 (Copenhagen: Toldhistorisk selskab, 1987), 210–13.
The Mistress of the Sound
111
was as much to blame as the king, for the Regency of 1588–96 was far more
curt in its dealings with England than Frederik had ever been. Whoever was to
blame, it revealed an unwillingness to show commercial leniency to those states
that considered themselves friendly to Denmark. At best, English and Dutch
diplomats interpreted this policy as ungenerous and mean-spirited, and at worst
as a sign of duplicity.
One cannot help but be critical of what one English diplomat called the
‘covetous’ nature of the Danish central authority, which seems to have tried
perhaps a little too hard to wring every last penny from commercial revenues
and to get formal respect from more-established European powers. Denmark
was indeed respected for its naval strength and its commitment to international
Protestantism, but it was also regarded as a bothersome ‘turnstile’. There was a
fine line between inspiring respect and provoking widespread antipathy. Over
the next century, Denmark’s trade policies would do the latter, and as the threat
from Sweden loomed Denmark could not afford to alienate potential allies.
3. THE ‘WICKED NEIGHBOUR’
It appears, at first glance, that rivalry and hostility between Denmark and
Sweden was inevitable. But it was not so, certainly not when viewed from the
vantage point of the mid sixteenth century. Despite more than a full century
of uncomfortable cohabitation under the umbrella of the Kalmar Union, the
two kingdoms had much in common, in culture, political traditions, and noble
bloodlines. After 1523, the two states even shared a common enemy in Christian
II. The concerns and aspirations of the Swedish and Danish crowns were not
incompatible. Repeatedly throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
Denmark and Sweden would draw together in defence against common foes, if
only for a short time.
Nonetheless, the natural state of Danish–Swedish relations between 1560 and
1721 was conflict. In part, the mutual hostility came from the ambitions of the
kings themselves, but the chief animus was Swedish in origin. The overarching
goals of Swedish foreign policy under the Vasas are much debated still, but the
bulk of the available evidence suggests that Swedish foreign policy was predicated
on fear. The Vasa kings and their ruling class, probably more united regarding
matters of grand strategy than were their Danish counterparts, tended to view
Denmark as an unrelenting threat to the very existence of their state. Polish,
Russian, and Danish territory surrounded Sweden, but of the three Denmark was
the most immediate peril. Norway and Skåne shared a long border with Sweden;
Skåne nearly cut it off from the North Sea. From time to time, Swedish fear of
Denmark was entirely justified, but Sweden’s policy of lashing out at potential
enemies via preemptive strikes, to defend its interests by taking the offensive,
112
The Development of the Consensual State
was a self-fulfilling prophecy. For in viewing Denmark as an ‘unsleeping enemy’,
Sweden became itself a menace to Denmark’s security and survival.⁷
From 1523 to the middle of the century, the diplomatic relationship between
Sweden and Denmark was surprisingly placid given the deep and abiding hatred
aroused by Christian II. Neither kingdom was in a condition to challenge the
other: Gustav Vasa and Frederik I were far too preoccupied by domestic problems,
and Christian III was more worried by Habsburg ambitions. The kings of both
lands acted as a moderating influence on those aristocrats who would pursue
a more aggressive course. Despite the promises he made in his 1523 charter,
Frederik I had neither the will nor the means to quell Vasa’s rebellion and force
Sweden back into a Danish-led Union. The Count’s War actually strengthened
the frayed ties between Denmark and its newly independent neighbour without
compromising the autonomy of the latter. Swedish naval power, though modest,
was instrumental in sweeping Lübeck’s fleet from the seas around Denmark.
Christian III and the Council were grateful for the effort. The councils of
the two kingdoms demonstrated their mutual goodwill in a limited alliance,
the Brömsebro Treaty of 1541. At Brömsebro, delegates from both councils
pledged that their two states would not attack each other, and vowed henceforth
to conduct a common foreign policy. Such solidarity, reminiscent of the best
intentions of the Kalmar Union, was too good to last for long, and within three
years the partnership cooled perceptibly. Christian III negotiated the Speyer
Treaty of 1544 without consulting Gustav, and Gustav never forgot the slight.
Until the death of King Gustav in September 1560, the Danish and Swedish
governments watched each other warily and sparred over trivial issues, such as
the nebulous border separating northern Norway from Sweden and Finland, and
the status of the nomadic Lapps who travelled from one realm to the other.⁸
For all their bluster, Christian III and Gustav had no desire to engage in an
unnecessary war. Their successors were of a different mind. Both Frederik II
and Erik XIV were young, aggressive, and anxious to test their mettle on the
battlefield. There was no shortage of pretexts to justify going to war for either
party. The most troublesome differences emerged from conflicting ambitions in
the eastern Baltic in the early 1560s. Denmark established a foothold in the
area in 1560, when Frederik II purchased the island of Øsel for his younger
brother, Duke Magnus. Magnus, his brother’s equal in ambition but not in
ability, tried to extend his authority to the mainland nearby, claiming the title
⁷ Michael Roberts, The Swedish Imperial Experience 1560–1718 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 1–42; Klaus-Richard Böhme, ‘Building a Baltic Empire: Aspects of Swedish
Expansionism, 1560–1660’, in Göran Rystad (ed.), In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in
Power Politics 1500–1990, 2 vols. (Lund: PROBUS, 1994–5), i. 182–3; Göran Larsson, ‘Öresund
ur svensk synvinkel 1563–1658’, in Engström and Frantzen (eds.), Øresunds strategiske rolle, 51–62;
Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721
(London: Longman, 2000).
⁸ Esben Albrectsen, Karl-Erik Frandsen, and Gunner Lind, Konger og krige 700–1648, Dansk
udenrigspolitiks historie, 1 (Copenhagen: Danmarks Nationalleksikon, 2001), 277–81, 289–94.
The Mistress of the Sound
113
of ‘king of Estonia’. Unfortunately for Magnus, the Russian tsar Ivan IV (‘the
Terrible’) also had his eyes on Estonia. Soon Russian troops were pushing into
the disputed region, forcing Magnus back to Øsel. At this point, Sweden also
became involved: the port of Reval, dreading Russian overlordship, appealed
to Sweden for protection. Erik XIV answered the call in 1561, taking control
of Reval, and thus violated Magnus’s claim to possessions in the town. The
following year, Erik instituted a blockade of Narva, prohibiting all foreign trade
with the port. Magnus had unwittingly involved Denmark in Sweden’s trade
war with Russia, and for his part Erik XIV had insulted the Danish crown and
encroached upon Denmark’s dominium maris.
The Swedish and Danish councils sought, half-heartedly, to defuse the
potentially explosive situation in negotiations held at Copenhagen (1561) and
Stockholm (1563), but conditions only worsened. Frederik II, heedless of Swedish
protests, continued to employ the symbol of the ‘Three Crowns’—representing
the union of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—in his personal regalia, and
Erik XIV retaliated by including the three lions (representing Denmark) and
the single lion (Norway) in his family heraldry. The clash over the royal regalia
precluded a peaceful resolution of the other disputes. It would take only a
very minor incident to transform diplomatic hostility into open war. In May
1563 this happened in the seas off the Danish island of Bornholm. A small
Danish naval squadron encountered a larger Swedish force, and when the Swedes
neglected to strike their topsails in the traditional gesture of respect demanded by
Denmark, the Danish ships opened fire. The Swedes reacted without restraint,
falling upon the Danish squadron and taking three ships as prizes. The Seven
Years War of the North had begun.⁹
In this contest Denmark held all the advantages, or so it appeared. Denmark
had the stronger fleet, and the huge cash reserves stocked away by Christian III
and Johan Friis allowed the kingdom to hire more than 30,000 German and
Scots mercenaries for the first campaign. By autumn, Frederik II’s emissaries had
concluded alliances with Lübeck and Poland. Sweden, on the other hand, was
still at war with Russia over Estonia. Sweden could not afford a mercenary army,
and its native militia was poorly equipped and tactically incompetent. It fought
alone, and with minimal resources at hand, while the might of every other Baltic
power was ranged against it.
But the war was not a quick or easy victory for Denmark, regardless of its
superior strength and wealth. The progress of Danish forces in the opening
campaigns boded well. Älvsborg, Sweden’s only port on the North Sea, fell to
Danish besiegers in September 1563. King Erik led a counter-offensive into
⁹ Knud Rasmussen, Die livländische Krise 1554–61 (Copenhagen: Universitetsforlag, 1973);
Jason Lavery, Germany’s Northern Challenge: The Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Struggle
for the Baltic, 1563–1576 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1–18; Frede P. Jensen, Danmarks konflikt med
Sverige 1563–1570 (Copenhagen: Den dansk historiske forening, 1982), 21–72; Frost, Northern
Wars, 23–9.
114
The Development of the Consensual State
Halland in October, but after a humiliating defeat at Mared (9 November
1563)—where even Erik’s ‘secret weapon’, a group of four witches, failed to hold
off the Danes—he was driven back to Sweden with heavy losses. But the war
settled down into an indecisive and mutually destructive ‘war of posts’ in Skåne
and Norway after 1564. Repeated Swedish thrusts to the south and west achieved
the sack of Rønneby (Blekinge) in 1564, the conquest of Varberg (Halland) in
1565, and a temporary foothold in Jämtland and the Trøndelag. Danish forces
laid waste to the countryside of Västergötland and Småland. But neither of the
belligerents was able to gain a significant or lasting advantage on land. Despite
desperate fiscal measures at home, Frederik II was unable to raise enough cash to
pay (or even to dismiss!) his mercenary army; without pay the men would not
fight, and soon the army melted away. When Daniel Rantzau won a brilliant
victory over the Swedes at Axtorna (20 October 1565), he did so with an army
that numbered fewer than 8,000 men. At sea, the combined fleets of Denmark
and Lübeck held the upper hand, but they were not strong enough to blockade
the Swedish coastline and starve the Swedes into submission.¹⁰
Thus far the war had served only to impoverish Denmark. Axtorna had been
a costly victory, and the loss of an entire Danish naval squadron in a storm
off Gotland (July 1566) dealt a crushing blow to the Danish economy. Before
long, King Frederik’s subjects wearied of the constant stream of extraordinary
taxes and forced contributions of livestock and foodstuffs, not to mention the
king’s levying of peasant conscripts in 1564 and recurring outbreaks of epidemic
disease throughout the kingdom. Peasants living in the Scanian provinces, the
main theatre of war, were particularly hard hit. Denmark was in desperate straits.
It was this desperation that prompted Frederik II to seal off the Sound in 1565,
and to recall the disgraced Peder Oxe from exile in Lorraine in hopes that he
could somehow restore order to the state fisc. Ultimately this grave financial
distress compelled the introduction of the lastetold in 1567.¹¹
Frederik’s actions in the Sound forced the rest of Europe to take notice of the
Scandinavian war. The war was already causing some concern in the Empire, not
only because of the damage it inflicted upon Baltic commerce, but also because
there were many princes who feared that the conflict would soon spill over into
the Germanies and compromise the tenuous peace forged at Augsburg in 1555.
Such fears were not baseless. Both Frederik and Erik had sought assistance from
individual German princes, and the Grumbach ‘affair’ of 1564–6 demonstrated
that there were some among the princes who saw in the war a means for furthering
their own fortunes in the Empire. Activist Protestants in the Empire, notably
Frederik II’s brother-in-law Elector August of Saxony, saw the war as a dangerous
sign of Protestant disunity during the closing phases of the Council of Trent,
when the Protestants most needed to show solidarity. The closure of the Sound,
¹⁰ Jensen, Danmarks konflikt, 73–153, 182–251; Frost, Northern Wars, 29–37.
¹¹ Jensen, Danmarks konflikt, 154–65, 194–209.
The Mistress of the Sound
115
however brief, was highly damaging to the economies of England, France, and
the Netherlands. It caused disruption in ways that were wholly unanticipated: in
the Netherlands, where the unavailability of Baltic grain resulted in widespread
want and higher prices, the Sound closure was one of many factors that triggered
the ‘Iconoclastic Fury’ of 1566, leading to the revolt against Spain the following
year. Nearly all of Europe wanted to see the Danish–Swedish conflict resolved
quickly, and the diplomatic pressure on the two Scandinavian monarchs was
accordingly heavy.
Both kings wanted to end the bloody and indecisive war, too, but ending
it was much easier said than done. A change of regime in Sweden held out
some promise for peace in 1568–9. Erik XIV, brilliant but emotionally unstable,
descended into madness early in 1568. His two half-brothers, dukes Johan and
Karl, seized power, and in 1569 the former was crowned as King Johan III.
Johan was eager to make peace, but not at any price and certainly not on
Denmark’s terms. When a peace conference at Roskilde produced a settlement
that recognized Denmark’s territorial gains and compelled Sweden to pay a large
indemnity to Denmark, Johan rejected it with the hearty assent of the Swedish
diet. Similarly, the Danish Council’s demand that Frederik make peace at any
cost led to Frederik’s threatened abdication in 1570 and the resolution of the
diet to press on towards victory. It took foreign pressure to end the war. With
the help of mediation from Emperor Maximilian II, Charles IX of France, and
August of Saxony, the final peace negotiations opened at Stettin in September
1570. The resulting Peace of Stettin (13 December 1570) marked the war as a
Danish victory, but only in the most marginal sense. Both sides gave up nearly all
of the territorial conquests they had made during the war; Sweden surrendered
all claims it had once had on Norway, Skåne, and Gotland, while Denmark
officially renounced its ancient claim to the Swedish crown. Denmark’s only
substantial gain was the temporary possession of Älvsborg, which it would hold
pending Sweden’s payment of a 150,000 rigsdaler ‘ransom’.¹²
The significance of the Seven Years War of the North for Scandinavian history
cannot be overestimated. It resolved nothing, not even the heraldic dispute over
the ‘three crowns’ that had played such an important part in the origins of the
war. The war added to, rather than diminished, the hostility between Sweden
and Denmark, and hence made future clashes all but inevitable. In Sweden, the
conclusion of the war brought little more than a thirst for revenge and a steadfast
conviction that Denmark could never again be trusted. For the larger European
community, the Seven Years War of the North demonstrated precisely what
Danish possession of the Sound implied: that the king of Denmark could singlehandedly bring northern European commerce to a disastrous halt. It enhanced
¹² Lavery, Germany’s Northern Challenge; Jensen, Danmarks konflikt, 252–331; E. C. G. Brünner,
‘Die dänische Verkehrsperre und der Bildersturm in den Niederlanden’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter,
53 (1928), 98–109.
116
The Development of the Consensual State
Denmark’s reputation as a great regional power, but it also excited fear and envy.
Either way, Denmark could no longer be ignored, and this was at best a mixed
blessing for the Oldenburg state.
Finally, there were significant constitutional ramifications for Denmark itself.
The war did create strong personal bonds between Frederik II and his councillors,
which went far towards easing the tensions that had built up in the wake of the
Ditmarschen campaign. But at the same time it increased the determination of
the Council to limit the king’s authority in Scandinavian affairs. The Council
did not love Sweden, but neither was it eager to support their king’s impetuous
rush to war in 1563, even if it had become unavoidable. The Council had
already asserted itself in Scandinavian affairs while leaving most other areas of
diplomacy to the king’s discretion—the 1541 Brömsebro treaty, for example,
had been negotiated under the Council’s authority and not Christian III’s—but
after Stettin the Council moved to establish this practice by law. At Stettin, the
councils of Denmark and Sweden pledged that all future disputes between the
two states would first be addressed by joint sessions of the councils, the so-called
‘border meetings’ (grænsemøder). Only if the border meetings failed to resolve
any given dispute would the councils allow their respective sovereigns to resort
to the use of force. It was a limited but important restriction on royal authority
in both states, but the ‘border meeting’ clause would have more of an impact on
Denmark. The Swedish Council of State, frequently cowed into subservience as
the Vasa kings relied more and more on their diet as a constitutional apparatus,
was gradually losing its autonomous voice. In Denmark, where the Council
would not surrender its autonomy until 1660, the institution of the border
meetings more tightly fettered royal authority in the making of foreign policy.
Forty-one years would pass between the Stettin settlement and the renewal of
war between the Nordic kingdoms. The mutual distrust, however, did not abate.
War threatened on numerous occasions. In the mid 1570s, Johan III flirted
with the idea of religious apostacy, discussing with Spanish and papal emissaries
a possible return to Rome. Though married to a Catholic Jagiellon princess,
Johan never actually converted to the Roman faith. His proposals for a via media
church that embraced Catholic liturgy but retained clerical marriage met with a
cold reception in the Holy See, and the strongly Lutheran population of Sweden
objected vociferously to its king’s confessional predilections. Still, Frederik II
and his councillors were concerned that Johan might become involved in a
papal-Spanish-Polish plot to conquer the Sound. Frederik could not hide his
determination to prevent confessional change in Sweden at all costs. When Johan
finally renounced his plans to convert, he sheepishly admitted that fear of Danish
retaliation stayed his hand.¹³
¹³ Lockhart, Frederik II, 125–7; Vello Helk, Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus S.J.: en biografi med
bidrag til belysning af romerkirkens forsøg på at genvinde Danmark Norge (Copenhagen: Gad, 1966),
65–95, 110–52; Oskar Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia, 4 vols. (Oslo:
The Mistress of the Sound
117
The uneasy détente that prevailed between Denmark and Sweden was certainly
preferable to open war. The perpetuation of this peaceful, if tense, coexistence
depended solely on the attitudes of the Swedish and Danish ruling classes, and
on those of their monarchs. Frederik II’s good-natured personal correspondence
with Duke Karl of Södermanland, younger brother and eventual successor of
Johan III, reveals that warmer relations were indeed possible. As the events of
1559–63 had demonstrated, however, such amity could just as easily evaporate.
All it would take to shatter the peace would be a single ambitious ruler, one who
had the resources to fight, one who had no memory of the horrors of the Seven
Years War of the North. And while Denmark continued to bask in its new-found
reputation as master of the Baltic, Sweden was actually growing far more rapidly
in its capacity for making war. The next time Denmark and Sweden faced each
other on the battlefield, Denmark would not have quite so clear an advantage.
4 . C O N F E S S I O N A L A N D DY N A S T I C I N T E R E S TS :
D E N M A R K A N D T H E E M PI R E
The German policies of the Oldenburgs are rarely accorded much space in
current surveys of Danish history. This is an unfortunate lacuna; for though
Sweden presented the most immediate threat to Danish security after 1560,
it was not necessarily foremost on the minds of the Oldenburg kings. Except
during the Seven Years War of the North, Christian III and Frederik II devoted
far more time, thought, energy, and ink to the politics of the Habsburg dynasty
and the German states than they did to the intrigues of the house of Vasa.
This was only natural. The most pressing international concerns of the mid to
late sixteenth century centred on the polarization of Continental Europe in the
wake of the Reformation. Moreover, the kings of Denmark were also dukes of
Holstein, and as such had a vested interest in German and Habsburg affairs.
Three factors strengthened the ties between the Danish kings and the German
princes, and dragged the Oldenburg monarchs into the great diplomatic disputes
of the century: first, the deposal of Christian II in 1523, which clashed with the
dynastic claims of the Habsburgs; second, the Reformation, which put Denmark
at the head of Germany’s Protestant states; and third, the need to find patrimonies
for the younger sons of the dynasty, which was imperative because the division
of the Danish lands and the further partition of the Duchies was impossible.
The first and initially the most pressing of these motivating factors was the
deposal of Christian II. As this would be the greatest influence on the foreign
policy of Christian III, and would remain a matter of grave concern for Frederik
II, it merits some explanation here. In purely dynastic terms, Christian II’s claims
Universitetsforlaget, 1963–92), ii. 89–225; Sven Ulric Palme, Sverige och Danmark 1596–1611
(Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1942), 102.
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The Development of the Consensual State
to the Danish throne were entirely legitimate. He had not formally abdicated but
merely left the kingdom in 1523 to seek the aid of his Habsburg in-laws. The
Council could make a good case that he had acted as a tyrant and thereby violated
the terms of his coronation charter, yet they too had violated the same charter:
they neglected to formally ‘instruct’ the king of the error of his ways, and did not
give him the chance to correct his misguided policies. Once captured, Christian
II himself ceased to be much of a real threat to the crown, and his personal claim
was literally a dead issue after his death in captivity at Kalundborg in late January
1559, only days after the death of his cousin Christian III. The real peril came
from the two daughters of Christian II and Isabella of Habsburg. The eldest,
Dorothea, married Friedrich, Count Palatine (later Elector Palatine Friedrich II),
in 1535. With Charles V’s support, Friedrich took up his wife’s cause during
the Count’s War, preparing a seaborne expedition against Sjælland in early
1536. Nothing came of it; the proposed expedition was scrapped when Charles
V resumed his war with France. Count Friedrich’s conversion to Lutheranism
in 1544 permanently lost him Habsburg backing and forced him to withdraw
his claim.
Christian II’s second daughter, Christine (1521–90), however, would not be
shaken so easily. Her second marriage, to Duke Francis II of Lorraine, produced
a son and two daughters, and it was primarily for her daughters’ sake that she
held tenaciously to the claims of her line. She refused to renounce her claim
as long as she lived. Fortunately for Denmark, Christine found little support
for her schemes, at least not among the Habsburgs. After 1544, neither Charles
V nor Philip II of Spain gave her the least bit of encouragement, so whatever
threat she posed to Denmark was largely chimerical. The Danish royal house
remained wary nonetheless to the end of the century, and with good reason.
Christine found no lack of lesser champions to espouse her cause—including,
briefly, Peder Oxe, exiled by Christian III in 1558. And there was always the fear
that the Habsburgs or Christine’s new relations in the Guise faction of Lorraine
might use her as a means of working some mischief in Denmark.¹⁴
Under these circumstances, it was wise for Christian III and Johan Friis to
tread carefully. Denmark did not have the means to take on the might of the
Habsburgs, and anyway they were preoccupied with the reform of state and
church to which they had committed themselves. Still, the threat from Lorraine
could not be ignored; upon this issue rested the legitimacy of the ruling house
and therefore the territorial integrity of Denmark. The cornerstone of Christian
III’s foreign policy became the isolation of Christine of Lorraine by diplomatic
means. At first, Christian III tried to safeguard his realm by allying himself with
Charles V’s enemies. Near the end of the Count’s War, Christian III reacted
¹⁴ Hansen, Kejser Karl V, 206–44; Poul Colding, ‘De lothringske praktikker mod Danmark
i syvårskrigens første år’, in Povl Bagge (ed.), Smaaskrifter tilegnede Professor, Dr. phil. Aage Friis
(Copenhagen: J. H. Schultz, 1940), 63–81.
The Mistress of the Sound
119
to news of the Count Palatine Friedrich’s planned invasion by sending Danish
and Holstein troops to the Netherlands, aiding Duke Charles of Geldern in his
war against Groningen. The campaign was a failure, Breide Rantzau’s troops
having suffered a major defeat at Heiligerlee only two days after Christian III’s
triumphant entry into Copenhagen. It had been a daring but ill-conceived move,
and after the civil war Christian instead sought alliances with two more reliable
partners: France and the Protestant League of Schmalkalden. Neither afforded
the king much comfort. Shortly after concluding an alliance with Francis I of
France at Fontainebleau (November 1541), Christian allowed the French to push
him into undertaking a military expedition against the Netherlands in 1543. The
venture was a dismal failure, and it caused him to rethink the entire direction of
his foreign policy.¹⁵
In a complete volte-face, Christian decided instead to placate Charles V by
throwing himself on his mercy. In the Treaty of Speyer (May 1544), Christian
renounced the French alliance and withdrew his membership in the Schmalkaldic
League, in return for the emperor’s promise that he would not support any attempt
to dethrone Christian. Perhaps it was not as satisfactory as a formal recognition
of his legitimacy, but it was the best that Christian could hope for, and the
emperor’s destruction of the Schmalkaldic princes three years later proved the
wisdom of the Speyer treaty. What remained unresolved by Speyer Christian
tried to fix by dealing directly with Christine herself. Throughout the 1550s, he
strongly advocated a marriage alliance with the house of Lorraine, hoping that
a match between his son Prince Frederik and Christine’s daughter Renée would
satisfy the duchess’s demands, and possibly even add Lorraine to the Oldenburg
patrimony. The match never took place—Frederik was indifferent to it, many
of the king’s advisers opposed it, and Christine was none too cooperative—but
it remained Christian III’s fervent hope to the end of his days.¹⁶
Christian III’s concern for defending his legitimacy, and his fear of Habsburg
retribution, kept Denmark from significant involvement in the political affairs
of German Protestantism. Protestant princes in the Empire certainly wanted a
greater degree of Danish participation in their affairs, and they quickly forgave
Christian his desertion of the Schmalkaldic League, but the king would not
be stirred. Frederik II was not so restrained. His close friendship with August
of Saxony, and his extended tour of the German courts in 1557–8, awakened
in the young and heretofore listless prince a passionate interest in German
politics, which alarmed his isolationist father but elated the German Protestants.
Although the Ditmarschen invasion and the deteriorating relationship with
Sweden absorbed the young king’s energies for the first decade of the reign,
still he wasted no time in demonstrating his intent to defend Protestantism in
¹⁵ DNT, i, 404–9; Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind, Konger og krige, 273.
¹⁶ Ibid. 281–7; Martin Schwarz Lausten, Religion og politik: studier i Christian IIIs forhold til det
tyske rige i tiden 1544–1559 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1977); DNT, i. 450–8.
120
The Development of the Consensual State
the Empire. During the Naumburg colloquy of 1561, where leading Protestant
princes tried to draft a common response to the final session of the Council of
Trent, Frederik II delighted his coreligionists by haughtily refusing to grant an
audience to a papal legate.¹⁷
It could be argued that the motivations behind Frederik’s foreign policies
were first and foremost centred on national security and not religion per se.
To a great extent this was indeed the case, particularly during the 1560s and
1570s. The ‘intrigues of Lorraine’ and escalating international resentment of
Danish policies in the Sound helped to inspire a series of plots, most of
them fanciful and impractical, aimed at sabotaging Frederik’s government and
even subjugating Denmark. The first of these, the so-called ‘Grumbach affair’
of 1564–6, brought together an unlikely quartet—Christine of Lorraine, the
Ernestine duke of Saxony, the exiled Peder Oxe, then serving at Christine’s court,
and an impoverished imperial knight named Wilhelm von Grumbach—in an
attempt to aid Sweden in its war against Denmark, dethrone Frederik II, and
overthrow Elector August of Saxony. It was a ridiculous failure, like all such
cabals, but it caused Frederik a few sleepless nights. The outbreak of the Dutch
Revolt and the French wars of religion added a new and frightening dimension
to the designs of those who aimed at ending Frederik’s stranglehold over the
Sound—that of religious ideology. The plot of Anders Lorichs in the late 1570s,
for example, threatened to embroil Denmark directly in the confessional struggles
on the Continent. Lorichs, a man who earlier had been dismissed from Frederik’s
service, tried to persuade Johan III of Sweden to act on a convoluted plan by
which Sweden, Poland, and Spain would attack Denmark, seize the Sound for
Spain, and forcibly convert the Danish heretics, shipping off the unrepentant to
serve as slave labour in New Spain. Though the Lorichs plot ultimately came
to nought, there were more than enough real perils to keep Frederik II on his
toes. The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris in August 1572, and the
subsequent election of Henri de Valois, duke of Anjou, to the Polish throne
the following year, deeply disturbed the Danish king. The thought that Anjou,
notorious throughout Europe for his alleged complicity in the massacres, might
rule neighbouring Poland was almost more than Frederik could bear.¹⁸
By the end of the 1570s, however, the objectives of Frederik’s ‘confessional’
foreign policy had been transformed. Danish historians, even those critical of
Frederik’s abilities, generally credit the king for his willingness to act as a
mediator of sorts in Protestant theological disputes. But if Frederik did act as a
mediator, he did not do so on purely philanthropical grounds or because of some
pedantic interest in matters theological. His desire to foster solidarity within
Europe’s Protestant community stemmed instead from what he perceived as a
political imperative: to present a united Protestant front, one that embraced
Lutheran and Calvinist alike, as a means of protection against the militancy
¹⁷ Lockhart, Frederik II, 84–7.
¹⁸ Ibid. 92–5, 113–32.
The Mistress of the Sound
121
of Counter-Reformation Catholicism. Like many Protestant sovereigns of his
day, Frederik believed ardently in the existence of an international Catholic
conspiracy, directed from Rome and Madrid, that intended nothing less than
the complete extirpation of the Protestant faith. The actions of Spain in the
rebellious Netherlands, the conduct of the house of Valois in its dealings with
the Huguenots, and the resurgence of Catholicism in the Empire of Rudolf II,
all seemed to prove the point. Episodes such as the Lorichs conspiracy—and
an alleged assassination plot in 1585 against the king and his sons, which in
Frederik’s mind was somehow connected to Spain—made the Catholic threat
personal.¹⁹
Frederik II’s opposition to the Concord movement in the late 1570s made
him a hero to the more radical Protestant princes in the Empire and to Calvinist
statesmen in France and the Netherlands, who saw in the Danish king not
only a powerful ally, but also a means of uniting the German Protestants in
defence of the faith. Repeated emissaries from Elizabeth I, Henry of Navarre,
and radical activists like Count Palatine Johann Casimir helped Frederik warm
to the idea of championing Protestantism on the Continent. Elizabeth I,
who conferred upon him membership of the Order of the Garter in 1579,²⁰
made an especially profound impression on Frederik. Several members of the
king’s inner circle, notably Heinrich Rantzau, encouraged him as well. By the
mid 1580s, Frederik was busily mediating between orthodox and Philippist
Lutherans, hoping to convince the orthodox ‘Martinists’ that solidarity was vital
to the survival of Protestantism, whether or not they found collaboration with
Calvinists repugnant. To the English he hinted that he might close off the Sound
to Spanish shipping, something tantamount to a declaration of war, should Philip
II not cease his ‘persecution’ of Protestants in the Netherlands. He sent sternly
worded warnings to both Henry III of France and Philip II, and volunteered his
services as a mediator for the abortive Anglo-Spanish peace talks in the spring of
1588, talks that broke up when the Armada sailed into the Channel.²¹
The effort, which consumed much of Frederik’s time and energy in the last
decade of his life, would prove futile. The greater German princes, including
the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, were either unwilling to collaborate
with Calvinist rebels or reluctant to provoke their Catholic emperor. At two
successive princely diets—at Lüneburg in 1586 and Naumburg in 1587—the
king could not get anything more substantial than vague expressions of moral
support. In England, policy-makers such as Sir Francis Walsingham and Robert
Dudley, earl of Leicester, argued that Danish involvement would be essential to
the success of any Protestant alliance, and were willing to do whatever it took to
win Frederik over. It should have been a simple task, for Frederik’s aims were
¹⁹ The Sabinus ‘plot’ of 1585 is discussed ibid. 219–25.
²⁰ The actual ceremony, however, did not take place until 1582.
²¹ Frede P. Jensen, ‘Frederik II. og truslen fra de katolske magter’, HTD, 93 (1993), 233–77.
122
The Development of the Consensual State
not markedly different from Elizabeth’s; neither ruler, for example, really wanted
to see the Netherlands achieve independence, preferring a confessionally tolerant
Dutch state under foreign rule without a substantial foreign military presence
there. Denmark’s inflexibility on matters of trade, however, alienated nearly all
but the most avowed danophiles at Elizabeth’s court. At the end of Frederik’s
reign, Danish intentions were almost as suspect in England as they were in
Spain. Perhaps it was because of his failure to create or co-create a ‘Protestant
international’ that Frederik did not push the Council to back a war against either
France or Spain, as Elizabeth’s ministers hoped he would do. Denmark could
not take on the two most powerful states in Europe, together or singly, without a
broad base of support in Protestant Europe. Foreign observers familiar with the
Danish court believed that the Council held the king back from making a firm
commitment to a war in defence of Dutch and French Protestants. ‘His will is
good’, wrote one English visitor, ‘but yet he is overruled.’²²
The anticlimax of Frederik II’s foreign policy during the ‘wars of religion’ helps
to illustrate two fundamental points about Denmark’s role in European affairs
and the manner in which the Danish government went about the business of
war and diplomacy. First, while in domestic matters the monarchy operated as a
partnership between sovereign and aristocracy, and while the Council demanded
the final say in affairs relating to Sweden, when it came to relations with the
major Continental powers the king was in charge. Individual councillors, such
as Johan Friis and Niels Kaas, might play an important advisory role, but it was
a subordinate role and they involved themselves only when the king wished it.
Neither Christian III nor Frederik II convened his Council to discuss European
politics outside the Baltic region. Both kings worked most closely with their
Germans. Frederik’s 1586 embassy to England, arguably the most ostentatious
and most important diplomatic mission of the reign, was led by Heinrich Ramel,
one of the king’s German secretaries, and did not involve a single member of
the Council. If the practice excited any jealousy within the Council, no one
commented upon it. The king was expected to lead in the conduct of foreign
policy. The Council, however, by guarding the purse strings, would still have the
ultimate authority over major diplomatic or military commitments.
Second, the events of the 1570s and 1580s demonstrated just how much
Denmark’s international reputation had changed over the course of a mere
three or four decades. Frederik II’s actions on behalf of the Protestant states
established him as a leader, albeit not a very successful one, of one of Europe’s
two great confessional blocs. The Dutch, the Huguenots, the Protestant German
princes, and even England looked to Denmark for direction and support. It
was no coincidence that German Protestant statesmen toyed with the idea of
nominating Frederik as a potential opposition candidate for election to the
²² Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby, to Sir Francis Walsingham, 15 Dec. 1585, quoted in
Lockhart, Frederik II, 238.
The Mistress of the Sound
123
Imperial throne, not once but twice. Regardless of the constant irritations that
Danish commercial policies produced, the Oldenburg kings had earned the
reputation of champions of the Protestant faiths, a reputation created by Frederik
II but one which long survived his passing in 1588. The problem was that the
capabilities of the Oldenburg state could not sustain this reputation. This was
not yet manifest in 1588, nor even in 1625, but within a half-century it would
become painfully obvious to all.
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II
T H E AG E O F C H R I S T I A N I V,
1596−1660
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6
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
No visitor to Denmark can escape the legacy of Christian IV. Evidence of the
king’s personal touch is ubiquitous throughout the country, and can be easily
found in Norway, southern Sweden, and the former Duchies as well. Thanks
to the king’s prolific writing habits, we know something of his thoughts and
sentiments, recorded in numerous journals, diaries, and nearly 3,000 pieces of
correspondence written in his hand. It is a much simpler task to ‘reconstruct’
the personality of Christian IV than it is to do so for most of his predecessors
or successors, and so the joys and tragedies of the king’s life have become
an integral part of Danish historical mythology. Even today, Christian IV is
revered as something of a superhuman figure, a colossus with lofty goals and
enormous appetites, and a man with a big but fragile heart, who suffered as
much disappointment in his personal relationships as he did in his political
ambitions.¹
The physical reminders of Christian IV reveal much of the character both
of the king and of his realm. During his long reign, Denmark reached both
the zenith and—at least very nearly—the nadir of its power and influence in
European affairs. The king bears much personal responsibility for Denmark’s rise
and decline in the seventeenth century. Taken as a whole, the career of Christian
IV was a failed one. Christian himself saw it thus from the vantage point of his
deathbed; but if he was a failure, it was not for lack of energy. In foreign policy
as well as domestic, every aspect of the reign was imbued with an almost feverish
activity, as the king (and very often his Council too) sought to augment the
authority of the state at home and to enhance the reputation of the kingdom
abroad. Perhaps the greatest tragedy and the greatest significance of this period
in Danish history, the half-century that ended with Christian’s death in 1648,
is that Denmark’s international reputation suffered irreparable damage and that
the ‘constitution’ established by the king’s father and grandfather collapsed. The
concept of the ‘Crown of Denmark’ died as the relationship between Christian
IV and his Council metamorphosed from one of partnership into one of outright
confrontation and bitterness.
¹ Leo Tandrup, ‘En brav blakket eller brutal konge’, in Svend Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden
(Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1988), 387–411.
128
The Age of Christian IV
1. KING, COUNCIL, AND CONSTITUTION
The royal accession of 1596 was the least eventful in Denmark’s recent memory.
It was peaceful, unlike that of 1534–6; it was not the result of usurpation as in
1523; there was no immediate and manifest clash of personalities as there had
been in 1559; and it was not unexpected in the least. The coronation of Christian
IV had already been in planning for eight years, and to the Council of State
the new king was a known quantity. The Council had been solely responsible
for Christian’s education and grooming for office after April 1588, when he
celebrated his eleventh birthday. Their young charge had been attentive and
dutiful, and the governing Regency had clearly left its imprint on his approach
to kingship.
During his eight years under the Regency’s supervision, Christian IV had been
well prepared for his role. His father had already laid the groundwork; taking a
keen interest in the education of the prince-elect and his younger brothers, dukes
Ulrik and Hans, Frederik II had seen to it that his sons received the best tutelage
available in the kingdom. Though the anti-aristocratic and anti-foreign reaction
of the lesser nobles in 1588 removed the learned Heinrich Ramel and Christoffer
Valkendorf from leading positions in the king’s household, replacing them with
the unscholarly Hak Holgersen Ulfstand, Christian’s education did not suffer.
Perhaps he was not nearly so learned as his more celebrated contemporary and
rival, Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, but by no means could Christian IV be said
to have been ignorant. He was equally fluent in Danish, German, and Latin,
and may have had a basic command of Italian as well. He excelled in pragmatic
matters. The hours he spent sailing small craft on the lake at Skanderborg
Castle instilled in him a deep understanding of all things nautical, as well as a
well-developed interest in ship design. Christian’s appreciation for naval affairs,
a thing of no small importance for a kingdom whose security rested so firmly on
sea power, would never leave him.
Christian’s political education was far more extensive than his father’s had
been. From the age of 13, he regularly took part in meetings of the Council,
working closely with his later father’s most trusted adviser, Niels Kaas. After
Kaas’s death in 1594 the king played an important role in Council deliberations.
He granted audiences to foreign emissaries and displayed a grasp of foreign
affairs remarkable for one so young; while yet a 12-year-old, for example, he
discussed the prospects for an international Protestant alliance with delegations
from England and Scotland, eliciting favourable comments from both. Most
important, the years of working together with the Council and the Regency
developed in Christian a profound attachment to the concept of king-in-Council
that had been so fundamental a part of Frederik II’s kingship. Undoubtedly,
Arild Huitfeldt’s Chronicles, written as a didactic work for the young Christian,
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
129
had some impact on the king. To the end of his days, even as the Council became
a major obstacle to the exercise of his authority, Christian never so much as
contemplated the permanent dismissal of that body. To him the Council was
sacrosanct, the institutions of Danish government immutable.²
In this sense, Christian’s political education would prove to be detrimental to
the continued success of Denmark’s limited monarchy. Christian had learned
statecraft while sitting at the feet of the Council, and hence had learned exclusively
from its perspective. He did not have a suitable royal role model. Frederik II
had been a doting father, but at the time of his death he had not yet begun
to introduce Christian into the world of politics. Denied the opportunity to
see his father at work, Christian never learned what it meant to be king in a
conciliar monarchy, and would never learn the art of political management. Like
his father, he consulted with his Council; unlike his father, he would invariably
meet with the Council as a body, and as a body the members were more likely
to oppose royal policies with which they disagreed. Christian IV, in other words,
was dedicated in principle to the concept of conciliar monarchy, yet never found
a means of getting what he wanted from the Council without confrontation.
His education—as exemplified by his fascination with sailing—formed in him a
propensity to focus on minute details rather than broader problems. In modern
parlance, Christian IV was a ‘micro-manager’, who immersed himself in the most
trivial concerns, failing to delegate authority in an efficient manner and thereby
frequently neglecting the larger duties of rulership. This tendency, combined
with his inflexibility in dealings with the Council, would later become the bane
of his governance.
The Regency, on the whole, proceeded without incident. After the initial
shake-up following the Protest of 1588, there were no significant changes in its
personnel. The Regency leaders, primarily Kaas and Huitfeldt, were competent
caretakers; by following their late sovereign’s policies, including the continuation
of fief reform, they made sure that the realm remained in sound condition. Only
in foreign policy did the regents deviate from the course laid out by Frederik II.
The assault of the Spanish Armada on England was, in the eyes of the regents,
an uncomfortably narrow escape for Denmark. Several Spanish ships had been
sighted off the Danish and Norwegian coasts, one sought shelter in Bergen, and
there was great concern that the intended target of the Armada was the Sound
rather than England. Thoroughly frightened, the regents backed off from any
involvement in the wars in France and the Netherlands. Whatever difficulties
confronted the Regency came from the shrill demands of the Dowager-Queen
Sofie regarding the partition of the Duchies. The united efforts of the Council, the
² Steffen Heiberg, Christian 4: monarken, mennesket og myten (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1988),
10–49; Troels Frederik Troels Lund, Christian den Fjerdes Skib paa Skanderborg Sø, 2 vols.
(Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1893); C. G. Tortzen (ed.), Liber compositionum: Christian IV’s latinske
brevstile 1591–1593 (Copenhagen: Klassikerforeningen, 1988).
130
The Age of Christian IV
Holstein nobility, and Christian IV—who, significantly, sided with the Council
against his own mother, opposing the further division of the Duchies—isolated
Sofie and further bonded the king to the Council. By 1595, the Council had
begun to discuss the transfer of power to the king, and in August 1596 Christian
was crowned at Copenhagen. One year later, his new bride, Anna Cathrine of
Brandenburg, was crowned as queen.
Christian may not have shared his father’s knack for managing the Council of
State, but in matters of personality he and Frederik II had much in common.
Like Frederik, Christian was warm-hearted and informal, and though not a
demagogue he did maintain a common touch with his subjects throughout his
life. He enjoyed hunting, drinking, and gambling above all other pursuits, and
was something of a philanderer. To some, Christian appeared unrefined and
dissipated. He shocked the Stuart court—though not James I, his brother-inlaw—with his drunken antics when he visited his sister, Queen Anna, in 1606
and 1614. Some foreign observers commented unfavourably on the tavern-like
atmosphere that prevailed at Christian’s court. ‘Such is the life of that king’,
wrote the earl of Leicester after an embassy to Denmark in 1632, ‘to drink all
day and ly with a whore every night.’³ In the context of consensual monarchy,
Christian’s personality was a great political asset—at the beginning of the reign.
It allowed him to forge close personal bonds with the members of the Council,
who were his friends and drinking companions as much as they were his political
partners. The tightly knit social symbiosis of king and Council seemed to promise
an even more productive collaboration than that of the period 1570–88.
The social composition of the Council itself, and the process by which its ranks
were filled, did not change in the first three decades of Christian’s governance.
Regardless of the 1588 Protest, Christian reserved Council positions and fiefs
for the uppermost echelons of the aristocracy, for men whose families had long
been represented at the Council table. There were no ‘new men’ in the central
administration for the first half of the reign. Service at court, but especially in
the Chancery and within fief administration, continued to be the surest path to
Council membership. This in turn implied a greater degree of education for the
‘typical’ councillor: members of the Council were two to three times more likely
to have matriculated at foreign universities than were other nobles. Similarly,
there is nothing surprising or noteworthy about those councillors appointed to
positions among the officers of state. Prior to the constitutional crisis of the
late 1620s, the king selected the rigsembedsmænd exclusively from the Council.
Though Christian IV, like his predecessors, had a habit of leaving some offices
vacant for years on end—there was no rigshofmester from the death of Valkendorf
in 1600 to the appointment of Frans Rantzau in 1632, for example—by and
large he kept the promise he made in his coronation charter, to keep the most
³ ‘Greven af Leicester, Robert Sidneys, Beretning om sit Gesandtskab til Kongen af Danmark og
Hertugen af Holsteen, i Aaret 1632’, Danske Magazin, 3rd ser., 1 (1842–3), 15.
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
131
important positions filled. The Council was a homogeneous body, sharing a
common social, cultural, and economic outlook. And since the king alone had
the right to appoint men to these positions, this implies that Christian IV had no
hidden agenda to ‘pack’ the central administration with outsiders whose loyalty
was to him rather than to the aristocracy.⁴
The homogeniety of the Council and the central administration helps to
account for the persistence of constitutional harmony in Denmark prior to 1625,
which was broken only by brief disputes over foreign policy. It also helped
that Christian IV did little to antagonize the Council. He did not overtly play
favourites, and was more even-handed than Frederik II in the distribution of
political favours. Christian did not keep an inner circle of advisers. He worked
closely with his dedicated and learned chancellors, Christian Friis til Borreby
(chancellor 1596–1616) and Christen Friis til Kragerup (1616–39), but did not
befriend them quite so intimately as his father had befriended Niels Kaas. Nor did
Christian bring Germans into the administration in significant numbers; only in
the German Chancery did Holsteiners or other Germans figure significantly. In
short, there was no royalist inner core at Copenhagen, and Christian IV showed
no inclination to create one.⁵
Since this concord would not last forever, the king’s political views merit some
attention here. Christian IV held a very elevated view of the royal calling, and
certainly court culture was far more ostentatious during his reign than it had
been under his father. This was due more to the fashion of the times than to a
marked difference in political philosophy between father and son. Christian was
clearly a monarchist, but he was equally dedicated to the principle of consensual
rule, of which the Council—and hence the aristocracy—was an integral and
inseparable part. Christian IV was not a James VI and I: though a prolific writer,
the Dane left few written clues as to his thoughts on the power of kings. We
do not know what, if any, books in the rich political literature of the age—the
age of Bodin and Hotman—he read. As a child, he had thoroughly digested
Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince, and in 1619 he hired the German
royalist Henning Arnisæus as his court physician. Arnisæus, however, was chosen
for his medical skills and not for his political views. What little we know of
Christian’s political proclivities must come from his actions, and one incident in
particular speaks volumes about this: the fall of Christoffer Dybvad. Dybvad, a
Norwegian by birth, was the son of the controversial theologian Jørgen Dybvad,
and served as professor of mathematics at Copenhagen from 1618. The younger
Dybvad spent a great deal of time in the Dutch Republic, and there he developed
a great respect for the Dutch burgher class and an antipathy towards noble rule.
⁴ Leon Jespersen, ‘Rekrutteringen til rigsrådet i Christian 4.s tid’, in Knud J. V. Jespersen (ed.),
Rigsråd, adel og administration 1570–1648 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1980), 35–91.
⁵ Knud J. V. Jespersen, ‘Herremand i kongeklæder: Christian IV, rigsrådet og adelen’, in Ellehøj
(ed.), Christian IVs verden, 123–45; Ole Degn, Christian 4.s kansler: Christen Friis til Kragerup
(1581–1639) som menneske og politiker (Viborg: Landsarkivet for Nørrejylland, 1988).
132
The Age of Christian IV
Curiously, he became not a republican but a monarchist. He publicly advocated
the abolition of the Council and the establishment of a kind of populist absolute
monarchy, in which the noble class would no longer monopolize political power.
When word of Dybvad’s ideas leaked to Christian IV in 1619, the king was
incensed. At his command, Dybvad was shorn of his academic titles, arrested,
and clapped in irons at Kalundborg Castle. The very idea of a royalist revolution,
of a government that did not rest on the support of the aristocracy, was anathema
to Christian IV. He was neither a revolutionary nor an incipient absolutist.⁶
Yet there were cracks beneath this veneer of political solidarity. The monarchy
worked well not only because Christian and his aristocracy shared a common
mindset and values, nor just because both worked assiduously to keep the
peace at home. The success of consensual monarchy depended equally on a
shared vision of Denmark’s future. The Council did not object strenuously
to its king’s ambitious commercial and dynastic policies because these policies
redounded to the honour and prosperity of the kingdom. When the Council
raised objections—and it would—it did so in a deferential manner, as cautionary
advice and not as flat rejection.
But major differences of opinion between king and Council emerged within a
few years of the coronation, mostly over issues of foreign policy. The Council of
State had a long record of caution in matters of foreign policy, being amenable
to preparations for national defence but wary of actions that could provoke a
war. Memory of the costly indecisiveness of the Seven Years War of the North
deepened this wariness in the succeeding two generations of councillors. As
relations between Denmark and Sweden soured at the turn of the new century,
Christian grew ever more eager to crush Sweden with a massive pre-emptive strike.
The Council did not. To a man, the members of the Council feared Sweden
and Karl IX, but did not see the need to rush headlong to war. Discussing the
issue with the assembled Council in 1601 and 1603, Christian found the body
intractable. He submitted to the Council’s will—grudgingly—but in 1603 he
added a strange afterword: he could not, he warned, be held responsible for the
political fallout of the Council’s obstinacy, and if the lower orders took exception
to its position it would not be his fault. To the Council as a group, this sounded
remarkably like a threat, and it did not go over well. Christian also felt aggrieved,
and when the Nordic rivalry again reached an impasse in 1611 he was not to be
dissuaded by his Council. This time Christian handed the Council an ultimatum:
if it refused the king support for a war against Sweden, then the king would
declare war himself as duke of Holstein. Faced with this embarrassing prospect,
⁶ Knud Fabricius, Kongeloven: Dens Tilbivelse og Plads i Samtidens Natur- og Arveretlige Udvikling
(Copenhagen: Hagerup, 1920), 45–56, 80–5; Leon Jespersen, ‘Knud Fabricius og den monarkiske
bølge: nogle kommentar til de brydninger i 15–1600-tallets Danmark’, Historie (1997), 54–85;
Horst Dreitzel, Protestantischer Aristotelismus und absoluter Staat: die ‘‘Politica’’ d. Henning Arnisaeus
(Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1970); Bjørn Kornerup, Biskop Hans Poulsen Resen: Studier over kirke- og
skolehistorie i det 16. og 17. aarhundrede, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1928–68), ii .137–45.
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
133
the Council gave in, and the result was the Kalmar War of 1611–13. In the
declaration of 1603 and the ultimatum of 1611, Christian revealed that although
he did not dispute the authority of the Council, he would not hesitate to sidestep
that authority if necessary. It was not the approach that his father would have
taken. Most important, the success of the 1611 bluff convinced Christian of its
utility. He would not forget the incident, nor would the Council.⁷
That the king could make such a threat, and that the Council could take
it seriously, points to another important feature of the constitutional situation
in Denmark. Christian’s avowal to make war on Sweden on his own would be
convincing only if the king were not wholly dependent on the financial resources
of the realm, resources that the Council still guarded jealously. But Christian IV
was not financially dependent on the Council, for by 1611 he was already a very
wealthy man. Wise investments and judicious mulcting of the Sound Dues and
other tariffs allowed him to amass a personal fortune unmatched by any other
sovereign in Europe, and rivalled only by that of Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria.
Christian also had full access to the treasury of his mother, Sofie, arguably one of
the wealthiest women in seventeenth-century Europe. In stark contrast to most of
his fellow rulers—like James I of England—he increased that fortune over time.
By 1625, Christian’s personal assets stood at an estimated 1,000,000 rigsdaler, an
enormous sum. The king put his fortune to use, lending hundreds of thousands
of rigsdaler to lesser nobles at low interest rates and reducing their dependence on
the money market at Kiel. Moreover, the money gave him considerable latitude
in the making of policy. Christian could make war without the Council’s consent
because he had the means to do so without resorting to grants of extraordinary
taxation. Perhaps it put him in an enviable position as a statesman, but the king’s
great personal wealth had troubling constitutional implications. It meant that,
no matter how devoted Christian was to the principles of consensual monarchy,
he could make war or peace independent of the Council if he so chose.⁸
2 . ROY A L E N T E R P R I S E
The single overriding goal of Christian’s regime was expansion. Above all, this
meant an expansion in reputation, both that of the king and of his kingdom,
and though this definition included territorial acquisition this was a lesser part of
the king’s agenda. Primarily Christian IV was interested in the expansion of the
central authority at home, the augmentation of state revenues, and an increase
of Denmark’s share in European commerce. During the first half of the reign,
⁷ Heiberg, Christian 4, 132–3, 163–7.
⁸ E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Defence, War and Finance: Christian IV and the Council of the Realm,
1596–1629’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 7 (1982), 277–313; E. Ladewig Petersen, Christian
IVs pengeudlån til de danske adelige (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1974).
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The Age of Christian IV
the Council generally shared his ambitions—though it sometimes questioned
his methods.
Danish historians still apply the term ‘mercantilism’ to Christian IV’s commercial policies; Steffen Heiberg, perhaps more accurately, has called them ‘economic
nationalism’. With the tacit approval of the Council of State, Christian sought to
use state authority to promote a favourable balance of trade by diminishing the
importation of manufactured goods, encouraging native production for export,
and allocating a greater share of the export trade to Danish and Norwegian
merchants. The king’s motivations were personal, or rather state-driven, for
unlike Christian II he showed no overt desire to woo the mercantile class.
Christian himself remarked that his commercial endeavours were intended to
‘bring honour to us and, God willing, no harm to the merchants’.
Christian IV’s commercial projects were not organized in a consciously
structured ‘programme’; they were a series of experiments, well intended but
often crippled by poor planning or imperfect execution. Nor were they original
to Christian or to Denmark. Most of his projects were inspired by contemporary
Dutch practice—for all his political contempt for the merchant republic, the
king regarded the Dutch economy as the model of modernity—and were typical
for the time. If Christian stands out as a commercial manager, it is because of the
energy he poured into his endeavours.⁹
Christian directed much of that energy towards the building of new towns
and the renovation of existing ones. Commercial activity in the Oldenburg realm
hitherto centred on a handful of ports—Copenhagen and Bergen, Malmø and
Helsingør; the king planned to encourage industry and trade by founding new
towns in the provinces, to which he granted generous tax privileges in hopes
of attracting merchants and artisans, both foreign and native. Many of the new
towns served a dual purpose, as centres of trade and as defensive strongholds
along the borders and the coastlines, but the main impetus was commercial. In
Norway, the king’s greatest legacy was the founding of Christiania—the heart
of modern-day Oslo—after a fire consumed most of old Oslo in 1624. Oslo was
modest and provincial in comparison with cosmopolitan Bergen, but the new
Christiania was meant to serve as a hub for commerce in southern Norway. By
far the most ambitious of Christian’s town-building projects lay far to the south:
the city of Glückstadt in Holstein, founded in 1616–17. Glückstadt, situated
on the lower Elbe just downriver from Hamburg, was Christian IV’s challenge
to Hamburg’s dominance of north German commerce. It was Christian’s intent
that Glückstadt be made into a staple-town, providing foreign merchants with
an alternative to trading with Hamburg, and allowing the king to levy tolls on
Elbe river traffic. Overall, Christian’s town building must be accounted a success.
Even had they not contributed to the prosperity of the monarchy, the new towns
⁹ Heiberg, Christian 4., 134–43. A good overview of Christian’s commercial projects is Svend
Ellehøj, ‘Borgere og byerhverv i Christian IVs politik’, in Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden, 146–69.
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
135
were invaluable as naval bases and strategic strong points, and their construction
was not a significant drain on the treasury.¹⁰
Of all the towns in the realm, none was more favoured than Copenhagen.
Christian IV was more sedentary than his father and grandfather had been,
and unlike them he spent most of his time in or near the capital. He viewed
Copenhagen as the commercial and administrative hub of the monarchy, its chief
naval base, and the shining jewel in his crown, a reflection of the glory of the
dynasty. The king’s ambitions for Copenhagen, and his partiality towards the
burghers of the city, found their expression in the construction of the imposing
Stock Exchange (Børsen, 1619), which was designed so that merchant captains
could unload their cargoes directly into the huge trading halls on the building’s
ground floor. It was no coincidence that Christian’s most ambitious commercial
projects centred on Copenhagen and its mercantile elite.
Christian did not passively sit by and wait for the new and renovated towns
to attract business on their own. From the beginning of the reign, he tried to
lure foreign burghers to settle in Denmark. When he sent Jonas Charisius, a
diplomat in the German Chancery and Christian’s leading adviser on economic
affairs, to the Netherlands in 1607, Christian directed Charisius to recruit Dutch
merchants and artisans. Charisius was to point out the advantages of living
and working in Denmark, and to promise free exercise of religion—a major
concession from a king who so disliked Calvinism.¹¹
Immediately after the Kalmar War, Christian shifted his focus, actively
intervening in commercial life within the realm. He began in 1613 with an
assault on the craft guilds, which he saw as an impediment to productivity. He
unilaterally scrapped the internal regulations of all guilds in the realm, and in a
royal ordinance in 1621 he set new rules for the conduct of guilds. At one stroke,
Christian eliminated the system that characterized medieval guild organization:
aspiring journeymen no longer had to produce a ‘masterpiece’ or host expensive
feasts to qualify for master status; guilds could no longer exclude foreign-born
artisans, and neither could they fix prices in order to reduce competition among
themselves. This was the first act in a series of economic reforms designed to
minimize imports and promote domestic production of trade goods for export.
Christian presented his plan to the Council at Antvorskov in March 1620. Here
he proposed a wide-ranging ban on imported goods and on the exportation of
certain raw materials, such as untanned hides, that could be used for production
at home. The councillors did not object strenuously, but made it plain to the
king that they feared the imposition of royal monopolies that might result in
higher prices for manufactured goods. Christian moderated his plans but did not
give them up. Immediately after the Antvorskov meeting, he promulgated a ban
¹⁰ Vilhelm Lorenzen, Christian IV’s Byanlæg og andre Bybygningsarbejder (Copenhagen: Høst,
1937).
¹¹ Heiberg, Christian 4., 136–7.
136
The Age of Christian IV
on the importation of finished hides and leather goods, and the following year
he instituted a new, more aggressive tariff schedule. The Toll Ordinance of 1621
placed a 3 to 5 per cent duty on all imported goods; raw materials that could be
used for domestic manufacture could be imported duty-free.¹²
Even before the import restrictions of the early 1620s, Christian IV made use
of his authority—and his money—to stimulate production through the creation
of state-run manufactories. In 1605, he founded the Disciplinary House and
Orphanage (Tugt- og Børnehus) in Copenhagen, patterned after Amsterdam’s
tuchthuis (1595) and initially put under the supervision of the Treasury. It drafted
the homeless and impoverished, women convicted of morals infractions, and
indigent and orphaned children as labour. The intention behind its founding
was a good one—to teach useful trade skills to the poor, while manufacturing
valuable goods for export—but in practice it turned out to be a fiscal nightmare.
Christian hoped to make it a lucrative enterprise, and contemplated giving the
Tugthus a monopoly over the production of coarse woollen cloth and cheap
clothing, but no matter how much money and care he poured into the venture
it could not be made profitable. The mortality rate among the workers was high,
and the quality of the articles manufactured there was poor. Even under private
direction, as the Clothing Company (Klædekompagniet, 1620), the Disciplinary
House was a failure. Little by little its operations shut down. By 1628 the
Clothing Company ceased to exist, and the orphanage closed its doors in 1649.¹³
The failure of Christian IV’s state-sponsored manufactures is perhaps best
illustrated by the fate of another royal enterprise, the Silk Company (Silkekompagniet), founded in 1621. The king intended to give the Silk Company, whose
members included nearly all silk dealers in Copenhagen, a monopoly over the
silk trade in the kingdom, but in the five-year lifespan of the company he failed
to realize this aim or even to make the venture profitable. An additional tax of
5 per cent on imported silks did little to encourage consumption of domestic
silk, which was low in quality. The Council of State, moreover, was reluctant to
grant monopolies under any circumstances. Christian resorted to more restrictive
measures: he published a sumptuary law that required non-nobles to purchase
their silks from the Silk Company, while allowing nobles—in deference to the
Council—the privilege of buying imported silk. Sales remained poor regardless,
and in 1624 Christian sold off the Silk Company to private entrepreneurs after
suffering a total loss of 250,000 rigsdaler. The company fared no better under
private ownership, and went into liquidation two years later.
Christian IV’s attempts to expand Denmark’s trade through state-chartered
trading companies yielded better results. The first of these was the Icelandic
Company (formally the Icelandic, Færoese, and Northland Company), founded
¹² Henrik Pers, ‘Christian 4.s merkantilistiske erhvervspolitik ca. 1619–25’, Historie, 10 (1973),
391–414.
¹³ Olaf Olsen, Christian IVs Tugt- og børnehus, 2nd edn (Copenhagen: Wormianum, 1978).
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
137
at Copenhagen in 1620. When the Hanseatic trading privileges in Iceland expired
in 1602, Christian gave Danish merchants a monopoly over the Iceland trade,
and he transferred exclusive trading rights in all twenty of Iceland’s harbours
to the Icelandic Company in 1620. All of Iceland’s products would now be
exported entirely by company merchants, and Icelanders in turn would have to
rely upon these same merchants for their regular supplies of grain and other
staples. The arrangement brought great wealth to the company and especially to
Copenhagen, for thirty-three of the thirty-six company merchants hailed from
the capital. The king also granted the Icelandic Company a monopoly on trade
with the Færø Islands, and the right to participate in the northern Norway
trade. The result was mixed: the Icelandic Company prospered, but Bergen and
Trondheim—which had earlier dominated commerce with northern Norway
and the Færøs—suffered a major loss.¹⁴
Like the sovereigns of the other major maritime powers, Christian IV was
highly interested in claiming a share of Europe’s trade with the world beyond
the Continent. Denmark was a latecomer to the game, but the king tried to
make up for this by sponsoring several costly voyages of exploration within a
very short period of time. Between 1605 and 1607, he sponsored three voyages
of exploration to Greenland, and in 1619 he dispatched the Norwegian naval
commander Jens Munk to find the North-West Passage to the Orient. Munk’s
1619–20 expedition was an unmitigated disaster. After finding its way to North
America and into Hudson’s Bay, the small flotilla found itself locked in by ice
on the bay’s western shore. Munk gravely underestimated the severity of winter
in the Canadian Arctic. Making a fortified camp at the mouth of the Churchill
River (present-day Churchill, Manitoba), he and his command of eighty-two
men claimed the region for Denmark, euphemistically giving it the name ‘Nova
Dania’. By the time the bay had thawed enough to allow the Danes to leave,
eighty of the men had died from exposure or scurvy. As one of only three
survivors, Munk was forced to abandon the king’s warship Enhjørningen, and the
pathetic remnant of the voyage limped back to Bergen in September 1620.¹⁵
Christian IV was greatly angered at the failure, but his enthusiasm was
not entirely dampened. Inspired by the stellar success of England’s East India
Company (1600) and the united Dutch East India Company (1602), he did
not hesitate to accept the proposal of two Dutch merchants to form a Danish
East India Company (1616). The king held 12.5 per cent of the shares in the
joint-stock company; Danish nobles, merchants, burghers, and a small number
of foreign merchants bought the rest. The expressed aim of the company was
to establish a trading post on the Coromandel coast of south-eastern India.
¹⁴ Jón J. Aðils, Den dansk Monopolhandel på Island 1602–1787, trans. Friðrik Ásmundsson
Brekkan (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1926–7), 71–122.
¹⁵ Kaj Birket-Smith, Jens Munk’s Rejse og andre danske Ishavsfarter under Christian IV (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1929), 29–60, 103–58; Thorkild Hansen, Jens Munk (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1965).
138
The Age of Christian IV
In 1618, however, a Dutch merchant named Marselis de Boschouwer came
to Copenhagen with an enticing proposal. Claiming to act as agent for the
‘emperor’ of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), Boschouwer solicited Danish aid
against the Portuguese in return for exclusive trading rights in Ceylon. Christian
IV impulsively took Boschouwer up on his offer. The first East India Company
expedition, under the command of Ove Gjedde, left Copenhagen in November
1618. After a difficult voyage to Ceylon, the expedition found a cold welcome
from the ‘emperor’—a mere rajah, as it turned out, who was uninterested in
working with the Danes—and Gjedde moved on to the Coromandel coast.
Negotiations with a local potentate, the nayak of Tanjore, led to the etablishment
of a fortified Danish trading post at Tarangambadi, known to Europeans as
Tranquebar.
The Danes would maintain a commercial presence at Tranquebar for just over
a century, but the venture was not remunerative. There were some promising
beginnings: in the early to mid 1620s, Danish East India Company ships
plied the trade routes between Tranquebar, Tenasserim (western Thailand), and
Macassar (Indonesia), returning with cargoes of precious spices. The company
even managed to expand for a while, establishing a factory at Masulipatnam and
a couple of satellite trading stations as well. But Denmark’s colonial effort in
India was puny and the profits were accordingly disappointing. A mere eighteen
company ships sailed for Tranquebar from Copenhagen between 1618 and
1639—as compared with the Dutch East India Company’s 299 ships during
the same period—and of these eighteen only seven returned to Denmark.
Frequent shipwrecks, high mortality rates among the colonists, and corruption
and incompetence on the part of the Danish governors all contributed to the
demise of the company. The Danish presence in Asia was so trivial that the
Dutch, the English, and the Portuguese never deigned to evict it. Christian IV’s
personal losses must have been huge. In 1624 alone, he poured 300,000 rigsdaler
into the Danish East India Company, but received no return on his investment.
He refused to dissolve the company, but the experience discouraged him from
similar ventures. When Dutch merchants in Copenhagen formed the Danish
West India Company in 1625, Christian pointedly refused to get involved.¹⁶
The abject failures of the Clothing, Silk, and East India companies, though
typical of the age, paint a dismal portrait of Christian IV as a royal entrepreneur.
In other areas, the monarchy had better luck. Christian held a strong interest
in the development of Denmark’s whaling industry, giving financial and moral
encouragement to masters from Copenhagen and Bergen who hunted the rich
whaling grounds off Iceland, Greenland, and the Svalbard archipelago. In 1619
and 1620, he dispatched small royal whaling fleets to the north and established a
¹⁶ Richard Willerslev, ‘Danmarks første aktienselskab’, HTD, 10th ser., 6 (1944), 608–59;
Inger Barnes (ed.), Memoirs of Jon Olafsson, Icelander and Traveller to India 1622–25 (Cambridge:
Babraham, 1998).
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
139
permanent Arctic whaling station on Spitzbergen. The profits were modest but
then so was the investment, and the boost given by royal participation set the
Danish and Norwegian whaling industry on a firm footing.¹⁷
The greatest potential sources of national wealth, however, were within the
Oldenburg lands. The Norwegian timber industry had already been lucrative for
some time before Christian became king, but heretofore the monarchy had only
regulated the timber trade without exploiting it. Christian IV, characteristically,
was more aggressive. In part, his goal was—like his father’s—to ensure that the
crown reserved the lumber it needed for the fleet and for the numerous royal
construction projects in Copenhagen and elsewhere; in 1622, he set fixed timber
production quotas for each fief in Norway, to be shipped to royal building
sites each year. Yet Christian further sought to augment the government’s role
in the production of timber for export. In the decade beginning in 1610, he
implemented a ‘command economy’ of sorts, compelling Norwegian peasants
on royal land to harvest timber and deliver it to his agents free of charge.
Foreign merchants, in turn, were obligated to purchase the king’s timber before
they could approach private dealers. In addition, Christian hoped to reduce
private competition by restricting the sale of timber on private (i.e. non-royal)
lands (1616). To be fair to Christian, the 1616 ordinance was prompted not
solely by a drive for profit at the expense of the Norwegian people, but also
by an interest in conservation, a legitimate concern that an unregulated timber
harvest would result in widespread deforestation. Still, the scheme did not work
well. The Norwegian peasantry was understandably uninterested in profitless
labour, and the restrictions on private sales unleashed a storm of protest from
the local nobility. Christian rescinded the sales restrictions in 1618, effectively
withdrawing from direct involvement in the timber trade. He would have to be
satisfied with the export duties on foreign sales of Norwegian timber, not an
inconsiderable source of income.
Iron was Norway’s second significant natural resource, and though it was not
nearly so plentiful as timber, Christian IV guarded it jealously. Like timber, it
was a vital strategic resource. Danish reserves of iron ore had proved insufficient
to meet Denmark’s military needs, and so Christian turned to Norway’s as yet
undeveloped stocks. With the aid of mining experts imported from Saxony,
he founded royal ironworks at Eiker (1602) and Bærum (1610), and also took
control of a host of lesser iron, copper, and lead mines in central and southern
Norway. Early in 1624, the Norwegian governor Jens Juel opened a royal silver
mine at Kongsberg. At first, Christian showed little inclination to allow local
nobles or merchants to share in the ownership of the mines, and until the late
1620s the mining industry was a purely royal enterprise. But the Norwegian iron
industry, like most of Christian’s ventures, was not remunerative, and the king
¹⁷ Sune Dalgård, Dansk-norsk hvalfangst 1615–1660: en studie over Danmark-Norges stilling i
europæisk merkantil expansion (Copenhagen: Gad, 1962), 96–128.
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The Age of Christian IV
soon grew tired of it. He retained a significant share—after 1628, he still held
a 50 per cent stake in Kongsberg—but by the 1630s controlling interest in the
Norwegian mining concerns lay in private hands.¹⁸
Christian IV approached agriculture with the same kind of boundless enthusiasm that he applied to commerce and manufacturing. He continued his father’s
practice of fief consolidation through exchanges of landed property, but on a
much more limited scale, and focused on improving the profitability of the large
estates he already had. Fascinated with the mechanical details of agriculture, he
hoped to increase the efficiency and profitability of large-scale farming through
the introduction of modern technological improvements. One of the newer large
farms, established by Christian in 1620 just west of Copenhagen, boasted stall
facilities for 500 head of cattle, and even a complicated mechanism for bringing
fresh water to the herd. Christian also hoped to reform the collection of taxes and
rents, thereby making the peasantry itself more profitable. One plan involved the
partial commutation of peasant labour obligations into cash payments. Cartage
was vital to the king’s many building projects, but it was necessary in only a
few locales. In 1623, Christian instructed his fiefholders on Sjælland and Fyn
to negotiate with crown peasants and determine how much they were willing
to pay to be free of their cartage obligations. It was a remarkable example of
a typically Scandinavian phenomenon—the willingness of the Nordic rulers,
Oldenburg and Vasa, to survey popular opinion before making major policy
decisions—but the results were disappointing. Neither the fiefholders nor the
peasants were pleased with the proposal; the peasants in Dragsholm fief declared
that they could not pay a single shilling more than they already did. The Council
declared the following year that commutation of cartage would ruin the peasants
and deprive fiefholders of an invaluable service. In Norway, a similar scheme
fared little better. Still, the king did not give up, and until the war in German
drew his attentions elsewhere he tried to find a workable compromise to the
dilemma.¹⁹
As a businessman, Christian IV was a failure. Lest his business acumen be
judged too harshly, it should be pointed out that while most of his efforts
to boost the state economy through royal intervention were unsuccessful, and
several of them outright fiascos, they were failures that he and Denmark could
afford to suffer. As in his conduct of foreign policy, Christian IV could afford to
take big risks because he enjoyed the luxury of almost unlimited cash reserves.
The Sound Dues provided him with a steady and enormous income; he had
¹⁸ Øystein Rian, Jens Juels stattholderskap 1618–1629: en studie i stattholderembetets kompetanse
og funksjoner (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975), 127–57; Kristian Moen, Kongsberg Sølvverk
1623–1957 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967).
¹⁹ Karl-Erik Frandsen, ‘Christian IV og bønderne’, in Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden,
175–7; Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1646, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 267; E. Ladewig Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund
1500–1700, Dansk socialhistorie, 3 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980), 350–1.
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
141
unfettered access to the fortune his mother had diligently scraped together; and
after 1613 the so-called ‘Älvsborg ransom’ from Sweden gave him a further
1,000,000 rigsdaler to spend as he pleased. His endeavours, though costly, were
not so expensive as to do serious damage to royal or state finances. Even the
utterly disastrous ventures at least profited the mercantile elite of Copenhagen.
Christian’s economic reforms were admittedly haphazard and directionless, but
that was due to a complete lack of experience in such matters—not only on
the part of Christian and his ministers, but throughout Europe as a whole. The
notion of using state power to stimulate trade and industry was still a relatively
new one in Europe, and if Christian demonstrated a degree of naïvety it was
only because there was precious little experience upon which he could draw, in
Denmark or abroad.
There was a subtle downside to royal intervention in the Danish economy
in the years around 1620. The relationship between king and mercantile elite
blossomed in these years, but that between king and Council did not. This is
not to say that the creation of a few failed trade monopolies and proto-industrial
concerns destroyed an otherwise tightly knit collaboration between king and
aristocracy. Yet there was some friction all the same, and in these matters the
interaction of king and Council followed a consistent pattern: Christian’s was
the voice of reckless enterprise, of a boundless if dilettantish energy, while the
Council’s was that of caution and conservatism.
Christian IV’s commercial projects also uncovered aspects of his personality that were perhaps troubling. Too often he was preoccupied with trivial
details—he personally designed the ‘waterworks’ on his estate west of Copenhagen, for example—and thereby wasted time and energy on matters that should
have been delegated to a subordinate. When taking on a new task, Christian was
rashly enthusiastic, willing to spend time and money with abandon, but at the
first sign of trouble he grew despondent, quickly losing patience and interest. In
1624, for example, he created a royal postal service for Denmark—Europe’s first,
and therefore a remarkable measure in itself. It soon proved to be poorly organized and inefficient. Although Christian did not abandon it altogether, before
long he and the Chancery avoided using it for official business, which reduced
its effectiveness even more. Years later, the French ambassadors Abel Servien and
the Count d’Avaux would comment on this facet of Christian’s nature:
Although he is the oldest monarch in Christendom, in those matters in which he is
engaged at the moment he has not shown the sagacity which is usually found in those who
are as old as he. He is entirely distracted, governed only by passion; he has not undertaken
anything with discretion or understanding, and each of his decisions is determined only
by blindness and rashness.
Christian IV’s initiative and personal energy were admirable, but he was not
judicious in their application. Unfortunately, he would carry all of these traits
into other areas of governance, including the formulation of foreign policy and
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the making of war, areas in which the Council was not likely to be very indulgent
of a reckless sovereign.²⁰
3 . T H E C O U RT A N D T H E M I L I TA RY
Christian IV’s efforts to enrich the state and the dynasty were driven by a realistic
assessment of political-fiscal circumstances. Christian knew well, as did his fellow
monarchs, that the business of being king was becoming an unbearably expensive
proposition. As grain prices began to fluctuate wildly in the first quarter of the
century, usually for the worse, the normal domain-based income of the state fisc
would soon become inadequate to cover the expenses of preparing for war and
maintaining a well-ordered state. That the Oldenburg state managed to meet
these tasks without bankruptcy was in itself a noteworthy achievement. In other
states—France and Sweden, for example—a burgeoning bureaucratic apparatus
was partially responsible for the higher costs of governance. In Denmark, where
the administration had not grown appreciably since the Reformation and still
retained its late medieval structure, this was not the case. Instead, the greater
expenses of government in Denmark came from two areas that were utterly
necessary for the security and prosperity of the state and which fell under the
king’s purview: the court and the military.
It is very easy to be critical of court expenditures as a wasteful extravagance, a
product of royal egotism, and a sign of the insensitivity of the privileged orders
towards the disenfranchised. Perhaps ‘splendour at court’ was all of these things,
but the court served vital functions in the early modern state. It was a yardstick
by which foreign visitors could measure the power and sophistication of the
monarchy and the state, a visible reflection of majesty, to impress potential allies
and intimidate enemies. Court culture had also become a highly competitive
enterprise by the seventeenth century. To maintain the reputation of his kingdom
and his dynasty, to be known as a great king of a great land, Christian would
have to keep pace with his fellow sovereigns.
We will examine the cultural and ideological aspects of Christian’s court
culture in Chapters 8 and 9, but it is important here to look at the dramatic rise
in the sheer expense of the Danish court. The greatest increase in court-related
expenditures came from the building and renovation of castles. Frederik II had
been content to live in the modest residences of Antvorskov and Skanderborg;
only at Kronborg did he allow himself the luxury of a comparatively modern
palace. At the outset of Christian IV’s reign, of all the royal residences only
²⁰ Otto Madsen, Et nyttigt og gavnligt postværk: P&T’s historie til 1711 (Copenhagen: Generaldirektoratet for Post- og Telegrafvæsenet, 1991), 13–161; J. A. Fridericia, Danmarks ydre
politiske Historie i Tiden fra Freden i Lybæk til Freden i Kjøbenhavn, 2 vols. (Copenhagen:
Hoffensberg, Jespersen & F. Trap, 1876–81), ii. 434.
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
143
Kronborg and Copenhagen Castle surpassed the great manor houses of the
aristocracy. Copenhagen Castle, a rambling congeries of several architectural
styles, was a positive disgrace.
Christian was an avid—and surprisingly good—architect, and though he
purchased the services of foreign architects, notably the Steenwinckel family
from the Netherlands, he did much of the designing himself. He commissioned
many of Copenhagen’s most famous structures, including the Stock Exchange,
the Arsenal and naval chapel (Holmens Kirke, 1619) at Bremerholm, and
new spires for Skt. Nicolai and Skt. Petri churches. The renovation of the
royal residences, however, was Christian’s highest priority. In 1596 he had the
prominent Blue Tower (Blåtårn) of Copenhagen Castle rebuilt and topped with
an ornate bronze spire. The two greatest architectural achievements of the reign
followed shortly thereafter. At the town of Hillerød on Sjælland, where Frederik
II had kept a modest hunting lodge, Christian commenced construction of his
largest palace in 1602. Most of this palace—dubbed Frederiksborg in honour
of his father—was complete by 1616. In the meantime, the king had already
launched into the erection of a yet another palace—Rosenborg, his lusthaus near
Copenhagen’s north gate, where construction commenced in 1606. Most of the
older castles, including Kronborg and Koldinghus, underwent some degree of
restoration.²¹
Christian IV’s expenditures on the royal household—including construction,
court personnel, art and music—were substantial, but they were not significantly
higher than those of Frederik II’s reign.²² Military expenses, however, were
much more onerous. The rapid pace of technological and tactical development
characteristic of this phase of the ‘military revolution’ helped to spur a kind
of ‘arms race’ mentality, as the European states vied to best one another in
the size and proficiency of their military establishments, a competition that few
polities of the period could afford to support financially. But neither could they
afford not to participate in the arms race, for to let down one’s guard would be
to court disaster. Even in times of peace, then, preparation for war consumed
a gigantic share of state income. The heightened international tensions of the
period between the 1560s and the beginning of the Thirty Years War naturally
exacerbated this tendency towards almost unbearable military budgets.
Denmark had been relatively secure during the latter half of Frederik II’s reign,
and from the time of the Stettin settlement in 1570 it had been at peace. But the
²¹ Kjeld de Fine Licht, ‘Arkitektur: manierismens fortsættelse’, in Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs
verden, 336–77; Francis Beckett, Frederiksborg Slot, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Hagerup, 1914–18);
Vilhelm Wanscher, Christian 4.’s Bygninger (Copenhagen: Haase, 1937); Vilhelm Wanscher,
Rosenborgs Historie 1606–34 (Copenhagen: Haase, 1930).
²² Compare the statistics in Leon Jespersen, ‘The Constitutional and Administrative Situation’,
in Leon Jespersen (ed.), A Revolution from Above? The Power State of 16th and 17th Century
Scandinavia (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 2000), 93, table II, 1, and in Johann Grundtvig, Frederik
den Andens Statshusholdning, (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1876), pp. CLXXVI–CLXXVII.
144
The Age of Christian IV
diplomatic climate was changing in the north as it was on the Continent. Well
before the outbreak of the Kalmar War in 1611, the uneasy détente between
the Nordic kingdoms was visibly fraying, primarily over the disputed northern
border in the Finnmark. Continued clashes between Sweden, Russia, and Poland
similarly threatened to destabilize the tenuous balance of power in the Baltic
region. Frederik II’s near brush with confessional war in the 1580s was not
forgotten; the appearance of the Spanish Armada in 1588 reminded the Danish
government that it would have to be on its guard for an attack from the west
as well. Possession of the Sound would always require Denmark to be vigilant,
particularly as Christian IV pushed the Sound Dues to new heights. Denmark
had much to be wary of, and the military establishment bequeathed by Frederik
II was not up to the multitude of tasks now demanded of it.
Christian IV was an indefatigable builder, and this trait was as manifest
in his military policies as it was in his many contributions to royal architecture. Many of the new towns founded in the first half of his reign—such as
Christianopel (1599), Varberg (1613), and Christianstad (1614)—were created
explicitly as fortresses, and Glückstadt, though located in an indefensible spot,
was also heavily fortified. It was under Christian’s direction that Copenhagen
received its first extensive fortifications. Bastions and batteries ringed the city’s
perimeter, bolstered by the new fortress town of Christianshavn (1617), built to
protect the naval facilities at Bremerholm. Some of the fortress towns guarded
the southern approaches to Denmark in the Duchies, but most were ranged
along the Scanian and Norwegian frontiers to protect against incursions by
the Swedes. All of the new fortifications were built along the lines of the
‘Italian trace’ model, and therefore were in accordance with the most modern
principles of the day. Compulsory peasant labour helped to keep construction costs down, but even the relatively simple task of keeping the fortresses
manned and in good repair required the frequent assessment of extraordinary
taxes.²³
The fleet was even more vital to the security of the realm. Largely for financial
reasons, it had been allowed to languish during the eight-year Regency. When
Christian IV came to the throne in 1596, he had at his disposal a total of twentytwo warships, only nine of which could be considered ‘large’ (i.e. carrying more
than twenty guns each). The king soon remedied this problem. Denmark was
not lacking in skilled shipbuilders, but Christian hired talented foreigners like the
Scotsman David Balfour to oversee the refurbishing of the fleet. Construction
continued steadily throughout the reign, peaking during the Kalmar War and
again during the 1630s. By 1624, the fleet numbered some twenty-five large and
middling vessels, carrying a total of over 700 cannon, and could boast of some of
the most intimidating warships in northern Europe: the monstrous Tre Kroner
²³ Fine Licht, ‘Arkitektur’, 359–66; Finn Askgaard, Christian IV: ‘Rigets væbnede Arm’ (Copenhagen: Tøjhusmuseet, 1988), 17–29.
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
145
(launched 1604) rivalled anything laid down in a Dutch or English shipyard.
The fleet held on to some of its late medieval character as a naval militia, with
the ships’ complements being raised by recruitment or conscription as necessity
required, but overall the trend was towards a professionalization of officers and
crews. Increasingly, the officer corps drew heavily upon non-nobles, both Danish
and Norwegian.²⁴
Accompanying the growth of the royal navy was a concomitant expansion
in the facilities for fitting out warships. Bremerholm was already an impressive complex in the sixteenth century, but in Christian IV it found a truly
passionate master and advocate. A new Arsenal (Tøjhuset, begun in 1598)
and a provisioning house (Provianthuset) flanked a man-made, sheltered inner
harbour, which allowed even the largest men-of-war to provision and arm themselves directly from the facility’s warehouses. With its own brewery (Kongens
Bryghus), farms dedicated to producing food for its workers, and a church
to tend to their spiritual needs, Bremerholm became a proto-industrial citywithin-a-city; in 1645, its population numbered some 2,200 workers and naval
personnel, not counting dependants. Workshops in the vicinity—including
blacksmith’s shops, a cannon foundry, saltpetre works, a powder mill, and a
rope-walk—kept Bremerholm supplied with the materials of war. The complex and its associated industries thereby fulfilled the most important goal
of Christian’s economic policies: Danish self-sufficiency. Only in the supply of
small-arms and infantry equipments was Denmark forced to rely on importations
from abroad.²⁵
On the need to expand these parts of the military establishment—the
fortifications and the fleet—the king and Council agreed wholeheartedly. The
Council may not have shared Christian’s eagerness for a confrontation with
Sweden, but the aristocracy did understand the importance of preparing for a
Swedish assault. Fortresses and naval forces could not possibly be construed as
potential tools of royal tyranny. Land forces, however, were a different matter. So
far, Denmark had relied primarily on foreign mercenaries to fight its wars, and
would continue to do so for most of Christian IV’s reign. Maintaining a sizable
mercenary army in peacetime presented problems: it would be prohibitively
expensive and inconvenient, and would give a would-be tyrant an almost
unimaginable political advantage. Native military institutions, on the other
hand, were incapable of standing against professional troops in battle, let alone
making use of the new weapons and tactics that had come to revolutionize
European warfare in the preceding century. Home-grown levies had already
demonstrated their shortcomings in the Seven Years War of the North.
²⁴ Gunner Lind, ‘Rigets sværd: krig og krigsvæsen under Christian IV’, in Ellehøj (ed.), Christian
IVs verden, 109–10; Askgaard, Christian IV, 51–67; Niels Probst, Christian 4.s flåde (Copenhagen:
Marinehistorisk Selskab, 1996).
²⁵ H. D. Lind, Kong Kristian den Fjerde og hans Mænd paa Bremerholm (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1889), 1–32; Askgaard, Christian IV, 52–3, 60–1.
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The Age of Christian IV
The challenge, then, was to find a happy medium. This Christian did by
employing both methods of army organization—mercenary and native—simultaneously. He was well versed in the tactical thought of the time, and was
fascinated by the reforms then being implemented in the Netherlands, which
stressed thinner, more elongated infantry formations and a greater emphasis on
firepower. In 1607, he commissioned a Danish translation of Europe’s first drill
manual, Jacob de Gheyn’s Wappenhandelinghe, thereby making Dutch infantry
drill accessible to a Danish audience. Scores of young Danish noblemen had
already ‘trailed a pike in Flanders’ in the Dutch service, many of them personally
endorsed by the king himself. Christian was undoubtedly also influenced by the
contemporary German trend towards what was called Landesdefension, which
recommended reliance on native militias trained in accordance with the Dutch
model.²⁶
Danish military institutions on land changed dramatically in size and character
in the years before Christian’s entrance into the German war. Given his tendency
to immerse himself in detail, it should come as no surprise that Christian
himself took the leading role in military reform. He began these reforms in 1609
with a thorough restructuring of the knight-service. Previously an ad hoc levy
drawn from the more prominent landowning nobles, by 1625 the knight-service
was organized into seven permanent tactical units (called faner, or ‘banners’),
each officered by a nobleman appointed by the king. In addition, the militia
ordinances of 1614 created two regional regiments of native infantry, a total of
4,004 men. The system was not dissimilar to the better-known (and much more
extensive) Swedish practice of conscription: 4,004 peasant farmsteads on crown
land were earmarked for the support of the native regiments, with each farm
receiving exemption from taxation and other duties in return for supporting one
soldier. Recruitment of mercenary troops continued in the early 1620s, on a
limited basis, to supplement the native conscripts. The end result by 1625 was a
respectable fighting force, reasonably well trained and equipped, but not in itself
capable of fighting a prolonged war against a powerful and determined foe. Even
the king entertained no illusions about the quality of his native troops, whom
he characterized acidly as being ‘worse than beasts’. Indeed, Denmark’s ‘army’,
if can be called that, was far inferior to that of Sweden under Gustav II Adolf,
at least in numbers; the king would still have to recruit a substantial quantity of
mercenaries if he wanted to field an army for war. Christian’s reforms provided
Denmark with the core of a field army, but in wartime Denmark would still be
overly reliant on extra-national manpower.²⁷
It is significant, too, that while Denmark now had a small permanent army, it
did not have a royal army. The knight-service and the national infantry regiments
²⁶ H. D. Lind, Kong Kristian den Fjerde og hans Mænd paa Bremerholm 69–88.
²⁷ Ibid. 30–42; Gunner Lind, Hæren og magten i Denmark 1614–1662 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1994), 21–51.
The Activist Monarchy of Christian IV
147
were really under the command of the Marshal of the Realm, and the Council
made it clear that these troops were not to be used outside the kingdom’s borders.
While this crippled their utility for the king’s foreign policy, Christian’s vast
personal wealth meant that the restriction did not entirely bind his hands. He
could afford to enlist mercenaries on his own means, without resorting to the
use of national forces or begging the Council for grants of taxation. It was this
fact—that the king could go to war as he wished, with or without the Council’s
assent and support—that would ultimately wreck the constitutional harmony of
the Oldenburg state after 1625.
1. Christian II, king of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, 1513–23. Painting by
Mesteren for Magdelene-Legenden, 1521.
2. Frederik I, king of Denmark and Norway, 1523–33. Painting by Jacob Binck, 1539.
3. Christian III, king of Denmark, 1536–59. Painting by Jacob Binck, 1550.
4. Frederik II, king of Denmark, 1559–88. Copper plate, 1573.
5. Christian IV, king of Denmark, 1596–1648. Painting by Abraham
Wuchters, 1638.
6. Frederik III, king of Denmark, 1648–70. Painting by unknown artist, c.1650.
7
Baltic and German Hegemonies: Denmark
and Europe, 1596–1629
Christian IV was a warrior-king. Certainly he liked to see himself in this way. He
was one of the few European sovereigns of his age, along with Gustav II Adolf, who
personally led troops on the battlefield on a regular basis. He enjoyed a good fight,
and the one moment in his life for which he is best remembered—celebrated in
Johannes Ewald’s royal anthem ‘King Christian’—was when he stood upon the
quarterdeck of the flagship Trefoldigheden during the battle of Kolberger Heide
in 1644: as a 67-year-old sea captain, severely wounded in the shoulder and
holding a bandage to his now-missing right eye while stolidly barking out orders
to his officers. It was his martial qualities, his unquestionable physical courage,
that drew the most praise from his contemporaries. Christian IV was a soldier’s
soldier, and no one who knew him doubted it.
It was not a quality, however, that was calculated to go over well with the
Council of State, which as a body did not share the king’s thirst for martial
glory. It has also not been viewed kindly by Danish historians. Christian IV’s
earlier biographers tended to portray him as a great national hero, a saviourmilitant who repeatedly risked his life and fortune to protect an ungrateful
kingdom from a multitude of enemies. But the humiliating events of 1864,
when a puny and inexperienced Danish army failed to prevent an AustroPrussian invasion, permanently coloured the scholarly analysis of Christian’s
foreign and military policies. To historians writing in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, Christian IV’s foreign policies were overly aggressive
and ill-considered; viewed in the dim light of the War of 1864, his policies
did not take into account that little Denmark had no business meddling in
the affairs of much greater states. Historical Marxists derided him for his
egotistical strivings for power and wealth. Opposing Christian, these historians
argued, was the Council, whose objections represented prudent reason and
pragmatism. Altogether, these interpretations of Danish foreign policy in the first
half of the seventeenth century were permeated with errors both teleological and
presentist. They assumed that Denmark was of no greater account in 1625 than
it was in 1864, and that greed and aggrandizement alone motivated Christian
IV’s actions.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
149
In recent decades, Christian’s reputation as a statesman has undergone a
significant transformation. Christian IV is no longer written off as an unreasonable aggressor, but instead is recognized as having responded rationally to
international developments that threatened the security of the Oldenburg realm.
The main threat was Sweden. All other foreign policy concerns were based on
the Danish–Swedish rivalry. Indeed, as Leo Tandrup has argued, Christian IV’s
intervention in German politics, culminating in the ‘Emperor’s War’ of 1625–9,
was a consciously formulated part of his strategy to defeat Sweden: for by gaining
lands and greater status within the Holy Roman Empire, Christian hoped to
counter Swedish territorial gains in the eastern Baltic and to deny the Swedes a
foothold in the Germanies.¹
The problem with this line of argument—like similar interpretations of
Danish ‘grand strategy’ under Christian III and Frederik II—is that it is
narrowly Nordic in focus. It neglects the history of Danish–European relations
over the century since the Reformation; it trivializes the multitude of perils—real
or imagined—that faced Denmark, reducing them to a single foe: Sweden. The
‘Tandrup thesis’ portrays Denmark as a state with purely Scandinavian concerns
and ambitions, not as a kingdom that was already becoming integrated into
the mainstream of European affairs. There can be no question that Swedish
expansionism was one of the most significant factors shaping Danish foreign
policy in the early seventeenth century. It may even have been the most important.
But it was not the sole factor. Denmark was beset with dangers by the second
decade of Christian IV’s reign, and as many of them came from the south and
west as from the north and east.
1. DENMARK AND SWEDEN, 1596 – 1624
Denmark was the dominant power in the Baltic in 1596. That dominance,
however, was not uncontested, especially along the Baltic’s eastern shore. Since
the 1560s, Sweden, Russia, and Poland had been battling over possession of
Estonia. There would be rare moments when peace would break out, but
these rarely lasted for long. The relationship between Sweden and Poland became
especially poisonous after the Vasa duke Karl of Södermanland and his supporters
deposed Sigismund Vasa, who had succeeded his father Johan III (1594) and
Stefan Bathory (1587) as king of Sweden and Poland respectively. During
Russia’s ‘time of troubles’ that followed the death of Boris Godunov in 1605,
both Sweden and Poland rushed to have their own candidates placed upon the
¹ Leo Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie: en politisk-diplomatisk studie over forløbet af den
dansk-svenske magtkamp fra Kalmarkrigen til Kejserkrigen, 2 vols. (Århus: Universitetsforlaget, 1979);
Steffen Heiberg, Christian 4: monarken, mennesket og myten (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1988), 8.
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The Age of Christian IV
throne of the tsars in Moscow. Poland still held sway in the extreme eastern part
of the Baltic, but Sweden—now under the heavy-handed rule of Duke Karl, now
King Karl IX (1604–11)—fought to break what the Swedish elite perceived as
their kingdom’s territorial encirclement by hostile forces.²
Throughout the 1580s and most of the 1590s, Denmark did not become
embroiled in the competition over the eastern Baltic territories. Though Frederik
II had adamantly opposed Poland’s right to keep a sizable fleet, and had even
taken up arms to help the city of Danzig fight against its Polish overlords,
common opposition to Sweden allowed Poland and Denmark to warm to
one another in the decade after Frederik’s death. Russia, too, was a potential
ally, also driven by its justifiable concern with Swedish expansionism. Indeed,
Christian IV had hoped to bring about a marriage alliance with Boris Godunov,
arranging a match between his own youngest brother Duke Hans (1583–1602)
and one of the tsar’s daughters, but Hans died before the match could be
consummated.³
Denmark’s relationship with Sweden, however, was fraught with danger from
the time Christian IV reached his majority. In large part this was the result
of a clash of royal personalities, reminiscent of Frederik II’s rivalry with Erik
XIV. Johan III had prudently avoided antagonizing Frederik II, and for a while
it seemed possible that Denmark and Sweden might have learned to coexist
peaceably. But Christian IV was not his father; from his first days as king, he and
Sweden’s new ruler, Karl Vasa, would lock horns.
To a degree, the escalation of the Danish–Swedish rivalry after 1596 must
be attributed more to Swedish actions than to Danish. The Swedish policy of
national defence via pre-emptive action was bound to lead to a clash, for of the
powers that encircled Sweden Denmark was the most to be feared. Oldenburg
territories ringed Sweden’s southern and western frontiers, and though Swedish
shipping was guaranteed free passage through the Sound, Denmark’s ownership
of the straits at Helsingør would in itself be a major strategic liability for Sweden
should the two kingdoms again come to blows. But Denmark, or rather Christian
IV himself, was not blameless. Christian would not entirely give up his claim to
the Swedish crown. Even after Stettin, the thorny issue of the ‘three crowns’ in the
Danish royal heraldry was as yet unresolved. Both Frederik II and Christian IV
styled themselves ‘king of the Goths’, a direct affront to Sweden. When Christian
IV had the new spire placed atop the Blue Tower at Copenhagen Castle in 1596,
he graced it with the device of the three crowns. Sweden’s diplomatic world-view
may have been warped by paranoia, but Christian IV could not restrain himself
from goading the ‘unsleeping enemy’.
² Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721
(London: Longman, 2000), 44–101.
³ Heiberg, Christian 4., 47, 155; DNT, iii. 122–31; Esben Albrectsen, Karl-Erik Frandsen,
and Gunner Lind, Konger og krige 700–1648, Dansk udenrigspolitiks historie, 1 (Copenhagen:
Danmarks Nationalleksikon, 2001), 373–5.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
151
The conflict that finally erupted in 1611 had its deepest roots, however, in
a lingering dispute over the northernmost sector of the Norwegian–Swedish
frontier, in the region known as Nordkalotten. The political border there was
unclear, and there was no perceptible cultural divide either; the region was
sparsely populated and the local inhabitants were nomads. The Lapps, who
made up the bulk of the population in Nordkalotten, crossed from Swedish
to Norwegian territory and back again while tending their migratory reindeer
herds. Both Christian IV and Karl IX claimed to be ‘king of the Lapps’, and
both men asserted their claim to the territory. The land was particularly valuable
to Denmark, for possession of Nordkalotten was the basis of Denmark’s historic
claim to the right to regulate shipping passing through the Barents Sea to
trade with Archangel. Christian’s 1599 sea voyage to the North Cape was an
unmistakable articulation of that claim. Karl, however, asserted that the Teusina
treaty with Russia (1595) gave Sweden the right to tax and administer much of
the north country, contesting Danish claims to the Norwegian coastline there.
Soon Swedish administrators, troops, and tax-collectors muscled their way into
the region.⁴
Christian IV’s initial response was uncharacteristically cautious. The Swedish
threat was not to be taken lightly, and for this reason he pushed for the rebuilding
of the fleet and of the fortifications along the Swedish frontier. Similarly, he
strengthened the local administration in northern Norway. Previously, the
northernmost portion of Norway had fallen under the immediate supervision of
the fiefholder in Bergen; now two new fiefs, one in Finnmark and the other in
Nordland, were set up at royal command. The Swedes, however, had more troops
in the region. To be sure, there were other points of contention between the two
crowns. Christian IV, for example, refused to recognize the legitimacy of either
Karl IX’s naval blockade of Riga or indeed of Karl IX himself after his coronation
in 1604. Instead, he acknowledged Sigismund Vasa, king of Poland and Karl’s
deposed nephew, as the true king of Sweden. In his diplomatic correspondence
with Sweden, Christian IV addressed not Karl himself but the Swedish Diet, in
a direct and calculated insult to Karl.
The plethora of thorny diplomatic and commercial issues separating the two
Nordic kingdoms would have to be resolved, in accordance with the Stettin
treaty, through border meetings between delegations from the Danish and
Swedish councils. This measure would appear to remove the direction of the
negotiations—as it was intended to do—from the hands of the two bellicose
kings and give it to the councillors, who, it was hoped, would be more reasonable
and moderate. In this regard, Denmark was at a distinct disadvantage. The Danish
⁴ Sven Ulric Palme, Sverige och Danmark 1596–1611 (Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1942);
Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2 (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 211–13; Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind, Konger og krige, 370–1,
378–83.
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The Age of Christian IV
Council was uninterested in the border dispute in the north; Nordkalotten was
distant and poor, and consequently in the Council’s eyes not worth a fight.
Christian, though, was passionate about the issue, as he profited from control
over the Archangel trade. There was no such division of opinion or purpose
separating Karl IX from his Council. Karl and his councillors were not on good
terms; the Swedish aristocracy hated Karl, who had eliminated his more vocal
opponents in the notorious Linköping treason trials of 1600. But because of his
heavy-handed rule, which had cowed all opposition, there was at least fear and
respect, and the Swedish Council did not dare do anything that went against
his will. In fact, both Karl and Christian consistently misinterpreted each other’s
political strengths and weaknesses, and in so doing seriously underestimated the
potential for bloody and indecisive war. Christian IV failed to notice that Karl
IX and his Council were of one mind, and that Sigismund had few supporters
who were not in exile; Karl assumed that without the Danish Council’s approval
Christian would not resort to a military solution. Karl’s mistake was probably
the more serious one.
Negotiations, in the form of a series of border meetings between 1601 and
1603, brought some compromise, but then compromise was not in Christian
IV’s nature. He stubbornly resisted the Council’s efforts to appease the Swedes
through concessions in Nordkalotten. Christian wanted war, and when he
convened the Council at Odense in August 1604 he laid before it his rationale
for attacking Sweden. The Swedes, he argued, were likely to attack first. Just
that year, Christian had learned of the ‘Hinrichsson plot’, a conspiracy named
after the disaffected Jesuit who had revealed it. It was similar to the sinister
confessional plots of Frederik II’s day: according to Jonas Hinrichsson, Poland
and Spain, with papal backing, intended to conquer Sweden, reclaim it for the
Catholic Sigismund Vasa, and then use Sweden as a springboard for an assault
on Denmark. Using a somewhat twisted logic, Christian IV concluded that a
Danish attack on Sweden was necessary to save both Sweden and Denmark—and
Protestantism—from this insidious conspiracy. It is possible that he counted on
confessional fears to move the Council, but if so he was wrong, for the Council
flatly rejected any plan to go to war with Sweden without direct provocation.⁵
Christian IV curbed his warlike urges for the time being, even as dispute piled
on dispute between 1604 and 1609. He was more considerate of his Council
than his father had been in his earlier years, as his frank and open discussions
with it at Odense in 1604 show. Yet to his mind a military confrontation with
Sweden was both necessary and inevitable, and since the Council did not share
this view he sought to sabotage any opportunity for compromise with his ‘wicked
neighbour’. When Duke Heinrich Julius of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Christian’s
⁵ Palme, Sverige och Danmark, 363–498, 639–44; Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 213–17;
Oskar Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia, 4 vols. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget,
1963–92), ii. 288–301.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
153
brother-in-law, offered to mediate a settlement between Denmark and Sweden,
he readily accepted, but he had no intention of following through. To the
peace talks, due to take place at Wismar in 1608, Christian sent no members
of the Council, dispatching instead two Chancery secretaries as ‘royal advisers’
with specific instructions from him alone. The Swedish delegation was delayed,
Christian recalled his two men from Wismar without waiting for the Swedes
to arrive, and the talks amounted to nothing. Further Swedish provocations
in Nordkalotten prompted the king once more to summon the Council and
request its support for war. Meeting at Horsens in January 1609, the Council
adamantly refused to go to war unless Sweden struck first. The following year the
king pressured the Council into rejecting a Swedish request for another border
meeting, but by then it was obvious to him that the Council could not be cajoled
into belligerence. He would have to find a way to act on his own, with or without
its blessing.⁶
A contest of arms between Denmark and Sweden perhaps could have been
averted. For all of their mutual distrust, the Swedish and Danish councils were
eager to avoid a clash. The Swedish Council even summoned the courage to break
with Karl IX over the issue, advising its king to refrain from provoking Danish
anger, advice which he summarily rebuffed. There was also great international
support for a negotiated settlement, for a Scandinavian war was not in the
best interests of north-western and Protestant Europe. A war fought over the
Sound would disrupt the Baltic trade as it had done in 1563–70; even worse,
it would compromise Protestant solidarity just as confessional strife was reemerging in the Empire. For both of these reasons, James I of England offered
his services as mediator to Christian and Karl in 1610. Karl, who despite all his
bluster was not disinclined to negotiation, gratefully accepted; Christian did not.
Significantly, Christian did not bother to involve the Council or even to inform
it of his decision. Not until February 1611, when he convened the Council at
Copenhagen, did he play his hand. Here he informed the Council that he would
make war on Sweden whether it liked it or not, and if the Council refused
him again he would do so on his own, as duke of Holstein. The majority of
the councillors still objected to a Swedish war, but as a group they shied away
from deserting their king. The war with Sweden, the Kalmar War of 1611–13,
had begun.
The two opposing forces were almost evenly matched. Sweden’s mostly native
army was battle-hardened from years of campaigning against the Poles and the
Muscovites; the civilian population had likewise been long inured to the burdens
of conscription, heavy taxes, and wartime shortages. Denmark, on the other
hand, was as yet lacking in military strength, but the kingdom had all of the
advantages bestowed by wealth. Christian had already doubled the size of his
fleet, and was able to field an army of around 20,000 men, a mixture of peasant
⁶ Palme, Sverige och Danmark, 516–67.
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The Age of Christian IV
militia from Denmark and Norway, mercenaries hired in northern Germany and
the British Isles, and heavy cavalry drafted from the knight-service. Denmark’s
primary advantage, as in 1563, was a diplomatic one: Sweden was its only enemy,
while Sweden faced tough and unrelenting opponents in Poland and Russia.
There was nothing that the Swedish aristocracy dreaded more than a war on two
or three fronts.⁷
This strategic advantage alone was sufficient to give Denmark a victory in the
Kalmar War. Christian IV’s aim was simple but bold, and ultimately unrealistic:
the complete and final conquest of Sweden. This he hoped to achieve by means
of a three-pronged assault. While one army protected Norway’s vulnerable
eastern border and provided a diversion, the two main forces—a western army
(commanded by the Marshal of the Realm, Sten Maltesen Sehested) in Halland,
and an eastern (under the king’s personal command) in Blekinge—would strike
northwards into Sweden, secure the main fortresses in the south, join forces,
and finally march on Stockholm and the heart of the kingdom. Christian’s plans
were already set well before he sent his heralds to Stockholm with the declaration
of war. By March 1611, the Danish fleet was actively securing the lines of
communication between Sjælland and the fortresses in Skåne.
In May 1611, scarcely a month after the declaration of war, Christian
struck. The initial progress of the assault on Sweden was remarkably rapid.
While Sehested moved out of Halland towards the Swedish town of Jönköping,
Christian led the eastern army over the Swedish frontier on 1 May, overrunning
Brömsebro and arriving before the great Swedish stronghold at Kalmar two days
later. Danish forces took the town of Kalmar by storm before the end of the
month. Karl IX, who had expected the main thrust to come from the west, was
taken completely by surprise. Hurriedly he pushed a relief force towards Kalmar,
where the fortress still held even after the town fell. But the effort was in vain.
Sehested came to Christian’s aid and drove off Karl’s army; the fortress at Kalmar
capitulated on 2 August 1611, after its commandant succumbed to a generous
bribe from the Danish king. Precisely one week later, combined Danish naval
and land forces made an amphibious landing on the island of Öland, taking the
main fortress at Borgholm without having to fire a shot. The Danish fleet, in the
meantime, dominated the seas surrounding the theatre of operations.
The Swedes accomplished next to nothing in the 1611 campaign. A small
cavalry force under the command of the heir apparent, Gustav Adolf, raided the
fortress at Christianopel in Blekinge, driving off or killing the garrison there; but
since the Swedish prince found it prudent to evacuate Christianopel the very
next day, it was a minor moral victory at best. Karl IX was desperate; he lashed
out personally at Christian in a bizarre missive. Accusing the Dane of deception
⁷ On the operational details of the Kalmar War, see Axel Liljefalk Larsen, Kalmarkrigen: Et
bidrag til de nordiske Rigers Krigshistorie (Copenhagen, 1889); Finn Askgaard, Christian IV: ‘Rigets
Væbnede Arm’ (Copenhagen: Tøjhusmuseet, 1988), 96–107.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
155
and treachery, and of committing an unjustifiable breach of the Stettin treaty,
he challenged Christian to personal combat as a means of settling their disputes.
Christian contemptuously rebuffed him: ‘you ought to be ashamed of yourself,
you old fool, to address an honourable lord in this fashion, something you must
have learned from an old whore who is accustomed to defending herself with
nagging’. Karl was no fool, but he was indeed old; on 30 October 1611, the
61-year-old king died at Nyköping. Sweden had lost its sovereign at the most
inconvenient moment imaginable, and the crown passed to Karl’s adolescent
son, now King Gustav II Adolf (reigned 1611–32).
In little more than a decade, Gustav Adolf would prove to be Christian IV’s
most dangerous rival, but in 1611 he was a teenage boy who had inherited a
poor kingdom in the midst of a disastrous war. Worse still were the domestic
and constitutional challenges that faced the boy-king. His aristocracy, which
had suffered heavily under Karl IX’s harsh rule, demanded a greater share in
the governance of the realm, and sought assurances from their new king that he
would not emulate his father’s brand of despotism. Gustav Adolf, working closely
with his chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, successfully met his Council’s demands
and effected a warm reconciliation with the aristocracy, but above all he would
have to bring the war to a swift conclusion if he were to save the monarchy. He
was willing to concede almost anything to end the war with Denmark, but that
would require persuading Christian IV to come to the peace table. And that was
something that Christian, drunk with victory, was ill-inclined to do.
Christian IV had no reason to make peace at the beginning of 1612. His
Council, though lukewarm in its support for the king’s war, dutifully refrained
from nagging the sovereign about the high cost of the war. Danish forces
everywhere had encountered few setbacks. Only in 1612 did the Danish army
face real difficulties: plague had thinned its ranks, killing Marshal Sehested
among others; heavy desertions added to its woes, and the Norwegian peasants
did not respond well to military conscription. Campaigning in southern Sweden
proved to be a logistical nightmare. Still, on balance, Denmark held the upper
hand while the Swedes suffered irredeemable losses. After a short-lived Swedish
liberation of Öland, Gert Rantzau led the Danish eastern army to retake the
island. The western army, now under the king’s command, delivered the most
crushing blow of all: on 23 May 1612, after a siege of eighteen days, the
port of Älvsborg surrendered. Sweden was now completely cut off from the
North Sea.
But the war stalled after the capitulation of Älvsborg. Except for the fighting
around Älvsborg and on Öland, the war settled down into a series of raids
and reciprocal plunderings in the Scanian provinces, the only real victims of
which were the long-suffering peasants in the region. It soon became apparent to
Christian and his lieutenants that a full-scale land offensive towards Stockholm
would be well-nigh impossible. At home, the Danish population had held up
well under the burden of wartime taxes and the requisitioning of supplies, but
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The Age of Christian IV
there had been murmurs of discontent in Norway, and Christian had to wonder
how much longer his peasants and burghers could bear the strain. Most weighty
was the growing international pressure to end the war. The king had snubbed
a Dutch offer of mediation in 1611, but he could not be so cavalier with his
brother-in-law, James I of England. James pressed firmly for English-mediated
peace talks. Even Christian Friis til Borreby, who had shared the king’s push
for war, raised the spectre of international alienation—that trade concerns
might compel England, the Netherlands, and the Hanseatic towns to unite with
Sweden against Denmark. Even Christian IV had to admit that Denmark could
not afford such a confrontation, and he accepted the English offer in order to
head this off.⁸
In a border meeting held at Sjöaryd, on the frontier that separated Halland
from Swedish Småland, Danish and Swedish councillors hammered out a peace
settlement with the indirect input of their respective kings. Gustav Adolf was
eager to make peace, and had already made conciliatory gestures to Denmark;
at his coronation in 1612, he had pointedly omitted the title ‘king of the Lapps’
that his father had claimed. The Swedish delegation was accordingly willing
to give the Danes anything they wanted; anything, that is, but what Christian
IV wanted most—the port of Älvsborg, still under Danish occupation. That
would have been an intolerable loss for the Swedes, who offered cash for its
return. Christian did not want to give up his hard-won prize, but the danger of
international isolation that would surely result from breaking off the peace talks
outweighed the profits to be had from blocking Swedish access to the North Sea.
Early in 1613, the Danish delegation demanded 2,000,000 rigsdaler —an almost
unheard-of sum—for Älvsborg’s return. Sweden could not possibly afford such
a price, and fortunately for it the Danes indicated that they would settle for
1,000,000 rigsdaler, or ‘ten barrels of gold’ in the parlance of the time. The
‘Älvsborg ransom’ would be paid in four equal and annual instalments between
1616 and 1619. Any default or delinquency would result in the permanent
ceding of Älvsborg and its environs to Denmark. The peace treaty, signed at
Knäröd in late January 1613, clearly marked Denmark as the victor. Swedish
gains in eastern Norway were returned to Denmark, but Denmark retained
possession of Öland; Älvsborg would remain in Danish hands until the ransom
was paid off. Finally, Sweden rescinded its claims to the disputed regions in
the north, and allowed Christian to keep the device of the three crowns in his
heraldry.
The ‘Kalmar Triumph’, as it was styled by Christian’s panegyrist Claus
Christoffersen Lyschander, had a threefold effect on the king’s future conduct of
foreign policy. First, the rapid victory bolstered his self-confidence, and although
the war had revealed just how difficult a complete conquest of Sweden would
be, he held on to the hope that this was still attainable. He clung to this hope
⁸ Heiberg, Christian 4., 183–91.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
157
so long as he had Älvsborg in his grasp, convinced that if the Swedes defaulted
on their ransom payments—and there was every reason that the impoverished
kingdom would do just that—then possession of Älvsborg would give Denmark
the means to crush its troublesome rival once and for all. Second, the war did
not cripple Sweden, but served only to antagonize it. The lingering hatred of
Denmark, which pervaded all levels of society in Sweden, grew white hot with
the humiliation of Knäröd. Curiously, even though Axel Oxenstierna shared this
sentiment, Gustav Adolf did not; repeatedly he would show signs of seeking
some modus vivendi, even partnership, with the Danes. After meeting Christian
IV face to face for the first time, at a border meeting in 1619, the Swedish king
reported that he liked Christian personally. There was no man, he declared, that
he would rather have as his friend; indeed, they would have been good friends
if it were not for the fact that they were neighbours.⁹ Sadly, Christian IV had
his uses for Gustav Adolf, but friendship was not one of them. Christian would
eventually have much reason to rue his perpetuation of the Scandinavian rivalry,
for though Sweden was not yet in a position to exact revenge, the day was not far
off when it would be.
Third, the Kalmar War worked a significant change in the domestic context
of foreign policy. The successful prosecution of the war, over the objections of
the Council, made Christian IV even less inclined than he had been to follow the
Council’s advice on matters of war and peace. And the Älvsborg ransom, which
went straight into his personal treasury, gave Christian greater financial ability to
pursue a foreign policy of his own design without having to rely upon the Council
for grants of taxation. For its part, the Council after the Kalmar War became
more cautious—not of Sweden, but of Christian. Christian never realized just
how much the war with Sweden damaged his relationship with the Council.
In the decade after the Peace of Knäröd, the relationship between Sweden and
Denmark followed much the same path as it had between 1570 and 1611—as
a ‘cold war’ of sorts—only this time the stakes were much higher, and Sweden
grew into a much more formidable opponent in the interim. By means of
fiscal belt-tightening and heavy taxation at home, and with generous financial
assistance from the Dutch, the Swedish government managed to pay all four
instalments of the Älvsborg ransom in full and on time, dashing Christian
IV’s hopes of conquest. Starting in the 1620s, Gustav Adolf’s extensive and
revolutionary reforms of his army and navy gave Sweden the ability to make
substantial territorial gains in the eastern Baltic. In the Treaty of Stolbova (1617),
Sweden acquired Kexholm and Ingria from Russia, thereby gaining complete
control of the Gulf of Finland and denying Russia a Baltic window. From Poland,
Swedish forces took the fortresses of Pernau and Dünamünda (1617–18) and
the valuable Livonian port of Riga (1621).¹⁰
⁹ Ibid. 243.
¹⁰ Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, i, 225–510.
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The Age of Christian IV
Sweden’s good fortune in its empire-building in the east inevitably affected
its position vis-à-vis Denmark, and began to tilt the balance of power in its
own favour. The transformation happened so quickly that everyone, Christian
IV included, was taken by surprise. In 1619, the Swedish crown proposed an
alliance with Denmark against Poland, hoping thereby that it could forestall a
Danish attack, which the Swedes expected after the Älvsborg ransom was paid
off. Christian IV’s new chancellor, Christen Friis til Kragerup, firmly rejected
the Swedish offer in a border meeting later that year. It was a diplomatic victory
for Denmark, and demonstrated that Denmark was still the greater power. But
only five years later, another border meeting revealed just how much things had
changed. In May–June 1624 at Knäröd, where eleven years earlier the Danes had
forced a humiliating peace on Sweden, the Swedish delegation threatened war if
Denmark did not rescind recently imposed tolls on Swedish shipping through
the Sound. Gustav Adolf and his Council were united in their determination to
attack Denmark if their demands were not met; the superior condition of Swedish
military forces, and the fact that Sweden was temporarily at peace with Poland,
meant that the Swedes could focus their military might on Denmark if need
be. Denmark, on the other hand, was in no shape to fend off a major Swedish
offensive. It was forced to accept the Swedish demands unconditionally. The
Knäröd negotiations of 1624 demonstrated that Sweden was gaining the upper
hand in Nordic affairs. The relative strengths of their military establishments
aside, the Danish crown did not have the unity of purpose and vision that
Gustav Adolf shared with his Council and Diet. It was a disturbing portent for
Denmark’s future as a Baltic power.¹¹
2 . DY N A S T Y, C O M M E RC E , A N D R E L I G I O N : D E N M A R K ’ S
RO L E I N G E R M A N A F FA I R S
A few foreign statesmen made note of the shifting currents in Scandinavian
politics. The Palatine diplomat Ludwig Camerarius, a frequent visitor to both
Denmark and Sweden in the early 1620s, came to believe that Sweden was the
stronger state, and Gustav Adolf the better man. By and large, however, Denmark
still held its reputation as the leader of Protestant northern Europe. Control
of the Sound was the most substantial reason for the persistence of this belief;
Frederik II’s efforts on behalf of the hoped-for Protestant coalition of the 1580s
contributed as well. Moreover, Christian IV was wealthy, a great asset for an
international leader, and was well connected by marriage and blood. His wedding
to Anna Cathrine bound him to the Hohenzollern dynasty in Brandenburg; other
marriages in the family tied the Danish royal house to the Wettins in Saxony, all
¹¹ Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, ii. 265–360.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
159
of the Braunschweig duchies, and a host of smaller Protestant territorial states in
the Empire. Christian’s favourite sister, Anna, was consort of James VI and I, and
therefore queen of both England and Scotland. And since James and Anna were
the parents of Elizabeth Stuart, wife of Elector Palatine Friedrich V, Christian
was also connected to the most radical of the German Protestant princes.
Like his father, Christian IV felt at home in the Empire, where as duke of
Holstein he was the most prominent prince in the Lower Saxon Circle. He would
continue to fulfil the role traditionally played by his dynasty in Lower Saxony and
in northern Germany in general: as ‘good uncle’, adjudicating the innumerable
disputes that arose between his princely neighbours and relations in the Empire.
Frederik II had been more interested than his son in the higher politics of
the Empire, the machinations of the great princes and of the emperor himself;
Christian IV, on the other hand, took a more active part in the local affairs of
Lower Saxony. Two things initially prompted his actions in the region: first, his
ambitious commercial policies, which aimed to expand Denmark’s commercial
dominion in northern Germany at the expense of the decaying Hanseatic League;
and second, the dynastic needs of his growing family.¹²
An aggressive foreign policy, one that aimed to establish commercial dominion
in northern Germany, was a natural corollary to Christian’s ‘economic nationalism’. Christian was determined to claim the Elbe and Weser estuaries as his own,
to dominate the Hanse towns in the region just as they had dominated Denmark
less than a century before. If Frederik II had been brusque in his dealings with
the Hanse, then Christian was downright intimidating. Taking full advantage
of Hanseatic weakness, he revisited his father’s claims to Hamburg in 1598,
excluded Hamburg merchants from the Icelandic trade, and radically pared back
Hanseatic trading privileges in Norway. By such means, he bullied Hamburg
into acknowledging the joint suzerainty of Denmark and Holstein-Gottorp in
1603. When the Imperial judiciary, the Reichskammergericht, ruled in 1618 that
Hamburg was a ‘free city’ and could not be claimed by Denmark, Christian was
undeterred. He found other ways to crush Hamburg’s autonomy: the construction of Glückstadt gradually reduced maritime traffic between Hamburg and
the North Sea to a trickle, and Hamburg surrendered its sovereignty to him in
June 1621. Christian, however, stopped short of war with the Hanseatic towns,
individually or collectively; he was satisfied with harassing them, and in this he
seems to have taken great pleasure. The Hanse could do little more than whine
in protest.¹³
¹² Troels Dahlerup, ‘Christian IVs udenrigspolitik set i lyset af de første oldenborgeres dynastipolitik’, in Svend Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1988), 41–63.
¹³ Paul Douglas Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: King Christian IV
and the Decline of the Oldenburg State (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1996),
73–7, 82–4, 88–95; Hans-Dieter Loose, Hamburg und Christian IV. von Dänemark während des
Dreissigjährigen Krieges (Hamburg: Hans Christian, 1963); Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind, Konger
og krige, 400–1.
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The Age of Christian IV
In 1621, Bremen also joined Hamburg in Denmark’s political orbit, but for
different reasons and by different means. For Bremen filled yet another need for
Christian IV: providing security for the younger sons of the dynasty. Christian
was not a doting father, but he was a prolific one. His unhappy marriage to
Anna Cathrine of Brandenburg produced three sons who survived to adulthood:
Christian (1603–47), Frederik (1609–70), and Ulrik (1611–33). He sired two
more sons by his mistresses Kirsten Madsdatter and Karen Andersdatter. The
king’s morganatic marriage to the young noblewoman Kirsten Munk in 1615
was especially fruitful; before they parted ways in 1629, he and Kirsten had two
boys and seven girls. Anna Cathrine’s two younger sons presented the greatest
dynastic problems. Duke Christian, whom the Council had already recognized as
Prince-Elect Christian (V), had a secure future as heir apparent to the throne, but
dukes Frederik and Ulrik would have to be provided for, and further partition
of the Duchies was out of the question. For a Protestant German prince of
means, the most convenient solution to the problem of younger sons came from
the secularized bishoprics of northern Germany. Since the Peace of Augsburg
in 1555, the Protestant territorial princes had regularly coerced or bribed the
cathedral chapters of the many formerly Catholic bishoprics in the north to accept
their sons as prince-bishops or ‘administrators’. Such positions not only gave
their recipients a respectable patrimony and a steady income, but they also helped
to expand the influence and reputation of the dynasties that sponsored them.
The competition over secularized bishoprics became fierce in the first quarter of
the seventeenth century, even though the practice was illegal under the terms of
the Augsburg peace. Frederik II had tried his hand at what was called Stiftpolitik,
attempting to place Christian IV’s younger brother Ulrik (1578–1624) on the
episcopal throne at Strassburg in the mid 1580s. The plan fell through, but
in 1591 Ulrik became coadjutor (designated successor to the sitting bishop) at
Schwerin, and he took the bishop’s seat there in 1603.
Christian IV’s concerted attempt to acquire bishoprics began in the late
1610s, primarily for his son Frederik. Through bribery, threats of force, and
skilful negotiation, he secured for Frederik the coadjutorships of Bremen (1621)
and Verden (1623), as well as the post of bishop-administrator of Halberstadt
(1624). The king’s plan to secure Kamin for his youngest son, Duke Ulrik, was
unsuccessful, but he did purchase a canonry at Bremen for Ulrik (1622), and
in the same year Ulrik became coadjutor at Schwerin. By 1624, the Oldenburg
house held on to the lion’s share of secularized sees in northern Germany.
Christian’s Stiftpolitik in the early 1620s settled a thorny dynastic problem,
but it did not do much to help his reputation in Germany or abroad. His
vast personal fortune and the great diplomatic influence he wielded—he was a
king, after all—had given him a competitive edge over his princely neighbours
in Lower Saxony, and they resented him for it. His actions also caused some
trepidation at The Hague. To protect their trading interests in the Baltic and
in northern Germany, the Dutch had concluded defensive alliances with the
Baltic and German Hegemonies
161
Hanseatic League (1613) and Sweden (1614). Christian IV’s actions—not only
his ‘trade war’ with Hamburg, but also his threats of reprisal against Bremen
(1618) and his military intervention in a civil dispute in Stade (1619)—alarmed
the Dutch, but it was the king’s ambitions on Elbe and Weser commerce
that most aroused their ire. Christian IV was not oblivious to this, and his
irritation of the Dutch was partly intentional. The alliances of the States General
with Sweden and the Hanse angered him; he relished the opportunity to get
vengeance, however petty. As in his dealings with the Hanse, he treated Dutch
emissaries with disdain and showed no inclination to countenance their demands
for reduced tolls. But the Dutch made no serious effort to hinder Christian’s
actions in the Empire. As the expiration of the Twelve Years Truce (1609)
drew closer, and with it the likelihood of a renewed war with Spain, the States
General needed allies and therefore keenly desired Danish friendship. By 1621,
the Dutch–Hanseatic–Swedish alliance was for all practical purposes nullified,
and Christian IV was free to do as he pleased in Lower Saxony without fear of
Dutch meddling.¹⁴
In fact, Maurice of Nassau and the leaders of the Dutch Republic were eager
for Denmark to immerse itself in German affairs after 1621, for the imminent war
with Spain was intimately connected with the escalating conflict in the Empire.
Denmark’s role in the Thirty Years War (1618–48) would be a complicated
one, and historians disagree vehemently on the nature of that role. Most view
Christian IV’s Stiftpolitik and his war in the Empire (1625–9) as two sides
of the same coin: to earlier German scholars, Christian IV posed as a defensor
fides to justify stealing territory from a helpless and beleaguered Germany;
recent Danish scholars tend to portray Danish expansionism in Germany as
a measured reaction to Swedish expansionism in the eastern Baltic; and even
conventional survey texts on European history invariably argue that Christian
intervened in the Thirty Years War in order to gain land and commercial
influence. Such arguments misconstrue the king’s personal interest in German
and Protestant affairs, as well as the nature and pace of Denmark’s involvement
in German affairs. No matter how acquisitive he was, Christian was the ruler of
a solidly Lutheran state, whose father had assumed a leading role in international
Protestant movements. The extension of militant Romanism into northern
Germany greatly worried him, and particularly since it seemed as if Denmark
itself were targeted by the Counter-Reformation Church. Moreover, there was
little tangible connection between Christian’s Stiftpolitik and his actions on behalf
of those German princes who took up arms against the Habsburgs. During those
periods in which a Protestant, anti-Habsburg coalition seemed feasible, Christian
left the Hanseatic cities alone and put a temporary halt to his acquisition of
bishoprics.
¹⁴ Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 82–101; Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie,
i, 355–362, 417–30, 439–93.
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The Age of Christian IV
It was fear, not ambition or greed, that guided the king’s actions. Christian had
the mindset of a German territorial prince, a Reichsfürst, and considered himself
very much an insider. In later years, he tried in vain to understand Sweden’s
motivations for invading the Empire in 1630; unlike himself, he argued, Gustav
Adolf was a foreigner and not a ‘membrum Imperii’, and therefore had no
legitimate reason to involve himself in a purely German dispute.¹⁵ As a territorial
prince with extensive German lands, Christian above all feared the extension
of the Habsburg imperium into the northern extremes of the Empire, for
a centralizing Habsburg authority—religious as well as political—threatened
the security of his patrimony and of his recent gains in Lower Saxony. It
also compromised the ‘princely liberties’ that he and his fellow princes had
enjoyed for centuries—the ability to conduct policy as they wished without
interference from Vienna. No one would deny that Christian had a hunger
for land, wealth, and power; but it was the dread of losing what he had
already built up, and fear of Catholic machinations, that pushed him to war
in 1625.
There are clear parallels between the German policies of Christian IV after
1620 and those of his father from 1572 to 1588. Both dreaded the creation of
a Habsburg ‘world monarchy’ that would reduce the political autonomy of the
German princes, and the creation of a centralized Habsburg state that would
imperil Denmark’s security. Both were convinced that there was a link between
the emperor and the papacy, a Catholic conspiracy that intended to curtail the
religious liberties of the princes and even to extirpate Protestantism. To Frederik
II, the latter, the fear of an international Catholic plot, was the most pressing
concern. Christian IV, however, was most troubled by the local implications.
Although he hated Catholicism, he felt compelled to act only when Romanism
and Imperial aggression pressed close to home.
Christian’s early responses to the ‘Protestant cause’ were accordingly lukewarm,
even indifferent. The States General, for example, had requested his services as
mediator for the Dutch–Spanish peace talks in 1607–9. Christian agreed, but
without much enthusiasm and only as an obligation he felt he had to fulfil
as a Protestant monarch. In less than a year, bored by the slow pace of the
negotiations, he recalled his delegates from the talks despite plaintive appeals
from the Dutch. His delegation at the dramatic Imperial Diet at Regensburg
in 1608 did not participate in the mass exodus of Protestant princes and the
subsequent formation of the Evangelical Union, though his participation in the
latter body was much desired. The king did consent to take part in the talks
at Düsseldorf in 1609–10 that sought to resolve the complicated Jülich-Kleve
succession dispute, but without any intention of throwing his support behind
one claimant or another. With the outbreak of the Kalmar War in 1611 he
withdrew completely from the affair. Repeated pleas for support, issued from
¹⁵ Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 216.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
163
the leaders of the Evangelical Union, elicited nothing more than polite refusals
from him.¹⁶
For all his reticence, Christian IV was highly respected in the Empire. It is
a measure of this respect that he was discussed as an opposition candidate for
the Imperial throne in 1612, just as his father had been in 1562 and 1586.
But Christian’s approach to Imperial politics was conservative, and he was not
willing to risk all for a cause that had little hope for victory. When Bohemia
erupted in revolt in May 1618, Christian was one of the first European leaders
whom the Prague rebels solicited for aid and leadership, but he brusquely refused
them. The conflict was yet too distant, and Christian—like most legitimate
sovereigns—did not take kindly to rebels, whatever their cause. The spread of
the conflict into the German lands, however, changed his mind. The Imperial
ban on the ‘Winter King’ Friedrich V and the subsequent invasion of the Rhine
Palatinate by Spanish forces demonstrated that the new emperor, Ferdinand
II, was willing to trample on the ‘German liberties’ to advance a Catholic
agenda and his own power; the expiry of the Twelve Years Truce in the
Netherlands signalled that the Sound was in imminent danger of a Spanish
assault. It is difficult to say if Christian’s concerns resonated with his advisers,
but there was no shortage of Protestants abroad who were willing to fan the
flames. James I of England relentlessly pushed his Danish brother-in-law to
intervene.
Frightened by Habsburg gains, but encouraged by the show of international
support, Christian IV agreed to help orchestrate a meeting of Danish, English,
Dutch, and Protestant German delegates at the Holstein town of Segeberg in
March 1621. Here the Protestant leadership issued a bold challenge to the
emperor: Ferdinand must restore the Elector Palatine to his confiscated lands and
dignities, and withdraw all foreign troops from the Empire, or else a coalition
army would force him to do so. The ‘Segeberg Coalition’ may have caused some
temporary unease in Vienna and Madrid, but it was a fragile union and therefore
short-lived. Nonetheless, over the course of the next three years Christian’s
bellicosity grew as the Habsburg–Catholic threat drew ever nearer to the borders
of Lower Saxony. The military adventures of the Protestant condottiere Ernst
von Mansfeld and Duke Christian of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (the ‘Mad
Halberstädter’, a nephew of Christian IV) on behalf of the outlawed Winter
King drew the attention of Ferdinand II northwards. By 1622 the army of the
German Catholic League, under the command of Jean ’tSerclaes, Count Tilly,
was pressing on Lower Saxon territory in pursuit of Mansfeld and Halberstadt;
in 1623, Tilly’s army twice set foot in the Lower Saxon Circle, promising a
full-scale invasion if the princes there did not aid him in crushing the Protestant
rebellion. These actions served to confirm what Christian IV had suspected:
that Vienna would demand obedience, with fire and sword if need be, and that
¹⁶ Ibid. 78–9.
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the old balance created at Augsburg in 1555 would soon be eclipsed by a new
Catholic and Imperial one.¹⁷
Coinciding with these developments was an apparent Catholic bid for Denmark itself. Between 1622 and 1624, Christian and his ministers found evidence
that several Dominican and Jesuit priests had been travelling incognito throughout Denmark and Norway; at least one Jesuit had infiltrated the royal court,
and a Hamburg merchant in Malmø, one Arnold Weisweiler, had been caught
harbouring Jesuit ‘spies’ and distributing pro-Catholic literature. It was hardly a
substantive threat to the confessional integrity of Denmark, but it was enough to
convince Christian IV that militant Romanist and Habsburg political ambitions
were one and the same. Shortly before Weisweiler was executed at Malmø,
Christian crowed, ‘The Almighty has this day miraculously revealed the Catholic
assault on these lands.’¹⁸
Christian’s efforts to defend Lower Saxony against the emperor, or to restore
the exiled Elector Palatine, were without result. In part, this was because his
allies were unreliable. James I, at least until 1624, did not want to risk a breach
with Spain that would undermine his efforts to secure a Spanish marriage for
his son Charles. The Evangelical Union was weak and irresolute, and many
of the princes and towns of Lower Saxony were either too frightened of the
emperor or too resentful of Denmark to be of much use. The Danish king did
his best to patch up his frayed relationship with his southern neighbours—he
even offered to restore Hanseatic trading privileges in Denmark, a remarkable
concession—but to no avail. International and even German support for an
anti-Habsburg coalition came and went, and Christian IV accordingly vacillated
between bellicosity and passivity.¹⁹
The greatest constraint on Christian’s German policies, however, came from
within, from the Council of State. The Council, of course, was not a static
institution; its membership changed as councillors died or retired. None of those
who had participated in the peace talks at Stettin in 1570 were still alive, and
indeed only a few of the men who had served on Christian’s Council during the
Kalmar War were still active in 1624. In 1616 alone, Christian had to appoint a
new chancellor and elevate six new members to make good the losses, and in the
period 1617–24 he appointed four more. Friis til Kragerup’s Council was not the
same as Friis til Borreby’s. Well over half of the Council of State, in other words,
consisted of new men, hand-picked by the king, when he hoped to persuade the
¹⁷ Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 95–108; Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind, Konger
og krige, 404–6.
¹⁸ Klaus Jockenhövel, Rom—Brüssel—Gottorf: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der gegenreformatorischen Versuche in Nordeuropa 1622–1637 (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1989), 18–50; Garstein,
Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia, iii. 3–183.
¹⁹ Steve Murdoch, Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart 1603–1660: A Diplomatic
and Military Analysis (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2003), 44–59; Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’
War, 89–111.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
165
Council to support a more assertive role for Denmark in the Empire. And yet
the Council’s outlook on foreign affairs in 1622–5 was strikingly similar to that
of the Council in 1611, or 1604, or even 1571.
The memory of the Kalmar War made the Council wary of the king’s
recklessness. Almost to a man, save for a few unswervingly loyal royalists like
Jacob Ulfeldt, the councillors were against any kind of involvement in German
politics. Some of the new men who had been closest to Christian, like Christen
Holck, came to be the most vocal opponents of an intervention. Though delighted
that Christian’s attempts at coalition-building had resulted in better relations
with England and the Netherlands, the Council contended that the conflict in
the Empire was not a matter that concerned Denmark. The kingdom already
had an implacable enemy in Sweden; it did not need to add the emperor and
Spain to the list. Consequently, the Council shot down every one of Christian’s
requests for funding or troops for the war in Germany. The king did what he
could on his own—he made large personal loans to James I and the Elector
Palatine, for example—but without material support from his Council or from
foreign allies he could not act as he wished.²⁰
On this issue Christian would never win the Council’s approbation, but by late
1624 there was sufficient foreign interest in a Danish-led Protestant coalition that
Christian could seriously consider taking up arms against the emperor and the
Catholic League. After the collapse of marriage negotiations with Spain, James I
took a much more aggressive stance in German affairs. With his encouragement,
and with promises of aid from the Dutch and even from France, Christian IV
decided by the beginning of 1625 that he could accept the role of Protestant
champion as his allies desired. It had been hoped, especially at the Stuart court,
that Sweden could be brought into the alliance as well, but this was not to
be: Gustav Adolf wanted supreme command, distrusted both Denmark and
Catholic France, and proposed an invasion strategy that was far more ambitious
and expensive than anything James I had in mind. The war aims of Christian
IV, who desired only the restoration of the Elector Palatine and guarantees
of ‘princely liberties’, were more manageable, and accorded more with James’s
personal aspirations.²¹
Christian IV did not want to break with the Council over this issue. In
later years the Council’s opinion would mean little to him, but in 1625 he
was still dedicated to the principles of consensual rule. Meeting the Council
in Copenhagen in February 1625, he laid out his war plans for the final time.
The Council listened patiently and refrained from scolding the king, and as a
conciliatory gesture it granted assistance to England worth 200,000 rigsdaler, but
²⁰ Ole Degn, Christian 4.s kansler: Christen Friis til Kragerup (1581–1639) som menneske og
politiker (Viborg: Landsarkivet for Nørrejylland, 1988), 147–52.
²¹ Murdoch, Britain, Denmark-Norway, and the House of Stuart, 59–63; Lockhart, Denmark in
the Thirty Years’ War, 111–25.
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it would not budge on the question of war. The emperor, the majority on the
Council maintained, had not offended Denmark, and by going to war with him
the king was putting his crown and the welfare of his subjects at risk. By this
point, the councillors must have been well aware that Christian would go to war
with or without their consent, but this time they would call his bluff. If the king
went to war, he would go alone. Denmark would not follow.
Christian did as expected, and without hesitation. Having been elected as
military commander (Kreisoberst) of the Lower Saxon Circle, he took command
of a mixed force of 20,000 mercenaries and local conscripts in May 1625. He
could not use the newly formed Danish national regiments, but there were
no legal barriers to prevent him from recruiting in Denmark, and so two elite
Danish regiments soon came to join the Lower Saxon army. Additional regiments
came from England and Scotland, as did a small number of Dutch and French
troops, plus the remnants of Ernst von Mansfeld’s notoriously unruly army.
Detachments of the Lower Saxon army occupied strongpoints along the Circle’s
southern frontier by midsummer, waiting for Tilly’s nearby forces to make
their move.
3 . T H E E M PE RO R ’ S WA R
Christian IV’s intervention in the Thirty Years War—sometimes called the
‘Lower Saxon War’ or, in Danish, the ‘Emperor’s War’ (Kejserkrigen)—is often
styled a ‘Danish invasion’ of the Empire. It was neither Danish nor an invasion.
Denmark was not officially at war, since the Council pointedly refused to give its
blessing to what it called a ‘royal adventure’. And it was not an invasion. Rather,
Christian IV had taken command of a rebel army in Lower Saxony, the purpose
of which was to protect the Circle from further Imperial incursions and, it was
hoped, to pressure Ferdinand II into restoring the Elector Palatine. Certainly the
emperor regarded the ‘Lower Saxon War’ as an act of rebellion. The possibility of
a truly Danish invasion, however, was sufficiently intimidating that both of the
Habsburg courts hoped for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Curiously, Philip
IV of Spain led the call for peace with Denmark, seeking to end the stand-off
through negotiation even if it meant generous concessions.²²
The war was on, all the same, and Tilly’s Catholic League army raced
northwards to meet the Lower Saxon challenge. After a brief and indecisive clash
at the Weser river-town of Höxter (July 1625), Tilly hinted that he was willing to
talk peace. The following day, however, Christian suffered a terrible accident near
²² On Kejserkrigen, see J. O. Opel, Der niedersächsisch-dänische Krieg, 3 vols. (Halle and
Magdeburg, 1872–94); Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind, Konger og krige, 416–25; Askgaard,
Christian IV, 108–51; Axel Liljefalk Larsen, Kejserkrigen (Copenhagen, 1896–1901); Lockhart,
Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 131–207.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
167
his headquarters at Hameln: he and his horse fell from the parapet of Hameln’s
city wall, seriously injuring him and rendering him unconscious for two days.
Rumours of the king’s death emboldened Tilly and dismayed Christian’s timid
Lower Saxon allies, some of whom deserted the cause immediately. The robust
king survived, and his army kept Tilly at bay. Tilly’s army crushed a rebel force
at Seelze (November 1625), but a raid led by Christian’s brilliant young cavalry
commander, Duke Johann Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar, drew most of the League
forces away from Lower Saxony.
As the first campaign drew to a close, Danish, Dutch, English, and French
emissaries met at The Hague to discuss common strategy and the terms of
their alliance. The resulting Treaty of The Hague (November–December 1625)
failed to articulate a well-defined approach or even a set of goals—the English
delegation, led by the duke of Buckingham, wanted an all-out war on Spain—but
at least it reassured Christian that foreign aid was on the way. He would need
the assistance. Recent reinforcements gave Christian a two-to-one manpower
advantage over Tilly, but Tilly was no longer alone. For in late 1625 Ferdinand
II authorized the creation of an Imperial army under the command of the
brilliant if erratic Bohemian nobleman Albrecht von Wallenstein. Since a brief
and half-hearted round of negotiations between Imperial and rebel delegations
at Braunschweig failed to resolve the conflict, Christian would have to prepare
for at least one more campaign, the entire purpose of which was to keep the
armies of Tilly and Wallenstein separated. Christian IV may not have been a
great tactician, but he was a bold and innovative strategist, and his plans for the
1626 campaign reflected that. To draw Tilly away from Lower Saxony, he sent
Sachsen-Weimar to raid the as-yet unspoiled Catholic bishoprics in Westphalia,
and dispatched Halberstadt—now in his service—to support a peasant uprising
in Hessen, where the local population had taken up arms to resist Tilly’s brutal
occupation of the region. Meanwhile, Mansfeld and Johann Philip Fuchs von
Bimbach, Christian’s second in command, moved to the south-east to divert
Wallenstein. Unfortunately, like most bold strategic plans of the age, it was bound
to go wrong. Tilly crushed the Hessian rebellion and Halberstadt effortlessly.
The self-seeking Mansfeld, chafing under the king’s command, set out on his
own to invade the Habsburg hereditary lands. Wallenstein destroyed Mansfeld’s
army as it tried to force a crossing of the upper Elbe at Dessau (April 1626).
Christian barely averted disaster. He sent Sachsen-Weimar, the only one of
his generals to show a spark of genius, to regroup Mansfeld’s shattered army and
hold Wallenstein at bay. Indeed, it seemed that the eastern army might have
some chance of victory. The Transylvanian rebel Bethlen Gabor, always eager to
strike at the Habsburgs, offered an alliance and the services of an Ottoman army
to Christian IV. Sachsen-Weimar and Mansfeld planned to move towards Silesia
and Moravia, perhaps even into Upper Austria, where a peasant rebellion had just
erupted, and then to link up with Bethlen Gabor and the Turks. Sachsen-Weimar
and Mansfeld set off for the south-east in June 1626, and Wallenstein followed
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in hot pursuit. Christian’s strategy appeared to be working: so long as his army in
the south-east remained intact, Wallenstein could not effect a junction with Tilly.
Otherwise the situation looked grim for the Danish king. Promised English
and Dutch aid had not come through, and another appeal to the Council elicited
nothing more than the unhelpful suggestion that Christian sue for peace without
delay. In desperation, the king decided to lead his main army in Lower Saxony to
the south in a massive counter-offensive. Just what he intended is unclear. He may
have hoped to stab deep into the Danube valley, or he may have just been trying
to relieve his garrison at Göttingen, then under siege. At first Tilly, outnumbered,
retreated southwards, but last-minute reinforcements from Wallenstein allowed
him to execute an about-turn and move to face Christian. The Dane consequently
opted for retreat. Heavy rains and impassible roads forced Christian to make
a stand near the village of Hahausen in the foothills of the Harz mountains.
Here, in the battle of Lutter-am-Barenberge (17 August 1626), the Lower Saxon
army fought hard, repelling a League assault and then launching what initially
seemed to be a decisive counter-attack. But Tilly’s veteran army won the day,
killing, wounding, or capturing around half of Christian’s forces. Nearly half of
the king’s senior officers, including Fuchs von Bimbach, were also lost, and the
king himself only narrowly evaded capture.
Lutter was not the end of the war in Lower Saxony, but it marked the beginning
of the end. The king’s Lower Saxon allies, those who remained, abandoned him
wholesale. And then the Silesian campaign collapsed. After a very promising
offensive into the rich Habsburg lands, and the recruitment of thousands of
disaffected Protestants there, the army of Mansfeld and Sachsen-Weimar began
to fall apart from poor discipline and lacklustre leadership. Wallenstein drove
Bethlen Gabor and the Turks back into Hungary; Sachsen-Weimar perished
from disease; and the unscrupulous Mansfeld deserted the army, later dying of
plague in Sarajevo. Wallenstein pounced upon the eastern army, now in full
retreat and leaderless. Only a tattered handful limped back to sanctuary in Lower
Saxony in 1627.
Christian IV realized that the game was up. He took the Council’s advice and
tried to negotiate an end to hostilities. Perhaps he could have secured favourable
terms earlier, since Ferdinand was more concerned about the possible outbreak
of war with France. The collapse of the Lower Saxon war effort in 1626–7, and
the discovery that Christian’s diplomats had been discussing an alliance with
Venice, compelled the emperor to undertake an all-out offensive against Lower
Saxony and Denmark. Wallenstein and Tilly finally joined forces at the end of
summer 1627. In September they invaded Holstein, and only days later they
crossed the Slesvig frontier into Denmark itself. What few local defence troops
could be assembled melted away before the League–Imperial army and fled to
the islands. All of Jutland was soon under enemy occupation.
Denmark was utterly unprepared for an invasion. The king’s German troops
were either captured outright or bottled up in isolated garrisons in Holstein.
Baltic and German Hegemonies
169
Foreign aid did not materialize. France and England fought over La Rochelle, and
hence neither party was willing to part with more than the paltry contributions
they had made thus far, which fell far below the amounts promised at The
Hague in 1625. The Dutch, still smarting over the loss of Breda to the Spanish,
were likewise in no position to help. Christian IV was thrown upon his own
resources and—with the Council’s grudging consent—those of the kingdom
itself. The Council granted the king some funding, but imposed its control on the
collection and disbursement of taxes. It allowed the king the use of the national
militia for the defence of Denmark, but prohibited the quartering of foreign
mercenaries in much of the kingdom and forced the dismissal of many of the
mercenary units. The Council made it clear that it wanted peace, immediately
and at any price.
Once again the king disregarded the Council’s advice. He firmly believed that
only a counter-offensive in Jutland and the Duchies would allow Denmark to
secure an honourable peace settlement. Perhaps it was well that he persisted
in this belief, for there was far more at stake than the possible loss of Jutland.
By now the emperor, and through him Wallenstein, had set his sights on a
more valuable prize: the Baltic itself. Both branches of the Habsburg dynasty,
the Spanish as well as the Austrian, had been contemplating the possibility of
establishing a naval presence along the Baltic’s German shore. Once Imperial
and League forces conquered Denmark’s possessions in Lower Saxony, and took
control over Christian’s former ally Mecklenburg, this so-called ‘Baltic design’
took form. Construction of an Imperial fleet began at Wismar, Greifswald,
Rostock, and even in the Jutish port of Ålborg at the end of 1627. This was
no trivial enterprise: together, these shipyards could assemble a considerable
fleet in a very short time. Combined with the Polish fleet and Habsburg
naval forces from Dunkirk, the Imperial navy in the Baltic would constitute
a real challenge to the fleets of Denmark, Sweden, the States General, and
England.
Christian’s strategy for the 1628 campaign, developed in consultation with his
new second in command, the competent if uninspiring Margrave Georg Friedrich
of Baden-Durlach, called for naval actions against the new Habsburg ports, and
a series of amphibious assaults along both coasts of Jutland, extending to the
German Baltic coast. The attacks on Jutland and Holstein would, he hoped, allow
the Danes to regain a foothold in the Danish mainland. Diversionary actions
in Mecklenburg and Pomerania would draw Wallenstein’s attentions eastward;
Ferdinand II had just rewarded Wallenstein with the duchy of Mecklenburg as
payment for his services, and the Imperial generalissimo was not prepared to
let his new lands fall into enemy hands. Danish naval supremacy in the Baltic
allowed successful execution of the king’s plan. Christian’s squadrons destroyed
the Imperial naval facilities at Ålborg, Greifswald, and Wismar, and Denmark’s
command of the seas made it possible for his land forces to strike at will. After
making landfall at Fehmarn and at Eckernförde in Holstein, the king’s troops
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drove League and Imperial troops from the Danish mainland. A more ambitious
assault on the island of Usedom to the east ended in a serious defeat at the battle
of Wolgast (August 1628), but it too served the main strategic purpose: drawing
Wallenstein away from Denmark. Altogether, though there were few stunning
victories, the amphibious campaign of 1628 convinced Wallenstein that peace
would have to be conceded soon. Imperial forces were more urgently needed
elsewhere.
Yet another factor compelled Wallenstein to advocate a quick and generous
settlement: the spectre of Nordic collaboration. Gustav Adolf of Sweden had no
reason to celebrate the imminent demise of his Danish rival. Sweden had just as
much to lose as Denmark did in the event of Habsburg triumph in the southern
Baltic, so despite their previous enmity the Swedish and Danish governments
concluded a mutual defensive pact in April 1628. That summer, Danish and
Swedish troops fought side by side to defend the port of Stralsund against
Wallenstein. Wallenstein had a healthy respect for Christian IV, but he was one
of the very few men in the Habsburg camp who recognized just how dangerous
Sweden could be. A combined Scandinavian counter-offensive, he saw, could
easily turn the Habsburgs’ moment of triumph into one of humiliating defeat.
The success of the 1628 campaign and the mere thought of a united Danish–Swedish front saved Denmark. Christian IV now had the diplomatic edge
he needed to make peace on favourable terms. The peace proposal initially
drawn up by Wallenstein and Tilly in September 1627 was a harsh one: Christian IV would have to give up all claim to Imperial office and to the Lower
Saxon bishoprics, and either cede Holstein and Glückstadt to the emperor
or pay a ransom of 2,000,000 Reichsthaler per province against the return of
Holstein, Slesvig, and Jutland. These were exorbitant demands, and though
the Council was willing to negotiate on this basis the king most assuredly
was not. Both Christian IV and Ferdinand II were under great pressure to
continue the war—the emperor from Bavaria and the Catholic League, the
king from England and the Dutch—but the two parties nevertheless decided
to come to the peace table at Lübeck in January 1629. Wallenstein came prepared to demand Denmark’s payment of the emperor’s war debt, the immediate
cession of Jutland and the Duchies, and Christian’s promise that he would
never again involve himself in German affairs. Astonishingly, the Danish delegates—hand-picked by the king, not by the Council—proposed something
much different: the unconditional restitution of all occupied lands, payment of
damages to the Lower Saxon states that had suffered under Imperial occupation, and guarantees of the religious and political liberties of the Lower Saxon
Circle.
The Danish demands were impertinent, to say the least, but there was a
logic to them. Wallenstein did not want to prolong the war, and Christian
deftly inflamed his fears of a Swedish intervention. Meeting Gustav Adolf on
the Scanian frontier at the parsonage of Ulvsbäck in February 1629, Christian
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171
made public his interest in a strong offensive-defensive alliance with Sweden.
It was a sham; he had no intention of concluding such an alliance—he
told Gustav Adolf as much when they met face to face at Ulvsbäck—for
the purpose of the meeting was simply to convey the appearance of Nordic
solidarity to the Imperial delegates at Lübeck. The ruse worked. As the
Imperial delegation mulled over the changing situation, Christian prepared
to launch a massive invasion of occupied Jutland. Ignoring Tilly, who wanted to end the talks and renew the war, Ferdinand and Wallenstein opted
for a conciliatory peace. On 22 May 1629, the Imperial plenipotentiaries
accepted a modified version of the Danish proposal. Christian would give up
his claims to the Lower Saxon bishoprics, but Denmark would neither pay
reparations nor cede any territory. The Peace of Lübeck was, in the words
of the councillor Christen Thomesen Sehested, ‘a miracle . . . a direct gift
from God’.²³
Christian IV had actually accomplished a great deal in his four-year intervention. The war was not, as E. Ladewig Petersen called it, an ‘intermezzo’.²⁴ For
nearly four years, Christian’s military endeavours had kept at bay the bulk of
the emperor’s military might, making it possible for Sweden to prepare for its
invasion of the Empire in 1630. No one could argue that Denmark had not been
defeated, but the Sound was still firmly in Danish hands. Even in defeat, Danish forces had destroyed the Habsburgs’ ‘Baltic design’. The Imperial–League
invasion of Jutland had a positive effect as well: it alarmed England, France, the
Netherlands, and Sweden, forcing them to play a more active role in the German
war. Had Christian IV wished to continue the war beyond the spring of 1629, it
is likely that he could have done so with the backing of a renewed—and more
effective—anti-Habsburg coalition.
Denmark was beaten, but it had not been bankrupted or partitioned. Still, it
did bear deep scars from the experience. Its international reputation had suffered
a great blow. European statesmen were beginning to understand that Denmark
was perhaps not quite so powerful as it appeared to be. The most serious wounds
inflicted by the king’s war were internal, for the war destroyed the constitutional
balance within the Oldenburg monarchy. The king and his Council had been
on good terms, overall, in the three decades before the Lower Saxon War. Now,
however, each regarded the other with undisguised bitterness and recrimination.
From the perspective of the Council, the king’s rash actions and disregard for
its counsel came close to costing Denmark its most valuable provinces. To the
king’s mind, Denmark’s near defeat could have been avoided if the Council
had supported the war from the beginning. The peace negotiations at Lübeck
²³ Knud J. V. Jespersen, ‘Kongemødet i Ulfsbäck præstegård februar 1629—en dansk diplomatisk triumf på tragisk baggrund’, Historie, 14 (1982), 420–39; Ernst Karl Heinrich Wilmanns, Der
Lübecker Friede (Bonn, 1904); Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 197–207.
²⁴ E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘The Danish Intermezzo’, in Geoffrey Parker et al., The Thirty Years
War, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1997), 64–73.
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convinced Christian that the Council could not be trusted with the security
of the realm, for if it had had its way then Denmark would have lost much
territory and gold. The Lower Saxon War was a true watershed in the history
of the Oldenburg state, for with its conclusion Denmark began its downward
spiral into political insignificance, and the constitution established by Christian
III became unworkable.
8
Church and Court: Culture in the Age
of Christian IV
The integration of Denmark into the mainstream of European high culture,
which began in earnest with the Reformation, was already in full swing when
Christian IV was crowned in 1596. Frederik II’s support of learning, bolstered
by the quasi-official academic circle at court, made fertile ground for the growth
of Renaissance humanism. Tyge Brahe’s Uraniborg and Niels Hemmingsen’s
academic household were not phenomena of purely local interest; they inspired
widespread international recognition, drawing students and admirers from all
over Europe. The late sixteenth century was indeed Denmark’s Renaissance.
Danish culture in the age of Christian IV was, by contrast, more opulent,
less open to new ideas, and consequently less innovative than that of Frederik
II’s day. The court remained the focal point of art and music, literature and
learning, and the king was the leading patron. Christian IV outdid his father in
his efforts to promote the image of a powerful and sophisticated state. He was
competitive in all things, not least in learning and culture, but in his drive to gain
renown for Denmark he and his court borrowed heavily from current European
trends. Danish culture in the early seventeenth century excelled in ostentation
and sophistication, but lacked the originality of the days of Brahe, Hemmingsen,
and Severinus. In one area—religion—Danish high culture became markedly
rigid, closed-minded, and hence stagnant.
1 . T H E AG E O F R E S E N
In 1617, the clergy of Denmark and Norway celebrated the Lutheran Jubilee,
marking the 100th anniversary of Martin Luther’s objection to the sale of
indulgences. Scores of popular religious tracts and public sermons honoured the
great reformer. They also commemorated the achievements that Denmark had
made in Luther’s name: the elimination of papist ‘superstitions’ from churches
and homes, and the safeguarding of doctrinal purity against the raging tides of
heterodoxy. There was indeed much to celebrate. Few states in Europe, Protestant
ones at least, could boast such a record; the Oldenburg state had escaped the
confessional strife that had afflicted so much of Europe. But the 1617 Jubilee
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also acknowledged a transformation in Danish Lutheranism. Between 1550 and
1600, the Lutheran church in Denmark had been dominated by humanistic
Philippists. By 1617 that had changed. The Danish church was now more
monolithic in structure, less tolerant of dissenting voices, and ruled by clergy that
was adamantly opposed to Philippism. The Jubilee was the public confirmation
of the triumph of gnesio-, or orthodox, Lutheranism, the faction that insisted on
the strict literal interpretation of Luther’s teachings and the unqualified rejection
of compromise with either Geneva or Rome.
This ‘triumph of orthodoxy’ did not happen overnight. Rather, it was a
gradual transition whose success was due mostly to the efforts of several forceful
personalities in Christian’s clergy. The trend towards orthodoxy in Denmark
was a response, albeit a belated one, to parallel developments in northern
Germany. By the 1590s, the Book of Concord had worked its intended effect.
In Wittenberg and in Rostock, the two theological centres that had the greatest
influence on Denmark, there was no longer much sympathy for Calvinists,
overt or secret. Philippism held on for a little while longer in Denmark.
The members of the Regency government, most of whom had been on good
terms with Niels Hemmingsen, worked hard to make sure that their late
sovereign’s religious policies continued to be enforced. Mostly this meant the
suppression of controversy. When Isak Grønbæk, rector of Skt. Nicolai’s Church
in Copenhagen, preached on the subject of predestination in 1594, the Council
initiated disciplinary proceedings against him, which ended in his immediate
recantation. Interestingly, the man who led the attack on Grønbæk—the
councillor and regent Jørgen Rosenkrantz—was a student of Melanchthon and
a devout Philippist. Grønbæk’s offence was not that he had spoken with favour
of Calvinist beliefs, but that he had preached publicly on a controversial topic.¹
For at least two decades after Frederik II’s death, Philippists held nearly all of
the posts in the episcopacy and in the theological faculty at the university. Not
only did these men, such as Jacob Madsen Vejle (superintendent in Fyn) and
Peder Hegelund (Ribe), continue to pay tribute to the erudition of their beloved
Hemmingsen, but they perhaps even strayed a little closer to Calvinism than
their master had intended. Increasingly, young Danish students matriculated at
Heidelberg and Geneva rather than Wittenberg and Rostock. The king himself,
early in the reign, followed in his father’s religious footsteps. His favourite cleric
in these years was Jon Jacobsen Venusinus, rector at the Church of the Holy
Ghost in Copenhagen, who in 1588 had been temporarily suspended from his
post for failing to perform the ritual of ‘exorcism at baptism’ (djæveluddrivelse
ved dåben).
The matter of exorcism at baptism became the source of heated controversy.
It was also the vehicle by which orthodox Lutheranism made its inroads into the
¹ Hal Koch and Bjørn Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie, 8 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1950–66), iv. 161–2.
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Danish religious establishment. The divines of Frederik II’s day, Hemmingsen
among them, tolerated exorcism as a harmless relic from Catholic tradition.
Hemmingsen’s followers were less inclined to let it stand, and Christian IV
agreed that exorcism had no place in the liturgy. When the king ordered the
omission of exorcism from the christening ceremony for his daughter Elisabeth
in 1606, only two professors from the university objected: Jørgen Dybvad and
Hans Poulsen Resen. Resen was most adamant on the point, and as he was
popular at court the king reconsidered the issue. Though the majority of bishopsuperintendents voiced their antipathy towards exorcism when Christian asked
for a ruling on the matter, Resen’s view prevailed. At Resen’s urging, Christian
allowed the inclusion of the exorcism rite in the Norwegian church ordinance of
1608. Perhaps the weight of theological opinion was against Resen on this point,
but exorcism would remain an official part of Danish liturgy until 1783. It was
the first of many victories for the ambitious professor.²
Resen (1561–1638) was a respected theologian at the time of the controversy.
Educated at Wittenberg and Rostock, he received appointments to the philosophy
and theology faculties at Copenhagen. He was virulently anti-Catholic, and his
sympathies were initially with the Philippists, but some time early in the new
century he reversed his stance. Believing that religion was purely a matter of
faith in which reason had no place, he grew to despise Calvinism as overly
rationalistic and Philippism as being too close to Calvinism. Resen, however, was
no revolutionary. His ideas were a reflection of the current trend at Wittenberg,
and he counted among his greatest influences the Lutheran mystic Johann Arndt,
general superintendent of Celle in Lower Saxony. Nor was Resen original or
prolific as a biblical scholar. He produced an approved (but unofficial) translation
of the Bible in octavo format, intended for popular sale, an apologia for his
theological stance (De sancta fide, 1614), and a few devotional and polemical
tracts. He was also a cold and ambitious man, who did not hesitate to engineer
the downfall of his opponents as he sought to refashion the state church in
his image.
This Resen did with a vengeance. His first ‘victim’ was Jørgen Dybvad, a
Norwegian-born professor of mathematics and theology. Dybvad, father of the
soon-to-be infamous Christoffer, was not a popular man at the university or at
court, and he had a pronounced tendency to mix acerbic political commentary
into his sermons and writings. By 1607, his behaviour—he had criticized the
moral failings of the nobility, and even his attacks on the Jesuit theologian Robert
Cardinal Bellarmine were considered extreme—caused him to be dragged before
the university’s consistory for examination. Dybvad had collaborated with Resen
before, but now Resen turned on him. The consistory, with Resen in the fore,
voted against Dybvad, who was summarily dismissed from his academic post.
² Bjørn Kornerup, Biskop Hans Poulsen Resen: Studier over Kirke- og skolehistorie i det 16. og 17.
aarhundrede, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1928–68), i. 271–82.
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The Age of Christian IV
Only a year later, Resen set his sights on Iver Stub, professor of Hebrew and, like
Dybvad, an ardent admirer of Calvin. Stub had dared to criticize his translation
of the book of Job; Resen, in revenge, accused Stub of ‘pandering to the whore
of heresy’. Stub followed Dybvad to face the consistory, at Resen’s prompting.
After refusing to denounce Calvin as a heretic and blasphemer, he was found
guilty and dismissed from the faculty in 1609.³
Resen’s role in the actions against Dybvad and Stub earned him great influence.
He replaced Dybvad as the unofficial summus theologicus, and attracted a growing
flock of students. Many Philippists in the faculty found it politic either to
keep their silence or to leave the university altogether. But the imperiousness of
Resen’s manner also drew enemies. Foremost among these were two Norwegian
Philippists: Cort Aslakssøn, professor of theology and a former student of Tyge
Brahe, and Oluf Jensen Kock, rector at Skt. Nicolai’s in Copenhagen. Aslakssøn
confined himself to anonymous printed attacks on Resen’s theology, but the
brazen Kock could not restrain himself from lashing out against Resen from
the pulpit. Kock denigrated Resen’s work in Christology, calling his rival an
‘inflammatory, a ubiquitarian and a brother of the Concord’, despite warnings
from both Resen and Peder Vinstrup, bishop-superintendent of Sjælland. He
refused to curtail his verbal assaults, and Vinstrup filed charges against him.
Christian IV thought the matter serious enough to warrant a special royal
commission, which promptly fired Kock from his parish in 1613.
The affair was a critical moment for Resen, for in the meantime Kock’s
charges against him—that, by embracing orthodoxy, he had violated the Church
Ordinance and Frederik II’s ban on the Concord—still had to be addressed.
Kock and Resen faced each other in a special hearing held in the king’s presence
at Koldinghus in January 1614. Kock was outmatched; Resen was his superior
in learning and eloquence. Christian IV could not hide his preference for
Resen. The king nodded in agreement with everything Resen said, but repeatedly
interrupted Kock’s statements with angry outbursts: ‘Master Oluf, you are insane,
nothing you say is right!’ Resen was exonerated, and Kock was crushed. Charged
with being a ‘calumniator’ and bringing false accusations against the vindicated
Resen, Kock was condemned to permanent exile. Tear-filled supplications to
the king’s mercy, and even a later personal appeal by the Swedish chancellor
Axel Oxenstierna, fell on deaf ears. Resen was triumphant. The two remaining
Philippists of note, Niels Mikkelsen Aalborg and Cort Aslakssøn, saw the writing
on the wall. When Resen moved to secure their dismissals, both men recanted
and bowed to him. From 1614, Hans Poulsen Resen reigned supreme within
the Oldenburg clergy. When the consistory examined his controversial tome, De
sancta fide, later that year, no one dared raise his voice in protest. And in 1615,
³ Bjørn Kornerup, Biskop Hans Poulsen Resen: Studier over Kirke- og skolehistorie i det 16. og 17.
aarhundrede, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1928–68), i. 290–325.
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Christian IV rewarded his favourite theologian with the greatest prize he could
give: the post of bishop-superintendent of Sjælland.⁴
Resen would be the king’s right-hand man in the episcopacy until his death
in 1638. The few Philippists who remained in the clergy either fell silent or
were—like the bishop-superintendent of Fyn, Hans Knudsen Vejle, Resen’s
own brother-in-law—expunged. The most prominent theologians for the rest
of Christian’s reign were either friends or students of Resen: the most erudite
member of the Council, Holger Rosenkrantz ‘the Learned’, the physician and
professor of theology Caspar Bartholin, the educational reformer and bishop
Jens Dinesen Jersin, and above all Resen’s protégé Jesper Brochmand. For all of
his unattractive personal qualities, Resen’s monopoly over ecclesiastical authority
was not without its positive results. His visceral hatred of Catholicism inspired
him to undertake an overhaul of religious and secular education in the kingdom,
since he saw this as a bulwark against the pernicious influence of the Jesuits.
Resen also proved to be a brilliant administrator. Under his firm direction,
episcopal visitations became more frequent and more thorough in all dioceses.
He transformed the local assemblies of clergy, the previously desultory landemode
and provstemode, into regular, semi-annual events. He also strove tirelessly to
improve the salaries and working conditions of the lower clergy. All in all, the
rise of Hans Poulsen Resen permanently altered the hierarchy of the state church.
Before him, the bishop-superintendent of Sjælland was a primus inter pares within
the community of bishops, but now the office became tantamount to that of
archbishop. Resen’s close collaboration with the king and the chancellors, and
the regular observance of local clerical assemblies, ensured the smooth flow of
authority from the king to the lowliest rural parson.
The preservation of doctrinal purity had been one of the most difficult tasks
facing the Danish church since the Reformation. This did not change under
Resen. The flood of refugees fleeing religious persecution in the Netherlands
ebbed gradually after the 1590s, and Resen’s actions against Dybvad, Stub, and
Kock curbed home-grown disputes over Calvinism. But Christian IV’s importation of Dutch artisans and merchants guaranteed that religious heterodoxy would
continue to present a serious problem. Resen’s solutions were not novel—they
were based on those of Frederik II—but they were broader in scope and more
restrictive in their definition of ‘correct learning’. These measures included a ban
on the importation of unapproved foreign religious literature (1617), a reiteration
of Frederik II’s ‘foreigner articles’ (1619), and the requirement that all tutors
accompanying young men bound for university studies abroad be examined for
doctrinal correctness by the local superintendent (1616). Not content with mere
⁴ Oskar Garstein, Cort Aslakssøn: studier over dansk-norsk universitets- og lærdomshistorie omkring
år 1600 (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1953), 231–301; Kornerup, Biskop Hans Poulsen Resen,
i. 373–491.
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laws, Resen also took active steps to compel conformity. In 1618 he rounded
up all burghers in Copenhagen who were known to practise dissenting religions,
and forced them to swear to the Foreigner Articles. He kept a close eye over
foreign artisans, and ordered parsons in Copenhagen to turn in all Anabaptists so
that they could be expelled from the kingdom. All professors and clergy had to
pledge their allegiance to the Augsburg Confession. As before, public expressions
of religious dissent were not to be tolerated, but the message Resen meant to
convey went far beyond that. All religious thought, writing, and practice had
to conform to ‘correct learning’, and that meant unquestioning adherence to
Resen’s interpretation of Luther.⁵
The ‘age of Resen’ was by no means a period of great intellectual vitality in
Danish religious thought. The publishing houses in Copenhagen churned out
scores of different religious books each year, but in the main these were bland
devotional tracts and uncontroversial printed sermons. The single significant
theological work of the age, Jesper Brochmand’s Systema universae theologicae
(1633), is perhaps better known for its markedly royalist political theology
than for anything else. Still, for all its intellectual shortcomings, the solidarity
manufactured by Resen had concrete advantages given the tenor of the times.
Confessional harmony by royal fiat had worked well under Frederik II, but by
the time of the Regency disputes over exorcism and predestination threatened
to wreck that harmony. Resen’s methods, however harsh, had restored concord
and precluded dangerous factionalism. Even Holger Rosenkrantz the Learned,
whose personal views strayed ever further from Resen’s during the 1620s and
1630s, found himself compelled to keep his ideas to himself despite his exalted
political status. In the minds of Resen and most of the upper clergy, confessional
solidarity was utterly necessary if Denmark were to survive the expected Catholic
onslaught.
2 . T H E M O N A RC H Y A N D T H E C H U RC H
Fear of Catholic intrusion into Denmark, whether by open confrontation or
by subterfuge, was constantly on the king’s mind as well. It was one reason
why Christian IV took such an active interest in church affairs. In theological
matters, Christian was his father’s and grandfather’s inferior, even if he was
more opinionated than either of them. And far more than his predecessors he
incorporated his personal faith into the secular realm. Frederik II’s motto had
been Mein hoffnung zu Gott allain (‘My hope is in God alone’); Christian IV’s was
Regnum firmat pietas (‘Piety strengthens the realm’). For Christian IV this was
no empty platitude. He harboured a great disdain for popular piety, remarking
⁵ Oskar Garstein, Cort Aslakssøn: studier over dansk-norsk universitets- og lærdomshistorie omkring
år 1600 (Oslo: Lutherstiftelsens Forlag, 1953), ii. 146–234.
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during the Kock trial that ‘certainly an ordinary burgher is better suited to taste
a tankard of German beer than he is to judge in [theological] matters.’⁶ The king
preferred to leave the theological direction of the church to those clergymen he
trusted most, and for most of the reign that meant Resen. In the practical, that
is to say political, affairs of the church Christian immersed himself with gusto.
For the rise of Resen had transformed the state church into the handmaiden of
the monarchy, and the king in turn used the church as an extension of royal
authority. The king supported the church, and in return the episcopacy was
strongly royalist. The firm alliance between king and clergy would prove to be
a useful tool for Christian IV and his successor, Frederik III. Twelve years after
Christian’s death, the clergy would play a vital role in the royalist coup of 1660.
The first major task that the king assigned to the clergy was the defence
of Denmark against Romanism. Christian IV was intolerant of Catholicism, a
fact that students of his foreign policy often fail to note. Catholicism, however,
presented little or no threat to the Oldenburg lands. A very few Danish clergy
expressed some admiration for the piety of the Jesuit order, but those who did
so were quickly suppressed. Catholic communities lingered on in Iceland and
northern Norway, but they were so small and remote as to present no danger of
‘polluting’ the rest of the population.
The existence of a Catholic problem and the perception that such a threat might
exist were, however, two entirely different things, and the ruling elite in Denmark
was convinced that the papist menace was genuine. The available evidence seemed
to support such a notion. It was well known that young Danes, Norwegians, and
Icelanders were being recruited by the Jesuit seminaries at Braunsberg (presentday Braniewo, Poland) and Olmütz (Olomouc, Moravia, in the Czech Republic).
The numbers involved were trivial, but the practice was enough to elicit a sharp
reaction from Christian, Chancellor Friis til Borreby, and the episcopacy: an
edict of 1604 proclaimed that no one who had studied with the Jesuits could be
admitted to the clergy, and a 1613 ordinance barred Catholics from inheriting
property or residing within the Oldenburg lands. Denmark was not fertile ground
for Catholicism, but the papacy tried again and again to seek a foothold there.
In 1606, the Norwegian Jesuit Laurentius Nicolai—who, under the sobriquet
‘Klosterlasse’, had nearly converted Johan III of Sweden in the 1570s—came to
Denmark to seek an audience with Christian IV, who promptly ejected him from
the kingdom. A Dominican friar visited Denmark and Norway fifteen years later,
reporting to Pope Gregory XV that there were few Catholics to be found and that
the prospects of proselytization in the North were bleak. Gregory, undaunted,
proceeded with his plan to reintroduce Catholicism in Denmark.
⁶ Christian’s precise words were ‘ja Søfren Tolder haver bedre Forstand at smage en Pot tysk Øl
end at judicere I saadanne Sager’ (‘certainly Søren the Customs Officer is better suited to taste a
tankard of German beer than he is to judge in such matters’). By ‘Søren the Customs Officer’ the
king meant an ordinary burgher, an unlettered man. Koch and Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie,
iv. 212.
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The missio Danica, as Pope Gregory’s project became known, began its work
in 1622 from its headquarters in Brussels. Between 1622 and 1624, the mission
sent about a dozen Dominican and Jesuit missionaries to Denmark and Norway.
Travelling incognito, they were to give encouragement to those Catholics they
found, proselytize whenever possible, and gain a foothold at court. The mission
was not well timed, for Christian IV was already highly sensitive to Catholic
subterfuge. He had sparred with the neighbouring counts of Schauenburg in
1619–22 over their plans to build a monastery in Pinneberg and a Catholic
cathedral at Altona. He expected to find Catholic agents in his lands, and it was
not long before he learned that there were such agents. Christian assigned to
Resen and to the new chancellor, Christen Friis til Kragerup, the task of rooting
out the papists. One by one they were exposed and banished, including an
instructor at the Sorø academy, and it was at this point that Danish authorities
caught Arnold Weisweiler, the Catholic agitator at Malmø. After Weisweiler’s
execution, the king had had enough. In case the 1613 ordinance had not made
it sufficiently plain, he proclaimed to the world that Catholics were not welcome
in Denmark. He ordered a day of public thanksgiving to celebrate the death of
Weisweiler, and in March 1624 he banned outright Catholic worship in any
form within the Oldenburg state.⁷
The events of 1621–4 convinced the papacy that the missio Danica was a
fruitless folly, and after one more half-hearted attempt in 1639–40 it was decided
to confine missionary activities to foreign diplomatic embassies in Copenhagen.
With the 1650s came renewed hope that a reconversion of the Nordic lands
was not entirely unrealistic. Christian IV had softened his anti-Catholic stance
in his declining years, toying with the idea of granting religious freedom to four
Norwegian towns in 1646. Most encouraging for the papacy, however, was the
success it had in converting crowned heads of state in the North: Duke Johann
Friedrich of Braunschweig-Lüneburg went over to the old faith during a visit
to Assisi in 1651; Queen Christina of Sweden turned her back on Lutheranism
before her abdication in 1654. The death of Christian IV in 1648 removed a
major obstacle to Catholicism in Denmark, for his son and successor, Frederik
III (reigned 1648–70), was not so inimical to Catholics as his father had been.
Frederik’s consort, Sophie Amalie of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, was a sister of the
recently apostate Johann Friedrich. Frederik III unintentionally encouraged the
Catholics. He invited his Catholic brother-in-law to stay with the royal family
in Denmark; he befriended the Spanish resident ambassador in Copenhagen,
⁷ Ibid. 192; Vello Helk, Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus S.J.: en biografi med bidrag til belysning
of romerkirkens forsøg på at genvinde Danmark Norge (Copenhagen: Gad, 1966), 271–375; Oskar
Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia, 4 vols. (Oslo: Universitets forlaget,
1963–92), iii. 72–183; J. J. Duin, ‘Norske studenter på jesuittenes skoler inntil dommen på
Gjerpen prestegård i 1613’, in J. J. Duin, Streiftog i norsk kirkehistorie 1450–1880 (Oslo: St Olav
Forlag, 1984), 75–104; J. J. Duin, ‘Jesuittdommen på Gjerpen prestegård i 1613’, in Duin, Streiftog,
105–18.
Church and Court
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Bernardino Rebolledo, even permitting the priests in Rebolledo’s household to
participate in theological debates at the university. Frederik’s apparent goodwill
spurred the enthusiastic Spanish priests to take a stab at popular conversion.
Here he drew the line: in November 1655, he prohibited contact between his
own subjects and the embassy priests, dashing whatever hopes Rebolledo had
nurtured for establishing a Catholic foothold in Denmark.⁸
Together, the monarchy and the clergy were able to sustain the achievement
trumpeted in the Jubilee celebrations in 1617: the preservation of doctrinal
purity. Even as its international influence waned in the middle of the seventeenth
century, the Oldenburg state lived up to its reputation as a bastion of unshakable
Lutheranism. Michael Roberts’s characterization of Sweden as ‘the Lutheran
Spain’ applies equally well, and perhaps more aptly, to Denmark. The Lutheran
faith was, next to the royal house itself, the strongest tie binding together the
Oldenburg lands, and lending to the Oldenburg state a cultural homogeniety
and unity of purpose that were lacking in the Swedish empire at its height. The
collaboration of king and clergy, however, was not limited to the protection of
Denmark from divisive religious influences. For Christian IV, the church would
also serve as a means of enforcing social discipline.
The idea of using the church to regulate public morality and good order was
not unique to Denmark, nor within Denmark to Christian IV, since Frederik
II had done the very same thing. But the tighter unity imparted by Resen’s
ecclesiastical regime permitted a more thorough exercise of the church’s moral
authority. Resen, backed by Christian IV, kept a watchful eye over the personal
conduct of the clergy. No one was exempt, not even the most senior churchmen;
Anders Arrebo, the popular young superintendent of Trondheim and one of
the rising stars of the church, lost his position in 1622 as a result of a minor
indiscretion he committed during a wedding feast. And the lesser clergy, in turn,
had to monitor the behaviour of the laity in their charge. In this duty they had
the full backing of civil authority. Royal ordinances against morality infractions
began to appear after Resen’s elevation to the episcopacy in 1615: against incest
in the second or third degrees of kinship (1615), against adultery and promiscuity
(1617, 1621), and—in an ordinance that reads almost as if it came from Calvin’s
Geneva—against working on holy days and the use of foul oaths (1623). As
was frequently pointed out in the morality ordinances, the purpose of these
laws was to demand popular penitence in order to fend off ‘the rod of God’s
righteous wrath’. The obsession with averting divine wrath, a concern that Resen
and Christian IV shared, intensified shortly after the beginning of the Lower
Saxon War. King and episcopacy alike chose to interpret defeat in the war as a
⁸ Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2
(Oslo: Universitets forlaget, 1977), 367; P. Hampton Frosell, Diplomati og religion: gesandterne
for de katolske magter og deres kirkepolitik i Danmark c. 1622–1849 (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1990),
8–17.
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manifestation of God’s anger with the erring people of Denmark, a punishment
for their collective sins.⁹
The Ordinance on Church Discipline (March 1629) transformed this interpretation into a matter of law. Composed at the king’s command by a commission
consisting of Resen, eight other divines, and five members of the Council, the
ordinance stated explicitly that ‘the anger and vengeance of the Almighty has
justly been inflamed against these lands and realms’ by the ‘ungodly living and
false Christianity’ of the king’s subjects. In order to placate an angry God, the
ordinance called upon the clergy to seek out and punish sinners guilty of a
myriad of offences: absence from worship service and especially refusal to take the
sacraments; drunkenness; dishonesty in commercial transactions; and of course
sexual licentiousness. Offenders would have to do public penance, and repeat
offenders could be punished with banishment. Similarly, the ordinance warned
clergy to abstain from frivolous or scandalous behaviour, including dancing, and
threatened those who knowingly ignored the misdeeds of their parishioners with
dismissal. The spirit behind the 1629 ordinance reached its logical (if perhaps silly) conclusion in a royal directive to the episcopacy in June 1645. In each parish,
the king decreed, there should be several churchwardens, who would watch over
their congregations during worship service; armed with long poles, these men
were enjoined to ‘hit upon the head all those who fall asleep during the sermon’.¹⁰
To be sure, there were more serious obstacles to good order and godly
living than adultery and sleeping in church. Popular religion itself posed a
problem, for despite the best efforts of church leaders from Peder Palladius
to Jesper Brochmand there remained much that was ‘superstitious’ or ‘false’
in the devotions of the ignorant masses. Better catechismal education, it was
hoped, would solve the problem in due course, but to Resen and Brochmand
the immediate dangers presented by magic, witchcraft, and practices remaining
from Catholic times were far greater than those stemming from Calvinist ideas
spouted by a handful of professors. As such, they demanded more radical
solutions. Under Christian III and Frederik II, the episcopacy had tolerated a
number of Catholic religious practices that were deemed harmless, but Resen and
Brochmand were less forgiving. Brochmand, for example, forbade any medicinal
use of the consecrated host and banned the use of Latin in any part of the liturgy.
The area of popular religion which most occupied the attention of both church
and crown, however, was the practice of witchcraft. There had been laws against
⁹ Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 372–3; Koch and Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie,
iv. 243–6.
¹⁰ Jens Glebe-Møller, ‘Fromhed styrker rigerne: skole- og kirkepolitik under Christian IV’,
in Svend Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1988), 270–3; Troels
Dahlerup, ‘Fromhed styrker rigerne: kirkebogsforordningen af 20. maj 1645 og dens baggrund’, in
Afhandlinger om arkiver: ved Rigsarkivets 75-års jubilæum 1964 (Copenhagen: Rigsarkivet, 1964),
70–81; V. A. Secher (ed.), Corpus Constitutionum Daniæ: Forordninger, Recesser og andre Kongelige
Breve, Danmarks Lovgivning vedkommende, 6 vols. (Copenhagen: Rudolph Klein, 1887–1918), iv.
446–76, v. 468.
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witchcraft in medieval Denmark and Norway, but with the Reformation the
crown and the episcopacy stepped in to regulate the prosecution of witches. The
Copenhagen Recess of 1547 (incorporated into the Kolding Recess of 1558), for
example, barred accused witches from testifying in court—meaning, of course,
that witches could not implicate others in revenge—and prohibited torture except
in capital cases where the accused had already been sentenced to death. In 1576,
Frederik II decreed (in the Kalundborg Recess) that all capital cases would invoke
an automatic appeal to the regional courts: in other words, anyone convicted of
capital crimes at a county court would have to be tried at a regional court before
a death sentence could be pronounced. Largely because the central authority
enforced such restrictive measures, the Danish witchcraze would never match the
excesses of the phenomenon as experienced elsewhere in Europe. These measures,
however, were designed to reform the legal system in general, and were not specifically directed at witchcraft trials. The government did not even define, specifically,
what kinds of behaviour constituted witchcraft. In response to complaints by the
bishop of Stavanger, Frederik II in 1584 ruled that white magic was as much an
affront against God as was maleficium, and that the practice of either demanded
the death penalty, but this law would become binding only on Norway (1593).
Resen, Brochmand, and Christian IV took witchcraft more seriously. It is
not difficult to see why. Several witches were executed for cursing the voyage
of Princess Anna and her husband, James VI of Scotland, from Denmark to
Scotland (via Norway) in 1589–90. An ‘epidemic’ of sorcery in Køge, Sjælland,
in 1612 troubled the king greatly, and he was convinced that a German witch had
been hired to kill him by black magic in the late 1620s. His witchcraft ordinance
of October 1617 accordingly established a legal definition of witchcraft and
established the penalties for the crime: witches were those who had made a pact
with the Devil, and must be burned at the stake, while ‘cunning men’ and ‘wise
women’—practitioners of white magic—must be banished. The immediate
result of the 1617 ordinance was a brief but intensive witch-hunt, lasting for
about eight years. Between 1617 and 1625, the regional court at Viborg alone
heard 297 witchcraft cases, around 60 per cent of the total of witch trials held
there between 1609 and 1687. After 1625, the number of witchcraft trials abated
considerably, and would not peak again until the last great witchcraze of the
mid 1680s. In Norway, the incidence of witchcraft was more evenly spread over
time, peaking in the 1620s and again in the 1660s. Conviction rates for both
lands were not remarkably high: about 50 per cent for Denmark, 40 per cent
for Norway. Overall, the witchcraze in the Oldenburg lands exhibited signs of
relative restraint when set in its European context, owing probably more to the
legal framework established by king and clergy than to any other factor.¹¹
¹¹ Karsten Sejr Jensen, Trolddom i Danmark, 1500–88 (Copenhagen: Nordisc, 1982); Jens
C. V. Johansen, Da Djævelen var ude: trolddom i det 17. århundredes Danmark (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1991); Hans Eivind Næss, Med bål og brann: trolldomsprosessene i Norge (Stavanger:
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The Age of Christian IV
The political relationship between Christian IV and his clergy was a two-way
street. The king lent his authority to Resen’s and Brochmand’s efforts to cleanse
the kingdom of heresy and sin, expanding the scope of royal power. And the
clergy, for their part, were loyal and faithful servants of the king. Few theologians
apart from Brochmand engaged in the study of political or constitutional theory,
even within a scriptural context, but the actions of the clergy seem to indicate
at least a passive tendency towards royalism. This was not a novel trend, but
had in fact been present since the Reformation. The episcopacy had been quite
close to Christian III and Frederik II; the sermon delivered by Bishop Peder
Vinstrup at Christian IV’s coronation in 1596 glorified the divine nature of
kingly power. Ecclesiastical support for the king became more evident in the
seventeenth century. The clergy invariably backed the king, when they could,
in political disputes. Hans Poulsen Resen lent his voice to the king’s charges
against Christoffer Dybvad in 1622, asserting that the royal mathematician was
also a Calvinist. During the Kalmar War and the Lower Saxon War, the clergy
supported Christian enthusiastically despite aristocratic opposition, agreeing
without complaint to increased taxes that undoubtedly hurt them more than
they did the noble estate.¹²
The clergy also served as a mouthpiece for the king, especially in the last
twenty years of Christian IV’s reign. The observance of the prayer days became
a regular part of church life under Christian IV. During the Lower Saxon War,
the prayer days allowed the king to present his view of the conflict and defend
his actions directly to his subjects without going through the Council of State.
Particularly in the dark days after Lutter, prayers and sermons delivered in the
mandatory prayer days unrelentingly put forth the message that the war was the
result of God’s anger, brought on by the iniquity of the king’s subjects, in which
the forces of evil Catholicism were mere tools of divine wrath. Christian IV, in
this context, was nothing short of a national messiah, offering up his life and
fortune as sacrifices to save his ungrateful and wayward people. The clergy did
not limit their lobbying for royal policy to the ordained prayer days. Individual
clerics produced scores of broadsides (skillingsviser, or ‘one-shilling verses’) and
printed sermons. Still others tried their hand at the popular ‘miracle literature’
genre, lurid and often disturbing descriptions of blood-rains, monstrous births
both animal and human, and visitations by angels. This species of pulp literature
was perfectly suited for royal propaganda, since the universal message of the
reported miracles was the imminence of God’s wrath and a call for atonement.
Taken together, the prayer-day sermons and penitential writings made a powerful
Universitetsforlaget, 1984); Ólafur Davíðsson, Galdur og galdramál á Íslandi (Reykjavík: Sögufélag,
1940–3). See also the essays by Jens C. V. Johansen, Hans Eivind Næss, and Kirsten Hastrup
in Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (eds.), Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and
Peripheries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 339–402.
¹² Frede P. Jensen, ‘Peter Vinstrups tale ved Christian 4.s kroning: et teokratisk indlæg’, HTD,
12th ser., 2 (1966–7), 375–92; Kornerup, Biskop Hans Poulsen Resen, ii. 137–45.
Church and Court
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argument in favour of the king. The war was not a matter of royal policy, but
an inescapable punishment from God; the king was not responsible for starting
the war, but was instead the solution. Christian IV, whom the prayer literature
characterized as an Old Testament warrior-king and even likened to Christ
Himself, fought for God and His cause. Repentance, therefore, meant not only
the rejection of sinful conduct but also unfaltering devotion to the king.¹³
3 . E D U C AT I O N A N D L E A R N I N G
The cultural legacy of Christian IV is a paradoxical one, in that it entailed
an expansion of opportunities for learning and, simultaneously, a marked
step backwards in intellectual vitality and originality. Christian IV was much
better educated than Frederik II, and was widely regarded as a well-read and
cultured man. The leading men at court, such as Holger Rosenkrantz and the
two chancellors Friis, were both well educated and intellectually curious, and
were active patrons of scholarship and the arts. Yet the enthusiastic pursuit of
knowledge that characterized Frederik II’s day was woefully absent in Christian’s.
The stagnation of Danish intellectual life is most readily apparent in the
literary output of Christian’s reign. No one arose in these years to match
Niels Hemmingsen or even Heinrich Rantzau. Only Brochmand’s Systema of
1633 stands out as an important contribution to Danish theology, but even it
presented few novel ideas and does not merit a significant place in Lutheran
literature. Secular writings were also scanty. Anders Arrebo won some brief and
local fame for his verse, but there was little else. It did not help that the king
himself discouraged what he saw as frivolous literature—‘useless verses, poems,
fables, stories, and shameful romance books’ that could lead to ‘scandal and
subversion’.¹⁴
The physical sciences also stagnated under Christian IV. Within a decade and a
half of Frederik II’s death, the scientific community in Denmark suffered a double
blow: the dismissal and exile of Tyge Brahe in 1597 and the death of Petrus
Severinus in 1602. Although Uraniborg had been the intellectual centrepiece of
Denmark’s Renaissance, and added greatly to the prestige of the realm, Tyge
Brahe himself was a difficult personality. The generous funding allocated to the
support of Uraniborg and its students excited the jealousy of many professors at
the university. Worse still, Christian IV had good reason to dislike Brahe. One
biographer has recently asserted that there were distinct ideological differences
¹³ Paul Douglas Lockhart, ‘Dansk propaganda under Kejserkrigen, 1625–29’, Historie (1998),
222–48; Paul Douglas Lockhart, ‘Political Language and Wartime Propaganda in Denmark,
1625–1629’, European History Quarterly, 31 (2001), 5–42.
¹⁴ Vagn Lundgaard Simonsen, Anders Arrebos forfatterskab (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1955);
Harald Ilsøe, Bogtrykkerne i København og deres virksomhed ca. 1600–1810 (Copenhagen: Museum
Tusculanum, 1992), 39–59.
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The Age of Christian IV
between the king and Brahe, that Brahe was an adherent of aristocratic oligarchy
while Christian was an incipient absolutist. Given Christian’s constitutional
stance in the first half of his reign, such a postulate makes little sense; as
the prosecution of Christoffer Dybvad demonstrates, Christian IV was more
dedicated to the principles of aristocratic rule than even Frederik II had been.
Brahe, however, was an embarrassment to the king. His treatment of the peasants
on Hven was harsh, leading to a flood of complaints and grievances, and his
negligent management of the cathedral at Roskilde—where Christian III and
Frederik II were buried—was almost criminal. With few if any friends at court,
Brahe was politically isolated. In 1597, the king deprived him of his fiefs and
entitlements, and he left Denmark for Prague. Until his death four years later,
Brahe spent the troubled remainder of his life at the court of Emperor Rudolf
II. The death of Severinus, personal physician to Frederik II and Christian IV,
brought an end to the Paracelsian movement in Denmark, which had also found
many disciples at Uraniborg. Unfortunately for Denmark, nobody emerged
to succeed either Brahe or Severinus. Christian IV appointed Niels Heldvad
(1564–1634) as court astrologer, but Heldvad—better known for his satires and
popular writings—was no astronomer. Certainly he was no Tyge Brahe.¹⁵
The study of Nordic history and antiquities, though, prospered in the first
half of the seventeenth century. The publication of a Danish edition of the
works of the medieval chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in 1575 spurred interest in
Denmark’s past, both distant and recent. Most attempts at compiling large-scale
histories of Denmark came to nought. Vedel’s attempt to write such a history
failed; and though his appointed successor, Niels Krag (1550–1602), devoted
the last eight years of his life to the task, by the time of his death he had
written nothing more than a portion of his chronicle of Christian III. Arild
Huitfeldt’s Chronicles would be the sole contribution to the study of Denmark’s
recent past to make it into print prior to 1680. It was the distant Nordic past
that held the greatest fascination for the Danish intelligentsia. Dr Ole Worm
(1588–1654), professor of medicine at the university and probably the most
respected academic outside the theological community, was Denmark’s leading
expert on Norse antiquity. He produced no printed scholarship of note, but was
instead—typical of his age—a prolific collector of artefacts and specimens. His
academic quarters housed a dazzling and bizarre assortment of archaeological,
ethnographic, and zoological finds from as far away as Greenland. The Museum
Wormianum, however, was not Worm’s chief legacy. His greatest passion was
for Denmark’s Viking heritage, and in this field he was a pioneer. He enumerated
and transcribed Viking-age rune-stones throughout the Oldenburg lands. In this
endeavour Worm had the enthusiastic support of the king himself, who in 1622
¹⁵ John Robert Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and his Assistants, 1570–1601
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 196–7; H. V. Gregersen, Niels Heldvad, Nicolaus
Helduaderus: en biografi ( Tønder: Historisk samfund for Sønderjylland, 1957).
Church and Court
187
ordered Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic clergy to report in detail on ancient
monuments and rune-stones found in their parishes.¹⁶
It is significant that despite the shared interest in the Danish past, neither
the king, nor the nobility, nor the learned ever tried to construct a unifying
political ideology based on historical mythology. Sweden had Gothicism, an
ideology based on the notion that the Swedes were descendants of the world’s
first civilization. Gothicism was already an established phenomenon in the
later sixteenth century, after the publication of Johannes Magnus’s Historia
Gothorum Sveonumque in 1554. It bound king and nobility together in something
resembling nationalism, and the Vasa kings used the idea to justify their
imperialistic pretensions; it provided Gustav Adolf and his aristocracy with a
‘common language’ of empire and conquest.¹⁷ But in Denmark no parallel
development, no ‘Juticism’, ever emerged. Perhaps the interest in Danish
antiquity came too late for such an ideology to have been relevant. Denmark
had no Johannes Magnus, and while Worm was yet transcribing rune-stones
the Oldenburg state had already been beaten into the dust by its enemies, and
the relationship between king and aristocracy had already been damaged beyond
repair.
Education thrived under Christian IV. In this regard the king and aristocracy
could congratulate themselves on a job well done, for educational institutions
thrived at all levels. The promotion of Resenian orthodoxy was an important
motivation, as was the king’s desire to promote the reputation of his monarchy as
a sophisticated state and to diminish reliance on foreign educational institutions.
The multiple goals were not irreconcilable, and were in fact highly complementary. For only through well-regulated education within the confines of the
monarchy could dangerous foreign influences be filtered out and the doctrinal
purity of the faith be assured.
Christian IV was convinced that failings in religious education were primarily
responsible for moral lapses among the common people. With perhaps a trace
of hypocrisy—for he was a notorious womanizer—he opined that ignorance of
the catechism led to public immorality, and that only through more thorough
catechismal indoctrination could youth be dissuaded from premarital ‘copulation’. Fear of Catholicism, however, was a more compelling motive than the
king’s prudishness. To strengthen his realm against the influence of the Jesuits,
Christian recognized that he would have to put his schools in good order. A royal
ordinance of 1604 called for a complete overhaul of the Latin schools of Denmark and Norway, stipulating minimal educational requirements for teachers
and requiring the bishops to take direction of the schools in their dioceses. Hans
¹⁶ H. D. Schepelern, ‘Den lærde verden’, in Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden, 276–301;
H. D. Schepelern, Museum Wormianum (Odense: Andelsbogtrykkeriet, 1971).
¹⁷ Kurt Johannesson, The Renaissance of the Goths in Sixteenth-Century Sweden, trans. James
Larson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
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The Age of Christian IV
Poulsen Resen, a gifted pedagogue, assumed the leading role in the reforms.
Between 1604 and 1608, he turned out primers on logic, rhetoric, geometry,
arithmetic, and Latin grammar. Another wave of educational reform commenced
around 1620, when the king’s willingness to spend was at its height. Among
other things, Christian ordered the founding of advanced preparatory schools,
the collegia (also called gymnasier), in the cathedral towns in 1619. After 1639,
functioning collegia could be found in Odense, Lund, Roskilde, Ribe, Viborg,
and Århus.¹⁸
There were good reasons to provide opportunities for secular education as well,
not least the fact that a growing central administration required a steady supply
of educated bureaucrats. To this end, Christian IV approached the Council in
1620 with a proposal to create a ridderakademi, a school for young noblemen.
Private noble academies had already existed in Denmark, notably Admiral Herluf
Trolle’s school at Herlufsholm (1565), but what Christian recommended was
a larger institution funded by the crown. The Council took up his proposal,
and in January 1623 the academy at Sorø Cloister opened its doors. Students
at Sorø received instruction in languages, courtly skills such as dancing, and
fencing and other martial arts. It was not an original concept, and the opening
of Sorø roughly corresponded with that of Gustav Adolf ’s Collegium illustre in
Stockholm, established along much the same lines. But for Denmark, Sorø made
perfect sense. It gave a basic humanistic education to nobles of lesser means,
without incurring the undue expenses of grand tours and without exposing
impressionable young men to the danger of ‘pollution’ by foreign ideas.¹⁹
Predictably, the university, as the centre of Danish intellectual life, came in
for its share of royal support. The mission of the university remained what
it had been since the Reformation—the education of clergy—but since the
clergy bore greater educational responsibilities than before it was imperative that
the quality of instruction there be improved. Over the course of Christian’s
reign, the crown added substantially to the physical facilities of the university:
new dormitories (including the Regentia, still standing on Købmagergade in
the centre of Copenhagen’s old town), classroom buildings with impressive
auditoria, and a church specifically designated for the student community (1635,
later replaced by Trinity Church). The teaching staff grew, as did their salaries.
Resen’s formidable presence was as visible at the university as it was in all aspects
of academic life; his humourless rule over student life made him universally
unpopular with the student body, but regardless he did a great deal to improve
academic standards. By 1629, theology students were required to demonstrate
competence in preaching before they could be ordained; in 1636, theological
¹⁸ Glebe-Møller, ‘Fromhed styrker rigerne’, 256–62; Kornerup, Biskop Hans Poulsen Resen,
i. 236–70, 326–72.
¹⁹ Birte Andersen, Adelig opfostring: adelsbørns opdragelse i Danmark 1536–1660 (Copenhagen:
Gad, 1971), 32–8, 42–51.
Church and Court
189
examinations were required of all students wishing to attain the degree of
magister.²⁰
This considerable infusion of resources, both royal and private, into education
cannot hide the fact that intellectual life in early seventeenth-century Denmark
had become markedly less vibrant than it had been in the previous four decades.
Precisely why this is so is difficult to fathom. It is tempting to argue that local
factors, both religious and political, played a role, rather than any corresponding
cultural backsliding in Europe as a whole. Orthodox Lutheranism surely exerted
some negative influence. Sweden, like Denmark, experienced a transition from a
humanistic and vaguely defined Protestantism towards a more rigid orthodoxy,
and largely for the same reasons: the trend towards orthodoxy in the Empire and
the fear of heretical subterfuge. In Sweden, too, the overall effect on intellectual
pursuits was a stultifying one. The court, however, probably exerted the greatest
influence on literary and intellectual culture. The king and the aristocratic
magnates were the sole patrons of artistic and scholarly endeavours. Intellectual
life centred on the university and the royal household. But so long as the university
remained little more than a seminary, dominated by the king and his creatures
in the upper clergy, like Resen, its staff were unlikely to produce anything
more scintillating than pedestrian theological tomes and devotional tracts. Most
important, the king himself set the tone. Frederik II had demonstrated a wideranging appreciation for learning, characteristic of a ‘Renaissance’ king; but
for all of Christian IV’s concern for reputation—his own as well as that of
his realms—he did not share his father’s humanistic tendencies. His interests
were more pragmatic than his father’s had been, favouring engineering and
architecture over astronomy and medicine. In all fairness to Christian IV, it
should be pointed out that he did not have the time or the wherewithal to devote
to abstract learning. Frederik II’s court had been more modest, relaxed, and
harmonious, than his son’s, as were his political aims. Christian IV’s political
and diplomatic activities left little time for abstract thought, and the poisonous
political atmosphere of the 1630s precluded the kind of intellectual circle that
had formed around the king in the 1570s and 1580s.²¹
4 . T H E RO L E O F T H E C O U RT
In cultural life as in commercial policy and foreign affairs, the drive to gain
for Denmark a reputation as a great power was foremost among Christian IV’s
²⁰ Koch and Kornerup, Den danske kirkes historie, iv. 276–82; Glebe-Møller, ‘Fromhed styrker
rigerne’, 260–1.
²¹ Ole Degn, Christian 4.s kansler: Christen Friis til Kragerup (1581–1639) som menneske og
politiker (Viborg: Landsarkivet for Nørrejylland, 1988), 104–46; Jens Glebe-Møller, Doctrina
secundum pietatem: Holger Rosenkrantz den Lærdes teologi (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1966).
190
The Age of Christian IV
motives. Christian wanted to be a great king, or at least to be perceived as
one. At court, he strove to present a glittering image of might and majesty,
and hence paid much more attention—and devoted a much larger share of his
income—to the visual context of kingship than his predecessors had done. As
Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen has astutely observed, court culture under Christian
IV represents a transitional phase in the history of the court: it lies somewhere
between the humble, unpretentious, and often bawdy court of Frederik II, which
more closely resembled those of the Protestant princes of northern Germany,
and the self-consciously stiff, formal, and opulent courts of Denmark’s absolutist
kings in the last third of the century. Christian IV’s court blended elements of
both. It was ostentatious, yet retained many of the egalitarian features of his
father’s household.²²
The court is worthy of study not just for its contribution to Danish elite
culture, but also because it was in art, architecture, and ceremony that Christian
IV gave expression to his political aspirations. Since the king rarely if ever
discussed his views on kingship in writing, court culture can also serve as a
barometer by which we can gauge how his interpretation of the Oldenburg
‘constitution’ changed over time. Clearly this interpretation did change, and the
watershed year—as in virtually everything else—was 1629. Prior to his defeat
in the Lower Saxon War and the ensuing domestic crisis, the court culture
of Christian IV’s Denmark was similar thematically to that of Frederik II.
Christian’s court was the more splendid and sophisticated, but neither violated
the spirit of consensual monarchy in its iconography, its symbolic representation
of the idea of monarchy. As Christian IV and his Council clashed over foreign
and fiscal policies in the last two decades of the reign, however, court culture
reflected the king’s frustrations with consensual monarchy, and through the arts
and royal iconography the king spoke the language of prerogative rule.
Christian IV, as we have seen, invested heavily in royal architecture, renovating
older palaces and constructing two magnificent new residences: Rosenborg and
Frederiksborg. Rosenborg, as a ‘country’ retreat, was not designed to impress
visitors, but Frederiksborg was intended to do just that. Built upon a pair of
islands in the lake at Hillerød in north-central Sjælland, on the site of one of
Frederik II’s hunting lodges, it was a spacious palace complex. It sported a separate
Chancery building, a large and elaborate garden, and the most spectacular chapel
royal of any palace in the land. Still, even Frederiksborg, which was built in
conscious imitation of Dutch architecture, was modest by Western European
standards. Although the largest residential structure in the kingdom, it did not
differ greatly in external appearance from the larger aristocratic manor houses in
Jutland, Fyn, or Sjælland. It could be argued that in architecture, as in social and
²² Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, ‘Statsceremoniel, hofkultur og politisk magt i overgangen fra
adelsvælde til enevælde—1536 til 1746’, Fortid og nutid (1996), 3–8.
Church and Court
191
political life, Christian IV presented himself as a first among equals. The sheer
size of Frederiksborg reflected the king’s superior station, but the residence did
not stand out as being something of an entirely different nature from aristocratic
manors such as Brahetrelleborg or Egeskov.²³
As a patron of the arts, Christian IV equalled or surpassed most of his European
contemporaries. Again, he self-consciously followed the trends and fads of his
day. His success at enticing foreign painters and musicians to his court had
less to do with the attraction of Copenhagen itself than with the abandon with
which he spent his personal funds. Christian bought talent, pure and simple.
His acquisitions, both in artists and in works of art, were at first modest, but
in the years immediately following the Kalmar War the victorious king became
a more ambitious and discriminating connoisseur. In 1618, for example, he
commissioned Adriaen de Vries, a sculptor then in the employ of Rudolf II,
to fashion a tremendous fountain—topped with a figure of Neptune—for
the courtyard at Frederiksborg. Dutch and German painters, most of them
with extensive training in Italy and the Netherlands, were imported to execute
portraits of the royal family and to decorate Rosenborg and Frederiksborg.
Initially Christian hired the services of respectable but lesser-known painters
(Isaac and Pieter Isaacsz, Gerrit von Honthorst, Frantz Clein) and drew on a
small pool of native-born Danish talent (Søren Kier and Reinhold Timm). In the
last half of the reign, his reputation for generosity drew more widely celebrated
personages, foremost among them the Delft painter Karl van Mander III and the
Antwerper Abraham Wuchters. Both were nearly permanent fixtures at court in
the 1630s and 1640s; Mander was Christian’s favourite, and the king financed a
study tour for him in 1635–8. The king was as avid a collector of art as he was
a patron of artists. While representing Denmark at the Dutch–Spanish peace
negotiations in 1607–8, the diplomat Jonas Charisius purchased a tremendous
quantity of paintings and musical instruments for the king. Danish diplomatic
agents with errands in the Netherlands frequented the art market at Delft on the
king’s behalf.²⁴
Christian was well aware of the importance of music in creating an appropriate
aura for a highly regarded king, a rex splendens. He also had a deep personal
passion for music; musical training was part of his early education, and he
would emphatically make his tastes known to his court musicians. Here, too,
the king did not hesitate to purchase the best and the most his money could
²³ Jan Steenberg, Christian IVs Frederiksborg (Hillerød: Frederiksborgs Amts Historiske Samfund,
1950); Otto Norn, To grænseslotte: Frederik I’s Gottorp og Christian IV’s Koldinghus (Åbenrå: Historisk
Samfund for Sønderjylland, 1986), 63–130.
²⁴ Charlotte Christensen, ‘Christian IVs renæssance: billedkunsten i Danmark 1588–1648’,
in Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden, 302–35; Meir Stein, Christian den fjerdes billedverden
(Copenhagen: Gad, 1987); Steffen Heiberg, ‘Art and Politics: Christian IV’s Dutch and Flemish
Painters’, in Art in Denmark 1600–1650, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (1983), (Delft: Delftsche
uitgevers Maatschappij, 1984), 7–24.
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The Age of Christian IV
buy. At its peak in 1618, the Danish ‘music royal’ numbered some seventy-six
singers, trumpeters, and other instrumentalists, being second in size only to
the court music of Emperor Rudolf II. And Christian could brag, more so
than in painting, that his ensemble included some of the premier ‘stars’ in
European music: the Englishmen William Brade and John Dowland early in
the reign, the Saxon court composer Heinrich Schütz in the 1630s and 1640s.
Though foreigners, especially Englishmen, made up a substantial proportion
of the court musicians, Christian drew more heavily on native talent in music
than he did in the visual arts. Two of his leading musicians in the first quarter
of the century, Melchior Borchgrevinck and Mogens Pedersøn, were Danes;
neither man, admittedly, figures highly in Renaissance musicology, but within
the narrow field of Danish music history both Borchgrevinck and Pedersøn are
individuals of some importance. Musical and artistic activity was not limited to
the royal courts at Copenhagen and Frederiksborg. Christian IV’s eldest son and
heir apparent, Prince-Elect Christian (V), was an aesthete with refined tastes;
at his personal court at Nykøbing Falster he maintained his own musical and
artistic retinue. It was probably through Prince Christian’s influence in Electoral
Saxony that the king was able to secure so great a catch as Heinrich Schütz for
his own court.²⁵
With generous doses of cash, Christian IV had by the 1620s transformed his
court from one reminiscent of the middling German princely households into
one that could stand comparison with the great courts of Europe. Foreign visitors
to Frederiksborg might have been dismayed by the pervasive heavy drinking that
was so fashionable in Denmark as it was in Protestant Germany; the Spanish
ambassador Rebolledo, after visiting the spring of St Helen at Tisvilde, remarked
that the Swedish saint had truly wrought a miracle—she had made Danes drink
water. Yet still they found the cultural atmosphere at court impressive. No less
a judge than Charles Ogier, the French ambassador at Copenhagen in 1634,
remarked with great favour on the decoration of Rosenborg and the ceremonies
held to celebrate the wedding of Prince-Elect Christian that year.²⁶
Though Christian IV exceeded his father in courtly ostentation, the ‘message’
of Danish court culture between 1596 and 1629 was little different from that
of earlier times. The intended audience was a foreign one, and the theme
Christian intended to convey to that audience was simply the majesty and power
of the Oldenburg realm. The carved busts of the great generals of antiquity,
which adorned the facade at Frederiksborg, and the statues of Hercules, Hector,
Alexander, and Scipio that perched atop the ‘Heroes’ Tower’ at Koldinghus,
all proclaimed the king’s martial virtues and his imperial conceits; the bronze
²⁵ Ole Kongsted, ‘Den verdslige ‘‘rex splendens’’: musikken som repræsentativ kunst ved
Christian IVs hof ’, in Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden, 433–62; Angul Hammerich, Musiken ved
Christian den Fjerdes Hof (Copenhagen, 1892).
²⁶ Frosell, Diplomati og religion, 17; Charles Ogier, Det store Bilager i Kjøbenhavn 1634, Memoirer
og breve, 20 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1914).
Church and Court
193
statue of Neptune that graced the great fountain at Frederiksborg bespoke
Denmark’s pretensions to dominance of the seas. The symbolism of the court
reflected, in other words, Christian IV’s ambitions for Denmark, and not for
himself within his kingdom. Nothing in the king’s political discourse, however
expressed, violated the spirit of consensual monarchy or touted the virtues of the
royal house above those of the aristocracy. That would change, however, as the
former symbiosis between king and aristocracy decayed after 1629.
9
The Death of Government by Consensus,
1630–1648
It could be said of the Oldenburg state, as Michael Roberts once said of Sweden,
that the history of Denmark is the history of its kings. This may be a simplistic
formulation, but as with every monarchy of the early modern period, Denmark’s
fortunes were so closely tied to those of the royal house that sometimes it
can be all but impossible to separate the two. The fates of king and kingdom
were clearly intermarried in the two decades following the Peace of Lübeck in
1629. Denmark’s decline into the second rank of European states began then,
and was reflected in the misfortunes that marred the personal life of Christian
IV. The German war, in the king’s estimation, should have been his moment
of triumph; but although the Lübeck settlement was far more gracious than
anything Christian had the right to hope for, he could not strut proudly as the rex
triumphans as he had in the halcyon days after the Kalmar War. Defeat had not
utterly bankrupted Denmark, but it had seriously depleted the king’s personal
wealth, and brought into question his status as a leading Protestant prince.
The year of Lübeck was the worst year of the king’s life to date. He lost far
more than a war with the emperor; he also lost much of what was closest to his
heart. Most devastating was the departure of his wife, Kirsten Munk, as a result of
infidelity and then divorce. Christian may have been a philanderer in his earlier
days, but he had been smitten with Kirsten since they had first met around 1615.
Years of bearing the king’s children (nine in all, in the space of ten years) and
putting up with his frequent absences had chilled Kirsten’s affection for him, if
she had ever felt any. In late 1628 she locked the king out of her chambers at
Frederiksborg, and in 1630 she left him for good. The break-up nearly destroyed
Christian, who for the remainder of his life fulminated in writing over the details
of Kirsten’s infidelity. Somehow the king’s life only got worse. Fire consumed
Kronborg, the most visible symbol of the father whose memory he cherished, in
September 1629. Small wonder, then, that he saw in the events of 1629 the hand
of a vengeful God at work. Christian, who did not stand up well under adversity,
sank into a deep depression that continued with few interruptions for the rest
of his days. Visitors to court noted his recurrent black moods, and that he had
begun to drink more heavily than before. Even in the presence of distinguished
The Death of Government by Consensus
195
foreign guests, the previously jovial Christian was sullen and morose, and not
infrequently inebriated.¹
A good share of the king’s woes were political. In 1611, Christian had bullied
the Council into going along with his war against Sweden; in 1625, the Council
withheld its support. The immediate result was not open enmity between the
two partners. Overall, the members of the Council saw themselves as loyal to
the king but obliged to urge caution, and a few—like Jacob Ulfeldt—supported
his actions in Germany. But Christian’s priorities and the view of the conciliar
opposition were fundamentally irreconcilable. The invasion of Jutland in 1627
and the peace negotiations of 1628–9 drove a wedge between king and Council,
inspiring mutual distrust, as each ‘party’ believed that its stance on the war had
been confirmed by its outcome. Peace did not heal the wounds caused by the war.
The king sought to recoup what he had lost in the war with the emperor and to
strengthen Denmark’s defences against a possible Habsburg or Swedish attack;
the Council, conversely, aimed to limit his control over state funds and his ability
to make policy independent of the Council. The two points of contention that
would plague most European monarchies of the period—finances and foreign
policy—would prove to be the bane of the Danish constitution as well.
In recent decades, Danish historians have shied away from depicting the reign
of Christian IV as a precursor to absolutism, fearing that such a perception could
lead to the whiggish assumption that absolute monarchy was a matter of fate, or
that some sort of absolutist ‘agenda’ drove Christian’s policies. He had no such
agenda. His later struggles with the Council stemmed from differing perceptions
of Denmark’s role in the world and not from diverging interpretations of
Denmark’s unwritten constitution. It is not possible, however, to understand the
events leading up to the royalist coup of 1660–1 without taking into account
the events of Christian IV’s reign. Christian may not have intended or wanted
an absolute monarchy as it is conventionally defined, and one should not view
Denmark as embarking on an irreversible path towards absolutism in 1625 or
1630, but his reign constituted an important precursor to the establishment
of hereditary, absolute monarchy all the same. The political dysfunction of the
period 1629–48 created the conditions that made the imposition of a new regime
possible.
1 . WA R F I N A N C E , F O R E I G N P O L I C Y,
AND CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT
Christian IV was a wealthy man, but even he could not personally pay for all
of the expenses incurred in the German war, even in its earlier stages. He had
¹ Steffen Heiberg, Christian 4.: monarken, mennesket og myten (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1988),
312–25.
196
The Age of Christian IV
taken this into consideration when weighing his options in 1624–5, and his
decision to go to war was predicated upon the availability of external sources
of support. Foreign subsidies, contributions from the Lower Saxon princes for
the defence of the Circle, and loans secured at Kiel’s money market would
in theory absorb most of his military expenses. Only the latter source proved
reliable. England, the Dutch Republic, and France were remiss in meeting their
financial obligations to the Danish-led coalition. The English ambassador to
Denmark, Sir Robert Anstruther, estimated that the English crown had paid
just over 8 per cent of its promised subsidies by July 1627. This figure does
not even take into account the hundreds of thousands of rigsdaler owed by
the Stuarts to Christian from pre-war loans. Contributions from the states of
Lower Saxony yielded only inconsequential amounts after the beginning of
the war. Although Christian’s lieutenants employed the so-called ‘contribution
system’—the systematic mulcting of occupied territories to meet the expenses of
the army, later perfected by Gustav Adolf and Wallenstein–on a limited basis
in Lower Saxony, this did not offset the costs of the war in a significant way.
Christian IV would have to pay for the war by himself. Commercial duties were
an important royal resource, and he squeezed every last penny from them; a
toll ordinance enacted in February 1626 doubled the Sound Dues for foreign
shipping. But in the main, the king was compelled to rely on credit to keep his
armies intact.
From Christian’s perspective, the Council was entirely unhelpful, and would
never soften its opposition to the king’s war. Still, as a body the Council
recognized the need for stronger defences at home. After the defeat at Lutter in
August 1626, it approved a series of tax levies to provide for military recruitment,
repair of border fortifications, and the upkeep of the fleet. Extraordinary taxes
became so commonplace during the war years—there were eight individual levies
between the spring of 1625 and the spring of 1627, compared with twenty-two
such levies in the previous twenty-eight years—that they began to lose their
temporary character. These taxes, however, were earmarked solely for national
defence, and prior to the autumn 1627 invasion of Jutland this meant that
they were beyond the king’s reach. In Norway, where the Council wielded less
influence and the king commanded much loyalty, the Diet granted Christian
regular ‘war taxes’ (krigsskatter) specifically for ‘His Majesty’s war in Germany’.²
With the incursion of League and Imperial troops into Danish territory in
late 1627, the Council was more tractable in the granting of tax funds, for the
king’s war was now its war, whether the councillors liked it or not. Conciliar
resentment, occasioned by the invasion, inevitably resulted in strained relations
² Paul Douglas Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: King Christian IV and
the Decline of the Oldenburg State (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1996), 165–8;
E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Defence, War and Finance: Christian IV and the Council of the Realm,
1596–1629’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 7 (1982), 277–313.
The Death of Government by Consensus
197
between king and Council. Though Jacob Ulfeldt pleaded for loyalty to the king
in this time of crisis, the majority of those seated in the Council chambers saw
this as an opportunity to limit the royal prerogative. Primarily the Council was
intent on retaining control not only over the collection of taxes, but over their
allocation as well. In the spring of 1628, it authorized further taxes only on the
condition that it be allowed to create a General War Treasury Commissariat
(Generalkrigszahlkommissariat), answerable only to the marshal and the Council.
The Commissariat was to be responsible for the collection and disbursement of
all military finances. The Council also sought to extend its competence to the
direction and control of the war effort itself. In 1627 it strong-armed Christian
into allowing a meeting of the Estates to elect a new marshal, since the post had
been vacant since 1619. Christian agreed, grudgingly, but the man chosen by
the Diet was not much to his liking. The new marshal was Jørgen Skeel, a vocal
opponent of the war and—even worse—not even a member of the Council of
State. Christian refused to accept Skeel’s election, arguing that by tradition all
of the high officers of state were members of the Council first, but eventually
he gave in to overwhelming pressure from the Council to accept Skeel as both
marshal and councillor. This was a major constitutional defeat for Christian IV,
for he had been forced to give up one of his most treasured prerogatives: the
exclusive right to name appointees to the Council.³
The king, for his part, almost went out of his way to antagonize the Council. In
1626, Prince-Elect Christian, acting as regent while his father was in Germany,
indulged in a scandalous liaison with a noblewoman named Anne Lykke. The king
found the situation highly embarrassing. Lykke, the widow of the late councillor
Kaj Rantzau, was one of the wealthiest aristocrats in the realm. To stop the
affair, Christian ordered her arrest and incarceration without charge. Eventually
he released her, but only after the Council had expressed its indignation that he
had treated one of its own in such a fashion. Meanwhile, the king’s marriage to
Kirsten Munk had become a matter of political contention. Several councillors
gossiped irresponsibly that Kirsten exercised an evil influence over the king, that
it was she who turned him against his faithful advisers. Christian was justifiably
incensed by the mean-spirited talk, but his actions only fanned the flames: in the
autumn of 1627 he gave Kirsten the title ‘Countess of Slesvig and Holstein’ and
had her included in the standard liturgical prayers for the royal family. Granting
such distinctions to a woman who was not royalty did not sit well with the
members of the Council.⁴
The political atmosphere at court was thoroughly poisoned by the end of
1628. Arguments over the negotiation of peace only exacerbated the unhealthy
climate. A majority on the Council demanded peace, whatever the cost, while
³ J. A. Fridericia, ‘Nogle Bemærkninger om Rigsmarskene og Rigsmarskembedet, især under
Christian IV’, HTD, 3rd ser., 4 (1872–3), 578–609.
⁴ Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 181–3.
198
The Age of Christian IV
Christian held out for a more favourable settlement made possible by diplomatic
and military pressure. Lübeck vindicated his perseverance, but the king was not
a gracious winner, and fear of a conciliar backlash compelled him to take a truly
divisive action. As the final draft of the Lübeck treaty lay on his desk in May
1629, waiting only to be ratified by his hand, he boldly demanded of the Council
reimbursement for his wartime expenses as a condition of ratification. The
Council stood aghast at this blatant act of political blackmail, but had no choice.
Reluctantly, it granted Christian the sum of ‘ten barrels of gold’ (1,000,000
rigsdaler). The incident of the ‘ten barrels of gold’ was the breaking point. From
the moment the Council submitted to the king’s demands for recompense, the
king and the Council were opponents, and at times even enemies. The practice
of dyarchy had suffered no greater blow since the later days of Christian II’s reign
more than a century before. Christian IV and the Council had permanently parted
ways, and there seemed to be little hope that the fissure could ever be bridged.⁵
The king’s intention with the ‘ten barrels’ was not so much to rebuild his
financial losses at the Council’s expense as it was to ensure temporary fiscal
independence from the Council so that he could pursue his own foreign policy
without the customary obeisances to the aristocracy. Yet he was not content with
this short-term expedient. Instead, he sought a more permanent solution through
manipulation of the Oldenburg constitution, in several ways. The first was the
use of representative institutions at the national level, perhaps the most significant
constitutional innovation of the reign. Whereas the Vasa monarchs had made
the Diet the centrepiece of their governance in Sweden, a useful counterpoint
to the power of the landowning aristocracy, the Oldenburg kings had studiously
avoided summoning it except on rare occasions. Prior to 1627, Christian had
summoned the Diet only once—at Copenhagen in May 1608—and that was
for a mere formality, to elect his son Christian as heir apparent. When the Diet
met in Odense in January–February 1627 to vote on a proposed tax to provide
for national defence, it was the first time a full Diet, one that included peasant
representation, had convened since 1570. The initiative was not Christian’s in
the beginning; the Council had suggested it, possibly as a means of shunting
responsibility for the potential failures of royal policy. The Diet proved favourable
to Christian’s interests, and the lesson was not lost on him. He convened Diets
far more frequently than either his father or grandfather had: five times (1627,
1627–8, 1631, 1638, and 1645) in eighteen years, as opposed to four times
(1536, 1547, 1570, and 1608) in the previous nine decades. Not once did the
Diet fail to satisfy Christian’s requests, though the 1638 and 1645 Diets did
enact measures that compromised royal authority.⁶
⁵ Steffen Heiberg, ‘De ti tønder guld: rigsråd, kongemagt og statsfinanser i 1630’erne’, HTD,
13th ser., 3 (1976), 25–58.
⁶ J. E. Larsen, ‘Om Rigsdage og Provindsialforsamlinger samt Rigsraadet i Danmark, fra det 13de
Aarhundrede indtil Statsforandringen 1660’, HTD, 1st ser., 1 (1840), 306–24; Poul J. Jørgensen,
The Death of Government by Consensus
199
In foreign affairs, too, Christian sought to marginalize the Council. The earlier
Oldenburg kings had made extensive use of the German Chancery as a foreign
office of sorts, and to a certain extent had tried to integrate the activities of the
Council and the German Chancery. Frederik II, it will be recalled, ennobled
several of his Germans and appointed some of them to the Council, and on
his travels both German and Danish advisers accompanied him. Christian IV,
on the other hand, nearly excluded the Council from diplomatic activities
after 1629. Members of the German Chancery, along with a very few trusted
councillors, conducted most of his diplomatic business in the 1630s and early
1640s. Christian accorded the Council few opportunities to participate directly
in the making of foreign policy.⁷
Complementing Christian’s reliance on the Diet was his intentional creation
of a royalist clique within the uppermost ranks of the central administration.
His union with Kirsten Munk had produced several daughters, some of whom
were approaching marriageable age in the late 1620s and the 1630s. These
Christian married off to young and ambitious men from the aristocracy. Bound
by marriage to the royal house, this group of nobles—called the ‘sons-in-law’
by Danish historians—could potentially have been a tremendous boon to the
king. The ‘sons-in-law’ were not outsiders, but rather came from the most
prominent families in the realm, and this is what made their incorporation into
the royal family so clever; for even without Christian’s favour, they would have
been the next generation of councillors. The Council could not object to their
advancement, but Christian co-opted them before they could be truly assimilated
into the Council. Most promising among them was Frans Rantzau, scion of the
loyal Rantzau clan of Holstein. Frans, who was betrothed to Christian’s daughter
Anne Cathrine in 1627, became the closest thing to a royal minister-favourite in
Denmark prior to the absolute monarchy. He rose rapidly through the ranks of
the upper administration. The king elevated the 22-year-old Rantzau to Council
membership and the position of statholder⁸ in 1627, and in 1632 gave him the
post of rigshofmester, a calculated slight towards Chancellor Friis til Kragerup.
The king’s sons-in-law Corfitz Ulfeldt and Hannibal Sehested, offspring of the
‘royalist’ councillors Jacob Ulfeldt and Christen Thomesen Sehested respectively,
were likewise rewarded: Ulfeldt succeeded Rantzau as statholder (1637) and
rigshofmester (1643), and Sehested became royal governor in Norway (1642).
Dansk retshistorie, 5th edn (Copenhagen: Gad, 1971), 500–4; GDH 2/2, 532–5; Knut Mykland,
Skiftet i forvaltningsordningen i Danmark og Norge i tiden fra omkring 1630 og inntil Frederik den
tredjes död (Bergen and Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967), 16–18.
⁷ Heinz Lehmann, Die deutsche Kanzlei zu Kopenhagen (Hamburg: Paul Evert, 1936), 35–44;
Leon Jespersen, ‘The Constitutional and Administrative Situation’, in Leon Jespersen (ed.),
A Revolution from Above? The Power State of 16th and 17th Century Scandinavia (Odense:
Universitetsforlag, 2000), 132; DFH, i. 106–8.
⁸ The statholder (statholder i København, ‘governor of Copenhagen’) was the highest civil
authority in Copenhagen, who assumed many of the duties of the rigshofmester when that office was
unoccupied. See Jørgensen, Retshistorie, 341.
200
The Age of Christian IV
Christian did not forget the loyalty of those councillors who had stuck by him
during the war years, appointing Christen Thomesen Sehested as Chancellor of
the Realm (1630) and as King’s Chancellor (1640). The Council and the upper
administration now contained a significant party of men who owed their rapid
rise to royal favour.⁹
Though these were long-term measures, and had little immediate impact,
Christian IV nonetheless acted as a free agent in the making of foreign policy
during the fifteen years after Lübeck. His goal was a simple one: to recover,
through a policy of armed neutrality, the lands and titles lost to him during
the Lower Saxon War. It was a dangerous game. The situation in the Empire
became far more volatile with the enforcement of the Edict of Restitution (1629)
and the military intervention of Gustav Adolf (1630). The Swedish invasion,
and Gustav Adolf’s stunning military victories in 1631–2, posed a grave threat
to Christian’s German interests and even to the security of Denmark and the
Duchies, but it also presented a tempting opportunity to play one side off the
other. By flirting with both the emperor and the Swedes diplomatically, Christian
hoped to reconstruct his antebellum dominance over northern Germany and
to resurrect his shattered international reputation. At least in the short run,
the policy worked well. Ferdinand II did not want to drive Christian into
the arms of the Swedes, and—especially after the death of Gustav Adolf in
1632—the Swedish government could not afford to add Christian to its growing
list of enemies in arms. Even the Hanseatic towns, despite their previous enmity
towards Denmark, found no advantage in trading a Danish overlord for a more
oppressive Swedish one. It put Christian in a position of advantage, since both
belligerents were willing to tolerate Danish expansion into Lower Saxony, even
if in so doing Christian violated the terms of the Lübeck settlement. After the
Lower Saxon War, Christian resumed his sparring with Hamburg over control
of the lower Elbe. By 1633 the king had won out: Emperor Ferdinand II granted
the Danish crown the exclusive right to levy tolls on Elbe shipping. When the
cathedral chapter at Bremen elected Christian’s second son, Duke Frederik, as
archbishop-administrator of Bremen diocese in 1634, both the emperor and
the Swedes gave their assent. Frederik regained Verden for the Oldenburgs the
following year. Christian IV was well on his way towards recapturing his pre-war
power and influence in Germany.¹⁰
The problems with Christian’s foreign policy after Lübeck were twofold.
First, armed neutrality was not a stance that could be continued indefinitely.
The 1630s witnessed an internationalization of the war in the Empire, and
powerful neutrals were not suffered lightly. The king could not for very long
⁹ Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 235–6.
¹⁰ Ibid. 215–48; J. A. Fridericia, Danmarks ydre politiske Historie i Tiden fra Freden i Lybæk
til Freden i Kjøbenhavn, 2 vol. (Copenhagen: Hoffensberg, Jespersen & F. Trap, 1876–81);
Esben Albrectsen, Karl-Erik Frandsen, and Gunner Lind, Konger og krige 700–1648, Dansk
Udenrigspolitiks Historie, i (Copenhagen: Danmarks Nationalleksikon, 2001), 438–56.
The Death of Government by Consensus
201
show signs of friendship towards the two opposing parties without delivering
something substantial in return for their favours. Sooner or later one or the
other would call his bluff; inevitably one—and maybe both—would become
Denmark’s enemy. Christian, for his part, exercised little tact or good timing in
his diplomacy. When Emperor Ferdinand III (1637–53), for example, refused to
renew Denmark’s 1633 monopoly on the Elbe tolls, he responded impulsively.
In 1643 he put Hamburg under a naval blockade, ultimately compelling the
town—once again—to submit to Danish suzerainty. Such aggression did not
go down well either in Vienna or in Stockholm.
Second, the policy was not an inexpensive one. Armed neutrality required
being prepared for war. Perhaps it was not so costly a proposition, year for
year, as an actual war, but it was close, and in the long run the expenditures
would sap Danish state finances. The king was not entirely thrown upon his own
resources. The Council, recognizing that the times were perilous ones, honoured
his request for increased military spending and the expansion of the permanent
army. Prior to the Lower Saxon War, the national militia numbered 4,004 men;
from 1638, additional peasant levies, including one drafted from nobly owned
lands, reinforced the militia, bringing it to nearly 18,000 men in Denmark and
Norway by 1641. These troops were not kept perpetually mobilized, but garrison
duties and the construction and renovation of the border fortresses kept them
busy throughout the 1630s. The mean annual budget for the fleet increased by
nearly 80 per cent in the decade following Lübeck.¹¹
The fleet and the permanent army, however, were intended solely for home
defence, and hence the king would have to spend his own fortune if he wanted
to pursue an active foreign policy. The ‘ten barrels of gold’, raised through a
series of extraordinary taxes between 1629 and 1637, would absorb most of these
expenses, but this was only a temporary expedient. Christian’s need for a steady
flow of cash forced him to exploit the one resource that was unquestionably his:
commercial duties, in particular the Sound Dues.
The drastic new measures introduced into the collection of the Sound Dues
and the Elbe tolls constituted Christian IV’s greatest diplomatic failing in the
second half of the reign. The new Sound Dues schedule of 1638 increased the
flat fee on all ships, empty or laden, by 33 per cent; duties on individual cargoes
rose by as much as 300 per cent; saltpetre, earlier taxed at 1 per cent of its
value, was now assessed at 78 per cent. Dutch ships bound for the Prussian ports
were required to pay double the normal rates. The new tolls were aggressively
enforced. Danish customs officials thoroughly searched ships passing Helsingør,
impounding those that failed to produce the requisite documentation. Christian
closed off the Belts to all foreign shipping, and even considered placing an
annual cap on the number of Dutch convoys permitted to pass through the
¹¹ Gunner Lind, Hæren og magten i Danmark 1614–1662 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1994),
63–75.
202
The Age of Christian IV
Sound. Perhaps the money was necessary to pay for national defence, diplomatic
activities, and the court, but the impact on international relations was predictable:
it alienated those who traded most frequently in the Baltic, namely the English
and the Dutch. Critics of Denmark in England and the United Provinces already
found Christian’s pretensions to dominion of the Baltic, the North Sea, and
the Elbe unreasonable; the new toll schedule made these pretensions unbearable.
Frequent protests and embassies from the maritime powers, even the Council’s
appeals for caution, did not move the king to moderation.¹² The Dutch, feeling
the pinch, hinted by 1641 that they would be willing to resort to war to protect
their commercial interests in the region. Trade negotiations at Stade that year
defused the situation somewhat, as Christian promised to reduce the Sound
Dues to their 1637 levels, but two years later he again decreed a substantial
increase in tolls. Relations with England were little better. While the king did
make some concessions to English merchants in the late 1630s, his attempts to
supply Charles I with arms and men during the English Civil War earned him
the enmity of parliament. Christian IV had turned Denmark’s greatest friends
into bitter if reluctant enemies, and Denmark by 1643 was without a single
significant ally.¹³
2. THE END OF THE REGIME
Christian IV was not a popular man outside Denmark after 1637, but Denmark’s
reputation as a great regional power remained intact—damaged, perhaps, but
intact. No statesman, not even the passionately anti-Danish Axel Oxenstierna,
would dismiss Denmark lightly. Indeed, Christian’s reputation was such that his
offers to help mediate a peace settlement between Sweden and the Habsburgs
were taken quite seriously by both sides. By the end of 1641, he was formally
recognized as the chief mediator of the peace talks that were due to begin the
following spring in the town of Osnabrück, talks that would eventually lead to
part of the treaty known to later generations at the Peace of Westphalia.¹⁴
Christian’s relationship with his Council was similar to Denmark’s position
within the community of European states: respect without friendship, tinged with
a measure of distrust. The king and the Council were adversaries, and though
¹² Venge, Fra åretold til toldetat: Middelalderen indtil 1660, Dansk Toldhistorie, 1 (Copenhagen:
Toldhistorisk Selskab, 1987), 250–62; Johan Schreiner, Nederland og Norge 1625–1650: Trelastutførsel og hardelspolitik (Oslo: Dybwad, 1933), 38–75; Sune Dalgård, ‘Østersø, Vestersø, Nordsø:
dominium maris Baltici og maris Septentrionalis 1638’, HTD, 11th ser., 5 (1956–9), 295–319.
¹³ Steve Murdoch, Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart 1603–1660: A Diplomatic
and Military Analysis (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2003), 90–144.
¹⁴ Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 241–8; Gottfried Lorenz, ‘Die dänische
Friedensvermittlung beim Westfälischen Friedenskongress’, in Forschungen und Quellen zur
Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges (Münster: Aschendorff, 1981).
The Death of Government by Consensus
203
there were a few councillors who openly voiced their regrets that this had come
to pass, the informal dissolution of the dyarchy does not seem to have caused
Christian any sleepless nights. After the Lower Saxon War, he instead embraced
a different model of kingship, one that no longer aimed at a royal–aristocratic
partnership but rather elevated the king to a separate and superior plane. Court
culture reflected this more glorified view of kingly authority and of the dignity of
the royal house. The festivities surrounding the ‘Great Wedding’ of the princeelect in 1634, which introduced such novelties as ‘court ballet’ into Danish
regal culture, celebrated the virtues of the Oldenburg line while relegating the
conciliar aristocracy to a role that was marginal at best. Significantly, Christian
IV, ever the micro-manager, supervised the most trivial details of the wedding
entertainments. Reminders of the king’s power were made visible throughout the
realm, from the ubiquitous royal ciphers found atop altarpieces in innumerable
parish churches to the obelisk—adorned with the Oldenburg family tree—that
Christian commissioned to be erected in Copenhagen in 1638.¹⁵
Yet for all of his actions, constitutional or iconographic, Christian IV never
made an attempt to dismantle the old monarchy. True, he had sidestepped the
Council through the creation of a royalist clique and by bringing the Diet back
into Danish political life, but he never carried this trend to its logical conclusion.
He did not use the Diet to pressure or coerce the Council, nor did it enter his
head to dissolve it outright. He could have done so if he had wished to, for he had
opportunities to ally himself with the burghers and the lesser nobility. Neither
element would have had any reason to mourn the passing of the Council had
the king chosen to rid himself of it. In the immediate aftermath of the Lower
Saxon War, a wave of social unrest spread through the burghers and peasants of
Jutland, where the imperial invasion and occupation had worked their heaviest
damage. The anger of the lower orders in Jutland, however, was not directed
towards the king who had brought the war upon them, but at the greater nobles
who fled the mainland for the islands, thereby shirking their duty to protect
the common folk. In a group of meetings held in the summer and autumn of
1629, culminating in an assembly of disgruntled burghers at the town of Ry
in October, the burghers of Jutland drew up a series of anti-noble grievances
to be presented to the king. Christian treated the burghers graciously and did
not reprimand them, but neither did he act on their suggestions. The burghers,
subtly but unmistakably, had offered their support to the king, and Christian had
gently refused the outstretched hand. Perhaps the Council stood in the way of all
he wanted to accomplish after 1625, but even so he was not a revolutionary. He
¹⁵ Hugo Johannsen, ‘Den ydmyge konge: omkring en tabt maleri fra Christian IV.s bedekammer
i Frederiksborg slotskirke’, in Kirkens bygning og brug: studier tilegnet Elna Møller (Copenhagen:
Nationalmuseet, 1983); Torben Krogh, Hofballetten under Christian IV og Frederik III: En teaterhisteriske Studie (Copenhagen: P. Branner, 1939); Mara R. Wade, Triumphus nuptialis danicus:
German Court Culture and Denmark: The ‘Great Wedding’ of 1634 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1996). See also Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen’s review of Wade’s book in HTD, 98 (1998), 412–17.
204
The Age of Christian IV
was too much a product of consensual monarchy to bring about its destruction
by a deliberate act.¹⁶
The social tension manifested at the Ry assembly, the resentment of the lower
orders and the lesser nobility towards the aristocracy and the Council, was a key
feature of political life as Christian IV’s reign entered its final decade. Though
generally tractable to the king’s will, in its meeting at Odense in June–July
1638 the Diet demonstrated its dissatisfaction with aristocratic governance. As a
condition for lending its support to a more extensive implementation of militia
conscription, the noble estate at Odense demanded that exclusive control over
taxation be taken away from the Council. Instead, the collection and disbursement
of taxes collected for national defence in each province would be entrusted to
one councillor and two regional commissars (landkommissærer)—one a burgher
elected by the provincial estates, the other the local bishop-superintendent.
Christian IV approved the measure—curiously, since it was nearly as much a
blow against his own authority as it was against that of the Council—perhaps
seeing it as a political victory over the Council. Either way, it represented a
divisiveness in Danish society not seen to this degree since the nobility’s Protest
of 1588. Denmark may not have been on the brink of revolution in 1638,
but nonetheless there was evidence of potentially dangerous social instability.
The political implications of this trend would become evident as the Oldenburg
monarchy faced—and failed—its two greatest challenges of the century: the
wars with Sweden in 1643–5 and 1657–60. Significantly, the representatives
of the burgher estate once again sent the king a subtle signal of their political
sympathies, hailing him as ‘your royal Majesty, [who] next to God the Almighty
is the highest authority over us and all the inhabitants of the realm, [and] to
whom we should listen and obey’.¹⁷
Christian IV’s foreign policy after 1629 left Denmark without a single reliable
ally and earned the distrust of all major combatants in the Thirty Years War. His
status as peacemaker did not shield him; indeed, it only served to amplify this
distrust. The greatest peril came from Sweden. Axel Oxenstierna, the Swedish
chancellor who served as principal regent during the minority of Gustav II
Adolf ’s daughter and successor Queen Christina (1632–54), harboured nothing
but strong antipathy towards Denmark and its king. For Oxenstierna this hatred
was visceral, made worse by the fact that Christian had not gone out of his
way to avoid offending the Swedes. Christian’s reacquisition of Bremen, and his
actions against Hamburg, seriously compromised Sweden’s interests in northern
Germany. Strict enforcement of the Sound Dues hurt Sweden economically
and strategically, since munitions carried through the Sound in Dutch ships
¹⁶ Leon Jespersen, ‘Ryresolutionen og den jyske borgerbevægelse 1629’, Historie, 2nd ser., 17
(1987), 1–34; Mykland, Skiftet i forvaltningsordningen, 11.
¹⁷ Jespersen, ‘Constitutional and Administrative Situation’, 132; Leon Jespersen, ‘Landkommissærinstitutionen i Christian IV’s tid: rekruttering og funktion’, HTD, 81 (1982), 64–100;
Mykland, Skiftet i forvaltningsordningen, 15–16.
The Death of Government by Consensus
205
were now prohibitively expensive. To add insult to injury, the dowager queen
of Sweden, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, fled Sweden to seek asylum in
Denmark in 1640. She did so of her own volition, claiming mistreatment at
the hands of Oxenstierna’s regency government. Christian IV allowed her to
reside at the prince-elect’s castle at Nykøbing, but only reluctantly, for he found
her presence there highly embarrassing. Still, it was a blow to Swedish pride,
worsened by rumours that the Danish king and the erratic widow of the sainted
Gustav Adolf had become clandestine lovers. It was Christian’s role as mediator
at Osnabrück, however, that caused the greatest alarm in Stockholm. He may
have had his differences with the emperor, but his disputes with Sweden went
much deeper; and so, Oxenstierna reasoned, the Dane would be a fool not to
use the opportunity to cripple Sweden. The king publicly voiced his objections
to Swedish possession of Pomerania, a condition that Oxenstierna considered
non-negotiable as it was absolutely vital for guaranteeing Sweden’s security.
Christian IV, in short, was no impartial mediator, and Oxenstierna could not
allow him to have any say over Sweden’s future.¹⁸
Oxenstierna tolerated Christian’s German activities after 1629 because it suited
his purposes to do so, and because Sweden could not risk a fight on yet another
front. But by the early 1640s, the German war was turning in favour of the
Franco-Swedish alliance; by May 1643, Oxenstierna had obtained the Swedish
Council’s approval for a pre-emptive strike against Denmark. Denmark would
be an easy target if caught unawares, so Oxenstierna drew up his invasion plans
in the utmost secrecy. Christian IV was always on his guard where it came to
Sweden, but even so it was not until December 1643 that his resident ambassador
in Stockholm warned him that an attack was imminent, and by then it was too
late to prepare for the shock. In that same month the Swedes struck. During the
summer and autumn, the main Swedish army in Bohemia, under the command
of Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson, arranged an armistice with the emperor’s
forces and moved quietly northwards towards Lower Saxony. On 22 December
1643, Torstensson and his army of 15,000 men crashed across the Holstein
frontier. Even if Denmark’s national militia and the reorganized knight-service
had had the chance to mobilize and brace for the onslaught, it is unlikely that
they could have presented much resistance to Torstensson’s hardened veterans.
Torstensson captured or bypassed the renovated fortresses in Holstein and south
Jutland—the brand-new fortress of Christianspris fell to him after a siege of less
than a day—and by mid January 1644 Slesvig and all of southern Jutland was
under Swedish occupation. A Danish defensive force, hastily assembled by the
king and his marshal, Anders Bille, kept the Swedes from crossing the Lesser Belt
into Fyn, but then the Swedes launched a second offensive. An army of 14,000,
led by the renowned commander Gustaf Horn, crossed the Scanian frontier
¹⁸ Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 257–60; Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind, Konger
og krige, 457–9.
206
The Age of Christian IV
from Småland in February. Within weeks most of Skåne, including the towns of
Helsingborg and Landskrone, had fallen to Horn’s army.
The international reaction to the new Danish–Swedish conflict, called the
Torstensson War by Danish historians, was sharp but mixed. England was of no
help; even if Christian IV had kept on better terms with his nephew’s kingdom,
the Stuarts had much more pressing problems after 1642. Władysław IV of
Poland, who wanted an alliance with Denmark and had equally good reason to
hate Sweden, expressed his sympathy but provided no real assistance. The French
government, though allied with Sweden, had already demonstrated a profound
distrust of Swedish intentions in the Baltic, but France too was in no position
to come to Denmark’s aid. To the United Provinces, the Swedish attack on
Denmark was well timed. There was marked sympathy for Denmark among the
merchants of Zeeland, but to most of the deputies in the States General the
lightning assault on Denmark was a fitting comeuppance for years of prejudicial
toll policies. The Dutch government held aloof from the fray, but made no effort
to intervene when a privately funded Dutch fleet, under the arms merchant
Louis de Geer and Admiral Martin Thijssen, sailed from the Netherlands in the
spring of 1644 to reinforce Swedish naval forces. The only sovereign willing to
come to Denmark’s aid was, ironically, Emperor Ferdinand III. Christian IV
did not want the emperor’s help; he could not see how Torstensson could have
moved north so rapidly without Imperial collusion, and his suspicions impelled
him to withdraw his delegation from Osnabrück in protest. Ferdinand, however,
would not be refused. By the spring of 1644, an Imperial army under Matthias
Gallas was on the move from Mecklenburg towards Holstein. In the end, the
unwanted Imperial assistance made little difference. Torstensson evaded Gallas’s
slow-moving army, feinted southwards as if to threaten the Habsburg lands, and
then encircled and destroyed Gallas’s army by autumn 1644.
Denmark in 1643 still possessed a formidable fleet. In the years since the
Kalmar War, however, the Swedes had invested a great deal of time and resources
into their navy; the two Nordic fleets were now about evenly matched. Initially,
the Danish fleet—under the competent command of admirals Pros Mund,
Jørgen Vind, and Peder Galt and the king himself—performed quite well. In
two hard-fought engagements, first against Thijssen’s Dutch fleet at Listerdyb
(16 May 1644) and then against a Swedish fleet under Klas Fleming at Kolberger
Heide (1 July 1644), the Danes held their own, preventing Torstensson and
Horn from invading the Danish islands. A Danish blockade contained Fleming’s
fleet in the Kieler Fjord for nearly a month. In the meantime, Thijssen and de
Geer raised a new fleet in the Netherlands and set sail for the Baltic. At this
point everything went horribly wrong for Denmark. The Swedes broke out of
the Kieler Fjord in early August, and only one week later Thijssen’s fleet passed
through the Sound unopposed. The united Dutch–Swedish fleet then set sail for
Danish waters, where it was intercepted by a Danish squadron under Pros Mund.
The Death of Government by Consensus
207
Off the island of Fehmarn (13 October 1644), the larger Dutch–Swedish fleet
easily destroyed Mund’s squadron. Denmark had lost control of the narrow seas.
On land, the Danes fought back as best they could. Polyglot forces of foreign
mercenaries and Danish militia levies, led by the prince-elect, Duke Frederik,
and Marshal Bille, achieved some minor victories in Jutland and Skåne in late
1644. No matter how valiant their efforts, though, they could not make good the
losses of the previous year. Denmark had been not just defeated, but absolutely
humiliated. If there was any chance for a merciful peace it would be due to
international pressure; Denmark could not finesse its way to peace as it had in
1629. The only factors restraining Sweden from seeking the total destruction
of Denmark were the caution of Queen Christina, the intervention of France
and the Netherlands, and Oxenstierna’s military commitments to the south,
commitments that precluded an indefinite engagement in Denmark.¹⁹
France and the Dutch Republic were Swedish allies, and certainly the Dutch
had good reason to celebrate Denmark’s defeat, but neither was prepared to
see mastery of the Sound pass from Danish hands to Swedish. By now no one
doubted that Sweden was the more powerful of the two Nordic kingdoms, and a
Swedish Sound was more to be dreaded than a Danish one. Christian IV eagerly
accepted a Franco-Dutch offer of mediation. Peace negotiations commenced
at the town of Brömsebro, on the border between Småland and Blekinge, in
February 1645. Foreign mediation constrained the Swedes to moderate their
more radical demands—such as the immediate cession of Skåne, Blekinge,
and Halland—but it also ensured that Christian IV would not resume his
‘tyranny’ over Baltic commerce. When Danish negotiators baulked at conceding
unconditional freedom of passage for Swedish ships in the Sound, the States
General immediately dispatched a naval force to the straits at Helsingør to press
the point. In the final draft of the Brömsebro peace, signed and ratified in
August 1645, Denmark was forced to disgorge the Norwegian border provinces
of Jämtland and Härjedalen, as well as the islands of Gotland and Øsel. Bremen’s
fate would be resolved in direct negotiations with Duke Frederik. As a guarantee
of peace, Sweden would retain temporary possession of Halland for thirty years.²⁰
The disturbing truth revealed by Brömsebro was a simple one: Denmark was
no longer master of the Baltic, and indeed was no longer anything other than
a secondary regional power, cowering in Sweden’s shadow. Sweden’s star had
been in the ascendant for several decades before Torstensson swept into Jutland,
¹⁹ Finn Askgaard, Christian IV: ‘Rigets Væbnede Arm’ (Copenhagen: Tøjhusmuseet, 1988),
152–78; V. Vessberg, Bidrag til historien om Sveriges krig med Danmark 1643–1645, 2 vols.
(Stockholm, 1895–1900); Niels Probst, Christian 4.s flåde (Copenhagen Marinehistorisk Selskab,
1996), 227–56; Klaus-Richard Böhme, ‘Lennart Torstensson und Helmut Wrangel in SchleswigHolstein und Jütland 1643–1645’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte,
90 (1965), 41–82.
²⁰ Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind, Konger og krige, 461–3; Fridericia, Danmarks ydre politiske
Historie, ii. 448–524.
208
The Age of Christian IV
but until that moment any comparison of Danish and Swedish might was
sheer speculation. The Torstensson War was as true a test of the Scandinavian
rivalry as could be imagined. It was a test that Denmark failed miserably. To be
sure, Denmark lost little territory and kept its control over the Sound. Defeat
at Brömsebro, moreover, had subtle diplomatic advantages. Humiliation made
Christian IV more conciliatory and more anxious to find allies. Deft diplomacy
on the part of Corfitz Ulfeldt helped bring about new commercial alliances with
the Netherlands (the Treaty of Christianopel, 1645–6), France (Copenhagen,
1645), and England (Copenhagen, 1645). These treaties did not come gratis,
and required great commercial concessions. At Christianopel, for example, the
Danes had to promise the Dutch that they would reduce the Sound Dues
to their 1628 levels and exempt Dutch shipping from the Elbe tolls. But the
mere fact that Christian IV had to make such conciliatory gestures was in itself
an acknowledgement of Denmark’s waning fortunes. Denmark needed allies
because it could no longer defend itself or the Sound, let alone pretend to
dominium maris. Moreover, Brömsebro made it apparent to all that Sweden’s
thirst for vengeance was not yet slaked.
In some ways, the Torstensson War was a high point in Christian’s long life.
His display of personal bravery on the quarterdeck of his flagship Trefoldigheden
at Kolberger Heide was the stuff of legends. Such legends, however, rarely have
much connection to stark political reality. And the reality was that Christian IV
was now a broken man and a humbled king. The war had wounded him, quite
literally; at Kolberger Heide, the 67-year-old king had suffered grievous wounds
to the right eye and shoulder. The war wounded him in spirit as well. One can
only imagine how the old king’s heart sank as he stood at Kronborg to watch
de With’s fleet sail through the Sound—his Sound—unopposed in June 1645.
Christian’s fiscal injuries were deeper still. The war, and especially the commercial
concessions made to the maritime powers after Brömsebro, drastically reduced
the crown’s customs revenues. The royal coffers, drained by a decade and a half
of spending on the military and the court, were now so empty that the king had
to pawn his regalia, including his magnificent crown, to the merchant firm of
A. B. Berns. His bitterness showed through. He sent the elderly Peder Galt to
the block in August 1644, as punishment for allowing the Swedish fleet to slip
out of the Kieler Fjord; he gave an acerbic tongue-lashing to the noble estate at
the Diet of August 1645, berating the nobles for their unwillingness to sacrifice
for the good of the kingdom.
The kingdom had suffered, too. The Swedish occupation of Jutland and the
Scanian provinces was much harsher than the Imperial occupation of Jutland
in the late 1620s. Jutland in particular endured a heavy blow, having been
subject to unusually heavy taxes in the early 1640s. Here there would be no
rapid recovery as there had been after the German war. Substantial depopulation
and the widespread abandonment of peasant farms were the legacies of the
Torstensson War in Jutland. The damage wrought upon the social fabric of
The Death of Government by Consensus
209
the Oldenburg state was equally apparent. Just as had happened in 1627–9,
the flight of the aristocracy from the occupied lands inspired resentment and
loathing among the lower orders and the lesser nobility, who openly lampooned
aristocratic ‘cowardice’ in broadsides and scurrilous verse.
If the king’s resources were spent, so too was his political capital. The Council
of State did not even try to hide its disapproval of him. Perhaps in 1643, unlike
in 1625, Christian IV could not be blamed for taking Denmark needlessly to
war, but by alienating the Dutch and the Swedes he had in fact brought war
to Denmark. His attempts to bolster royal authority in the 1630s and 1640s
could not deter the Council from its quest to reduce regal power. The creation
of the ‘sons-in-law’ party had proved to be a failure: Frans Rantzau had drowned
in the moat at Rosenborg after a raucous drinking bout in November 1632;
Corfitz Ulfeldt had already shown himself to be faithless and self-seeking. The
Diet, though not so much angry at the king as at the aristocracy, also turned
on Christian. When he convened the Diet at Copenhagen in August 1645,
each of the individual orders granted extensive tax levies to help pay off the
war debt—which stood at 4,000,000 rigsdaler —but only after brazenly airing
their grievances against the government. The noble estate in particular called for
extensive constitutional change. Attacking the conciliar aristocracy, the nobility
at large demanded two things as a precondition for granting taxes: first, that
the commissars, established by the Odense Diet in 1638, be chosen exclusively
by the nobility of each province; second, that the noble order should have a
say in the appointment of new councillors. The size of the Council would be
fixed at twenty-two members, and when it was necessary to replace a deceased
or retired councillor the nobility of that councillor’s home province would have
the responsibility of nominating six to eight suitable candidates. From this pool
the Council would choose three candidates; the king would be obliged to make
his final choice from this ‘short list’. It was a significant encroachment on the
authority of both king and Council, but desperation forced Christian IV to
accept the proposal without a fight.
In his last few years as king, Christian IV hoped to salvage something from
the wreckage of Brömsebro. To him, the disasters of the Torstensson War
were irrefutable proof that the military establishment of Denmark and Norway
required a thorough overhaul. The impoverishment of the crown following
the war likewise inspired him to revisit the reform of the fiefs and of the
feudal knight-service, but the Council had no interest in these reforms, and
by the summer of 1647 it had the leverage it needed to refuse the king
outright. Prince-Elect Christian, aged well beyond his 44 years by fast living
and heavy drinking, succumbed to illness while on a visit to his Saxon inlaws at Körbitz in June 1647. Christian was understandably crushed by the
death of his eldest son, but even more so by the fact that the dynasty no
longer had an heir apparent. To ensure that his second son, Duke Frederik,
210
The Age of Christian IV
would succeed him to the throne, the king would have to dance to the
Council’s tune.²¹
The strain of conflict, with Sweden and with his own Council, soon took
its toll on the aged king. The last few years of his life were especially taxing,
and brought him little enjoyment; as he remarked despondently in 1642, ‘it is
a terrible thing to be king of Denmark’. When he was finally taken ill early in
1648, he was nearly 71 years old, and had been king for sixty. On 28 February
1648 the great king drew his last breath in his bed at Rosenborg.
²¹ Heiberg, Christian 4., 437–51.
10
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
The years from Brömsebro to Christian IV’s death were difficult ones for the ruling elite of the Oldenburg state. For the lower orders, the entire half-century—or
at least the three or four decades following the Lübeck peace—was a time of hardship. Poverty stalked the land after 1629, especially in Jutland, where two hostile
occupations in two decades wreaked havoc on the local economy. Outbreaks of
epidemic disease recurred with greater frequency in the second third of the seventeenth century than they had at any time since the appearance of the Black Death
in the mid fourteenth century. The parade of merchant vessels in and out of the
Sound ensured constant exposure to microbial dangers; foreign invasions brought
plague in their train as well. Plague and typhus raged through Jutland during the
occupations of 1627–9, 1643–5, and 1657–60. Major nationwide outbreaks
were noted in 1592, 1594, 1604, 1609–10 (the so-called ‘White Death’, probably typhus), and 1618–20. Outside Jutland, Copenhagen was the hardest hit: the
plagues of 1650–4 killed off as much as 40 per cent of the capital’s population.¹
Of all the burdens that weighed on the subjects of the Oldenburg monarchy,
nobility and common folk alike, none was more onerous than taxes. Perhaps the
most important salient feature of state development in the Oldenburg monarchy
prior to 1660 was what E. Ladewig Petersen has called the transition ‘from
domain-state to tax-state’, the shift from a polity whose income was derived
from domain and customs incomes to one that financed its activities through
regular taxation of its subjects. This transition, which was nearly complete when
the consensual monarchy died for good in 1660–1, would have important
ramifications for the state fisc, the constitutional arrangement, and the making
of policy. The growth in quantity and frequency of state taxes would be felt,
inevitably, at all levels of society, but especially among the lower orders. Perhaps
the burden of regular taxation would not fall so heavily upon the peasants of
Denmark and Norway as it did upon their neighbours in Sweden and Finland.
But then Denmark, unlike Sweden, was not perpetually at war in the late
sixteenth century and the seventeenth century. The tax burden in Denmark was
still severe, increasingly so as the century wore on.
¹ Fridlev Skrubbeltrang, Det danske landbosamfund 1500–1800 (Copenhagen: Den danske
historiske forening, 1978), 63; Aksel Lassen, Fald og fremgang: træk af befolkningsudviklingen i
Danmark, 1645–1960 (Århus: Universitetsforlag, 1965), 71–2.
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The Age of Christian IV
1 . T H E TA X - S TAT E
In the sixteenth century, it was still possible for the king to ‘live of his
own’, and for the state to function on the basis of ordinary revenues. Modest
expenditures required only modest incomes; domain income, combined with
the various customs duties and the Sound Dues, was sufficient to cover the
ordinary expenditures of crown and state. In wartime, extraordinary tax grants
could cover the additional expenditures, or at least could help to repay wartime
debts afterwards. Fortunately, Denmark engaged in only one war after the
Reformation—the war with Sweden, 1563–70—and while there was great fiscal
hardship during the war, extraordinary taxes and sound financial management
produced budget surpluses in the last years of Frederik II’s reign.
The costs of governance and statecraft swelled rapidly in the first four decades
of the following century. Christian IV’s commercial projects and an expanding
bureaucracy undoubtedly contributed to the rising expenditures, but most of the
additional expense can be attributed to war and national defence. The costs of
the German war, raising the funds to pay the ‘ten barrels of gold’ in the 1630s,
and the establishment of the permanent army in 1638 wiped out the budget
surpluses. Expenditures on Bremerholm and the fleet, for example, had totalled
87,400 rigsdaler in 1602, but had grown to 545,400 in 1646—an increase of over
500 per cent in forty-four years. The aggregate income of the realm—including
Norway and the Duchies—nearly doubled in forty years, from 800,000 rigsdaler
in 1600 to nearly 1.5 million in 1640, and still it could not keep pace with
expenditures. The principal sources of traditional income—domain revenues,
customs, and the Sound Dues—increased up to a point; but there was a limit to
what could be squeezed from crown lands, and as grain prices began to fall in the
1630s so too did fief incomes. In 1630, returns on the crown lands made up just
over half of the income of the realm; by the 1640s that proportion had dropped
to less than a third, and by 1662 to little more than 10 per cent. The proportion
contributed by the Sound Dues and other customs duties amounted to nearly 50
per cent at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but after the Torstensson
War that, too, dropped significantly. The obvious means of bridging the gap,
of covering the state’s mounting expenditures on fleet, army, fortifications, and
court, was direct taxation.
The total number of extraordinary taxes levied during the period 1536–1660—
475 altogether—is fundamentally meaningless from an analytical standpoint,
since not all were binding on the entire monarchy. Their bewildering variety,
with so many of them collected in kind, makes it difficult to assess their impact
on state finances. What is certain is that taxes paid in coin became more frequent
during the course of the German war, and even more frequent in its aftermath.
By the early 1640s, direct taxation was an established and regular practice. The
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
213
tax levies were not evenly distributed throughout the realm; in wartime, occupied
or war-torn regions—like Jutland in 1627–9, 1644–6, and 1657–60—might
be wholly exempted, while other regions would have to make up the difference.
Norway, for example, carried a disproportionately large share of the tax burden
during the Torstensson War, paying twice as much in relation to population size
as Denmark proper between 1641 and 1648. Still, the basic fiscal pattern was
that subjects of the Danish crown were paying heavier taxes, and more often, in
1640 than they were in 1600 or 1620, and that tax revenues made up a larger
proportion of the state’s income. That proportion, a negligible one in 1600, had
grown to nearly 61 per cent by 1662. After 1625, extraordinary taxes were fast
becoming ordinary.
Existing statistics also make it difficult to determine the precise weight of the
tax burden on the population at large, but scattered regional data give at least
some sense of it. Traditionally, extraordinary taxes were levied at the rate of 1
rigsdaler per eligible peasant, though double-, triple-, or larger taxes could also
be assessed. Peasants residing on Sjælland paid, on the average, 1 rigsdaler per
capita (i.e. 0.2 rigsdaler per annum) during the entire five-year period 1588–92,
but by the period 1638–42 this figure had risen to 15 rigsdaler (3 rigsdaler
per annum), an increase of 1,500 per cent! This figure accounts only for taxes
paid in coin; there were several other types of extraordinary taxation paid in
kind. Peasants living in the fief of Stiernholm in Jutland, for example, were
responsible for numerous ‘grain taxes’ (kornskatter) in 1633–58, three ‘food
taxes’ (madskat or fetaljehjælp, paid in meat or butter), a ‘copper tax’ (1646), cash
commutations for the conscription of sailors (bådsmandsskatter, 1635–56), and
special ‘contributions’ to support the construction force labouring on the new
fortress of Frederiksodde (1651–6). These were in addition to the now-regular
taxes paid in specie.²
2 . S O C I E TA L C H A N G E
The general trend in the social development of the Oldenburg state in the period
1596–1660 was polarization along economic lines. The economic conjunctures
of the so-called ‘price revolution’ at the end of the sixteenth century already
concentrated the wealth of the Oldenburg realm into the hands of fewer and
² Jens Engberg, Dansk finanshistorie i 1640’erne (Århus: Universitetsforlaget, 1972), 189–275;
Leon Jespersen, ‘The Constitutional and Administrative Situation’, in Leon Jespersen (ed.), A
Revolution from Above? The Power State of 16th and 17th century Scandinavia (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 2000) 91–7; E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘From Domain State to Tax State: Synthesis and
Interpretation’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 23 (1975), 116–48; E. Ladewig Petersen,
Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund 1500–1700 Dansk socialhistorie, 3 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1980), 337–47; Hans H. Fussing, Stiernholm len 1603–1661: studier i krongodsets forvaltning
(Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1951), 72–90.
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The Age of Christian IV
fewer individuals; the growing tax burden after 1625, plus the wars of 1625–9,
1643–5, and 1657–60, exacerbated this trend. The primary beneficiaries were
the crown, the very highest echelons of the noble estate, and a small mercantile
elite. The rich, in brief, became fewer and richer, while the poor grew both in
numbers and in the depth of their poverty. The population of the Oldenburg
state also grew during this period: in Denmark from 600,000 at the time of
the Reformation to over 700,000 in 1600 and to nearly 800,000 by 1650. The
Norwegian population more than doubled, from under 200,000 in the mid
sixteenth century to nearly 450,000 one century later. The growth added to the
tax base of the monarchy, but did not effectively cushion the blow of heavier
taxes.
The polarization of the nobility in the seventeenth century was a continuation
of late sixteenth-century developments, accelerated by the rise of the tax-state.
The nobility was already possessed of a strong profit motive; the imposition of an
increasingly heavy tax burden, which affected the nobility and its peasants, drove
noble families to make their landed estates more efficient and profitable. This they
attempted to do in several ways. Speculation in landed property intensified in the
second quarter of the century; in the years around 1620, approximately 4 to 5 per
cent of noble properties changed hands annually. Noble landowners also sought
to expand the size of their demesnes, by absorbing abandoned farms, by ejecting
leaseholding peasants from their tenures and incorporating entire villages, and
by establishing new manors. Such actions were economically advantageous for
the nobility, for by converting leaseholding peasants into ugedagstjenere, they
assured the landowner of a steady supply of compulsory labour while freeing the
peasants from all tax obligations. Presumably, too, the expansion of manorial
estates meant greater production of grain and cattle.
The socio-economic effect on the noble class was a further concentration
of land and power into the hands of fewer and fewer families. Noble families
who had the wherewithal to participate in the widespread real-estate speculation
of that period thereby built up larger agricultural concerns; those without the
requisite means either bankrupted themselves trying or refused to participate.
The gap between the richest nobles—the conciliar aristocracy and its peers—and
the poorer nobles opened up dramatically. In 1588, the poorest 40 per cent of
noble families accounted for 17 per cent of nobly owned lands; by 1638 this same
group could claim less than 6 per cent of that same land. In that same time frame,
the share of landed wealth in the hands of the uppermost 10 per cent of the noble
estate grew from 23 per cent to nearly 42 per cent. Members of the Council of
State owned, on average, five times as much land as the ‘typical’ nobleman in
1638. Similar conditions prevailed in Norway, where in 1639 the poorest 45 per
cent of the nobility owned a mere 11 per cent of noble land, while the richest 18
per cent owned 51 per cent of that land. A very, very few Norwegian magnates
became fabulously wealthy: Jens Bjelke, chancellor of Norway from 1614, could
by himself claim ownership of a full 12 per cent of all noble land in the northern
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
215
kingdom! Corresponding to this concentration of property was, not surprisingly,
a narrowing of political influence. Of the lowest 59 per cent (278 in number) of
Denmark’s noble families in 1625, only one could claim a member who served
as a fiefholder in a great fief.³
Habits of luxury furthered this bifurcation of the nobility. The noble estate’s
taste for fine and ostentatious living paralleled the splendour of the court. The
nobles, high and low, spent freely on status symbols, including fine clothing
and jewellery, ornate manor houses, elaborate carriages, exotic foodstuffs, and
public displays of wealth at weddings and funeral feasts. Not all irresponsible
noble spending, however, was dedicated to such frivolities; some of it was
earmarked for investment in education or, of course, land. The grand tour was
still held to be a component de rigueur of a young nobleman’s preparation for
adulthood, but the costs of educational peregrinations abroad were prohibitive.
Holger Rosenkrantz the Learned spent a total of 28,000 rigsdaler on the foreign
education of his three sons between 1627 and 1640. The problem was that
neither land purchases nor grand tours were sound investments after 1620 or
so. An expensive foreign education was no guarantee of advancement in state
service. Cattle prices continued to climb into the 1620s, and prices fetched by
rye rose for at least a full decade after that, but after 1640 Danish agricultural
production was not nearly so lucrative as it had been previously. The purchase of
land was therefore not necessarily remunerative. Nobles who wanted to purchase
land, yet could not afford to do so in cash, could borrow money (after 1602)
from Christian IV at the low interest rate of 6 per cent, or from the Holstein
money market at Kiel (the Kieler Umschlag) at 8 to 12 per cent. Since estates
rarely yielded much more than 3 to 5 per cent returns on the market value of the
land, interest rates alone could wreck a noble family.⁴
Christian IV hoped, as had his father, that these destructive spending habits
could be curbed through sumptuary legislation. The founding of the Sorø noble
academy (Ridderakademi) was similarly intended to reduce noble expenditures,
in hopes that local educational opportunities would make trips to the Continent
unnecessary. Such measures made little difference. Indeed, Christian IV’s generous lending practices only made it easier for noblemen to spend themselves into
oblivion, ultimately reducing themselves to penury, the sale of their privileged
lands, and the loss of noble status. The aristocracy distanced themselves further
³ Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten 1536–1648, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 2 (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 320–3; Svend Aage Hansen, Adelsvældens grundlag (Copenhagen: Gad,
1694), 143–77; Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund, 376–94; Håkon Hovstad, ‘Jordegods
i Norge på 1600-tallet’, in Från medeltid till välfärdssamhälle: nordiska historikermötet i Uppsala 1974
(Stockholm: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1976), 135–49.
⁴ Ladewig Petersen and Ole Fenger, Adel forpligter: studier over den danske adels gældsstiftelse i 16.
og 17. århundrede (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1983), 261–84; John P. Maarbjerg, Scandinavia in
the European World-Economy, ca. 1570–1625 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 108–17; Hansen,
Adelsvældens grundlag, 182–90; E. Ladewig Petersen, Christian IV.s pengeudlån til de dansk adelige
(Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1974), 31–69.
216
The Age of Christian IV
and further from the population at large, living lives of unprecedented luxury
while most of the king’s subjects laboured under the burdens imposed by an
increasingly exploitative central authority.⁵
This is not to argue, however, that the nobility as a class was fated to extinction.
Contrary to the assertion of Danish historians in the nineteenth century, the
noble estate did not destroy itself through reckless spending, nor did it fade
into obscurity because of declining birth rates. That the nobility did experience
a ‘biological decline’ is beyond doubt. But the noble estate did not lose its
raison d’être, for the expansion of the civil and military administrations helped
to balance the losses incurred as fief administration became more exclusive. The
size of the civil bureaucracy mirrored the activism of Christian IV’s regime, and
while some administrative bodies—such as the two chanceries—did not expand
appreciably in numbers, others did. The personnel employed by the Treasury, for
example, tripled in numbers between 1596 and the 1640s. Educated burghers’
sons were frequently employed in the central administration, but in the main the
important posts went to young noblemen.⁶
The greatest ameliorating factor was the rise of the officer corps. The militarization of the monarchy in the wake of the Lower Saxon War, and especially
after the expansion of the permanent army in the late 1630s, created a steady
demand for competent and experienced soldiers. The growth of the military
establishment affected the noble estate in two ways: first, it brought in highly
qualified commoners and foreigners, many of whom were subsequently ennobled
for their service; second, it provided the native lesser nobility with a new range
of career opportunities in an honourable profession. The demand for officers
helped to offset the diminished opportunities for state service brought about by
the fief reforms. By the 1650s, the army provided a livelihood for 14 to 18 per
cent of adult males in the Danish nobility. Officership could also grant access
to the otherwise closed circle of the Council. Anders Bille til Damsbo, marshal
and councillor from 1642, was a member of an aristocratic family yet owned
little land; his rise to conciliar status was due almost entirely to his distinguished
military career. Significantly, this new service nobility did not disrupt the cohesiveness of the noble estate. With few exceptions, the military nobility was readily
assimilated into the traditional landed nobility. Its status as warriors, in fact,
reinvigorated long-held claims that military service justified noble privileges. The
new military nobility did not become an agent of royalism. Quite the contrary:
⁵ E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Conspicuous Consumption: The Danish Nobility of the 17th Century’,
Kwartelnik Historii Kultury Materialnej, 30 (1982), 57–65; Leon Jespersen, ‘Statuskonsumtion og
luksuslovgivning i Danmark og Sverige i 1600-tallet—en skitse’, in Sten Åke Nilsson and Margareta
Ramsay, eds., 1600-talets ansikte (Lund, 1997), 169–95.
⁶ DFH, i 100–13, 127–9; Hans C. Wolter, Adel og embede: embedsfordeling og karrieremobilitet
hos den dansk-norsk adel 1588–1660 (Copenhagen: Den danske historiske Forening, 1982).
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
217
the growth of a professional officer corps seems to have slowed the decline of the
nobility and even to have strengthened it politically.⁷
Economic polarization was also the order of the day for the mercantile classes.
Prior to 1596, there was little differentiation in the ranks of the burghers.
Danish noblemen frequently sold their agricultural surpluses directly to foreign
merchants; only a very few Danish merchants participated directly in the export
trade. Royal commercial and military policies after 1600 altered this pattern.
Christian IV’s aggressive promotion of Danish trade helped somewhat. Danish
merchants profited most from the Icelandic monopoly and the gradual exclusion
of the Hanse from local trade, but the spectacular failures of most of Christian’s
trading ventures partially offset these gains. War was the real engine of change. As
a direct consequence of the Lower Saxon War and the ‘armed neutrality’ of the
1630s and 1640s, there emerged a native (or at least naturalized) mercantile elite,
centred on Copenhagen. Copenhagen merchants such as Gabriel de Marselis and
Henrik Müller grew rich from supplying munitions and provisions to Christian
IV’s armies in the Lower Saxon and Torstensson wars, and further enhanced their
wealth and influence by means of huge loans to noble families. In Denmark and
in Norway, the mercantile elite dominated the export trade in grain and timber,
especially as the central government abdicated its leading role in the timber trade
in favour of private investors. The Hellekande trading family, with offices in
Trondheim, Bergen, and Copenhagen, grew to be both the largest exporter of
timber in the realm and the most prolific supplier of timber to the court. The
Marselis and Müller trading houses were well connected to Christian IV’s leading
administrators of the 1640s, especially Hannibal Sehested and Corfitz Ulfeldt,
and received hundreds of thousands of rigsdaler in government contracts. The
Copenhagen merchants soon became vital sources of credit for the crown. A
full quarter of the total state debt of 5,000,000 rigsdaler incurred during the
Karl Gustav Wars of the 1650s was financed by Copenhagen merchants; at least
8 per cent of that debt was owed to Henrik Müller alone. The nouveau riche
among the merchants came to dominate town politics by mid-century, while the
merchants of Copenhagen eclipsed their provincial counterparts.⁸
While the mercantile elite may have gained the most from the policies of
Christian IV (and, later, those of Frederik III), they also felt the sting of
⁷ Gunner Lind, Hæren og magten i Danmark 1614–1662 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1994),
175–248, 383–99; E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Poor Nobles and Rich in Denmark, 1500–1700’, Journal
of European Economic History, 30 (2001), 119.
⁸ Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund, 380–4; Johan Jørgensen, Det københavnske
patriciat og staten ved det 17. århundredes midte (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1957); John T. Lauridsen,
Marselis konsortiet: en studie over forholdet mellem handelskapital og kongemagt i 1600-tallets Danmark
(Århus: Jysk Selskab for Historie, 1987); E. Ladewig Petersen, Knud J. V. Jespersen, and Leon
Jespersen, De fede år: Odense 1559–1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1984), 143–83, 216–304.
218
The Age of Christian IV
higher taxes, tolls, and tariffs—but not nearly so much as did the peasantry
of the Oldenburg lands. For the peasantry, as for the lesser nobility, the
period 1600–60 brought poverty, but for the peasantry that poverty came as
a direct result of the tax burden. The taxes that came in rapid succession after
1625 fell most heavily upon the shoulders of the freeholding peasants and the
ordinary leaseholders. Combined with the hardships brought about by the wars
of 1625–9, 1643–5, and 1657–60, the conscription of troops after 1638, and
the widespread crop failures of the late 1620s and early 1650s, the taxes were
more than many freeholding peasants could bear. In consequence, freeholding
peasants abandoned their farms or voluntarily surrendered their independent
status, reducing the population of freeholders (in Skåne and the islands) by
nearly a quarter between 1610 and 1651. Probably no more than 5 per cent of
Danish peasants were freeholders by 1660.
At the same time, the proportion of ugedagstjenere —peasants who lived in close
proximity to a manor, providing most of the compulsory demesne labour—grew
dramatically as the nobility consolidated its holdings and built new manors.
Denmark’s ‘enclosure movement’ of the early seventeenth century resulted in
the incorporation of 550 peasant tenancies into new manors between 1600 and
1649, and the elimination of thirty-two entire villages in Denmark alone in
1630–49. By the middle of the century, around 42 per cent of peasants on
noble land were ugedagstjenere. There were certain advantages for the peasantry,
notably full exemption from taxes for ugedagstjenere on noble lands. But the
additional burden of labour obligations, which could amount to as much as two
or three days of labour per week, made an ugedagstjener’s existence only slightly
less unbearable than that of a taxpaying peasant.
Some peasants—a disturbingly large number of them, in fact—were reduced
to genuine poverty. Before 1625, only about 1 to 2 per cent of all tax-paying
peasants requested exemption on the grounds that they were too poor to pay
any tax at all. In the aftermath of the Lower Saxon War, the increased tax
burden brought this proportion up to between 2 and 6 per cent, but with the
Torstensson War the number of peasants claiming impoverishment skyrocketed
to nearly 30 per cent. This was a temporary circumstance, to be sure, and there
was an economic recovery in the countryside after the war, but the recovery was
only partial. For the remainder of the period of the consensual monarchy, the
proportion of poor peasants hovered between 10 and 12 per cent.
The crown’s attitude towards the peasants is difficult to ascertain. On occasion,
king, Council, and courts stepped in to protect the peasantry from some abuses,
but overall they upheld the landowners’ right to run their estates as they
saw fit. In other regards the king and the Council split over agricultural
issues. Christian IV’s attempts to commute labour obligations for peasants
on crown lands (1623–4) and villeinage on Sjælland (1646) met not only
with peasant opposition—the additional expense was something they could
not bear—but also with the solid resistance of the nobility and the Council.
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
219
Surprisingly, there were no peasant uprisings in Denmark during this period,
but there was no mistaking the resentment caused by higher taxes, more
onerous labour obligations, and sterner discipline at the hands of the estate
owners.⁹
3 . S TAT E A N D S O C I E T Y I N T E R S E C T: LO C A L
G OV E R N M E N T
The prevailing systems of local governance in the Oldenburg lands had their
roots in medieval Danish practices. They would change little over the century and
a half of the dyarchy, and in many regards would remain structurally constant
even after the imposition of absolute monarchy in 1660–1. The immediate
representatives of the crown were the fiefholders. There were, roughly speaking,
two types of fief reckoned according to size: the great fiefs (hovedlen) and the
lesser fiefs (smålen or godslen). The former usually contained one or more entire
counties (herreder), which as a rule incorporated both crown-owned and nobly
owned estates, as well as a few small peasant-owned farms. In the great fiefs,
the fiefholder acted not only as the administrator of crown lands, but also as
the chief agent of the crown for the entire region covered by the fief, which set
him above all noble landowners in that region. The lesser fiefs, on the other
hand, were smaller but exclusively crown properties, and so the administrative
responsibilities of the fiefholder were accordingly fewer.
By the time of the Reformation, the duties of the fiefholder had expanded
considerably. Now he was the person directly responsible for the enforcement of
the law, the adjudication of local disputes, the collection of tithes and taxes, and
the accounting of rents on crown properties, as well as the security of the fief.
Though the nature of these duties did not change much during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, the scope of the fief system and the character of the
fiefholder did. A fiefholder’s job was a challenging one, which helps to explain the
trend towards professionalization in the fief administration and the connection
between fiefholding and appointment to positions in the Council. Service as a
fiefholder was the most visible way in which a nobleman could prove his loyalty,
integrity, and administrative competence.
The fiefholders did not work alone. Especially in the great fiefs, the fiefholder
depended on a small staff to assist him. In addition to various secretaries and
notaries who assisted in correspondence and the upkeep of accounts, a number
of bailiffs—bearing titles such as foged, ridefoged, or delefoged —represented the
fiefholder in each of the counties under his authority. The bailiffs, sometimes
⁹ Thomas Munck, The Peasantry and the Early Absolute Monarchy in Denmark 1660–1708
(Copenhagen: Landbohistorisk selskab, 1979), 17–32; Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 285–93,
342–9; Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund, 348–61.
220
The Age of Christian IV
lesser nobles but usually prosperous peasants with a modicum of education,
supervised the collection of taxes, tithes, and rents, investigated crimes, arrested
lawbreakers, and acted as state prosecutors at the county and fief levels. They
were the agents of the fiefholder’s discipline, but they also served as the chief
intermediaries between the peasants and the fiefholders, and therefore indirectly
gave the peasants a voice in fief affairs.
Popular assemblies at the fief level did not exist, but quasi-democratic traditions
persisted in the governance of the individual villages and counties. All peasants
had a voice in the informal village assemblies, usually called bystævne or bylag,
which met regularly to find common solutions to the everyday problems of rural
life. The county assemblies, or herredsting (as well as the manorial courts, the
birketing), served primarily as law courts. In theory, all peasants could be heard
at the weekly herredsting, and local nobles participated in their proceedings as
well. The herredsting acted as an important connection between local and central
authority, since these assemblies had the responsibility of announcing new laws,
policies, and taxes. They were also a venue for the airing of grievances to the king
and Council.¹⁰
The towns had their own unique administrative apparatus. Prior to 1561,
they were independent of the fief administration. They were self-governing
and answerable only to the king. In return for a fixed town tax (byskat),
the king in his coronation charter traditionally granted special privileges to the
licensed market towns, including prohibitions on artisanal work outside the town
walls. Though the institutions of town governance—the mayors, councils, and
assemblies—exercised a fair degree of autonomy, there was a close tie between
the magistracy and the crown, as the king frequently nominated new mayors.
Tensions between the magistracy and the burghers at large ran high during
the post-Reformation period, in part because of the inequitable distribution of
power between the two groups, and in part because of the obvious gap in wealth
and privilege; among other things, members of the magistracy were customarily
exempt from taxation. By the time of Frederik II’s reign, social unrest in the
towns had become so problematic that the crown felt compelled to intervene. A
royal ordinance of 1561 put all towns under the legal jurisdiction of the local
fiefholder, adding considerably to the fiefholders’ duties and causing no small
amount of consternation in the towns. Still, after the Count’s War, the towns did
not pose a challenge to royal authority, and civil disturbances in urban society
were rare by the dawn of the seventeenth century.¹¹
¹⁰ DFH, i. 78–83.
¹¹ Ibid. 80–2, 116–20; Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 128; Ole Degn, Rig og fattig i
Ribe: økonomiske og sociale forhold i Ribe-samfundet 1560–1660, 2 vols. (Århus: Universitetsforlag,
1981), i. 38–41, 383–406; Harald Jørgensen, Lokaladministrationen i Danmark (Copenhagen:
Gad, 1985), 41–6; P. Munch, Købstadstyrelsen i Danmark (Copenhagen: Det Nordiske Forlag,
1900), 1–66.
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
221
Clergymen were also involved in local governance. They were the agents of
crown—or, more correctly, royal—authority with whom the lower orders had
the most frequent dealings. While peasants might attend a herredsting from time
to time, and occasionally even be in the presence of the fiefholder, they would
have contact with their parish vicars at least once weekly. The vicar, as the
most learned man in most communities, was the primary link between village
society and the central government, and indeed with the outside world. The
clergy served many administrative and disciplinary functions under the expanded
competence of state authority after the Reformation. Through the supervision
of the catechism, parish clergy and their superiors were the primary educators
and enforcers of religious conformity; by reporting moral infractions and serving
on the morality courts (tamperretter), they were agents of social discipline. In
the towns, the clergy helped to administer public hospitals and other social
welfare institutions. By no means, however, were the clergy mere vessels of
royal authority, but rather—like the herredsting and the bailiffs—they were also
representatives of the communities they served. The lower clergy, of humble
origins and living among the common-born laity, tended to develop close bonds
with the members of their congregations. They frequently presented peasant
grievances to the crown, and at the national Diets after 1627 the parish clergy
informally represented the interests of the low-born.¹²
In structure and competence, local authorities in the peripheral lands were
not much different from those in Denmark proper, save perhaps in the Duchies,
which were dynastic possessions and did not fall under the Council’s jurisdiction.
Governors (statholdere), appointed by the king, served as the chief administrators.
In Iceland and Norway these governors were most often Danes, while the
governor in Holstein was invariably a Holsteiner. Beneath the governor, the
administrative structure varied from land to land. In Norway, royally appointed
fiefholders (lensherre) dominated regional government much as they did in
Denmark, and like the Danish fiefholders they were assisted by locally recruited
bailiffs (lagmænd). Danish or German bailiffs and the two bishop-superintendents
(usually native Icelanders educated in Denmark) mediated between the governor
and native elites in Iceland. The governor, his bailiffs, and the bishops made sure
that Danish laws were observed and taxes collected, but the Alþing continued to
rule in local affairs as it had done since the eleventh century. The administration
in royal Holstein was not markedly different from that of the minor German
territorial states. The governor there acted as middleman between the king and
the local estates, the Landtag. As a rule, Danes had no place in the governance of
Holstein, and the governor was responsible to the king alone.
¹² DFH, 122–4; E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Vredens dag: Christian IV og fattigdommen efter
Kejserkrigen’, in Svend Ellehøj (ed.), Christian IVs verden (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1988),
193–213.
222
The Age of Christian IV
4 . N O RWAY A N D I C E L A N D U N D E R C H R I S T I A N I V
Though the Oldenburg kings may not have been quite so tyrannical and
insensitive as some earlier historians would have us believe, nonetheless one
should not idealize the impact of Danish rule on Norway and Iceland. In these
lands, the crown respected traditional liberties and exhibited much paternal
concern for the welfare of its subjects, but Danish policy there was not invariably
benign. There was no mistaking the overall purpose that Norway and Iceland
served: they were to be profitable, supplying the state with vital resources and
obedient taxpayers. As the Danish kings and many of their lieutenants were
foreigners, friction between rulers and ruled would invariably arise, but not as the
result of intentionally cruel or callous policies. Rather, serious problems emerged
only when the economic and cultural interests of the central authority failed to
coincide with those of the local populations. At worst, Danish suzerainty entailed
some temporary hardships, but generally was something of a neutral force, having
only a minimal impact on the course of everyday life. At best, Denmark provided
Norway and Iceland with a modicum of stability and security, and sometimes
even with a measure of real prosperity.
From early on in his reign, Christian IV demonstrated a great personal liking
for Norway, visiting the northern kingdom on numerous occasions—something
that his two immediate predecessors had neglected to do. Certainly there were
good practical reasons for Christian to be so interested in Norway: its forests kept
his many construction projects and his navy stocked with timber, and its mines
would (or so he hoped) bring a steady stream of silver to his treasury. And with its
long common border with Sweden, Norway played an important role in Danish
grand strategy. Christian’s requests for tax levies from the Norwegian Diet after
1628 rarely if ever left him wanting. For his part, Christian IV viewed Norway as
a special component of the monarchy, and not as just another province. In 1604,
he gave to Norway a universal law code, the Norske lov, which incorporated some
Danish legal notions but retained much of Norway’s ancient legal tradition,
codified in the medieval landslov of Magnus Lagabøte.
Danish rule, however, did impinge somewhat on the lives of the common
people. The Norwegian population contributed a disproportionately large share
of the monarchy’s income after the Lower Saxon War. Norwegian taxes, fief
revenues, and customs duties accounted for 37 per cent of the income of
the realm in the year before the Torstensson War, and as much as 71 per
cent during that war. Because Norway’s population was much smaller than
Denmark’s, the overall tax burden per peasant in the 1640s was nearly twice
as high in Norway as it was in Denmark. Since the demand for timber in
Denmark was so great, Christian IV would have been remiss not to have
safeguarded this valuable resource; hence the Norwegian peasants and noble
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
223
landlords were restricted in their choice of customers, reserving the bulk of the
best timber for agents of the crown. Still, Norway prospered. The international
demand for timber remained steady even as the prices of grain and cattle
began to plunge in the later stages of the Thirty Years War. That demand
peaked in the aftermath of the great London fire of 1666, which—it was
said—‘warmed the hearts of the Norwegians’. In the south, where so many
peasants devoted their energies to the timber harvest, the rural classes were
perhaps more prosperous than anywhere else in the entire Oldenburg state.
Here the peasantry had access to foreign luxury goods not readily available
elsewhere in the monarchy; as Christian IV would observe, the inhabitants of
southern Norway had become so addicted to tobacco that ‘they prefer it to
breakfast’. Moreover, the Danish administrative presence in Norway was muted
and relatively inobtrusive. Even so dominating a figure as Hannibal Sehested,
Christian IV’s governor in Norway from 1642, worked closely with Norwegian
elites in his governance.¹³
The outlook for Iceland in the early seventeenth century was not so positive.
The period of Christian IV’s reign coincided with a dark time in the island’s
history, characterized by one Icelandic historian as ‘the gloomy seventeenth
century’. A share of this ‘gloom’ can indeed be attributed to Danish rule.
The Danish trade monopoly of 1602, transferred to the Icelandic Company
in 1620, has been blamed in Icelandic historiography for bringing economic
ruin to Iceland, and at a particularly inconvenient time; for piled atop the
pernicious influence of the monopoly was a series of disasters that had little
to do with the Danish occupation. Iceland is, and was, geologically unstable,
and has been prone to violent seismic activity throughout its history. Volcanic
eruptions and earthquakes hit the island with unprecedented severity in the
early seventeenth century. One volcano in eastern Iceland spouted lava and ash
for twelve consecutive days in 1625, its ash-clouds darkening the skies as far
eastward as Bergen. The crater at Hekla erupted repeatedly during the summer
and autumn of 1636.
More terrifying still was the so-called ‘Turkish Raid’ of June 1627. In this
incident, arguably the most bizarre occurrence in Icelandic history, four Algerian
and Moroccan pirate ships attacked several points along the southern and eastern
coasts. Pirate raids were not unknown in Iceland; English pirates had terrorized
the Western Fjords in 1579 and the Westman Islands in 1614; Spanish raiders
plagued the coastal towns as well, striking in 1614 and again the following year.
But the Turkish Raid was clearly the worst. The Muslim pirates raided the
harbour at Grindavík on the south coast, attacked the governor’s residence at
¹³ Sverre Bagge and Knut Mykland, Norge i dansketiden (Copenhagen: Politiken, 1987), 133–50;
Rian, Den aristokratiske fyrstestaten, 276–301; John P. Maarbjerg, Scandinavia in the European
World-Economy, ca. 1570–1625 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 246–9; Oscar A. Johnsen, De
norske stænder: Bidrag til oplysning om folkets deltagelse i statsanliggender fra Reformationen til enevældet
(Christiania: Jacob Dybwad, 1906), 111–245.
224
The Age of Christian IV
Bessastaðir, and then landed at the Eastern Fjords and the Westman Islands. The
destruction they wrought was severe. An indeterminate number of Icelanders,
certainly in the hundreds, was killed, and many others were captured, to be
taken to the Mediterranean and held for ransom or sold into slavery. The total
losses amounted to some 410 Icelanders, of whom fewer than thirty ultimately
returned to their native land. It was not a huge loss, but significant given the
minuscule size of Iceland’s population. To these misfortunes should be added
the Icelandic witchcraze, which commenced with the burning of a male witch at
Eylafjörður in 1625 and accelerated in mid-century.¹⁴
The first half of the seventeenth century was doubtless a most unpleasant
period in Iceland. But it is thoroughly misleading to link the misfortunes of
this time to Danish rule; the two things are scarcely connected, if at all. The
persecution of witches was instigated locally, by native Icelanders and not by
Danish authorities, who in fact tried unsuccessfully to halt it. The Turkish Raid
of 1627 was purely a matter of accident. The actions of the Muslim pirates were
not in any way provoked by Danish policies. The failure of crown authorities in
Iceland to guard against the raid was perhaps regrettable, but does not deserve
the verdict pronounced by Gunnar Karlsson: ‘This was the kind of protection
that Denmark gave Iceland at this time.’¹⁵ Christian IV was well aware of the
dangers posed by pirate raids, and from 1616 Danish naval vessels regularly
patrolled the waters around Iceland. In 1627, however, Denmark was engaged
in a life-and-death struggle with the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein, and hence
not in a position to divert naval forces to its most remote outposts, especially to
guard against something so unlikely as a raid by Mediterranean pirates in the far
reaches of the North Atlantic. Even had Christian IV kept a larger contingent of
Danish troops in Iceland, it would have stirred up more local resentment in the
long term.
The one misfortune that can be attributed to Danish rule—the trade
monopoly—is highly questionable. The monopoly compelled the Icelanders
to trade only with licensed Danish merchants, but the merchants were required
to supply the Icelanders with sufficient quantities of foodstuffs and manufactured
goods. Prices on these imported goods were fixed and kept reasonably low.
Clearly the arrangement was a lucrative one for the merchants and for the crown,
but it also served the economic needs of the natives. The monopoly required the
Danish merchants to trade in all twenty of Iceland’s recognized harbours, and on
the same terms, therefore allowing the poorer regions of the land to participate
directly in the trade. Such opportunities would not have existed had free trade
prevailed. Moreover, even the monopoly—though imposed from above—was
¹⁴ Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2000) 138–48; Gjerset, History of Iceland, 304, 318–20; Jón Helgason, Tyrkjaránið (Reykjavík:
Setberg, 1963).
¹⁵ Karlsson, History of Iceland, 144.
State and Society, Centre and Periphery
225
at least partially consensual, for Danish officials and merchants negotiated the
specific terms of the trade with the leading landowners in Iceland. In the
eighteenth century, corrupt royal officials and unscrupulous Danish merchants
twisted the trade monopoly into something that was both painful and oppressive
for the Icelanders, but in the first decades of its 186-year history, the Danish
trade monopoly acted as a ‘safety net’ that ensured survivable living conditions
for the most impoverished elements of Icelandic society. In another way—in the
payment of extraordinary taxes—Iceland held a favoured position within the
Oldenburg state. Only twice during the period of the consensual monarchy, in
1625 and 1638, did Copenhagen ask the Alþing to pay extraordinary taxes, and
the Alþing agreed to do so only in 1638. It stubbornly refused to pay the 1625
levy, citing widespread poverty, and the Danish crown did not pursue the matter
further. When its tax burden is compared with that imposed on Denmark and
Norway during this same period, Iceland was indeed fortunate.¹⁶
The nature of local government, in Denmark and in the outlying lands, says
much about the character of the Oldenburg conglomerate state. The practice
of local rule was simply the central authority in microcosm, for the local
administrations mirrored the consensual nature of the monarchy. In Denmark,
where the unprivileged masses probably had the least freedom of any of the
Oldenburg populations, the king and Council did not just hand down inflexible
edicts and expect them to be obeyed. Even in the absence of a regular national
Diet before 1627, the crown anticipated that key policy issues would have
to be negotiated. The commons did not have much say in matters that were
adjudged to be arcana imperii, such as decisions to go to war, and the crown
could be unapologetically dictatorial in the enforcement of moral and social
discipline. But in those affairs of state that touched most directly on the physical
well-being of its subjects, the crown was often eager to hear popular opinion.
That eagerness varied directly with the social station of that segment of the
population in question—the crown tended, naturally, to be more responsive to
noble protests than to the grievances of the peasantry—but nonetheless the king
and his Council were solicitous of popular sentiment. In the peripheral lands,
the central government was even more sensitive to traditional liberties, and the
opportunities for negotiating policy were accordingly greater. The Reformation
may have substantially expanded the powers of the central authority, but in no
way did it give rise to the kind of power-hungry, impersonal, and unyielding
juggernaut that is often associated with the seventeenth-century state. This,
probably more than any other single factor, explains the near absence of rebellion
or significant social upheaval in pre-absolutist Denmark.
¹⁶ Jón J. Aðils, Den danske Monopolhandel på Island 1602–1787, trans. Friðrik Ásmundsson
Brekkan (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1926–7), 71–122, 277–658; Árni Daníel Júlíusson, ‘Peasant
Unrest in Iceland’, in Kimmo Katajala (ed.), Northern Revolts: Medieval and Early Modern Peasant
Unrest in the Nordic Countries (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2004), 138–9.
11
War and Absolutism, 1648–1660
The scene at Christian IV’s deathbed at Rosenborg in February 1648 provides
a telling contrast with the events surrounding the death of his father sixty
years before, and reveals something of the problems facing the new regime.
When Frederik II died in 1588, he passed peacefully, surrounded by family
and friends, undefeated except by the cancer that claimed his life. Christian
IV’s legacy was more uncertain and far less comforting. He was genuinely
mourned by the common people, but he had few real friends or close family members. He had outlived three of his four legitimate sons, including
his heir apparent, for despite his surrender to the Council he had not yet
secured the election of Duke Frederik as prince. Christian IV died a weary,
troubled, and defeated man, who had had the misfortune to be present as
Denmark slid into international mediocrity. He did not, unlike his father, leave
behind him a kingdom that was stronger or wealthier than the one he had
inherited.
1 . T H E A R I S TO C R AT I C R E AC T I O N
The transfer of power from Christian to Duke Frederik went smoothly but
not cordially. Frederik was not technically guaranteed the throne, but there
were few alternatives. His eldest brother, also named Frederik, had died as an
infant in 1599; Prince Christian expired in 1647, and his youngest full brother,
Duke Ulrik, had been assassinated in 1633 while serving as an aide to the
Imperial general Wallenstein. His one remaining half-brother from his father’s
extramarital liaisons was illegitimate and hence ineligible. The only possible
contenders apart from Frederik were the children of Kirsten Munk. The Council
had hurriedly declared Munk’s children to be legitimate, presumably in order to
make sure that there would be an heir in the event that Frederik might die before
his election, but there was little danger that any of the Munk daughters or the
single Munk son (Valdemar Christian, 1622–56) would claim the throne. Duke
Frederik was the natural choice. The interregnum lasted a little more than two
months. Duke Frederik, now King Frederik III (reigned 1648–70), signed his
coronation charter on 7 May, formally received homage in July and August, and
was crowned at the Church of Our Lady on 23 November 1648.
War and Absolutism
227
Frederik III is perhaps the most inscrutable and enigmatic of the Oldenburg
rulers. Christian III and Frederik II were both very simple and straightforward
men; Christian IV, while emotionally complex, wore his heart on his sleeve.
Frederik III, on the other hand, was guarded in his thoughts and actions, rarely
revealing in speech or in writing the innermost workings of his mind. For this
reason, Danish historians have expended little ink on him. As he was the king
who brought absolute monarchy to the Oldenburg state, he clearly ranks among
the most important of Denmark’s rulers, but his taciturn nature and personal
reserve make his character defy easy analysis. It is certain, however, that he was
highly intelligent, refined, and possessed of a self-control that both his father
and his elder brother lacked. His actions, as duke and as king, reveal him to
have been cunning, occasionally vindictive, and Machiavellian. It could even be
said, given the constraints imposed upon him at his coronation, that he was the
most successful politician of the Oldenburg line. Frederik II had been skilled
at manipulating consensual monarchy to his own ends; Christian IV proved
incapable, in the long run, of either manipulating the existing system or altering
it. Frederik III, on the other hand, manipulated the traditional governmental
form, crushed it, and then created another to take its place.
There was nothing exceptional about Frederik III’s formal education, but the
young duke received an extensive informal schooling in politics from an early age.
In 1621, at the age of 12, he became coadjutor in the bishopric of Bremen; within
three years he could also claim the titles of coadjutor in Halberstadt and bishopadministrator of Verden. At the age of 18, he served as president of the king’s
Council of War at Stade (1627) and as military commander of the Lower Saxon
Circle in his father’s absence. Duke Frederik again became immersed in German
politics after Lübeck, serving as bishop-administrator of Bremen and Verden from
1634 to 1644. During the Torstensson War he had held important field commands. The experience left its mark on the man. His knowledge of German politics was perhaps more finely honed than his father’s or his grandfather’s, but above
all else Frederik was German. It was not Christian IV’s intention to raise a successor who was not Danish in character; it was simply that before 1647 it had never
occurred to him that he would be succeeded by anyone other than the prince-elect,
and Frederik’s main utility was within the framework of Christian IV’s German
policies. This did not bode well for the future of council-constitutionalism in the
Oldenburg state. Frederik was not mentored by the Council of State as his father
had been, and hence he had no instinctive loyalty to aristocratic rule. He was also
a serious and calculating man who did not share the vices and weaknesses of his
predecessors. Foreign observers noted that, even in his early twenties, Frederik
was possessed of a grave demeanour, and was not given to the womanizing and
heavy drinking that were usually ascribed to the Oldenburgs.¹
¹ Ståle Dyrvik, Truede tvillingriker 1648–1720, Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, 3 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1998), 17–22.
228
The Age of Christian IV
The character of the regime, even at its beginning, reflected something of
the character of the king. Heretofore, political faction was all but unknown
in Danish political life, at least in the form in which it was conventionally
encountered in European courts. Christian IV had his opponents and his
supporters in the conciliar ranks, but the important relationship of the reign
was that between the king and the Council as a group. Under Frederik III,
the Council was riven by faction, and this situation was further complicated
by the increasingly independent power of prominent administrators such as
Corfitz Ulfeldt and Hannibal Sehested. Here, too, was to be found infighting
and intrigue such as had never before surfaced in Danish politics. Significantly,
not all of this activity centred on the king himself. Frederik’s consort, Sophie
Amalie of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, played a more visible role in politics than
had any woman since Mor Sigbrit. The queen’s unrelenting hatred for Leonora
Christina—and by extension for Corfitz Ulfeldt—was legendary. Frederik was
by no means, however, a puppet of his aristocracy. Even if he practised politics
in a subtle and deceptively passive way, he was master of his household and his
realm from the beginning of the reign. His lack of commitment to aristocratic
constitutionalism was amplified by his personal resentment towards the Council
for the manner in which it had treated his father. But Frederik’s character was
such that he could bide his time to seek retribution.²
Before Frederik III could act as king, he would have to affix his name to
a coronation charter. Understandably, neither the Council nor the nobility at
large wanted affairs of state to continue as they had under Christian IV. To
many members of the Council, Christian’s foreign policies were responsible for
Denmark’s waning fortunes; the surest way to preclude a repetition of them would
be by reducing the prerogative powers of the monarch. The councillors, however,
would not draft the charter by themselves. It is an important measure of the
new-found influence of the Diet that this body also took part in the deliberations.
As in 1638 and 1645, the noble estate, led by the regional commissars, railed
against the growth of state power at their expense: against the Council, in other
words, as much as against the king.
But it was royal power, more than that of the Council, that suffered the greatest
loss in 1648, and Frederik III’s coronation charter was accordingly the most
restrictive ever handed down to a Danish sovereign. The charter incorporated
some of the key provisions demanded by the Copenhagen Diet of 1645, including
those regarding the election of new councillors, but it also gave sweeping new
powers to the Council. The king could not make war or peace, enter into foreign
alliances, assess new or heavier customs duties, extend or rescind commercial
privileges, or even re-value the coinage without the express consent of the
Council. There was no ‘resistance clause’ per se, but the charter—drawing on
antecedents from the previous century—did authorize the Council to caution
² GDH 3, 70–5.
War and Absolutism
229
the king when he violated the charter, and allowed the Council to act without the
king if he failed to mend his ways. Several important parts of the royal prerogative
were thus taken away. The king would be little more than a chief executive.³
Fortunately for Frederik III, the central administration was not quite so
solidly anti-royal as the coronation charter implied. Though one cannot speak
of ‘parties’ as such within the Council, there were clearly several factions with
conflicting agendas. Frederik, in a way, was a faction to himself. He did not
establish strong ties with anyone on the Council, quietly confiding in a small
group of German advisers who had been in his service before 1648. There was
a handful of avowed monarchists within the Council, men heavily influenced
by political trends in France, Sweden, and the German states. Of course, the
majority of those in the Council, most of them legacies from the previous reign,
were more traditional oligarchists, those who had opposed Christian IV’s policies
but were not necessarily opposed to a strong monarchy in principle. The most
vocal group in the central administration was the remnant of the ‘sons-in-law’,
the men whom Christian IV had hoped to fashion into a loyal clientele. From
the perspective of the older councillors and the king, this group was the most
dangerous, as the men shared little except a tendency to seek power without
regard for the Council. Most of the five leading ‘in-laws’ were bereft of talent
beyond a knack for self-preservation, but two were formidable politicians: Ulfeldt
and Sehested. If there was anything that bound Frederik III to his aristocracy, it
was a general dislike of the Ulfeldt–Sehested faction.
Frederik capitalized on this dislike. One by one he reduced the ‘in-laws’ to
political impotence. It was not a difficult task, as each member of the group
conveniently provided the king with justification for punishment. Christian von
Pentz, royal commander at Glückstadt, was the first to fall; upon the death of
Christian IV, he had the garrison at Glückstadt swear allegiance to himself rather
than to Duke Frederik. Frederik used the incident as an excuse to remove him
from office later that year. Councillor Hans Lindenov and the fiefholder Ebbe
Ulfeldt followed Pentz into disgrace in rapid succession.
These, however, were the lesser members of the faction. Far more dangerous
was Ulfeldt, who as rigshofmester since 1643 was arguably the most powerful
man at court when Christian IV died. There was no love lost between him and
Frederik III. Ulfeldt’s may have been the guiding hand drafting the coronation
charter of 1648, and Ulfeldt made no effort to disguise his contempt for the
new king. This was a serious miscalculation, for while Christian IV had been
indulgent of his behaviour, Frederik III was not. With the consent of the
Council, Frederik gradually stripped away Ulfeldt’s authority as rigshofmester.
³ Leon Jespersen and Asger Svane-Knudsen, Stænder og magtstat: de politiske brydninger i 1648
og 1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1989), 9–76; Leon Jespersen and Christian Larsen (eds.),
Som jeg har ment mit fædreland det vel . . . Rigsråd Christen Skeels politiske optegnelser 1649–1659
(Copenhagen: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 2004), 14–19.
230
The Age of Christian IV
Late in 1649, Frederik was alerted to rumours—perpetrated by Ulfeldt’s alleged
lover, one Dina Vinhofvers—that the rigshofmester and his wife intended to
poison the king. Vinhofvers then informed Ulfeldt that Frederik intended to
order the murder of Ulfeldt’s entire family. Ulfeldt threw himself on Frederik’s
mercy. Frederik craftily pardoned him and had Vinhofvers executed for perjury,
but two days later he asked the Council to audit Ulfeldt’s government accounts.
Knowing his fate was sealed, Ulfeldt fled to the Netherlands with Leonora
Christina in tow. When, in 1652, the disgraced rigshofmester moved to Sweden
and entered the service of Queen Christina, Frederik and the Council declared
him to be a traitor and confiscated his property.⁴
Sehested fell from power and grace almost simultaneously with Ulfeldt. Frederik III had nothing personal against Sehested. As governor of Norway, Sehested
had been an efficient royal servant, and moreover he was an advocate of strong
royal authority. The senior members of the Council, however, resented him.
The governor’s tight control over Norwegian finances was a boon to Norway
and the local administration there, but it reduced substantially the flow of cash
and resources from Akershus to Copenhagen. Unfortunately, Sehested was also
somewhat venal, and though this was hardly an unusual vice for a civil servant
in seventeenth-century Europe, the Council was eager to find evidence of misconduct. Frederik protected him as much as he could, but after 1649 he found it
politic to let the Council pursue its vendetta. A conciliar investigation of Sehested’s accounts in 1650–1 revealed misappropriations and suspicious transactions.
The governor caved in, confessing his errors and offering to remunerate the
crown for lost revenues, but the Council was not satisfied. Without further ado,
the Council dismissed Sehested and confiscated nearly all of his properties. Small
wonder, then, that Ulfeldt gave up so easily. He saw the writing on the wall.
The power struggle between the king and the ‘in-law’ faction was over by 1652.
It served two political purposes, both important: first, it removed a potentially
volatile group from the central administration; second, it united Frederik and his
conciliar aristocracy against a common foe. The attack on the Ulfeldt–Sehested
faction defused the tension that was evident at the time of Frederik’s coronation.
Perhaps the tranquillity of Danish domestic politics between 1652 and 1657
was superficial, a veneer of solidarity, but it was far preferable to the outright
confrontational nature of Christian IV’s last decade in office.
2 . T H E BU R E AU C R AT I C S TAT E
Despite the contentious relationship between king and Council that had prevailed
in 1648, the common effort to disenfranchise the Ulfeldt–Sehested faction had
⁴ Steffen Heiberg, Enhjørningen Corfitz Ulfeldt (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1993), 29–136; GDH
3, 75–8; J. A. Fridericia, Adelsvældens sidste Dage (Copenhagen: P. G. Philipsen, 1894), 116–65;
Dyrvik, Truede tvillingriker, 39–44.
War and Absolutism
231
taught the two to work together without rancour. For the remainder of the
decade, the king and the Council seem to have gone out of their way to avoid
provoking one another. Although neither would initiate any major reforms
during the course of the 1650s, the decade still marks the culmination of longterm trends in the organization of the central authority. By the 1620s, it had
become apparent that the king could no longer ‘live of his own’, that domain
incomes were not sufficient to meet the needs of a growing state in a new century.
Nor could the bureaucracy keep up with the increasing workload that confronted
it. The volume of routine paperwork processed by the central administration
had grown almost exponentially in the first half of the seventeenth century.
In the year 1597, the Danish Chancery produced a total of 713 ekspeditioner
(pieces of outgoing correspondence); fifty years later, that number increased to
1,694 ekspeditioner in a single year. There had been, in Denmark as elsewhere in
Europe, a revolution in the business of government, a revolution that medieval
bureaucracies were ill-equipped to handle. The kind of kingship practised by
Frederik II and a small travelling chancery was no longer feasible by the 1650s.
The tremendous load of paperwork required a more sedentary king and a greatly
enlarged bureaucratic structure. The size of the Oldenburg bureaucracy swelled
in response.⁵
The expansion of existing institutions would not suffice, however. It was not
just that the quantity of paperwork streaming into and out of the Chancery
offices was increasing, but that the scope of the administrative duties of the central
authority was changing. By the 1640s and 1650s, the natural trend was towards
specialization as well as professionalization. Before the Toll Ordinance of 1632,
for example, fiefholders were responsible for the collection of customs duties
in their fiefs. The Toll Ordinance took this duty away from the fiefholders,
and entrusted it instead to professional toll administrators; the post of General
Customs Officer (Generaltoldforvalter) was created for Norway in 1649 and
for Denmark two years later. Hannibal Sehested established a postal system
for Norway in 1647, and the Danish postal system was reinvigorated with the
appointment of a Postmaster General. In most of these cases, the appointees to
the new offices were burghers, some of them foreign-born, and nearly all were
men with business experience.
The most important development in the Oldenburg administration was the
gradual implementation of a ‘collegial’ system. Sweden had already pioneered
this bureaucratic innovation a decade earlier. Axel Oxenstierna’s ‘Form of
Government’ of 1634 divided the Swedish administration into several ‘colleges’,
each with a specific area of competence: a War College, a Mining College, a
College of Commerce, and so forth. Members of the Council of State would
preside over each college, assisted by men who were experts in their respective
fields, noble and non-noble alike. This complemented the creation of college-like
⁵ DFH, i. 127–34.
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The Age of Christian IV
organizations in the reign of Gustav II Adolf, including the High Court and the
Chancery. In Denmark, the process was more ad hoc and was not the result of a
single administrative reorganization. Whether the move towards collegial reform
in the Oldenburg state was inspired by the success of the Swedish model, or was
just a logical response to the growing complexity of governance, is impossible
to determine. Yet it happened all the same, first in the peripheral lands and
then in Denmark itself. As governor in Norway, Hannibal Sehested established
a General Commissariat in 1646, to aid in the collection of taxes and fief
revenues; in 1648, Frederik III (then Duke Frederik) put the administration of
the Duchies—previously managed by the governor—into the hands of a new
Regeringskancelli.
Overall, the Council of State distrusted these institutions, viewing them as a
means by which the king could pursue his own policies in the outlying lands
without conciliar supervision. Yet soon the press of routine business forced the
Council to take steps towards the creation of a rudimentary collegial system for
the entire kingdom. Ironically, the members of the Council brought this on
themselves: Frederik III’s coronation charter gave more demanding duties to the
Council, but few councillors had the means or will to remain in Copenhagen
year-round. The solution to this dilemma, implemented in August 1655, was
simple: the creation of a permanent Council Committee, a secretariat whose
four members—each of them councillors—would meet daily throughout the
year with the chancellor and the rigshofmester. This in itself was a quasi-collegial
body, for outside its meetings the committee members divided the workload
by area of competence. Other measures followed as necessity dictated. In 1655,
Frederik recommended the establishment of an Admiralty College to handle the
complex task of supervising the fleet. The Council, at first, was suspicious of
his motives, but it made the Admiralty its own by stipulating that all of the
Admiralty’s paperwork be channelled through the Danish Chancery. Likewise,
the difficulties of overseeing the war effort during the conflict with Sweden in
1657–60 inspired the founding of a War College in 1658.
The Council did not adopt a full-fledged collegial organization during the few
years that were left to it. Still, there was some talk of doing so. Councillor Gunde
Rosenkrantz proposed, in 1658, an all-encompassing collegial system, very similar to—and probably inspired by—Oxenstierna’s 1634 ‘Form of Government’.
The proposal differed significantly in spirit from Oxenstierna’s plan. While the
Swedish system reserved important posts for noblemen, it emphasized professional competence over birth and allowed for the employment of non-noble experts
in each college. It was, in other words, an embryonic meritocracy. Rosenkrantz’s
proposal also aimed at greater efficiency and professional competence, but at
the same time it contained a clearly delineated constitutional agenda: it sought
to cap royal authority and exclude the participation of non-nobles. As Leon
Jespersen has demonstrated in his analysis of the Rosenkrantz memorandum, the
proposal institutionalized many of the restrictions set forth in the 1648 charter,
War and Absolutism
233
making it easier for the Council to exert its authority in those areas—like foreign
policy—that had previously been part of the royal prerogative. It also restricted
all of the important posts to native-born Danish noblemen. The Rosenkrantz
plan, in short, was an attempt to perpetuate aristocratic rule by keeping royal and
non-noble input to a minimum. Ultimately it mattered little, for shortly after
Rosenkrantz made his suggestions the Council would exist no more.⁶
3. THE SWEDISH CALAMITY
Frederik III and his Council did not share a common vision where it came
to matters of foreign policy. Like Christian IV, Frederik was drawn towards
Germany, a predilection that was shaped by his youthful immersion in Imperial
politics and encouraged by his German advisers. He longed to reclaim his lost
possessions in Bremen and Verden. The Council, on the other hand, had cast
its eyes westward. The events of 1630–48 had convinced most councillors that
relations with England and the Dutch Republic were far more important to
Denmark’s future. The idea had much merit, but keeping on good terms with
the Dutch and the English was easier said than done. A rapprochement with
either power would necessarily involve reductions in the Sound Dues and other
tolls, such as the timber duties in Norway, but as England and the Republic
were Denmark’s best customers this could seriously diminish customs revenues.
The diplomatic benefits of English and Dutch alliances, however, were deemed
sufficient to compensate for any loss of revenue.
Frederik III did not object to this new direction in foreign policy—as in
domestic policy, he deliberately avoided confrontation with the Council—and
soon it paid off. He signed a closer mutual defence pact with the Dutch (Treaty
of The Hague, September 1649), which granted Dutch merchants unrestricted
passage through the Sound in return for an annual licence fee. The alliance was
short-lived; the States General found it to be unprofitable, and Denmark’s brief
and insignificant involvement on the side of the Dutch in the Anglo-Dutch
naval war of 1652–4 was uncomfortable for the Danes and unhelpful for the
Republic. The States General decided to abrogate the partnership, on friendly
terms, in September 1653. Fortunately, it was not difficult to patch up relations
with England after the brief intervention in the Anglo-Dutch War. Oliver
Cromwell had an abiding interest in furthering English commercial interests in
the Baltic and hence was receptive to Danish diplomatic advances. In the Treaty
⁶ Leon Jespersen, ‘The Constitutional and Administrative Situation’, in Leon Jespersen (ed.), A
Revolution from Above? The Power State of 16th and 17th Century Scandinavia (Odense: Universitets
forlag, 2000), 169–73; Leon Jespersen (ed.), At skikke sig efter tiden er den største klogskab . . . to
betænkninger fra 1658–1660 (Copenhagen: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie,
2004), 32–55.
234
The Age of Christian IV
of Westminster (September 1654), England and Denmark guaranteed free trade
between the realms. Though good standing with England and the Netherlands
had come at a considerable cost in lost tolls, at least Denmark had broken the
diplomatic isolation of the 1630s.⁷
It was none too soon, for in the east trouble was brewing. In June 1654, Queen
Christina of Sweden set aside her crown and abdicated in favour of her German
cousin, Karl Gustav, Count Palatine. This in itself was a disturbing portent for
Denmark. The new Swedish king, now Karl X Gustav, was bold and warlike; his
regime promised to be very different from that of the peaceful Christina. Worse
still, he was married to Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp. In Denmark the
match was seen as an insult: Hedwig Eleonora’s father, Duke Friedrich III of
Holstein-Gottorp, had been a terrible nuisance to Christian IV, and of course
the Gottorp house was a cadet line of the Oldenburg dynasty. The Swedish tie
with Gottorp was a direct territorial threat as well, since it gave the Swedes a
foothold in the Duchies. This was of special concern in 1654–5, as war loomed
on the horizon in the eastern Baltic. Russia had taken advantage of unrest in
the Ukraine to attack Poland in 1654, a development that Karl Gustav and his
advisers viewed as a major security crisis for Sweden. By the spring of 1655,
the Swedish crown had made the decision to ally with Russia and attack weaker
Poland, hoping thereby to shield itself from a Russian onslaught in the future.
The conflict in Poland did not involve Denmark directly, nor did it mean
that a Swedish attack on Denmark was in the offing. On the contrary: Karl
X Gustav hoped to enlist Danish support, and to this end he offered Frederik
III an alliance in June 1655. Frederik and the Council rejected the offer—the
bitter taste of Brömsebro still lingered on their palates—but this did not stop
the Swede. In July he sent his armies into Royal (Polish) Prussia. The pace of the
Swedish invasion was breathtaking. By the year’s end, not only Prussia but much
of Poland, including both Warsaw and Krakow, were in Swedish hands, and
Polish armies seemed to dissolve before the Swedish advance. Popular resistance
to the invaders in Poland helped to halt the Swedes, but most impressive was
the response of the major European powers. Outside Stockholm, Karl Gustav’s
invasion was seen as an act of overt aggression, made unacceptable by Sweden’s
status as a guarantor of the Westphalian peace. The Holy Roman Emperor,
Ferdinand III, prepared for war in defence of Poland. By the spring of 1656,
even the Russians had deserted their Swedish allies and sided with the Poles.⁸
There was great international pressure on Denmark to take sides. The Danish
government did not have the luxury of keeping a low profile. Though its greatest
⁷ DNT, iv. 626–35, v. 134–52; Heiberg, Enhjørningen, 60–76; Fridericia, Adelsvældens sidste
Dage, 203–17; Yngve Lorents, Efter Brömsebrofreden: Svenska och danska förbindelser med Frankrike
och Holland 1646–1649 (Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1916).
⁸ Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721
(London: Longman, 2000) 164–9; Åke Lindqvist, Politiska förbindelser mellan Sverige och Danmark
1648–1655 (Lund: Håkan Ohlsson, 1944); Fridericia, Adelsvældens sidste Dage, 207–61.
War and Absolutism
235
days as a military power were well behind it by 1656, Denmark still controlled the
Sound and hence it was still considered a significant potential ally (or enemy) by
any state that had an interest in Baltic affairs. No one in the Council sympathized
with Sweden, but actually going to war with Sweden so soon after the calamity of
the Torstensson War was an intimidating proposition. Frederik III was eager to
seek vengeance, and viewed Karl Gustav’s actions in Poland as a possible prelude
to an attack on Denmark. The Council was much less taken with the prospect of
hostilities—‘If we begin something and have no money, then it is a lost cause’,
noted Christen Skeel in his personal diary—but it was willing to agree to war
provided that Denmark had guarantees of substantial foreign aid. The question
was finally referred to a meeting of the Diet at Odense in February 1657, where
the idea of declaring war on Sweden found widespread popular support. The
Council gave its formal approval for war to the king on 22 April 1657.⁹
Frederik III did not act right away. He chose to wait for a more favourable
confluence of events, which came in late May. The new emperor, Leopold I,
honoured Ferdinand III’s promises of aid to Poland with the dispatch of a
massive army to the north. This signalled to Frederik III that the time had come
to take action. On 1 June 1657, the king’s heralds announced the declaration of
war in Stockholm.
Danish strategy aimed to recover those lands lost in 1645. A southern
army would attack Bremen and Verden, forces in Båhuslen and Skåne would
converge on Swedish-occupied Halland, and a Norwegian army would reconquer
Jämtland and Härjedalen. With Karl Gustav’s troops bogged down in the east, it
was reasoned, the Swedes would not be able to respond in force. It seemed simple
enough on paper, but in reality it proved to be a costly miscalculation. Denmark
still had an excellent navy, but the permanent army left much to be desired.
A defence ordinance of 1652, authored by Marshal Anders Bille, provided for
a conscript army of 10,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry; in Norway, where a
conscript army had first been established in 1628, about 9,000 infantry and
1,000 cavalry were to be mustered. This entire force could not be mustered in
time for the declaration of war in 1657, and so the crown had to resort to the old
expedient of raising mercenary troops to bring the army up to a respectable level.
Frederik’s government had undertaken a revamping of the fortification system as
well, but the project was not yet complete when war was declared. In the words
of Anders Bille himself, ‘the land defences are poor and insignificant.’¹⁰
The Swedish campaign in Poland had taken a serious turn for the worse by
late summer 1657. The Polish national uprising buoyed King Jan Kazimierz’s
⁹ E. Ladewig Petersen, ‘Omkring stændermødet i Odense i februar 1657: en spionrapports
vidneværdi’, Fynske Årbøger (1974), 14–36; Fridericia, Adelsvældens sidste Dage, 239–61; Jespersen
and Larsen (eds.), Som jeg har ment mit fædreland det vel, 159.
¹⁰ Dyrvik, Truede tvillingriker, 58–9; Knud J. V. Jespersen and Ole Feldbæk, Revanche og
neutralitet, 1648–1814, Dansk udenrigspolitiks historie, 2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2002), 52–4;
Gunner Lind, Hæren og magten i Danmark 1614–1662 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1994), 83–97.
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efforts to reclaim Poland; Russian and Imperial forces pressed on the Swedes,
and in September 1657 Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg (the ‘Great Elector’)—Sweden’s only remaining ally—switched his allegiance to Poland. Even
before the defection of Brandenburg, Karl Gustav was withdrawing his armies
from the Polish theatre. When Danish forces overran Bremen on 16 June 1657,
the Swedish king was already prepared to move west. By the end of July, a
Swedish expeditionary force of 13,000 men reached Holstein after a forced
march from its base in West Prussia. The Danish forces, though much improved
since the Torstensson War, put up a pitiful defence. The Swedish army swept
through the Duchies and much of southern Jutland by early September. The
brand-new fortress of Frederiksodde, near modern-day Fredericia, capitulated on
24 October after a siege of two months.¹¹
Denmark had suffered a terrible and unexpected blow, but so far it was not
quite so devastating as the opening stages of the Torstensson War had been.
The Danish fleet still controlled the western Baltic, keeping much of Sweden’s
navy bottled up in Wismar. Without naval supremacy, Karl Gustav could not
assault the main Danish islands or even transfer his troops from the Polish
theatre to Halland. The Danish assault on Halland had not gone very well by
autumn 1657, but in Jämtland and Härjedalen the Norwegian army had made
great progress, taking the Swedish fortifications at Frøsø on 18 November. The
contested Norwegian provinces were under Danish control by the end of the
year. Meanwhile, Karl Gustav’s force in Jutland remained inert at Frederiksodde,
unable to move without naval support.
But fortune, or rather nature, did not favour the Danes. The Danish winter
of 1657–8 was perhaps the harshest one on record. For the first time in anyone’s
memory, both of the Belts, the Lesser and the Greater, froze over. This prevented
the Danes from using their fleet to protect the islands; worse still, it allowed
the Swedes simply to walk across the Belts without naval support of their own.
On 30 January 1658, Karl Gustav led his troops across the frozen Lesser Belt
to Fyn, which was completely unprepared for a direct assault and fell within
days. Less than two weeks later, disregarding the admonitions of his generals,
he and his army marched across the untested ice of the Greater Belt from Fyn
to Langeland and thence to the islands of Lolland and Falster, finally arriving
on Sjælland on 11 February. When Swedish troops gathered at Vordingborg,
Frederik III had no choice but to submit. Eight days after arranging an armistice,
Danish negotiators put their signatures on a peace settlement forced upon them
by a Swedish delegation at Roskilde, on 26 February 1658. One member of
the Swedish delegation must have taken a great and perverse pleasure in the
event: Corfitz Ulfeldt, now a diplomat in Karl Gustav’s service, had finally
come home.
¹¹ On the operational details of the Karl Gustav Wars, see Jespersen and Feldbæk, Revanche og
neutralitet, 60–72; Fridericia, Adelsvældens sidste Dage, 265–476.
War and Absolutism
237
For Denmark, the Roskilde Treaty was a nightmare, ‘the hardest day in
the history of Denmark-Norway’.¹² The initial Swedish demands were quite
harsh—they included the payment of 1,000,000 rigsdaler in reparations and the
surrender of Iceland and the Færø Islands—but even after they were moderated
during the course of the negotiations the conditions for peace were still brutal.
Denmark would lose those lands already under Swedish occupation—namely
Bremen, Verden, and Halland—plus Skåne, Blekinge, Jämtland, Härjedalen,
the Norwegian fiefs of Båhuslen and Trondheim, and the island of Bornholm.
Norway, in other words, would be bisected, and Sweden would get additional
outlets on the North Sea. The loss of all three Scanian provinces deprived
Denmark not only of some of its most fertile farmlands, but also of its control
over the Sound. Karl Gustav, however, wanted more than land; he wanted to
see Denmark humbled. The Danish crown would be obliged to help the Swedes
close the Sound to foreign fleets, provide Karl Gustav with two thousand troops,
and provision the Swedish occupation force until May 1658. As an additional
humiliation, Frederik III was to release the Gottorp dukes from their bonds of
fealty to the Oldenburg kings, and to restore Corfitz Ulfeldt’s confiscated estates.
The Roskilde settlement was an unimaginable shock to the Danish regime, but
even before the Council and the king had the chance to start blaming each other
for the disaster, Karl X Gustav struck again. In part, this was because he did not
trust Denmark even after its defeat. This was wholly in keeping with the direction
of Swedish empire-building and security policy in the seventeenth century. The
almost paranoid character of Swedish foreign policy convinced even statesmen
as rational and calculating as Oxenstierna and Karl Gustav that Denmark would
cease to be a threat only if it ceased to exist. Denmark was Sweden’s Carthage,
and Karl Gustav its Scipio. And the Danish regime, for its part, had not been
overly eager to fulfil all terms of the Roskilde treaty. More important than these
factors, however, was the fiscal and military dilemma that Sweden faced in the
summer of 1658. Karl Gustav could not return to Poland, where his enemies
held an overwhelming advantage. On the other hand, he recognized that Sweden
could not demobilize. It needed to maintain a large army for its own protection,
but was in no condition to sustain a battle-ready army within its own territories.
The easiest solution was to send the army back to Denmark, where it could
provision itself at Danish expense while humiliating Denmark even more.
The renewed Swedish assault on Denmark, which commenced at the beginning
of August 1658, took all of Europe by surprise, including Denmark. If Danish
forces had been unprepared for a Swedish counter-attack in 1657, they were
doubly so now. On 8 August, Karl Gustav’s army landed at Korsør, in western
Sjælland, after a two-day sea voyage from Kiel. Helsingør and Kronborg Castle
capitulated within weeks, and in the meantime the Swedes invested Copenhagen
itself.
¹² Dyrvik, Truede tvillingriker, 60.
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This time Karl Gustav had gone too far. The Roskilde Treaty marked
the point at which Sweden was regarded throughout Europe as a dangerous
renegade. In Denmark and Norway the resistance to this aggression was fierce.
Little remained of the national army, and as in 1644 much of the aristocratic
leadership had fled from the scene of the fighting, but the ferocity of popular
resistance more than made up for this. A Norwegian uprising succeeded in
reconquering Trondheim by the end of 1658; peasants and burghers on Bornholm
murdered the Swedish commander there, forced the surrender of the garrison,
and proclaimed the restoration of Danish rule. In the countryside of Skåne
and Sjælland, motley improvised peasant armies—the snaphaner —conducted
guerrilla operations under the inspired leadership of Lorenz Tuxen and Svend
Poulsen, the latter of whom would gain undying fame in Danish folklore
as ‘Gøngehøvdingen’. The decisive response, however, came from abroad. A
united Imperial–Polish–Brandenburg army pushed into Jutland from the south,
while a Dutch fleet muscled through light Swedish opposition in the Sound to
relieve beleaguered Copenhagen. In March 1659, Dutch, French, and English
delegations met at The Hague and resolved to end the war, by force if need be.
Even when faced with these overwhelmingly superior forces, Karl Gustav
refused to capitulate. Neither he nor Frederik III, initially, desired foreign
mediation, but after direct negotiations between the two kings failed Frederik
gladly accepted the assistance of the allies. As Karl Gustav endeavoured to
reconquer parts of Norway, Danish and allied forces liberated Fyn, smashing
a Swedish army at Nyborg on 14 November 1659. The Swedish king was
still not ready to give up, but his sudden death at Göteborg in February 1660
brought the hostilities to an abrupt end. The Swedish Council of State was
thoroughly alarmed at the turn the war had taken, not to mention the terrible
cost of the fighting, and was eager to make peace. After settling its scores with
Brandenburg, Poland, and the emperor in the Peace of Oliva (May 1660), the
Swedes negotiated a permanent settlement with Denmark at Copenhagen on
6 June. The Peace of Copenhagen, orchestrated by England, France, and the
Netherlands, was but a minor revision of the Roskilde treaty. Trondheim and
Bornholm were returned to Denmark, but the Swedish conquests of 1658—all
three of the Scanian provinces, plus Jämtland and Härjedalen—remained in
Swedish hands.
For the maritime powers of north-western Europe, the Copenhagen treaty
was a great victory. It rewarded neither Denmark nor Sweden, and by allowing
Sweden to keep the Scanian provinces it ensured that neither Denmark nor
Sweden would physically control the Sound. It did not mean that the Sound
Dues were a thing of the past, but it did deprive Denmark of its ability to use the
Sound as it pleased. For Sweden, the peace was, in Robert Frost’s words, a ‘lucky
escape’; though the war was disastrous to its finances, it actually managed to gain
substantial amounts of territory and to hobble its old Nordic rival permanently.
But for Denmark the treaty of Copenhagen had no silver lining. It was nothing
War and Absolutism
239
short of a national calamity, entailing the second-greatest loss of territory the
kingdom would experience in its entire history. The Sound, the chief source of
Denmark’s pride, power, and wealth, was no longer Denmark’s.
As with any disaster of this magnitude, historians find it tempting to seek out
scapegoats to bear the burden of blame. Earlier Danish historians, notably J. A.
Fridericia, assigned full responsibility to the king himself. Recent historians have
either absolved the king, claiming that the conflict with Sweden was inevitable,
or have held the Council equally responsible for the act. All of these arguments
have much substance. Certainly it was the king who pushed for a declaration of
war, but he did not act against the will of the Council. And the Danish Diet, by
lending its hearty approval to the decision for war, must also share the complicity.
Perhaps the most devastating criticism that can be levelled at the Council is that
it did not prepare adequately for defence. In the end, though, the search for a
target of blame is a fruitless exercise. King and Council share equal responsibility
at least for the timing of the call to arms, for although the Council neglected the
armed forces the king was fully aware of Denmark’s military limitations. Both
parties, and the Diet too, were driven to rash action by a thirst for vengeance.
War against Sweden was not inevitable in 1657, but it is impossible to state
unconditionally that Denmark could have remained neutral throughout Karl X
Gustav’s short reign. The Swedish king demonstrated again and again that he
was both aggressive and unpredictable; Swedish noble and popular opinion was
stridently anti-Danish; and there is no telling if the Swedes would have attacked
Denmark even if Frederik III had not provoked them.
It is also unfair to claim that the Danish regime should have known better
than to attack Sweden outright. There was every indication in the summer of
1657 that Karl Gustav had been beaten—and trapped—in Poland. At sea, the
Danish fleet still held a slight edge over the Swedish, so Denmark had at least
a reasonable chance of conducting a successful defence after the invasion of
Jutland. The enormity of the Danish defeat must be linked to serendipity, to a
single improbable and even freakish act of nature: the freezing of the Belts in the
terrible winter of 1657–8. There were many things over which the king and the
Council could have exercised more judicious control, but the weather was not
one of them. Were it not for the ice bridge that connected Jutland to the islands,
it is unlikely that the Swedes could have achieved anything more than they had
in the Torstensson War. Indeed, they might not have been able to gain as much.
The international reaction to Swedish aggression in 1657–60 was much sharper
than it had been in the 1640s, and international sympathy for Denmark much
greater.¹³
Foreign intervention was a two-edged sword. The maritime powers may have
displayed some consideration for Denmark when they met at The Hague in
¹³ GDH, iii. 149–50; Fridericia, Adelsvældens sidste Dage, 476–91; Dyrvik, Truede tvillingriker,
66–9.
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1659, but only because it made good strategic sense to back the loser. England
and the Netherlands were not so much interested in defending Denmark as they
were in protecting their commercial interests in the Baltic. The Danish–Swedish
war presented these states with the opportunity to ensure that no one polity,
neither Denmark nor Sweden, could exercise a monopoly over Baltic shipping.
If there was any kind of ‘inevitability’ about the events of the late 1650s it
was this: that the interest of the Western maritime powers in liberating the
Baltic trade was so strong that Denmark’s stranglehold over the Sound would
inevitably be lost. Denmark would hold this geopolitical advantage only so
long as it had the strength to do so, or so long as the conflicts between
Protestant states and the Catholic bloc demanded confessional solidarity even
when such solidarity ran counter to the demands of commerce and dynasty. As
confessional affiliation diminished in importance in the conduct of international
affairs, Denmark’s identity as a Protestant power no longer bore much weight.
After 1645, Denmark did not have the ability to defend the Sound against all
challengers. In this regard, the true external agent of its loss in status, power, and
influence was not Sweden, but the irresistable might of England, the Netherlands,
and France.
4 . T H E B LO O D L E S S COUP D’ÉTAT, 1 6 6 0
As a result of the two ‘Karl Gustav Wars’, Denmark had suffered a terrible
loss: much of Norway, all of the Scanian provinces, control over the Sound,
and of course productive, obedient subjects. True, the populations of Skåne,
Blekinge, and Halland would remain steadfastly loyal to their Danish heritage
and legal traditions, not accepting the reality of Swedish rule until they were
forced to assimilate near the end of the century, but that was cold comfort
to the Danish crown. The wars were equally catastrophic for those lands that
remained in the Oldenburg orbit. The continual fighting around Trondheim,
on Sjælland and Fyn but especially in Jutland, had taken a horrible toll in lives
and livelihoods. Jutland suffered most. The Swedish invasion and occupation
of the peninsula—the second time in little more than ten years, and the third
foreign occupation in three decades—was hard enough to bear, but the incursion
of the Polish and German ‘liberators’ in 1659 occasioned the worst damage.
The Swedish invaders, no respecters of station, also swept clean several royal
residences of prized artworks, the cultural legacy of the previous two generations.
Koldinghus, Kronborg, and Frederiksborg were thoroughly plundered. Dozens
of examples of royal portraiture and sculpture were carted back to Sweden to
adorn the manor houses of prominent aristocrats and generals. Reminders of
Denmark’s past glories, including Frederik II’s fountain from Kronborg and
Christian IV’s Neptune fountain from Frederiksborg, found new homes in
War and Absolutism
241
Sweden as trophies of war. A more fitting symbol of Denmark’s decline could
scarcely be imagined.¹⁴
For the state, or rather the central authority, the costs of war were hardly
confined to a few dozen paintings and statues. The national debt at war’s end
has been calculated at some 5,000,000 rigsdaler. It was a colossal debt—about
three times the aggregate income of the realm in the year before the war. The
amount was, perhaps, not significantly larger than the debt incurred in the Lower
Saxon and Torstensson wars, but it was much worse in one significant way:
Denmark was in no condition to pay it off. It could not tap the Baltic trade as it
once was able to do, and it had lost domain revenues and taxpayers. And since
the demographic losses of the 1657–60 conflicts were more dire than those in
1627–9, it would be impossible to levy taxes at wartime levels. What remained
of Denmark’s population could not handle the burden.
Yet there was still profit to be found in defeat. The mercantile classes had
suffered as much as anyone else in occupied Denmark, but the material business
of war benefited them in the 1650s just as it had in the Lower Saxon and
Torstensson wars. Much of the crown’s debt was held by individual merchants,
like Henrik Müller, or by the great Copenhagen trading houses such as Marselis
and Berns. The primary beneficiary of Denmark’s defeat, however, was the king.
The war with Sweden was Frederik III’s finest hour. As a youth, Frederik had
showed himself to be a gifted military administrator and field commander, but
he was not a soldier-king as his father had been. During the Karl Gustav Wars,
he left the overall command of the army to Anders Bille and field command to
the experienced German soldiers Ernst Albrecht von Eberstein and Hans Schack.
Unintentionally, however, he became a military hero during the long siege of
Copenhagen. When the Swedes made landfall at Korsør at the beginning of the
second war, noblemen, councillors, and other elites fled as best they could, but
Frederik refused to desert his capital. ‘I will die in my nest’, he is alleged to
have said in response to the suggestion that he seek safety in flight. During the
siege, the king helped to man the parapets, fighting shoulder to shoulder with
the garrison and the Copenhagen militia and even leading several raids against
the Swedes outside the city walls. His grandfather and father may have had a
common touch, and traditionally the lower orders tended to look to the king as
protection against the landowning nobility. But by sharing with his subjects the
terrors and deprivations of a long siege, the ordinarily cold and aloof Frederik
endeared himself to the people of Copenhagen. It did not hurt his reputation
that, in a well-timed gesture of generosity, he granted extensive privileges to
Copenhagen and its burghers. Frederik III, if only for a while, was loved as few
sovereigns of his age were.
The war with Sweden was a catastrophe, but Frederik’s conduct at Copenhagen
ensured that it was also a triumph for the dynasty. Any part he may have played
¹⁴ Aksel Lassen, 1659: da landet blev øde (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1965).
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in causing the war was quickly forgotten. The flight of the great magnates,
though understandable, helped to reinforce the popular perception of the relative
virtues of king and aristocracy. The aristocracy—and by logical extension the
Council—were seen as timid, indecisive, and even cowardly, while the king
alone risked his life to protect his subjects and share their fate. This was the
very same notion that Christian IV had sought to popularize during and after
the Lower Saxon War. Because of the actions of Frederik III, the Karl Gustav
Wars served to confirm this line of thought. The dramatic rise in the king’s
popularity with the lower orders did not make a transition to absolute monarchy
inevitable—there is no causal link between the two things—but it did give him
a great deal of political capital to spend as he chose.
Frederik III had long held ambitions of increasing royal authority at the expense
of the aristocracy. His initial goal, however, was not so much the establishment
of absolute monarchy, as it is conventionally defined, as that of hereditary
monarchy. The two concepts are not the same. Hereditary monarchy merely
implied that royal authority could be passed down from parent to offspring, like
any inheritable property, hence bypassing the formality of an election by the
Council or the Diet. Such an arrangement would have constitutional advantages
for all orders, since it would minimize the chances of an unstable interregnum.
Even the Council appears to have recognized this fact over the years. The
elective principle, however, was the fundamental guarantee of aristocratic power.
Deprived of the certainty of succession, kings could be forced to behave well if
they wanted to preserve their dynastic interests; by maintaining the sanctity of
elections, the Council could set limits on the exercise of royal power through the
coronation charter, and would be within its rights to depose a king who failed
to honour those limits. Elections were a firm safeguard against royal tyranny
and an assurance of noble privilege. And though hereditary monarchy did not
automatically entail tyranny, it would deny to the aristocracy a means by which
tyranny could be prevented.¹⁵
The elective principle in the Oldenburg monarchy did not go unchallenged
over the years. In Denmark itself, the concept was well established by tradition and
by centuries of practice. Kings and councils alike asserted that Denmark was, and
always would be, a ‘free electoral realm’. In Norway the constitutional basis of the
practice was less certain. As stipulated in the 1536 charter, Norway was a Danish
dependency, and thus was obliged to recognize Denmark’s kings as its own.
Indirectly, then, it was an elective monarchy as well. Christian IV’s Norwegian
Law of 1604 stated this explicitly. Yet Norwegian elites acknowledged that in
the past, before the Kalmar Union, Norway had been a hereditary monarchy,
and some continued to pay homage to that tradition. In 1531, when Christian II
invaded Norway, Olav Engelbrechtsson and his confederates hailed Christian’s
¹⁵ C. O. Bøggild Andersen, Statsomvæltningen i 1660 (Copenhagen: Levin og Munksgaard,
1936), 16–23.
War and Absolutism
243
son Hans as hereditary king. When the Norwegian Diet gathered in 1648 to
offer its fealty to the newly elected Frederik III, the Danish chancellor, Christen
Thomesen Sehested, noted apologetically that the Council of State had not
sought the opinion of the Diet; the Norwegian chancellor, Jens Bjelke, replied
that this would have been unnecessary, since in Norway Frederik was already
acknowledged as ‘the true hereditary lord and king of the realm of Norway’. The
concept gained widespread circulation in Hannibal Sehested’s administration of
Norway—which was one of the many reasons that the Council so disliked the
governor.¹⁶
Although we know little of the reading habits of the educated elite in Denmark
and Norway, it seems likely—given the assimilation of European elite culture
in the Oldenburg state—that men of some learning would have been at least
familiar with the writings of Bodin and his adherents. Whatever the intellectual
context of the debate over hereditary monarchy, Frederik III was not shy of
embracing it. Well before he became king, Frederik had used the title ‘heir to
Norway’, just as Frederik I had done while he was yet a mere duke. Frederik
III continued to use the title publicly at the time of his election. At this point
it was simply a title, devoid of any political substance, but during the course of
the Karl Gustav Wars a number of events reinforced the king’s claims. In May
1658 he accepted hereditary rights to Slesvig for himself and his heirs; when
the people of Bornholm reclaimed their island for Denmark, they offered their
allegiance to the king personally and not to the crown. The war also strengthened
the king’s authority in practical terms. After the death of Marshal Anders Bille
in 1657, the transfer of army command to the newly established War College
put the direction of the war into the hands of Frederik and his German generals
Schack and Eberstein. Councillor Christen Skeel, ‘the watchdog of councilconstitutionalism’, protested Frederik’s reliance on ‘the foreigners’ as a violation
of the coronation charter, but the Council did not rally behind Skeel.
This confluence—the joining of an ideological justification for hereditary monarchy with the greatly augmented authority and popularity of the
king—would be of decisive importance when the Diet met at Copenhagen
Castle on 8 September 1660. When the king and Council summoned the estates
on 5 August, the purpose was to find a way to pay off Denmark’s monstrous
wartime debt and speed the recuperation of the realm. In terms of numbers
and composition, the meeting was conventional. About 100 noblemen were
present; the bishop-superintendents, plus a handful of middling clergy and academic personnel, represented the ecclesiastical estate; slightly in excess of sixty
prominent burghers, led by the two mayors of Copenhagen, made up the third
estate. Peasant representation was not invited. At the initial joint session in the
¹⁶ Helge Kongsrud, Den kongelige arveretten til Norge 1536–1660: idé og politisk instrument
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1984); Knud Fabricius, Kongeloven: Dens Tilblivelse og Plads i Samtidens
Natur-og Arveretlige Udvikling (Copenhagen: Hagerup, 1920), 117–52.
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castle’s great hall, the Council laid out its proposal to boost state income through
a ‘consumption’ tax. The individual estates then met separately to discuss the
Council’s proposal.
From the first day of the Copenhagen Diet, the third estate took the initiative.
On 17 September, the burghers drafted a series of truly radical proposals: that
the fiefs be dissolved and crown lands sold at auction, that crown officials be
paid fixed salaries, that all internal tolls and most import duties be abolished. In
addition, they demanded that they be given equal legal status with the nobility
and no longer be considered ‘unfree’, and on the peasants’ behalf they called
for an end to compulsory labour and villeinage. Finally, and most significantly,
the burghers desired a place in the fiscal administration, and stipulated that the
Diet be summoned to vote on all matters that touched on the ‘common good’.
After some revision, made necessary because of disputes between representatives
from Copenhagen and those from the lesser towns, the proposals were presented
to the king and the Council on 26 September. They were not well received, at
least not by the nobility and the Council. The assembled Diet could not agree
on anything but the immediate demobilization of the army, and the two higher
estates were unwilling to surrender any of their privileges.¹⁷
In previous meetings of the Diet, the burghers and the clergy had generally
followed divergent paths, and the clergy exhibited marked divisions within its
ranks. But in October 1660 they pulled together, not only as individual estates
but as a single-minded political bloc. All elements—the upper clergy as well
as the lower, the Copenhagen merchants as well as those from the provincial
towns—agreed to sacrifice the privileges to which they were entitled in order
to isolate the noble estate and the Council. Significantly, the two leaders of
the bloc—Hans Nansen, mayor of Copenhagen, and Hans Svane, bishop of
Sjælland—were men for whom the king had great respect. Calling themselves the
‘Confederates under Copenhagen’s Freedom’, the two estates drafted a proposed
course of action that was much different from what was expected of them. On 4
October, the Confederates began to debate the proposition that ‘Denmark and
Norway shall be and remain forever free hereditary realms, irrevocable in any
way’. Four days later the proposal was delivered to the Council with the request
that the nobility be required to vote on it.
The Council was in no condition to cast the proposal aside. It was weak
in numbers—there were no more than sixteen on the Council at the time,
and only fifteen were present in Copenhagen—and the experience of the war
had humbled it somewhat. Its true leader, the rigshofmester Joachim Gersdorff,
was absent because of illness; Christen Skeel, the most adamant defender of
¹⁷ Jespersen and Larsen (eds.), Som jeg har ment mit fædreland det vel, 19–31, 189–200. On the
events of September–October 1660, see Bøggild Andersen, Statsomvæltningen, 71–96; Jespersen and
Svane-Knudsen, Stænder og magtstat, 77–190; Fabricius, Kongeloven, 153–92; Carl-Johan Bryld,
Hans Svane og gejstligheden på stændermødet 1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1974), 42–123.
War and Absolutism
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aristocratic rule, had been dead for over a year. The Confederates caught the
Council, leaderless and timid, completely off-guard. This was a much more
sweeping reform than the one the burghers had formulated in September, and
potentially much more damaging to aristocratic interests, for in a hereditary
monarchy none of the customary privileges of the nobility would be safe. The
Council meekly responded that such a matter as the nature of Denmark’s
monarchy lay well outside the parameters of what the Diet had been summoned
to discuss. The Confederates’ subsequent audiences with Hannibal Sehested,
now restored to the king’s graces, and with the king himself brought no definitive
answer either. Frederik tactfully stated that he would not consider such a proposal
unless it had the backing of all three estates.
This was a machination on the king’s part. The very same day that he met
Nansen, Svane, and the Confederate delegation, he took measures to ensure
that the nobility and the Council could not back away from a confrontation.
During the siege of Copenhagen, Frederik had become quite friendly with Mayor
Nansen and with Frederik Turesen, the commander of Copenhagen’s militia.
Making use of these connections, he quietly mobilized the militia and closed all
of the gates of the city. The nobility, therefore, could not end the deliberations
by fleeing. Three days later, the king demanded that the nobility and the Council
give their responses to the proposal on hereditary monarchy at a joint meeting
of the Diet. At this session, held at Copenhagen Castle on 13 October 1660,
the nobility and the Council gave in to the rather unsubtle pressure from the
king and the lower estates. The noble estate reluctantly accepted the proposal,
asking only that the king guarantee the indivisibility of the realm and uphold
all traditional social privileges. Over the next four days, a special committee
appointed by the king attempted to work out a written constitution to replace
the 1648 charter. Here the representatives of the Council—four of them served
on the committee—finally voiced fierce opposition, hoping that some shred
of their previous importance could be preserved. It was too late. Bishop Svane
dominated the proceedings of the committee, and his personal influence with
the king did not brook resistance. The committee’s final ruling handed all power
to Frederik. The 1648 charter was nullified, and the king was enjoined to draw
up new legislation that would protect the welfare of all orders. On 18 October
1660, only one day after the committee’s final meeting, the Council and the Diet
re-crowned Frederik III in an elaborate ceremony on the Castle Square.
5 . H E R E D I TA RY A N D A B S O LU T E M O N A RC H Y
It would be very easy to portray the events of October 1660 as a conventional
alliance between prince and plebs. On the surface, it appears that Frederik III
received his new crown—one was indeed fashioned for the occasion—from
grateful subjects who wanted only to reward their hero-king and to seek release
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The Age of Christian IV
from a confining aristocratic oligarchy. Such an interpretation, however, is heavily
flawed. First, to view the ‘alteration of the state’ (statsomvæltningen) of 1660 in
this way is to ignore the fact that while hereditary monarchy can lead to absolute
monarchy, the two are not inseparable concepts. Second, it downplays both the
role of the king and the complexity of the deliberations among the Confederate
estates that autumn. The burghers’ demands of 26 September were a call not
for princely absolutism, but for a different kind of consensual monarchy, one in
which there was a partnership between king and Diet rather than between king
and Council. This was the logical culmination of the aspirations of the burgher
class, first articulated at Ry in 1629.
Though the nobility led the drive for decentralization at the Diets of 1638
and 1648, the burghers had also profited from the reforms initiated at both
gatherings. In 1660, the burghers were the ones who took the initiative. The
struggle fought out in 1660, therefore, was not one that pitted the proponents
of absolute monarchy against the adherents of aristocratic oligarchy, but rather a
clash between the advocates of centralization and those of decentralization. Even
when the Confederate estates changed their position on 8 October, their proposal
to the king and Council implied that constitutional, not absolutist, monarchy
was their intended goal. They specifically asked for the creation of a hereditary
monarchy ‘such as those of England, Sweden, and France’. The leaders in the
Confederate estates were intelligent men, and must have been at least passably
familiar with current events; the choice of models cannot have been an accident.
What the burghers wanted was Denmark’s transformation from a ‘society of
estates’ (stændersamfund ) to a ‘state of Estates’ (stænderstat). Offering hereditary
status to the king did not compromise this goal.
The problem with their approach was that the burghers were sharply divided
on the specifics of implementing such a plan, and any meaningful cooperation
among all estates was out of the question. Moreover, the burghers could not
count on the king to side with them. Whatever differences had existed between
king and Council since the time of the Lower Saxon War, in general the king
tended to close ranks with the Council whenever their joint grip on power
was questioned. There was no reason to expect anything radically different in
October 1660, and indeed it was rumoured that the king’s sympathies lay with
the nobility and the Council. In the view of the burghers and of the clergy,
strong royal authority was preferable to the continuation of aristocratic rule.
Unable to come up with an alternative, and capably managed by Hans Svane,
the committee created by Frederik III surrendered to the king the final authority
in fashioning a constitution. The Council and the Diet had failed to do what
they had set out to do, and the end result was that they legislated themselves out
of existence.
This was the chance for which Frederik III had waited during his twelve years
in office, and he took full advantage of it. On 10 January 1661 he presented his
subjects with the details of the new order, worked out in collaboration with his
War and Absolutism
247
closest advisers. To the king were reserved all legislative, executive, and judicial
powers, all control over the state fisc, all competence in making war and peace.
The Diet had no place in the new arrangement, nor did the Council, at least not
in its traditional incarnation. The Crown of Denmark, formerly the symbol of a
partnership, would now grace the brow of a single man.¹⁸
¹⁸ Fabricius, Kongeloven, 193–224; Dyrvik, Truede tvillingriker, 90.
12
Epilogue
The years 1660–1 were a watershed in the history of Denmark, of Scandinavia,
and of all Europe. It was the time of the Restoration in England, of Mazarin’s
death and the ascendancy of Louis XIV, of the first full year of peace on a
hitherto war-torn Continent. The Swedish empire reached its zenith in 1660,
while Denmark sank to depths scarcely imaginable only two decades before.
Despite the total reversal in the respective fortunes of the two Nordic kingdoms,
neither would enjoy the same prominence that it had during the preceding
century. Denmark and Sweden had indeed become integrated into a greater
Europe, but for them integration meant subordination. For a new age of war and
diplomacy had dawned, and a new constellation of powers—France, England,
the Netherlands, Austria—came to the fore. Previously leaders in a Europe where
religion determined allegiance, humbled Denmark and proud Sweden would
be relegated to the status of mere pawns. After 1660, the Scandinavian rivalry
became a sideshow to the wars of Louis XIV. Danish and Swedish foreign policies
would be predicated upon the whims of the much greater powers to the west.
In Denmark, sweeping political change had accompanied this diminution in
international standing. The moment was revolutionary, but the actual political
transformation was not. Much of the old order remained intact; for the rural
masses, the established patterns of life went on much as before. The constitutional
and administrative restructuring of the Oldenburg monarchy was not a radical
break with the past, but rather the culmination of long-standing trends that had
been clearly visible in Christian IV’s day. Still, there would be change. For the
remainder of the seventeenth century, the implications of the new order would
unfold, as the crown, the old elites, and the new elites tried to find a modus
vivendi that accorded with the pretensions of the absolute monarchy.
1 . T H E N EW O R D E R — AT H O M E A N D A B ROA D
Since the Diet of Copenhagen had discarded the 1648 coronation charter,
Frederik III would have to draft something with which to replace it—a
constitution, in essence—and to lay out the rights and privileges of the individual
estates. A declaration of privileges (June 1661) addressed the second task. The
1661 declaration introduced some unusual changes in the social order—the
Epilogue
249
city of Copenhagen, for example, was made a separate and equal estate of
its own—but the nobility was the only real victim. The noble estate lost its
tax-exempt status, its monopoly over political office, and its exclusive right to
own landed estates. Even the institution that had justified noble privilege, the
knight-service, was abolished in its traditional form. Noble status, in short, was
now fundamentally meaningless. The things that had defined the nobility as
a special class were denied it, while the opening of landownership and state
service to commoners seriously compromised the foundation of noble power and
wealth.¹
The writing of a constitution would be a more complicated process. Frederik’s
advisers and jurists set to work on it in 1661. Four years later the document
was complete. The end result was the ‘Royal Law’ (Lex regia or Kongeloven) of
1665, which would stand as the fundament of Danish government until 1848.
The document is remarkable, not so much for the originality of its ideas as for
the brutal clarity with which they were expressed. Portraying the ‘transfer’ of
all secular authority to the king’s hands as a voluntary and contractual act, the
Royal Law placed no bounds whatsoever on the scope of the royal prerogative.
It gave the king the sole authority to make, interpret, and enforce the law of
the land; the king was answerable only to God, and anyone who tried to limit
or question the extent of royal power would be guilty of lese-majesty. ‘Scarcely
an Oriental despot’, Knud Jespersen has observed, ‘was endowed with greater
powers.’ The law, however, was not made public. The greatest secrecy attended
its composition, and it would not find its way into print until 1709.²
That was the theory; in practice, the reform of the central administration was
not quite so radical. Following the Swedish example, and continuing the Danish
reforms of the 1650s, Frederik III and his advisers rebuilt the bureaucracy along
collegial lines. New colleges joined the Admiralty and War colleges: the Treasury,
the Consistory, the Chancery, the High Court, and the Commerce College. A
College of State was intended to coordinate their activities, but it was found to
be of little practical utility and was subsequently dissolved. All of the colleges
reported directly to the king. Frederik also restructured the local administration
so as to subordinate it more completely to the crown. The former fiefholders,
called ‘district officers’ (amtmænd ) after 1662, were paid fixed salaries and were
given little independent authority over their districts (amt, plural amter). The
days of town self-rule were over as well, for the king appointed all mayors and
magistracies.
¹ Nils G. Bartholdy, ‘Adelsbegrebet under den ældre enevælde: sammenhængen med privilegier
og rang i tiden 1660–1730’, HTD, 12th series, 5 (1971), 577–648; Leon Jespersen, ‘Den
københavnske privilegiesag 1658–1661 og magtstatens fremvækst’, in Nils Erik Villstrand (ed.),
Kustbygd och centralmakt 1560–1721 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1987),
157–83.
² Knud Fabricius, Kongeloven: Dens Tilblivelse og Plads i Samtidens Natur- og Arveretlige Udvikling
(Copenhagen: Hagerup, 1920), 248–343; GDH, iii. 179–86.
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The Age of Christian IV
With the adoption of a full-fledged collegial system, the brand of personal,
‘hands-on’ kingship practised by the earlier Oldenburgs was no longer possible.
The king did not have to share power with an aristocratic elite, but he still
had to rule with and through a daunting maze of bureaucratic institutions. He
was not required to consult them, but the sheer volume of paperwork generated
by the administration was enough to ensure that he could no longer rule by
means of hunting parties, travelling chanceries, and occasional meetings with a
single council. The king was firmly bound to the seat of power in Copenhagen;
he was remote, as much a part of the machinery of government as was the
lowliest scribe in the colleges. Hence the dilemma facing the first kings of
the reborn monarchy: how to rule within this bureaucratic framework while
yet retaining the expanded powers embodied in the Royal Law? Frederik III
relied upon a small circle of advisers, Germans mostly, keeping the decisionmaking process tightly restricted. His son and successor, Christian V (1670–99),
on the other hand, allowed his lieutenants much greater latitude, depending
on favourites for the routine administration of the realm. In the mid 1670s,
Peder Schumacher, ennobled as Count Griffenfeld, dominated the colleges and
controlled virtually all access to the king. After Griffenfeld’s fall in 1676, a court
party centred on the Germans Vincents Hahn and Adam Levin Knuth—the
‘Hahn’ske Cabal’—ruled in the king’s name in the 1680s and early 1690s.
Absolute monarchy did not mean that the king was more personally involved in
the making of policy.³
Besides its growing complexity, the most prominent feature of the new
government was its social composition. The old power elite was nearly excluded
from both central and local administrations. Members of the old conciliar
aristocracy continued to hold political posts; but in the colleges, and in district
administration, the emphasis was on competence and loyalty to the king, not
on pedigree. Educated burghers and German expatriates formed the new power
elite: Griffenfeld, the most powerful individual at court in the 1670s, was the
son of a Copenhagen wine merchant. The share of posts held by members of
the old nobility fell away sharply. In 1660, 93 per cent of the king’s fiefholders
in Denmark were members of established noble families; by 1720, only 19
per cent of their successors, the district officers, came from this same group.
Reinforcing this social displacement was the creation of a new ‘nobility of rank’:
first, the introduction of a titled nobility, consisting of ‘counts’ (greve) and
‘barons’ (baroner or friherre), in 1671, based on landownership; second, the
creation of ranked classes among office-holders. The second measure, introduced
in a series of royal ordinances between 1671 and 1716, ranked royal officials by
the prominence of their positions in the administration, and ultimately gave de
facto noble status to those who held these offices. Members of the old nobility
³ DFH, i. 159–219; Carl Christiansen, Bidrag til dansk Statshusholdnings Historie under de to
første Enevoldskonger, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Nordisk Forfatteres Forlag, 1908–22).
Epilogue
251
quickly found themselves on par with, or even below, professional bureaucrats
of common birth.⁴
There were unattractive features in the first decades of Denmark’s absolute
monarchy. With absolutism came court intrigue and factionalism on a scale not
yet seen in Denmark. Flatterers and royal mistresses fought for influence at court;
upstarts, like Griffenfeld, could manipulate the collegial system to their own ends.
Since there was no longer a Council to check the king’s behaviour, individual
monarchs could act as they wished without legal restraint. Frederik III’s vendetta
against Corfitz Ulfeldt and his long-suffering wife, Leonora Christina, would
have been highly unlikely in the days of the consensual monarchy. All the
same, the dismal portrait of Denmark painted by Sir Robert Molesworth in
1692 is both misleading and unfair. Even as courtiers, favourites, and aspiring
bureaucrats fought for the king’s attentions, the central administration showed
great capacity for pragmatic reform, and would continue to do so until the end
of the absolute monarchy in 1848.
Denmark’s diminished status after 1660 did not mean that the kingdom could
placidly withdraw from international politics. First of all, the Western powers
would not let it withdraw. The Baltic was just too important to England and
the Netherlands; in the power struggles of Louis XIV’s Europe, the Baltic region
would serve as an important second front for the Sun King and his opponents.
Second, the Danish kings and their advisers were not willing to acquiesce to
the territorial losses they had suffered in the wars of 1643–5 and 1657–60.
Frederik III, Christian V, and finally Frederik IV (1699–1730) all ached for
revenge on Sweden, hoping especially to effect the reconquest of the lost Scanian
provinces. Interestingly, this too—like the relative strength of Denmark and
Sweden—reflected a reversal in the Nordic rivalry. After 1660 it was Danish
hostility that kept that rivalry alive; Sweden, a sated power after 1660, was
anxious to avoid conflict with Denmark.
Denmark girded itself for war more intensively after 1660 than it had in
the reign of Christian IV. By the early 1670s, the kingdom could boast a
standing peacetime army of 16,000 conscripts, not counting the Norwegian
army, and a thoroughly modernized fleet. The problem was that the Western
powers would not countenance a purely Danish–Swedish duel along the lines
of the Kalmar War. Sweden could not have its détente, nor Denmark its war
of reconquest and vengeance, without the involvement of the greater European
states. The Scandinavian rivalry, therefore, devolved into a lesser aspect of the
wars of Louis XIV, a Baltic war-by-proxy between France and its enemies.
Unfortunately, both Denmark and Sweden allowed themselves to be used in
this way. After the French invasion of the Dutch Republic in 1672, the Swedish
regency government—albeit grudgingly—obediently heeded Louis XIV’s call
for an invasion of Brandenburg. Christian V and his ministers, conversely, caved
⁴ GDH, iii. 199, 203–6.
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The Age of Christian IV
in to pressure to join the coalition ranged against France in 1674. Christian’s
decision to ally Denmark with the emperor, Spain, Brandenburg, and the Dutch
Republic, however, was not entirely forced; the alliance gave him and the ‘war
party’ at court an excuse to attack Sweden.
In the summer of 1675, Denmark did attack, launching what has become
known as the Scanian War (1675–9). It started out as an undeclared war against
Sweden’s ally, Holstein-Gottorp, followed by an assault on Swedish Pomerania;
the following year, Christian V mounted a full-scale invasion of the Scanian
lands. The war was Denmark’s most successful military effort since the Kalmar
War. Although Danish armies failed to reconquer the Scanian provinces, and
suffered a bloody beating at Lund (December 1676), at sea Niels Juel’s Danish
fleet inflicted defeat after defeat on the Swedes. At the war’s end, the Danes
controlled Bremen, Verden, Wismar, the islands of Gotland and Rügen, and
much of Båhuslen. It should have been a Danish victory, but Louis XIV would
not allow it. When Danish–Swedish peace talks failed to make progress, Louis
threatened to invade the Duchies and compelled the Danes to negotiate with
him. The Danish emissaries who went, hat in hand, to Paris in the summer of
1679 were flatly informed by the French that Denmark could not keep its gains.
It was a humiliating moment for Sweden, for Louis had made peace for them
without so much as asking their advice; but it was doubly so for Denmark, which
had been robbed of its triumph and was powerless to do anything about it.⁵
The end of the Scanian War increased Danish hostility towards Sweden,
leading ultimately to the last great Scandinavian conflict, the Great Northern
War of 1700–21. But the Scanian War reinforced the lesson that Denmark had
already learned, at great cost, in 1645 and again in 1660: it could never again be
a ‘free agent’ in the Baltic. The Danish kings could never regain the lands they
had lost, and especially not the provinces that lined the north-eastern shore of
the Sound, for the great merchant nations to the west would not suffer either
Denmark or Sweden to control the Baltic narrows. Denmark’s most painful
‘territorial amputations’ were yet to be administered to it—the loss of Norway
in 1814, of the Duchies in 1864; but even so, the Oldenburg monarchy was
already a ‘midget state’ in 1679, a tool of greater states and wealthier kings.
2 . T H E S I G N I F I C A N C E O F T H E O L D E N BU RG S TAT E
Denmark’s absolute monarchy was a remarkable achievement, not least because
of the relative ease and calm that attended its birth. Its longevity and vitality
are also noteworthy. The collegial system adopted by Frederik III enacted some
⁵ Knud J. V. Jespersen and Ole Feldbæk, Revanche og neutralitet, 1648–1814, Dansk udenrigspolitiks historie, 2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2002), 86–133; Finn Askgaard and Arne Stade,
Kampen om Skåne (Copenhagen: Zac, 1983).
Epilogue
253
of the most progressive social and agrarian reforms of any early modern state;
the system proved to be so workable that it remained largely in place even
after the constitutional shift of 1848, when the absolute monarchy was scrapped
in favour of a liberal parliamentary government. In 1660, Denmark’s greatest
contributions to European civilization still lay ahead, but its days of glory were
already behind it. The kingdom’s integration into European life, a process that
had begun in the era of the Reformation, came with the loss of power and
international prestige.
It may be debatable whether the Oldenburg state was ever a ‘great power’;
but there is no question that it was a great regional power, even as its fortunes
began to wane in the seventeenth century. The factors that allowed Denmark
to achieve this status are not difficult to pinpoint. Control over the Sound, and
therefore over the Baltic trade, gave it power and influence; the Sound Dues
and Norwegian timber brought it wealth; proximity to the Germanies allowed
the ready interchange of goods and ideas with the Continent. The Reformation
played a twofold role: first, it tilted the constitutional balance in the king’s favour,
allowing the king greater freedom in the making of foreign policy; second, it
catapulted Denmark to a position of leadership as the European states divided
along confessional lines. Denmark was not the equal of France or Spain, but
among the Protestant powers its wealth and influence were not to be taken
lightly. Before 1629, Denmark was a big fish in a small pond.
Nor is there any mystery as to why Denmark lost the international reputation
it built up between 1536 and 1625. It did not have the resources to fight a
protracted war on its own, to reconquer or neutralize Sweden, or (after 1630) to
defend the Sound. It was a power without the muscle to sustain its reputation;
and while much the same could be said of Sweden, there were important
differences between the two rivals. Denmark, unlike Sweden, did not have
faithful or generous allies. The Swedish ruling class shared common foreign
policy goals with their monarchs, something that was quite definitely not the
case in Denmark. And Sweden was physically remote from the Continent, and
therefore from any serious threat of invasion. Denmark was a much more open
target—three invasions in as many decades showed just how vulnerable the
southern frontier was.
Sweden was the principal agent of Denmark’s decline, but it should not
be mistaken as the principal cause. The key factor was, rather, the role of the
western maritime powers: England, the Netherlands, and France. Between 1550
and 1630, the Baltic ‘Hellespont’ at Helsingør was a great political asset for
Denmark. In these years, the maritime powers were not yet at their height, and
Denmark maintained a superior navy. Most important, Denmark’s identity as
a Protestant power guaranteed it a certain immunity from retribution, even as
its exploitation of the Sound became more objectionable to those nations that
participated most in the Baltic trade. But as the demands of commerce and
dynasty superseded confessional affiliation in diplomatic importance, Denmark’s
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The Age of Christian IV
control of the Sound became intolerable. It was the maritime powers that failed
to rally to Denmark’s aid in 1625–9, guaranteeing failure in the Lower Saxon
War; it was they who favoured Sweden in the 1640s; it was they who allowed
Denmark to be partitioned in 1658–60. The maritime powers, and not Sweden,
would dictate the balance of power in the Baltic for some time to come.
We cannot dismiss the role of the Oldenburg kings and their councils in
bringing about Denmark’s fall. Frederik II inadvertently highlighted the strategic
importance of the Sound through the lastetold and the 1565 closure, while his
coalition politics inflated Protestant hopes that Denmark could be counted upon
to take a leading role in the ‘Protestant cause’. The Regency continued to alienate
England and the Dutch Republic through ‘acquisitive’ toll policies; Christian
IV’s clumsy handling of foreign commerce in the 1630s did more than anything
else to ensure Danish defeat in the Torstensson War. Denmark, perhaps, earned
its fate in 1660, but its commercial policies only hastened what was bound to
happen anyway.
No matter how odious Danish possession of the Sound and its claims to
dominium maris might have been to the rest of Europe, it cannot be said that
Denmark—unlike Sweden—was an aggressor-state. Only the 1559 invasion
of the Ditmarschen could be considered unprovoked aggression, and that act
was quickly forgotten outside the Empire. The reconquest of Sweden ceased
to be a major aim of Danish foreign policy after 1570; Christian IV gave up
entirely on the idea after the Kalmar War of 1611–13. Frederik II and Christian
IV, to be sure, bullied the Hanseatic towns, but this was a natural reaction to
centuries of Hanseatic predominance in Nordic commerce and politics. Even
in the German states, the foreign policy of the Oldenburg kings was reactive
rather than assertive. All of them, even Christian IV, were more interested in
protecting and consolidating what they had than they were in acquiring anything
outside of Denmark’s limited sphere of influence. They demanded and craved
international respect, and they did not turn their backs on Europe, but except
where it touched on the preservation of the state they were largely uninterested
in assuming a larger role in European affairs. Even at the height of its power,
Denmark was insular and inward-looking.
This inward-looking quality is in fact one of those traits that Knud Jespersen
has identified as part of ‘Danishness’, the collective world-view peculiar to modern Danes. The ideal characteristics of this Danishness—a general reluctance
to become involved in international politics, an active pursuit of egalitarianism,
a general concern for the lesser elements of society, a drive to solve communal
problems through open discussion and collective action, a dislike of confrontation—are most easily seen in modern Danish society; they are the very foundation
of social democracy in the Danish ‘welfare state’. As Jespersen has pointed out
in his recent and provocative survey of Danish history, these qualities have deep
roots in Denmark’s past. Of the attributes of Danishness, none has been more
enduring than the common, consensually based approach to problem-solving.
Epilogue
255
And this, which was the essence of discourse in the medieval village bystævne,
became established as a feature of Danish political life with the Reformation
in 1536.⁶
Consensus-building in the Danish polity worked at several levels during the
period 1536–1660. First, there was that between king and Council, which
persisted from 1536 until the constitutional feuds of the 1630s and 1640s and
resumed during the first decade of Frederik III’s reign. King and Council each
saw themselves, separately and together, as responsible for the overall welfare of
the subjects of the crown; fortunately, for most of this period, their perspectives
on what was best for the kingdom coincided enough to preclude internal conflict.
After the fall of Christian II, the Oldenburg kings and their councils put a great
deal of effort into cooperation. For all his bluster and high-handed actions,
even Christian IV—who had so often been held forth as an example of royal
egotism—craved consensus. He was, of course, not very successful in achieving
this in his relations with the Council, but he was never able to divorce himself
from the concept of conciliar monarchy. It was this concept that allowed the
dyarchical ‘Crown of Denmark’ to function as such, and it lent a true continuity
to the Council, so much so that it is not entirely incorrect to speak of the Council
as if it were a single, immutable entity over the course of more than a century.
Second, there was a continuous search for consensus between that Crown
and its subjects, combined with a genuine concern for the welfare of the weaker
members of the population. The central administration showed this repeatedly
in the making of domestic policy. The kings desired popular approval and were
anxious to ensure that the greater good was served thereby. The near absence of
popular assemblies before 1627 might seem to indicate otherwise, yet consensus
was sought all the same on the local level and in an informal way. Only this
can explain Christian III’s summoning of burgher and peasant representatives
when composing the great Recesses of the 1540s and 1550s, Christian IV’s
approach to the proposed commutation of compulsory peasant labour, and the
readiness of all the Oldenburgs to hear peasant grievances. The method used for
the collection of extraordinary taxes—the gathering of peasants into groups that
paid collectively, ‘the rich helping the poor’—was yet another manifestation of
this community-based mindset coupled with an interest in the common good.
The government in Copenhagen aimed at a third layer of consensus: between
Danish centre and non-Danish periphery. True, the crown was more interested
in what it could get out of Norway and Iceland than it was in what it could
do for its northern subjects, and the kings were content to leave Holstein to its
own devices. That there was occasionally exploitation of Norway and Iceland
for Denmark’s benefit, and that occasionally the two lands suffered from the
commercial demands of the monarchy, is beyond dispute. But as within Denmark
⁶ Knud J. V. Jespersen, A History of Denmark, trans. Ivan Hill (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2004),
5–11.
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The Age of Christian IV
itself, the central government maintained a good record of negotiating important
domestic issues with local elites and—especially under Christian IV—with
representative institutions. For every incident of exploitation, there was at least
a compensatory effort to impart something positive to the outlying lands.
Danish policies regarding the timber trade in Norway could be dictatorial and
sometimes smacked of a ‘command economy’ approach, but the establishment
of strict controls over Hanseatic merchants in Bergen returned much local trade
to Norwegian merchants. The 1602 trade monopoly in Iceland was designed
primarily to profit Danish merchants, but it also provided Iceland with an
economic safety net that the island had lacked when Hamburger and English
ships frequented its harbours.
In this sense, perhaps, it may be a mistake to place limits on the term
‘consensual monarchy’, confining it to the period 1536–1630 or thereabouts,
for even when king and Council failed to find common ground the government
as a whole tried to achieve consensus with Danish society and with the peripheral
lands of the monarchy. Sometimes the government’s efforts in this direction took
odd forms. Frederik II’s squelching of religious disputes after 1569, for example,
was primarily a way of protecting the state church, but it was also a means
of compelling harmony in a facet of everyday life where harmony was not the
natural order of things. If consensus could not be achieved by cajoling, it could
be enforced by law. Indeed, the only areas of policy in which the monarchy was
truly autocratic were religion and public morals. But here, too, the motivation
behind this inflexibility was an interest in promoting the welfare of all subjects.
Only by sustaining a well-ordered, morally upright, and faithful society could
Denmark expect to remain in God’s favour.
Viewing the history of early modern Denmark in this way, as a process by
which the communal values of the medieval village became the core values of
the state, suggests a more nuanced interpretation of the final act of this period:
the coup of 1660. Both king and Council claimed to speak for all subjects, but
after 1588 the Council’s claim was beginning to wear thin. The noble Protest
of that year, the burghers’ movement of 1629, and the Diet of 1638 revealed a
groundswell of anti-aristocratic sentiment among the lesser nobles and the lower
orders. By the time of the Copenhagen Diet of 1660, the Council was fighting to
preserve the exalted position of the aristocracy, and it had divorced itself from the
rest of society. In Knud Jespersen’s words, the Council ‘ended up representing
only itself’.⁷
Denmark was not predestined to absolutism. In the fateful month of October
1660, there were several paths that king, Council, and Diet could have taken:
one that led towards a popular, constitutional monarchy, pairing the king with
regular meetings of the Diet; towards a system that pushed the king further into
the sidelines; or towards a state in which the king himself possessed undivided
⁷ Knud J. V. Jespersen, A History of Denmark, trans. Ivan Hill (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2004), 39.
Epilogue
257
sovereignty, in the way that Jean Bodin had proposed nearly a century earlier.
The last was not the only path, nor the only realistic path, but in the end it proved
to be an acceptable one. Since the days of Christian III, the kings had crafted
a reputation for themselves as being above all social distinctions and disputes,
as being the best consensus-builders and stewards of the public welfare. In this
regard, the absolute monarchy of 1660–1848 fulfilled its duties reasonably well.
Even in the most turbulent years of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, long
after its heyday had passed, Denmark would demonstrate a capacity for social
and political flexibility, for pragmatic and rational reform, for stability, for easy
adaptation to changing times.
Glossary
adelsvælden. The term applied by Danish historians to the period of ‘noble rule’, i.e. until
the introduction of absolutism in 1660.
ægt. Cartage; the obligation of Danish peasants to provide transport to people or freight
for the king or the landowner.
afgiftslen. Variety of len in which the fiefholder paid a fixed annual fee to the crown,
keeping all other fief profits to himself.
Alþing. The Icelandic Diet.
avlingshoveriet. The obligation of Danish peasants to provide agricultural labour for noble
landlords or the crown.
bededage. ‘Prayer days’, special worship services held at royal command.
birketing. A manorial law court.
borgmester. A mayor in one of the købstæder.
byråd. A town council in one of the købstæder.
bystævne. An informal village assembly.
byting. A town law court.
Danmarks krone. The ‘Crown of Denmark’, the joint stewardship of central authority by
the king and the Council of State.
Dansk Kancelli. The Danish Chancery, the body of secretaries and scribes that processed
most of the paperwork of the central government relating to domestic affairs. Sometimes
simply called ‘the Chancery’.
dominium maris Baltici. Denmark’s claim to dominion of the Baltic Sea.
dominium maris septentrionalis. Denmark’s claim to dominion of the northern parts of
the North Sea, between Greenland and northern Norway.
fæstebønder. Leaseholding peasants, whether on crown or noble land; also called gårdfæstere.
foged. A bailiff, such as those who served the fiefholders; variants include delefoged,
herrefoged, and ridefoged.
fri len. Fiefs that were held free and clear by the fiefholder, without any obligations
beyond the knight-service.
grænsemøder. The ‘border meetings’ instituted at the Treaty of Stettin in 1570, which
obliged the Danish and Swedish Councils of State to adjudicate disputes between
Denmark and Norway.
Glossary
259
håndfæstning. A ‘coronation charter’, conventionally signed by Danish kings prior to
coronation; this set out the duties of the monarch and the privileges of each estate.
herred. A small administrative district, roughly analogous to a county (plural herreder).
herredag. The traditional, annual meeting of the Council of State, usually attended by
representatives of the nobility at large as well.
herredsting. A county court or assembly.
hoveri. The peasantry’s labour obligation.
husmænd. Cottagers; peasants who served primarily as agricultural labour.
høilærde. The ‘most learned ones’, members of the theological faculty at the University of
Copenhagen who advised the crown on theological or ethical issues.
kongens eget kammer. ‘The king’s own treasury’, the personal treasury of the king.
kongens kansler. The ‘king’s chancellor’, or simply the ‘chancellor’, the head of the Danish
Chancery.
kongens retterting. The court of highest appeal before 1660; the Council of State served in
this capacity once annually, at the herredag.
Kontoret. The Hanseatic merchant community and trading post at Bergen.
købstad. A royally chartered town in the Oldenburg realm. Most of the larger and
middle-sized towns were købstæder.
lagmænd. In Norway, bailiffs to the fiefholders; the rough equivalent of the fogeder in
Denmark.
landemode. Regional meetings of clergy, convened by the individual bishop-superintendents.
landgilde. Rent paid by leaseholding peasants.
landkommissærer. Regional commissars who supervised the collection of taxes; created by
the Odense Diet of 1638.
landsting. In medieval Denmark, provincial assemblies; by the sixteenth century, the term
referred to regional law courts.
lastetold. The revised Sound Dues schedule introduced in 1567, which assessed cargoes
on the basis of weight and value.
len. Roughly translated, a ‘fief ’; an administrative district in Denmark and Norway.
lensmand. A fiefholder in Denmark (lensherr in Norway).
mageskifter. The ‘land exchanges’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
regnskabslen. Variety of len in which the fiefholder received a proportion of fief incomes
as pay, remitting the surplus to the crown.
Rentekammer. The state treasury, headed by the rentemester.
260
Glossary
rigens kansler. ‘Chancellor of the Realm’, the chief legal officer of the kingdom.
rigsembedsmænd. The ‘officers of state’, including the marshal, the chancellor, the
rigshofmester, and eventually the admiral and rigens kansler; by tradition, these were
members of the Council of State.
rigshofmester. The leading member of the rigsembedsmænd and the king’s immediate
subordinate; he was chief financial officer, the man responsible for the upkeep of the fleet,
and served as the head of state in the king’s absence.
rigsmarsk. The Marshal of the Realm, the chief military officer of the kingdom.
rigsråd (rigens råd ). The aristocratic Council of State that ruled alongside the king. Some
historians translate this as ‘Council of the Realm’.
rostjeneste. The feudal ‘knight-service’ that required noble landowners to provide armed
retainers to the crown for national defence.
selvejerbønder. Independent or landowning peasants.
snaphaner. Irregular or guerrilla peasant bands who fought against Swedish armies in the
Karl Gustav and Scanian wars.
stadholder. Generally, a governor, as in the stadholder of Norway and the Statthalter in the
Duchies; the stadholder of Copenhagen was a high-ranking royal official, who fulfilled
the duties of the rigshofmester if the latter office was left vacant.
stændermøder. The Diet or meetings of the Estates.
statsomvæltningen. The ‘alteration of the state’, referring to the royalist coup of 1660.
stedsmål. The fee paid by leaseholding peasants upon assumption of their tenures. Also
called indfæstning.
tamperretter. The regional morality courts, conducted by secular and ecclesiastical authorities.
Tysk Kancelli. The German Chancery; a secretarial body that handled the administration
of the Duchies and functioned informally as a foreign ministry.
ugedagstjenere. Peasants residing near a manor, who provided most of the required
compulsory labour on noble and crown demesne lands.
vornedskab. Villeinage; observed only on Sjælland and the surrounding islands in eastern
Denmark.
Bibliographic Essay
The historical literature concerning the lands of the Oldenburg state is rich yet manageable,
since most historical enquiry in this field has been executed by a relatively small community
of scholars in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. It is not my intent here to provide
an exhaustive list of all relevant publications. Those readers wishing to investigate
individual subjects in depth are referred to the notes accompanying each of the foregoing
chapters.
In this brief essay I have endeavoured instead to provide a smaller, more selective list
of seminal titles, with as many English-language titles as possible. A handful of titles in
German are included as well. For the past twenty years or more, Scandinavian scholars
have been trying to reach out to their colleagues elsewhere in Europe and the world by
writing in more widely known languages, especially English and German. Many, if not
most, scholarly books written in Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish are accompanied by
English-language abstracts, as are articles in the major Scandinavian research journals.
Two excellent English-language journals, the Scandinavian Economic History Review and
the Scandinavian Journal of History, are written and edited by Scandinavians; they contain
articles that, for the most part, have been published previously in Scandinavian-language
serials.
Printed primary sources covering the period 1536–1660 are frustratingly thin in some
areas, but overall they are rather extensive, including multi-volume sets of Chancery
papers, proceedings of the Council of State, royal and aristocratic correspondence, fief
account books, and so forth. They are too vast to catalogue here; but those who have
the requisite language skills and interest should consult the official guide to Denmark’s
national archives (Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen): Wilhelm von Rosen et al. (eds.), Rigsarkivet
og hjælpemidlerne til dets benyttelse, 5 vols. (Copenhagen: Rigsarkivet, 1983–9), especially
vol. 1. Besides outlining the basic organization of the central archives in Copenhagen,
this guide includes references to nearly all of the important printed primary sources,
as well as to the more specific and topical archival inventories (the series Vejledende
arkivregistratur), and materials in Norwegian and Icelandic archives.
S U RV EY H I S TO R I E S
Danish and Norwegian history are both well served by multi-volume survey histories,
almost all of them well written, balanced, and containing extensive bibliographies. The
best of the Danish surveys is in Gyldendals Danmarks historie, published by Gyldendal
in the 1970s and 1980s: vol. 2 part 2 (covering 1559–1648) by Helge Gamrath and
E. Ladewig Petersen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980). More current, and only slightly less
thorough, is the series Danmark-Norge 1380–1814; see Esben Albrectsen, Fællesskabet
bliver til, 1380–1536 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997); Øystein Rian, Den aristokratiske
fyrstestaten 1536–1648 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997); and Ståle Dyrvik, Truede
tvillingriker 1648–1720 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1998). They are written by both
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Danish and Norwegian scholars, and do an admirable job of examining the Oldenburg
state as a whole.
1513 – 1596
Until very recently, Nordic historians have been far more attracted to research in social,
economic, and agrarian history than they have been to political or diplomatic subjects.
Hence there are few biographies of royalty or of prominent men in the early modern period. Paul Reiter, Christiern 2: Personlighed, sjæleliv og livsdrama (Copenhagen:
Munksgaard, 1942), is still the most comprehensive treatment of that enigmatic king,
despite its psycho-historical overtones; it should be supplemented by Mikael Venge’s two
books on Christian II’s fall from power: Christian 2.s fald: spillet om magten i Danmark
january–februar 1523 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1972) and ‘Når vinden føjer sig . . . ’:
spillet om magten i Danmark marts–december 1523 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1977).
Martin Schwarz Lausten, Christian 2. mellem paven og Luther (Copenhagen: Akademisk
Forlag, 1995), deals with Christian’s apostasy in exile. There are no complete biographies dedicated to Frederik I, Christian III, or Frederik II. Martin Schwarz Lausten’s
books on Christian III’s religious policies, however, provide the closest approximation
to a biography of that king: Christian den 3. og kirken 1537–1559 (Copenhagen:
Akademisk Forlag, 1987); and Peder Palladius og kirken 1537–1560 (Copenhagen,
Akademisk Forlag, 1987). Frede P. Jensen, Bidrag til Frederik II’s og Erik XIV’s historie (Copenhagen: Den danske historiske forening, 1978), and Paul Douglas Lockhart,
Frederik II and the Protestant Cause: Denmark’s Role in the Wars of Religion, 1559–1596
(Leiden: Brill, 2004), both reflect the revisionist ‘take’ on Frederik II. On domestic
politics during the 1550s and 1560s, see Poul Colding, Studier i Danmarks politiske
Historie i Slutningen af Christian III.s og Begyndelsen af Frederik II.s Tid (Copenhagen:
Arnold Busck, 1939). Søren Balle, Statsfinanserne på Christian 3.s tid (Århus: Universitetsforlag, 1992), covers in exhaustive detail the development of the state fisc in
the sixteenth century; Astrid Friis, Kansler Johan Friis’ første aar (Copenhagen: Universitetet, 1970), examines the partnership between Christian III and his most effective
chancellor.
Works on foreign policy during this period are slightly less sparse. The most current
overview is provided by Esben Albrectsen, Karl-Erik Frandsen, and Gunner Lind, Konger
og krige 700–1648, Danmarks udenrigspolitiks historie, 1 (Copenhagen: Danmarks
Nationalleksikon, 2001). Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen, Det danske imperium:
storhed og fald (Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 2004), provides a lively discussion of Denmark as
a Baltic empire. On the end of the Kalmar Union, see Lars Sjödin, Kalmarunionens slutskede
(Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1943), and Poul Enemark, Fra Kalmarbrev til Stockholms
blodbad: den nordiske trestatsunions epoke 1397–1521 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1979).
Caspar Paludan-Müller, Grevens fejde, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1853–4), remains the
definitive work on the Count’s War in any language, despite its age. Paul-Erik Hansen,
Kejser Karl V og det skandinaviske Norden 1523–1544 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard,
1943), treats Habsburg relations with the Oldenburgs up to the Treaty of Speyer;
Martin Schwarz Lausten, Religion og politik: studier i Christian IIIs forhold til det tyske
rige i tiden 1544–1559 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1977), covers Christian III’s
German policies after Speyer. On the foreign policy of Frederik II, see Poul Colding,
Studier i Danmarks politiske historie (on the years 1554–63); Jason Lavery, Germany’s
Bibliographic Essay
263
Northern Challenge: The Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Struggle for the Baltic,
1563–1576 (Leiden: Brill, 2002); and especially Frede P. Jensen’s brilliant study of the
Seven Years War of the North, Danmarks konflikt med Sverige 1563–1570 (Copenhagen:
Den danske historiske forening, 1982). Lockhart, Frederik II and the Protestant Cause,
discusses Frederik’s attempts to form a Protestant ‘international’. Michael Roberts, The
Early Vasas: A History of Sweden, 1523–1611 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1968), is the classic text on Swedish political history during the early struggles with
Denmark, and merits a reading regardless of its age. Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars:
War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (London: Longman, 2000), is
the best and most recent treatment of Baltic power politics during this period, supplanting
Stewart P. Oakley, War and Peace in the Baltic 1560–1790 (London: Routledge, 1992).
Charles Hill, The Danish Sound Dues and the Command of the Baltic (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1926), gives an accessible if dated assessment of Denmark’s Sound
policies.
The Reformation has probably generated more scholarly works than any other aspect
of this period, save perhaps social and agrarian history. The best overall account is
Martin Schwarz Lausten, Reformationen i Danmark (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag,
1987), which focuses mainly on purely religious issues; for a more general overview,
consult the same author’s Danmarks kirkehistorie, 2nd edn (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1987). There is a respectable literature on the church policies of Frederik I and Duke
Christian’s Reformation in the Duchies; the best are Walter Göbell, ‘Das Vordringen der Reformation in Dänemark und in den Herzogtümern unter der Regierung
Friedrichs I.’, in Peter Meinhold (ed.), Schleswig-Holsteinische Kirchengeschichte, 6 vols.
(Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1977–98), iii. 35–113, and H. V. Gregersen, Reformationen
i Sønderjylland (Aabenraa: Historisk Samfund for Sønderjylland, 1986). The essays in
Ingmar Brohed (ed.), Reformationens konsolidering i de nordiska landerna 1540–1610
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1990), deal extensively with education, liturgy, and discipline
in the late sixteenth-century Nordic churches. Steinar Imsen, Superintendenten: en studie
i kirkepolitikk, kirkeadministrasjon og statsudvikling mellom reformasjon og eneveldet (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1982), focuses on the upper hierarchy of the state church, with an
emphasis on Norway; it is an important supplement to Lausten’s works on Christian
III. There are several very good English- and German-language accounts as well; see
the essays in Leif Grane and Kai Hørby (eds.), Die dänische Reformation vor ihrem
internationalen Hintergrund (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1990), and Ole
Peter Grell (ed.), The Scandinavian Reformation: From Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The political
implications of the Reformation are analysed succinctly in E. Ladewig Petersen and Knud
J. V. Jespersen, ‘Two Revolutions in Early Modern Denmark’, in E. I. Kouri and Tom
Scott (eds.), Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his
Sixty-Fifth Birthday (New York: St Martin’s, 1987), 473–501.
Precious little has been written on Danish cultural life beyond religion. Tyge Brahe is
an exception. Of all the Brahe biographies, the most complete in any language is Victor
E. Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990). John Robert Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and
his Assistants, 1570–1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), concentrates
on the research activities of Brahe and his many apprentices, providing snapshots of
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Bibliographic Essay
Denmark’s intellectual elite in the reign of Frederik II. Jole Shackelford, A Philosophical
Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus
Severinus (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2004), is equally thorough on Severinus
and on Paracelsianism in general. On the visual arts and music, see Hanne Honnens de
Lichtenberg, Tro, håb og forfængelighed: kunstneriske udtryksformer i 1500-tallets Danmark
(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1989), and Ole Kongsted et al., Festmusikken fra
Renaissancen (Copenhagen: Det kongelige Bibliotek, 1990).
In view of how many Danish scholars have devoted themselves to the study of economic,
social, and agrarian history, it is surprising that so few of their writings have appeared
in English or German. Hence for those without knowledge of the Nordic tongues,
John P. Maarbjerg’s marvellous little book Scandinavia in the European World-Economy,
ca. 1570–1625 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995) is a real godsend, surveying the main
trends in Danish social and economic history while providing an intensive case study
of Fyn and Langeland during this period. The most comprehensive survey of Danish
social history for this period is E. Ladewig Petersen, Fra standssamfund til rangssamfund
1500–1700, Dansk socialhistorie, 3 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980). Per Ingesmann
and Jens Villiam Jensen (eds.), Riget, magten og æren: den danske adel 1350–1660
(Århus: Universitetsforlag, 2001), is an unusually comprehensive and cohesive series of
essays on the nobility, replacing much earlier work in the field, but one should not
neglect the classic quantitative treatment by Svend Aage Hansen, Adelsvældens grundlag
(Copenhagen: Gad, 1964). On rural society and economy, Fridlev Skrubbeltrang,
Den danske landbosamfund 1500–1800 (Copenhagen: Den danske historiske forening,
1978), remains the best survey; for more detailed approaches, see Hans H. Fussing,
Herremand og Fæstebonde: Studier i dansk Landbrugshistorie omkring 1600 (Copenhagen:
Arnold Busck, 1942), and Svend Gissel, Landgilde og udsæd på Sjælland i de store
mageskifters tidsalder (Copenhagen: Landbohistorisk Selskab, 1968). Danish-Norwegian
urban history lacks an overarching study, but there are several very good histories of
individual towns: on Copenhagen, Erik Kjersgård, Byen og borgen Havn, Københavns
historie, 1 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980), and Helge Gamrath, Residens- og hovedstad,
Københavns historie, 2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980); on Ribe, see Ole Degn, Rig og
fattig i Ribe: økonomiske og sociale forhold i Ribe-samfundet 1560–1660, 2 vols. (Århus:
Universitetsforlag, 1981); on Odense, see E. Ladewig Petersen, Knud J. V. Jespersen,
and Leon Jespersen, De fede år: Odense 1559–1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1984);
on Bergen, Anders Bjarne Fossen, Borgerskapets by 1536–1800, Bergen bys historie, 2
(Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1979); on Oslo, Knut Sprauten, Byen ved festningen: fra
1536 til 1814, Oslo bys historie, 2 (Oslo: Cappelen, 1992). The Baltic trade in general
has been the subject of several narrow but excellent studies: the best are Milja van Tielhof,
The ‘Mother of All Trades’: The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam from the Late 16th
to the Early 19th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Henrik Zins, England and the Baltic
in the Elizabethan Era, trans. H. C. Stevens (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1972); and Aksel E. Christensen, Dutch Trade to the Baltic about 1600 (Copenhagen:
Munksgaard, 1941).
Many of the aforementioned books cover the entire Oldenburg state, and not just
Denmark proper, but there is still a respectable body of literature devoted to the peripheral
lands of the monarchy. In addition to the survey histories from the series Danmark-Norge
mentioned above, one should consult the eminently readable overview by Sverre Bagge
Bibliographic Essay
265
and Knut Mykland, Norge i dansketiden, trans. Ole Schierbeck (Copenhagen: Politiken,
1987). Ståle Dyrvik, Norsk økonomisk historie 1500–1970 (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget,
1979), contains excellent discussions of the timber and fish trades, plus extensive references
to the specialized literature on these topics. The definitive treatment of the Reformation
in Iceland is Vilborg Auður Ísleifsdóttir, Siðbreytingin á Íslandi 1537–1565: byltingin að
ofan (Reykjavík: Hið Íslenska Bókmenntafélag, 1997), though the English summary is
too brief to be of much practical use to those who cannot read Icelandic. For English
readers, Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000), is an adequate survey history, though episodic and at times a little polemical
in its analysis of Danish rule. Michael Fell, And Some Fell into Good Soil: A History of
Christianity in Iceland (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), includes a fairly detailed account of
the Icelandic Reformation and the age of Guðbrandur Þorláksson. There is no worthwhile
English-language study of the Duchies under Danish rule. Danish readers should consult
H. V. Gregersen, Slesvig og Holsten før 1830 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1981); German
readers will appreciate Jörg Rathjen, ‘Die geteilte Einheit—Schleswig-Holstein zwischen
König und Herzog 1490–1721’, in Jann Markus Witt and Heiko Vosgerau (eds.),
Schleswig-Holstein von den Ursprüngen bis zur Gegenwart: eine Landesgeschichte (Hamburg:
Convent, 2002), 167–211.
1596 – 1660
The literature on this period is more extensive than that for the previous century, owing
in large part to the popular appeal of Christian IV and his era. Denmark saluted the
400th anniversary of Christian’s accession in 1988 with a massive nationwide exhibition,
sponsored by the Council of Europe; a host of excellent works on the king and his
times came from this celebration. The best biography of Christian IV is Steffen Heiberg,
Christian 4: monarken, mennesket og myten (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1988). Svend Ellehøj
(ed.), Christian 4.s verden (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1988), is an anthology of essays
on various aspects of the reign. There is one English-language biography of the king, and
though it is dated and flawed it is still a good read: John Gade, Christian IV, King of
Denmark and Norway (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1928).
Foreign policy is probably the most controversial aspect of Christian IV’s long reign.
A good overview is provided by Gunner Lind in Albrectsen, Frandsen, and Lind,
Konger og krige. Paul Douglas Lockhart, ‘Denmark and the Empire: A Reassessment
of Danish Foreign Policy under King Christian IV, 1596–1648’, Scandinavian Studies,
62 (1992), 390–416, considers the German elements of Christian IV’s diplomacy. On
the origins of the Kalmar War, see Sven Ulric Palme, Danmark og Sverige 1596–1611
(Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1942). Leo Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, 2
vols. (Århus: Universitetsforlag, 1979), examines Danish foreign policy in the Empire
within the context of the Danish–Swedish rivalry before 1625. For an opposing view
of Christian IV’s entrance into the Thirty Years War, see Paul Douglas Lockhart,
Denmark in the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: King Christian IV and the Decline of
the Oldenburg State (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1996), which also
examines Danish foreign policy after the the Lower Saxon War. A more detailed account
can be found in J. A. Fridericia’s ‘Rankean’ work Danmarks ydre politiske Historie i
Tiden fra Freden i Lybæk til Freden i Kjøbenhavn, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Hoffensberg,
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Bibliographic Essay
Jespersen & F. Trap, 1876–81). Fridericia’s interpretation, however, is heavily coloured
by what Knud Jespersen has called ‘post-1864 syndrome’, in that he viewed any Danish
attempt to become involved in great-power politics as irrational and irresponsible. Steve
Murdoch, Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart, 1603–1660 (East Linton:
Tuckwell, 2000), based on broad research in Scottish and English archives as well as
Danish, dissects the tumultuous Anglo-Danish diplomatic relationship and the reaction of
Denmark to the English Civil War. Steffen Heiberg, ‘Fra småfyrster til selvherskere—de
gottorpske hertuger og Danmark’, in Mette Skougaard (ed.), Gottorp—et fyrstehof i 1600tallet (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2002), provides a succinct and thoughtful discussion of
the rivalry between the Danish Oldenburgs and their cousins in the Duchies.
Gunner Lind, Hæren og magten i Danmark 1614–1662 (Odense: Universitetsforlag,
1994), studies the development of native military institutions and the rise of the
permanent army within the context of constitutional and social history. On the navy,
see Niels Probst, Christian 4.s flåde (Copenhagen: Marinehistorisk Selskab, 1996).
Finn Askgaard, Christian IV: ‘Rigets væbnede Arm’ (Copenhagen: Tøjhusmuseet, 1988),
provides a concise and entertaining of warfare and military operations, including very
good summaries of each of Christian IV’s military engagements. Danish scholars have
not paid much attention to the Kalmar War, the only thorough account of which is Axel
Liljefalk Larsen, Kalmarkrigen (Copenhagen, 1889). There are two brief English-language
discussions of the Lower Saxon War (the ‘Emperor’s War’): in Lockhart, Denmark in the
Thirty Years’ War, and E. Ladewig Petersen’s essay ‘The Danish Intermezzo’, in Geoffrey
Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years War, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1997), 64–73. Despite
its obvious significance in Scandinavian history, the Torstensson War has been all but
ignored. The best operational account is V. Vessberg, Bidrag til historien om Sveriges krig
med Danmark 1643–1645, 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1895–1900); on the southern theatre, see
Klaus-Richard Böhme, ‘Lennart Torstensson und Helmut Wrangel in Schleswig-Holstein
und Jütland 1643–1645’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte,
90 (1965), 41–82.
Students of administrative, bureaucratic, and financial history have long been attracted
to the reign of Christian IV. Leon Jespersen (ed.), A Revolution from Above? The Power
State of 16th and 17th Century Scandinavia (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 2000), is a
thoughtful, if densely written, study of the growth of state power in the Scandinavian
monarchies. Jespersen’s personal contribution to the volume focuses on Denmark. It
should be required reading for anyone interested in Danish government before the 1660
coup. On the rise of the ‘tax-state’ in seventeenth-century Denmark, and the concomitant
power struggle between Christian IV and the Council, see these excellent articles by
E. Ladewig Petersen, all in English: ‘Poor Nobles and Rich in Denmark, 1500–1700’,
Journal of European Economic History, 30 (2001), 105–24; ‘From Domain State to Tax
State: Synthesis and Interpretation’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 23 (1975),
116–48; ‘Defence, War and Finance: Christian IV and the Council of the Realm
1596–1629’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 7 (1982), 277–313; ‘War, Finance and
the Growth of Absolutism: Some Aspects of the European Integration of Seventeenth
Century Denmark’, in Göran Rystad (ed.), Europe and Scandinavia: Aspects of the Process
of Integration in the 17th Century (Lund: Esselte Studium, 1983), 33–49. Christian’s
‘break’ with the Council is most eloquently discussed in Knut Mykland’s pathbreaking
think-piece, Skiftet i forvaltningsordningen i Danmark og Norge i tiden fra omkring 1630
Bibliographic Essay
267
og inntil Frederik den tredjes död (Bergen and Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967). There
are many more detailed studies of various aspects of the central administration; none
of them makes for exciting reading, but all are invaluable, the following in particular:
Jens Engberg, Dansk finanshistorie i 1640’erne (Århus: Universitetsforlaget, 1972), on
the treasury; Haakon Bennike Madsen, Det danske skattevæsen: kategorier og klasser:
skatter på landbefolkningen 1530–1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1978), on taxes; and
the essays by Leon Jespersen and Daniel O. Fisher in Jespersen (ed.), Rigsråd, adel og
administration, on the composition of the Council of State and of the Danish Chancery
respectively.
Most of the titles on social and economic history listed in the previous section pertain to
the seventeenth century as well, with a few additions. On the ‘crisis’ of the Danish nobility,
the works of E. Ladewig Petersen stand out, and many of them are in English: The Crisis
of the Danish Nobility 1580–1660 (Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1967); ‘Conspicuous
Consumption: The Danish Nobility of the Seventeenth Century’, Kwartalnik Historii
Kultury Materielnej, 30 (1982), 57–65; his Christian IV.s pengeudlån til danske adelige:
kongelig foretagervirksomhed og adelig gældsstiftelse 1596–1625 (Copenhagen: Akademisk
Forlag, 1974), deals with the king’s activities as a lender to noble families. E. Ladewig
Petersen and Ole Fenger, Adel forpligter: studier over den danske adels gældsstiftelse i 16. og
17. århundrede (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1983), examines the extent and sociopolitical
implications of noble indebtedness. Hans C. Wolter, Adel og embede: embedsfordeling
og karrieremobilitet hos den dansk-norske adel 1588–1660 (Copenhagen: Den danske
historiske Forening, 1982) is a brief but pithy study of education and administrative
career paths among the nobility prior to absolutism. Regarding the mercantile elite,
John T. Lauridsen’s case study of the Marselis merchant dynasty is invaluable: Marselis
konsortiet: en studie over forholdet mellem handelskapital og kongemagt i 1600-tallets
Danmark (Århus: Jysk Selskab for Historie, 1987). Thomas Munck, The Peasantry and
the Early Absolute Monarchy in Denmark 1660–1708 (Copenhagen: Landbohistorisk
selskab, 1979), is far broader in its coverage than its title would seem to imply, covering
the history of agriculture and of taxation as well as the social history of the peasantry. It
is one of those few cases in which the definitive text on a major subject in Scandinavian
history has been written in a major Western tongue.
There is a great need for a biography of Frederik III, but fortunately the period
1648–60 and the transition to absolutism have occasioned a fair outpouring of literature.
The third volume of Gyldendals Danmarks historie, written by Knud J. V. Jespersen
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1989), provides the best survey history of this period. J. A.
Fridericia, Adelsvældens sidste Dage (Copenhagen, 1894), the nineteenth-century master’s
study of Danish domestic and diplomatic history during the first twelve years of Frederik
III’s reign, is typical Fridericia: massively researched, elegantly written, and overtly antiroyal. On the prelude to, and operations of, the Karl Gustav Wars see Åke Lindqvist,
Politiska förbindelser mellan Sverige och Danmark 1648–1655 (Lund: Håkan Ohlsson,
1944), and Arne Stade, Carl X. Gustaf och Danmark (Stockholm: Militärhistoriska
förlaget, 1965). Aksel Lassen, 1659: da landet blev øde (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1965),
is a chilling account of the demographic impact of the Swedish invasion and the allied
liberation of Jutland. C. O. Bøggild Andersen, Statsomvæltningen i 1660 (Copenhagen:
Levin og Munksgaard, 1936) is still widely regarded as the standard interpretation of
the royalist coup; it should, however, be supplemented with Leon Jespersen and Asger
268
Bibliographic Essay
Svane-Knudsen, Stænder og magtstat: de politiske brydninger i 1648 og 1660 (Odense:
Universitetsforlag, 1989), which considers not only the Diet of 1660 but also that of
1648 and the composition of Frederik III’s coronation charter. On the Royal Law and
its historiography, consult Leon Jespersen, ‘Knud Fabricius og den monarkiske bølge:
nogle kommentarer til de statsretlige brydninger i 15–1600-tallets Danmark’, Historie
(1997), 54–85.
Index
absolutism, transition to
(statsomvæltningen, 1660–1) 195,
243–57
adelsvælden 6, 56
Adolf, duke of Holstein, son of Frederik I 24,
37, 48
agriculture, in the Oldenburg state 6, 83–9,
92, 94, 96, 99, 140, 214–5, 218
large-scale farming 86–7, 93, 140, 214
Akershus Castle, Norway 22, 44, 100
Albrecht of Prussia, Grand Master of the
Teutonic Order 61
Altona 180
Älvsborg 113, 155–7
ransom of 1570 115
ransom of 1613 141, 156–7
Alvsson, Knut 12
Alþing, Icelandic diet 46, 74–7, 102, 221
Anabaptism 70
Andersdatter, Karen, mistress of Christian
IV 160
Anna, daughter of Christian III 35, 71
Anna, daughter of Frederik II, consort of James
VI and I of Scotland and England 159,
183
Anna Cathrine of Brandenburg, consort of
Christian IV 130, 158, 160
Anne Cathrine, daughter of Christian IV 199
Anstruther, Sir Robert 196
Antvorskov Castle 41–2, 135, 142
Antwerp 13
Arason, Jón 75
Archangel 109, 110, 151
Armada, Spanish 42, 121, 129, 144
army, see military institutions
Arndt, Johann 175
Arnisæus, Henning 131
Arrebo, Anders 181, 185
Arsenal, Copenhagen 143, 145
art 82, 190, 191, 240
Arup, Erik 30
Aslakssøn, Cort 45, 176
Augsburg, Peace of (1555) 114, 164
August, elector of Saxony 35, 71, 114–15,
119, 120
Axtorna, battle of (1565) 114
bailiffs 219, 220
Balfour, David 144
Baltic trade 13, 34, 41, 53, 85, 88, 98,
107–11, 115, 134, 153, 201–2, 240, 251
Barby, Andreas von 38, 50, 54–5
Bartholin, Caspar 177
Below, Heinrich 40, 55
Berg, Frants 73
Bergen 13, 44, 73, 86, 97, 100–1, 108, 129,
134, 137–8, 151, 217, 223, 256
Bergenhus Castle, Norway 101
Berns, Danish merchant dynasty 241
Bessastaðir, Iceland 102
Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania 167–8
Bille, Anders, til Damsbo 205, 207, 216, 235,
241, 243
Bille, Ove 60
Bille, Sten 80
Bjelke, Jens 214–15, 243
Blekinge 5, 21, 28, 114, 154, 207, 237–40
Blome, Hans 47
Blue Tower (Blåtårn), Copenhagen
Castle 143, 150
Bogbinder, Ambrosius 25, 33
Borchgrevinck, Melchior 192
‘border meetings’ 116, 151, 156, 158; see also
Stettin, Peace of (1570)
Boris Godunov, tsar of Russia 149–50
Bornholm 113, 237–8, 243
Boschouwer, Marselis 138
Brahe Ottesen, Axel 80
Brahe, Otte, til Knudstrup 80
Brahe Ottesen, Tyge ( Tycho Brahe) 80–1, 96,
173, 176, 185–6
Brahetrelleborg 191
Brandenburg, electorate of 121, 158, 236,
238, 251
Braunsberg 179
Braunschweig, peace talks at (1626) 167
Bremen 48, 160–1, 200, 204, 207, 227, 233,
235–7, 252
Bremerholm 87, 105–6, 143–5, 212
Brochmand, Jesper 177–8, 182–5
Brömsebro, Peace of (1645) 207–11
Brömsebro, Treaty of (1541) 112, 116
Bruchofen, Heinrich von 69
Buckingham, George Villiers, 1st duke of 167
Bugenhagen, Johannes 64, 78
bureaucracy, in the Oldenburg state 7, 40,
49–57, 92–3, 130, 142, 197–200, 204,
209, 216, 219, 231, 249–50
270
Index
burghers, in Danish society 97–8, 134–7,
141, 156, 178, 203–4, 217, 220, 241,
244, 246, 249–50, 255–6
Bærum, Norway, iron mine at 139
Båhus 22, 45, 100
Båhuslen 86, 235, 237, 252
Calvinism 69–71, 120–1, 135, 174–7, 184
Camerarius, Ludwig 158
Catholic League, German 163–5
Catholicism
conspiracies involving 116, 120–1, 162,
164, 178–80
in Denmark 31–2, 40, 44, 59–65, 68, 70,
73–5, 114–6, 121, 161, 173,
177–82, 187
legislation against 179–80
see also papacy
cattle trade 85, 88, 92, 96, 140
Ceylon 138
chancellor 7, 31, 51–2, 200, 232
chancellor of the realm 51, 54, 200
Chancery, Danish 7, 52–3, 79, 130, 141, 231
Chancery, German 38, 47, 52–4, 199
Charisius, Jonas 135, 191
Charles, duke of Geldern 119
Charles I, king of England 164, 202
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 13, 17,
20–2, 25, 28, 44, 108, 118–19
Charles IX, king of France 115
Christian I, king of Denmark 4, 6, 26, 48, 78
Christian II, king of Denmark 4, 8, 11–28,
33, 44, 59–61, 66, 107–8, 112, 117,
242–3, 255
commercial policies of 13, 15, 107, 111
Christian III, king of Denmark 22, 36–7, 43,
49–52, 68, 74, 76, 78, 80, 98–9, 104,
106, 116, 122, 182, 184, 186, 227, 255
character of 29
coronation charter 31, 44
and the council of state 33–4, 54–6
in the Count’s War 25–8
domestic policies of 31–5, 44–8, 53–4, 87,
92, 100–2, 105
as duke of Holstein 24–5, 61
foreign policy of 108–9, 112, 117–19
and the Protestant Reformation 24, 32–3,
44, 58, 61–7, 70–2, 75
succession of 27–30
Christian IV, king of Denmark 42–3, 47, 50,
56, 72, 77, 80–1, 101–2, 127–229,
242, 256
character of 127–30, 141–2
death of 209–10, 226
domestic policies of 133–43, 217
education of 128–9
foreign policy of 148–72, 199–202,
204–8, 254
nature of kingship 129–32
relationship with Council of State 131–4,
141, 147–8, 152–3, 157–8, 164–72,
187, 190, 193, 195–204, 209–10, 255
and religion 175–84, 187
and the ‘sons-in-law’ 199, 209, 229–30
Stiftpolitik 160–1, 227
Christian V, king of Denmark 6, 250–2
Christian (V), Prince-Elect of Denmark, son of
Christian IV 160, 192, 197, 203, 205,
207, 209, 226
Christian, duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel
(‘the Mad Halberstädter’) 163, 167
Christianopel 144, 154
Treaty of (1645–6) 208
Christianshavn 144
Christianspris 205
Christianstad 144
Christina, queen of Sweden 180, 204, 207,
230, 234
Christine of Lorraine, daughter of Christian
II 118–20
Christiania 134
Christoffer, count of Oldenburg 26–8,
105, 108
church and religion, in the Oldenburg
state 32, 58, 63, 64, 66, 172–8
clergy 65–7, 69, 71, 73, 78–9, 181–2,
187–9, 221
and debate over eucharist 70
episcopacy 31–2, 44, 59, 62–9, 73–5, 182,
184, 187
and ‘foreigner articles’ 70, 177
governance of 32, 64–7, 70, 221
and monarchy 184, 244–6
Ordinance of 1537 64–7, 74–5
Ordinance on Church Discipline
(1629) 182
in the peripheral lands 44
prayer-days 71–2, 184–5
and Protestant heterodoxy 67–71, 177
and regulation of morality 68, 76–7, 221
resistance to 65–6, 73–7
and royal propaganda 184–5
secularisation of 32, 65
and social discipline 181–4, 187, 221, 256
see also bishops; Catholicism;
crypto-Calvinism; Lutheranism;
philippism; religion
churches, construction of 143
Clein, Frantz 191
Clothing Company (Klædekompagniet) 136
Colding, Niels Nielsen 56–7
Collart, Claude 46
Index
colleges, collegial system 231–3, 243, 249–51
collegia 188
commerce, in the Oldenburg state 88–92,
98–102, 108–10, 115, 133–40, 151,
159, 207, 214, 217, 224–5, 241, 254–5
commissars, regional 204
Concord, Formula/Book of 71–2, 121, 174,
176
Concordia incident (1573) 110
‘Confederates under Copenhagen’s
Freedom’ 244–6
conscription, military 146, 201, 205, 235, 251
constitutional politics, in the Oldenburg
state 2, 6, 7, 19–24, 30–3, 38, 49–51,
56–7, 116, 127–33, 171–2, 193, 195–8,
202–4, 208, 227–9, 242–7, 253–6
‘contribution system’ 196
Copenhagen 13, 19, 22–31, 37, 50, 58,
62–3, 87, 97, 100, 105, 134–8, 178,
188, 192, 211, 217, 249
Castle 143
Confession of (1530) 63
diet at (1530) 63
diet at (1645) 209, 228
diet at (1660) 243–7, 256
Peace of (1660) 238
Recess (1536) 64, 67
Recess (1547) 183
siege of (1658–1660) 237, 241
Treaties of (1645) 208
University at 45, 66–71, 78–80, 175, 178,
188–9
coronation charter 6, 19–20, 31–2, 37, 44,
130, 226–9, 232, 242–5, 248
council-constitutionalism 2, 6–7, 49–51,
56–7, 227
Council of State (Denmark) 6, 7, 12, 17–19,
23–43, 49–52, 55–65, 72, 80, 90–3,
100–1, 105, 112, 115–8, 122–36, 141,
147–8, 151–3, 157, 164–72, 204, 214,
216, 218–20, 225–9, 233–4, 242–7,
251, 255–6
Count’s War (1534–6) 25–35, 37, 44, 62–3,
66, 96, 105, 108, 112, 118
county assemblies (herredsting) 220
court culture and life, in the Oldenburg
state 35–6, 39–41, 50–1, 79–82, 130,
142–3, 189–93, 203, 251
courts 54, 183
Cromwell, Oliver 233–4
crypto-Calvinism 69, 80, 121
Daljunker 21–2
Danish East India Company 137–8
Danzig 18, 150
Declaration of Privileges (1661) 248–9
271
Denmark
Crown of 6, 127, 247, 255
geography of 5, 84
manufactures and industry 87, 105, 136,
145
militia 145–6, 153–4, 207; see also military
institutions
population of 5–6, 214, 241
towns and cities in 17, 97–100, 134–5,
217, 220, 249
Dessau Bridge, battle of (1626) 167
diets, provincial 7, 45, 204
diets and estates, in Oldenburg monarchy 7,
18, 25, 31–2, 34, 39, 51, 197–8, 203–4,
209, 225, 228, 235, 242–6, 255
Disciplinary House and Orphanage (Tugt- og
Børnehus) 136
disease, epidemic 211
district officers (amtmænd) 249
Ditmarschen 37
invasion of (1559) 37, 55, 116, 119
Dohna, Christoph von 55
dominium maris baltici 104, 107, 109, 113,
208, 253–4
dominium maris septentrionalis 109–10
Dorothea, daughter of Christian II 118
Dorothea, daughter of Christian III 61
Dorothea of Sachsen-Lauenburg, consort of
Christian III 35, 61, 64
Dragsholm Castle 101, 140
Duchies, the 3, 5, 12, 24, 27, 42–3, 46–9,
61, 72, 84, 99, 117, 129, 130, 144, 169,
200, 212, 221, 232, 236, 255
Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester 121
Dünamünda 157
Dunkirk 169
Dutch War, of Louis XIV (1672–9) 251, 252
Dybvad, Christoffer 131–2, 175, 184, 186
Dybvad, Jørgen 45, 131, 175, 177
Dyveke, mistress of Christian II 13, 14, 17
Eberstein, Ernst Albrecht von 241, 243
Eckernförde 169
economy and economic development, in the
Oldenburg state 6, 83–92, 139–41
education, in Oldenburg state 77–9, 185,
187–9, 215
Egeskov 191
Eiker, Norway, iron mine at 139
Einarsson, Gissur 74–5
Einarsson, Marteinn 75–6
Eitzen, Paul von 72
Elbe River 47, 134, 159, 200, 201
Elisabeth (Isabella) of Habsburg, consort of
Christian II 13, 20, 118
Elisabeth, daughter of Christian IV 175
272
Index
Elizabeth I, queen of England 48, 50, 58, 110,
121–2
Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI & I and
Anna of Denmark 159
Emperor’s War (Kejserkrigen), see Lower Saxon
War
Engelbrechtsson, Olav 22, 44, 72, 242, 243
Engelbrektsson, Engelbrekt 4
England 58, 70, 105–6
political relations with Denmark 104, 109,
110–11, 115, 121–2, 156, 159,
163–71, 196, 202, 205, 208, 233–4,
238, 240, 251, 253–4
trade relations with Denmark 102, 109,
122, 256
Erasmus, Desiderius, of Rotterdam 131
Erik XIV, king of Sweden 38, 112–15
Erik of Pomerania, king of Denmark 4
Erikssen, Jørgen 73
Erslev, Kristian S. A. 30
estates, see diets and estates
Estonia 113, 149
Evangelical Union, German 162, 164
Eylafjörður, Iceland 224
exorcism at baptism, controversy over 174–5
Fabricius, Knud 30
Falster, island of 56, 236
Favreskov Bjerge, battle of (1535) 28
Fehmarn, island of 169
battle at (1644) 207
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor 35
Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor 163,
166–71, 200
Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor 201,
206, 234–5
fiefholders (lensmænd) 7, 42–3, 52, 101, 140,
215, 219–20, 249
fiefs (len) 7, 34, 38, 42–3, 53, 57, 87, 91–3,
100, 140, 209, 212, 215, 219–20
great fiefs 40, 215, 219
finances and state fisc 34–5, 40–1, 53–7,
100, 133, 140–2, 157, 195–8, 201–2,
208–13, 222, 231, 240
Finland 112
Finnmark 144, 151
fisheries, in Oldenburg state 86, 88, 99,
102, 108
Fleming, Klas 206
Flensborg 105
foreign policy and diplomacy, Danish 36–40,
52, 82, 104–23, 127–9, 132–3, 144,
148–72, 199–202, 204–8, 233–40,
251–4; see also Christian III, Christian
IV, Frederik II, Frederik III
France, political relations with Denmark 72,
110, 115, 119–22, 129, 165, 167–71,
196, 206–8, 238, 240, 251, 252–4
Francis I, king of France 119
Francis II, duke of Lorraine 118
Frederik I, king of Denmark 12, 18–25, 47,
59–63, 78, 104–5, 107–8, 112, 243
Frederik II, king of Denmark 49, 51–2,
56–7, 72, 76–7, 91, 96, 108, 128–31,
142–4, 150, 159, 162, 173, 176–7, 181,
183, 184, 186, 189–90, 226–7, 254, 256
character of 35–7, 39–40, 50
and the Council of State 36–40, 54–5,
113, 116
domestic policies of 37–48, 53, 85–7, 92,
98, 100–2, 105–6
foreign policy of 37–8, 40, 109–23
funeral of 43
and learning 78–81
and religion 58, 67–71, 78–9
succession of 36–7
Frederik III, king of Denmark 160, 179–80,
200, 207, 209–10, 217, 226–47, 250–1
and the Council of State 227–33, 235, 239,
242–7, 255
character of 227–8, 241
education and early career 227
foreign policy of 233–40, 251
succession and coronation (1648) 226
Frederik IV, king of Denmark 251
Frederiksborg Castle 143, 190–4, 240
Frederiksodde, fortress at 213, 236
Friedrich, duke, son of Frederik I 24, 48
Friedrich, duke of Saxony (‘Frederick the
Wise’) 60
Friedrich II, Elector Palatine and Count
Palatine 118–19
Friedrich V, Elector Palatine 159, 163, 165–6
Friedrich III, duke of Holstein-Gottorp 234
Friedrich Wilhelm, elector of
Brandenburg 236
Friis, Astrid 30
Friis, Christen, til Kragerup 131, 158, 164,
180, 185, 199
Friis, Christian, til Borreby 131, 156, 164,
179, 185
Friis, Johan 26, 33–4, 37–8, 40, 50, 53–5,
93, 108, 113, 118, 122
Frøsø 236
Fuchs von Bimbach, Johann Philip 167–8
Fyn 19, 27, 174, 205, 236, 238, 240
Færø Islands 99, 137, 237
Gaas, Hans 73
Gallas, Matthias 206
Index
Galt, Peder 206, 208
Geer, Louis de 206
Geneva 174
Gersdorff, Joachim 244
Gideon (ship) 105
Georg Friedrich of Baden-Durlach 169
Gjøe, Mogens 26
Glad, Rasmus 80–1
Glückstadt 134, 159, 170
gothicism 187
Gotland 21, 114–15, 207, 252
Göttingen 168
Gottorp 19, 22, 24, 48
Great Belt (Storebælt) 2, 236, 239
Great Judgement (Stóridómur, 1564) 77
Great Land Exchanges (mageskifter) 41–2, 53,
87, 92
Great Northern War (1700–21) 252
Greenland 5, 137–8
Gregory XV, pope 179–80
Greifswald 169
Griffenfeld, Count, see Schumacher, Peder
Grindavík, Iceland 223
Groningen, military expedition to (1536) 119
Grumbach affair 114, 120
Grønbæk, Isak 174
Guðmundsson, Daði 75
Gustav Vasa, king of Sweden 5, 16, 26, 28–9,
112
Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus), king of
Sweden 128, 146, 154–8, 162, 165,
170–1, 187, 188, 196, 200, 204–5, 232
Gyllenstierna, Christina 15
The Hague, Treaty and Confederation of
(1625) 167, 169
The Hague, Treaty of (1649) 233
The Hague, peace conference at
(1659) 238–40
Habsburg dynasty 109–12, 117–18, 120–1,
162, 164, 166, 169–71, 202
and the ‘Baltic design’ 169, 171, 207
Haderslev 24, 48, 61, 64
Haderslevhus Castle 47
Hafnarfjördur 102
Hahn, Vincents 250
Hahn’ske cabal 250
Halberstadt, bishopric of 160, 227
Halland 5, 28, 114, 154, 207, 235–8, 240
Hamar 99
Hamburg 107–9, 134, 159, 161, 164, 200–1,
204, 256; see also Hanseatic League
Treaty of (1536) 28
Hameln 167
Hans, king of Denmark 4, 12, 14, 21, 37,
47, 102
273
Hans, duke, son of Frederik I 24, 37, 48
Hans, son of Christian II 22, 25, 243
Hans, son of Frederik II 128, 150
Hans the Younger, brother of Frederik II 48
Hanseatic League 4, 13–14, 18, 25, 73, 86,
98, 101, 104–5, 107–9, 137, 156,
159–61, 200, 217, 254, 256
Hardenberg, Anna 35
Hardenberg, Erik 40
Härjedalen 207, 235–8
Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp, consort
of Karl X Gustav of Sweden 234
Hekla, Iceland, volcanic eruption at
(1636) 223
Hegelund, Peder 81, 174
Heidelberg 174
Heiligerlee, battle of (1536) 119
Heinrich Julius, duke of
Braunschweig-Lüneburg 152–3
Heldvad, Niels 186
Helgesen, Poul 59, 62
Hellekande, merchant family 217
Helsingborg 2, 206
Helsingør 2, 3, 41, 70, 87, 88, 110, 134, 150,
201, 207, 237, 253
Hemmingsen, Niels 68–71, 76, 78–81,
173–5, 185
Henry III, king of France and Poland (Henry,
duke d’Anjou) 110, 120–1
Henry IV, king of France (Henry of
Navarre) 121
Henry VIII, king of England 20, 60
Herlufsholm 188
Herrevad cloister 80
Hess, Marcus 98
Hillerød 143, 190
Hinrichsson Plot 152
history, study of, in the Oldenburg state 81,
186–7
Hjallese, meeting at (1534) 27
Hjaltason, Ólafur 76
Hólar 46, 74–7
Holberg, Ludvig 39
Holck, Christen, councillor 165
Holmens kirke 143
Holstein 3, 5, 22, 24, 26–7, 42, 46–9, 61, 72,
99, 117, 132, 153, 159, 168–70, 205–6,
221, 236, 255; see also Duchies
Holstein-Gottorp, duchy of 49, 159, 234, 237
Holstein-Segeberg, duchy of 48
Holy Roman Empire 3, 35–6, 47, 58,
114–15, 117–22, 149, 158–66,
169–71, 233, 235, 238, 252, 254
Honthorst, Gerrit von 191
Horn, Gustaf 205–6
Horsens 27
274
Index
Horsens (cont.)
council meeting at (1609) 153
Höxter, battle at (1625) 166
Huitfeldt, Arild 11, 23, 40, 56, 128–9,
186
Huitfeldt, Christoffer 75
Husum 60
Hven 80–1, 186
høilærde 68, 70, 78; see also Copenhagen,
university at
Iceland 44, 46, 52, 86–7, 99, 102–3, 107–8,
110, 137–8, 179, 237
Danish administration in 46, 74–7, 102,
221, 223–5, 255–6
Danish trade monopoly with 102, 137,
159, 217, 223–5, 256
episcopacy in 46
geography of 5, 84
population of 5, 6, 223–4
Protestant Reformation in 46, 74–7
volcanic activity in 223
Icelandic Company, Danish 136–7, 223–5
India, Danish trading post in 137–8
Ingria 157
iron industry 87, 139–40
Isaacsz, Isaac 191
Isaacsz, Pieter 191
Isabella, see Elisabeth of Habsburg
Ivan IV (‘the Terrible’), tsar of Russia 113
James VI and I, king of Scotland and
England 80, 130–1, 133, 153, 156, 159,
163–5, 183
Jämtland 46, 114, 207, 235–8
Jan Kazimierz, king of Poland 235–6
Jensen, Frede P. 36
Jersin, Jens Dinesen 177
Jespersen, Knud J. V. 90, 249, 254
Jesuit order, in Denmark 152, 164, 179–80
Johan III, king of Sweden 115–17, 120,
149–50, 179
Johann Ernst, duke of Sachsen-Weimar 167–8
Johann Casimir, Count Palatine 121
Johann Friedrich, duke of
Braunschweig-Lüneburg 180
Jónsson, Gísli 76
Josafat (ship) 105
Juel, Jens, governor in Norway 139
Juel, Niels, admiral 252
Jülich-Kleve, succession dispute in
(1609–15) 162
Jutish Law (1241) 34
Jutland 18–19, 27, 167–71, 203, 205,
207–8, 211, 213, 236, 239–40
Kaas, Niels, til Torupgård 40, 42, 50, 69, 78,
81, 93, 122, 128–9
Kalmar 154
Kalmar Union (1397) 4–5, 11, 23, 43, 104,
111–12, 242
Kalmar War (1611–13) 133, 135, 144,
153–157, 162, 164–5, 184, 191, 194–5,
254
Kalundborg 118, 132
Kalundborg Recess (1576) 183
Kalø Castle 16
Kamin, bishopric of 160
Karl IX, king of Sweden 115, 117, 132,
149–55
Karl X Gustav, king of Sweden 234–9
Karl Gustav Wars (1657–60) 217, 234–43
Karlstadt, Andreas von 60
Kattegat 2
Kexholm 157
Kiel 61, 92, 196, 215, 237
Kier, Søren 191
Klosterlasse, Laurentius Nicolai 179
Knäröd
border meeting at (1624) 158
Peace of (1613) 156–7
Knieper, Hans 82
knight service (rostjeneste) 37, 90–1, 106, 146,
154, 249
Knoff, Christoffer 69
Knuth, Adam Levin 250
Knutsson, Karl 4
Kock, Jørgen 25–6, 33
Kock, Oluf Jensen 176–7, 179
Kolberger Heide, battle of (1644) 148, 206,
208
Kolding Recess (1558) 33–4, 40, 54, 95, 183
Koldinghus Castle 35, 47, 143, 192, 240
Kongsberg, Norway, silver mine at 139–40
Korsør 237, 241
Krabbe, Erik 34, 54
Krag, Niels 81, 186
Kronborg Castle 41, 82, 142–3, 194, 208,
237, 240
Krummedige, Henrik 21
Krumpen, Otte 15, 38
Land Law of Christian II 17, 23, 59–60
Landskrone 206
Langeland 236
Lapps 112, 151, 156
Laski, Jan 70
lastetold 41, 53, 110, 114, 254; see also Sound
dues
law, attempts to codify, in the Oldenburg
state 34, 54
Index
Leonora Christina, daughter of Christian IV,
wife of Corfitz Ulfeldt 228, 230, 251
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor 235
Lesser Belt (Lillebælt) 2, 28, 205, 236, 239
Lindenov, Hans 229
Listerdyb, battle of (1644) 206
literature, in Oldenburg state 79, 81, 173–8,
184–5
local and regional government, in the
Oldenburg state 51, 93, 96–101, 204,
219–25, 249, 255–6
Lolland 56, 236
Lorichs, Anders 120–1
Lorraine 114, 120
Louis XIV, king of France 248, 251–2
Lower Saxon Circle 3, 159–60, 163–4, 166,
168, 170, 195, 200, 205, 227
Lower Saxon War (1625–9) 149, 166–72,
181–2, 184, 194–5, 200, 203, 217–8,
222, 224, 227, 241–2, 254
Lübeck 16, 18, 21, 25–8, 107–8, 112–14,
194–8; see also Hanseatic League
Peace of (1629) and preliminaries 170–1,
197–200, 211
Lund 60, 65, 188
battle of (1676) 252
Lunge, Vincens 21, 73
Lüneburg, princely diet at (1586) 121
Luther, Martin 60, 64, 69, 173, 178
Lutheran Jubilee (1617) 178–81
Lutheranism 20, 22–4, 29–32, 58–69, 72–4,
161, 173–8, 181, 185
orthodox (gnesio-Lutheranism) 69–71,
121, 174–8, 187, 189
Lutter-am-Barenberge, battle of (1626) 168,
196
Lykke, Anne 197
Lyschander, Claus Christoffersen 156
Madsdatter, Kirsten 160
Madsen, Poul 76, 78
Magnus, duke, son of Christian III 112–13
Magnus, Johannes 187
Malmø 17, 19, 24–9, 62, 97, 105, 134,
164
Mander, Karl van, III 191
Mansfeld, Count Ernst von 163, 166–8
Mared, battle of (1563) 114
Margaret, Habsburg regent in the
Netherlands 20
Margrethe I, queen of Denmark 4
Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, consort of
Gustav II Adolf 205
Maribo 65
Marriage Ordinance (1582) 68
Marselis, Gabriel de 217
275
Marselis, merchant dynasty 241
Maurice of Nassau, prince of Orange 161
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor 13
Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor 36,
115
Maximilian I, duke of Bavaria 133, 170
Mecklenburg, duchy of 169, 206
Melanchthon, Philip 64, 69, 174
Miðdalur, Iceland, meeting at (1542) 75
Mikkelsen, Hans 17
military institutions and army, in the
Oldenburg state 34, 87, 90, 105–6,
113–4, 143–6, 153–5, 166–8, 196,
201, 205, 207, 209, 212, 216, 235–9,
251; see also navy
Minden, Didrik von 75
Molesworth, Sir Robert 251
monarchy, character of, in the Oldenburg
state 2, 6–7, 23–4, 30–40, 49–52,
55–7, 65, 116, 127–33, 140, 165,
203–4, 208, 220, 225–30, 242–7,
249–50, 255–6
Moravia 167
Müller, Henrik 217, 241
Mund, Pros, admiral 206
Munk, Erik 101
Munk, Jens 137
Munk, Kirsten, morganatic wife of Christian
IV 160, 194, 197, 199, 226
Munk, Ludvig 96, 101
music, in the Oldenburg state 82, 191–2
Nansen, Hans, mayor of Copenhagen 244–5
Narva 113
Naumburg, princely diet at (1587) 121
navy, Danish 41, 105–6, 110, 113–4, 144–5,
153–4, 169, 201, 206–7, 212, 224,
235–6, 239, 251–3
Nedenes 85
Netherlands 17, 19–20, 25, 70, 72, 85, 88–9,
131, 134–5, 177, 230
Danish relations with 104, 109–11, 115,
121–2, 129, 156, 160–2, 165,
167–71, 196, 201–2, 207–9, 233–4,
238, 240, 251, 253–4
revolt of 70, 89, 109, 115, 120–2
States-General of 161
nobility, in the Oldenburg state 17, 19, 23,
26, 30–3, 37, 39, 42–3, 49, 55, 79,
83–6, 89–96, 132, 203–4, 208–9,
214–9, 233, 242–50, 256
Norby, Søren 21, 26
Nordkalotten 151–2
Norway 12, 20–6, 32, 43–6, 52, 72–3,
85–9, 94, 98–101, 107–8, 110, 112,
114–15, 134, 137, 139–40, 144, 151,
276
Index
Norway (cont.)
154, 156, 159, 179–80, 183, 207, 212,
214, 217, 223, 237–40
constitutional status of 44–5, 242–3
Council of State 21–2, 44–5
Danish administration in 45–6, 72–3,
100–1, 151, 183, 196, 199, 213,
221–3, 230, 232, 255–6
diet and estates in 101, 196, 222, 243
geography of 5, 84, 99, 100
population of 5, 6, 89, 100, 214
Protestant Reformation in 72–4
Norwegian Law, Christian IV’s (1604) 222,
242
Nova Dania, Danish outpost in North
America 137
Nyborg 35, 238
Nykøbing (Falster) 56, 192, 205
Nysted 87
Oddeyri, Iceland, meeting at (1551) 75–6
Odense 188
Council meeting at (1604) 152
diets at (1526–7) 62–3
diet at (1627) 198
diet at (1638) 204, 209, 256
diet at (1657) 235
Ogier, Charles 192
Óland 154–6
Olden-Jørgensen, Sebastian 190
Oldenburg dynasty 3, 48
Oliva, Peace of (1660) 238
Olmütz 179
Oslo 22, 44, 73, 99, 105, 134
Osnabrück 202, 206
Our Lady, Church of (Vor Frue Kirke) 12, 226
Oxe, Peder 40, 51–3, 78, 114, 118, 120
Oxe, Torben 14, 16
Oxenstierna, Axel 155, 176, 202, 204–5, 232,
237
Palladius, Peder 64, 66, 76, 182
Pálsson, Ógmundur 74–5
papacy 60–2, 116, 121, 162, 178–80; see also
Catholicism
and the missio danica 179–80
Paracelsian medicine, in Denmark 80; see also
Severinus, Petrus
peasantry, in the Oldenburg state 17–21,
31–2, 37, 84–6, 94–101, 140, 156, 186,
203, 213–4, 218, 220, 244, 255
cottagers 94
labour obligations and rent 95–6, 140, 144,
218, 255
landowning peasants 94, 218
leaseholding peasants 94, 218
ugedagstjenere 94, 214, 218
Pedersen, Christiern 66
Pedersøn, Mogens 192
Pentz, Christian von 229
Pernau 157
Petersen, E. Ladewig 30, 57, 171, 211
Philip II, king of Spain 118, 121
Philip IV, king of Spain 166
philippism 69–72, 80, 121, 174–7; see also
Lutheranism
Pinneberg 180
piracy, Danish measures against 41, 109, 224
Poland 157, 169, 234–40
Danish relations with 104–5, 107, 110,
113–14, 144, 149–50, 152, 158, 205
Pomerania, duchy of 169
postal service, in Denmark 141
Poulsen, Svend (Gøngehøvdingen) 238
Pratensis, Johannes 80
Protest of 1588 43, 55, 92, 128, 130, 204, 256
Protestant alliances, Danish involvement
in 110, 119–23, 158–65, 254
Quist, Søren Jensen (the ‘priest of Vejlby’) 54
Rafael (ship) 105
Ramel, Heinrich 40, 43, 50, 54–5, 122, 128
Rantzau, Breide 55, 119
Rantzau, Daniel 114
Rantzau, Frans 130, 199
Rantzau, Gert 155
Rantzau, Heinrich 47, 121, 185
Rantzau, Johann 19, 21, 27–8, 47–8
Rantzau, Kaj 197
‘rebellion paragraph’, in Danish coronation
charters 12, 19, 31
Recess of 1536 31–3
Reformation, Protestant, in Denmark 3,
30–3, 44, 49, 58–77, 82, 117, 225, 253
Regency government in Denmark
(1588–96) 42–3, 56, 73, 78, 111,
128–9, 144, 174, 254
Reinhardt, Martin 60
Rendsburg 61
meeting at (1544) 48
Renée (Renate) of Lorraine, granddaughter of
Christian II 119
Resen, Hans Poulsen 175–81, 183–4, 187–9
Restitution, Edict of (1629) 200
revolts and insurrections, in the Oldenburg
state 20–1, 27, 33, 44, 96, 101, 220, 225
Reykjavík 102
Ribe 174, 188
agreement of (1460) 48
Riga 151, 157
rigsembedsmænd, see Denmark, bureaucracy
Index
rigshofmester 31, 51–2, 55, 130, 199, 229,
232;
Roberts, Michael 1, 14, 194
Rosenborg 143, 190–2
Rosenkrants, Holger Ottesen 38
Rosenkrantz, Erik Ottesen 101
Rosenkrantz, Gunde 232–3
Rosenkrantz, Holger, ‘the Learned’ 177–8,
185
Rosenkrantz, Jørgen 174
Roskilde 19, 65, 186, 188
Peace of (1658) 236–8
Rostock 69, 78, 169, 174–5
Royal Law (kongeloven, lex regia, 1665) 249
Royal Tax 20
royalism 132, 184, 243
Rønneby 114
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor 121, 186,
191–2
Rügen 252
Russia 157, 234, 236
Danish relations with 107, 113, 144,
149–50
Ry, Jutland, meeting at (1534) 27
Ry, Jutland, meeting at (1629) 203–4, 256
Rønnow, Joachim 62
sacramentarianism 70; see also Denmark,
church in, and Protestant heterodoxy
St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) 120
Skt Nicolai Church, Copenhagen 143, 174,
176
Skt Petri Church, Copenhagen 143
Sadolin, Jørgen Jensen 62, 64
Saxo Grammaticus 186
Saxony, electorate of 121, 158, 192
Scanian War (1675–9) 252
Schack, Hans 241, 243
Schauenburg, counts of 180
Schjelderup, Jens 73
Schmalkalden, League of 119
Schumacher, Peder (Count
Griffenfeld) 250–1
Schütz, Heinrich 192
Schwerin, bishopric of 160
Scotland 106
Seelze, battle at (1625) 167
Segeberg, meeting at, and coalition (1621) 163
Sehested, Christen Thomesen 171, 200, 243
Sehested, Hannibal 199, 217, 223, 228–32,
245
Sehested, Sten Maltesen 154–5
Seven Years’ War of the North
(1563–70) 38–41, 46, 99, 101, 106,
113–16, 132
Severinus, Petrus 80, 185–6
277
Sigismund Vasa, king of Sweden and
Poland 149, 152
Silesia 167
Silk Company (Silkekompagniet) 136
silver mining 139–40, 222
Sjöaryd 156
Sjælland 26, 95, 177, 213, 218, 236–8, 240
Skagerrak 2
Skálholt 46, 74–7
Skanderborg 142
Skeel, Christen 235, 243–5
Skeel, Jørgen 197
Skipper Clement 27, 29, 96, 105
Skram, Peder 28, 105
Skriver, Christian 75
Skåne 5, 20–1, 26, 28, 114–15, 205–7, 235,
237–8, 240
Slagheck, Didrik 16–18, 60
Slesvig 3, 5, 22, 24, 46–8, 61, 72, 168, 205,
243; see also Duchies
Småland 114, 206–7
snaphaner, Danish guerrilla fighters 238
Sofie of Mecklenburg, consort of Frederik
II 42, 56, 129–30, 133
Sophie Amalie, consort of Frederik III 180,
228
Sorø, noble academy at 180, 188, 215
Sound, the 2, 3, 41–2, 53, 85, 88, 104, 107,
109–11, 114–15, 120–21, 129, 144,
150, 158, 163, 171, 206–8, 211, 233,
235, 238–40, 252–4
Sound dues 26, 41, 53, 107, 109–10, 115,
133, 140–1, 144, 158, 161, 196, 201–4,
208, 212, 233, 238, 254
Spain, Danish relations with 89, 110, 115–16,
118, 120–2, 129, 152, 161–9, 223, 252
Speyer, Treaty of (1544) 112, 119
Spitzbergen 138
Stade 161, 202
statholder in Copenhagen 199
Statthalter, governor in the Duchies 47
Stavanger 44, 73, 99, 183
Stefan Bathory, king of Poland 149
Stettin, Peace of (1570) 115–16, 150, 155,
164
Sthen, Hans Christensen 81
stipendium regium 78; see also Copenhagen,
university at
Stock Exchange (Børsen), in Copenhagen 135,
143
Stockholm 13–15, 155, 235
Bloodbath of (1520) 15–16, 28
Stolbova, Treaty of (1617) 157
Stralsund 170
Stub, Iver 176–7
Sture, Nils 21
278
Index
Sture, Sten, the Elder 4
Sture, Sten, the Younger 4, 14–16
Sture, Svante Nilsson 4
Svalbard archipelago 138
Svane, Hans 244–6
Svenstrup, battle of (1534) 27
Sweden 4, 7, 12, 14–18, 21, 23, 49, 57–8,
83, 94, 106, 116, 146, 160, 180, 187,
188–9, 209, 230–2, 249, 253
Danish administration in 4, 14–18, 21, 23
Danish relations with 28, 37–8, 104–8,
111–20, 132–3, 144, 149–58,
161–2, 165, 170–1, 200, 202, 204–8,
222, 234–40, 248, 251–3
Sønderborg 22, 35, 47–8
Tandrup, Leo 149
Tast, Herman 61
Tausen, Hans 61–2, 64
taxation, in the Oldenburg state 20, 33–5,
38–9, 41, 45, 57, 97–8, 114, 140, 144,
156–7, 169, 196–8, 208, 211–14, 218,
220, 222, 225, 241, 244, 255
‘Ten Barrels of Gold’ 198, 201, 212
Teusina, Treaty of 151
Thijssen, Martin 206
Thirty Years War. See Lower Saxon War
(1625–9); Christian IV, foreign policy of;
Torstensson War
Thorláksson (Þorláksson), Guðbrandur 76, 81
Three Crowns dispute 113, 115, 150, 156
Tilly, Jean ’tSerclaes, count 163, 166–71
timber trade, in Norway 85, 88, 99, 139, 217,
222–3
Timm, Reinhold 191
Torstensson, Lennart 205–7
Torstensson War (1643–5) 205–8, 212,
217–18, 222, 227, 235–6, 241, 254
Town Law of Christian II 17, 23
trading companies, in Oldenburg state 13–14,
136–8, 217
Tranquebar, India, Danish trading post at 138
Tre Kroner (ship) 144–5
Trefoldigheden (ship) 208
Treasury (Rentekammeret) 7, 55–6, 216
Treasury, royal (kongens eget kammer) 56
Trolle, Gustav 14–15
Trolle, Herluf 38, 188
Trondheim 22, 44, 46, 73, 100, 137, 181,
217, 237–8, 240
Trøndelag, Norway 46, 99, 114
Turesen, Frederik, commander of Copenhagen
militia 245
‘Turkish raid’ in Iceland (1627) 223–4
Tuxen, Lorenz 238
Twelve Years’ Truce (1609) 161
Tørning 24, 61, 64
Ulfeldt, Corfitz 199, 208, 217, 228–30,
236–7, 251
Ulfeldt, Ebbe 229
Ulfeldt, Jacob 165, 195, 197, 199
Ulfstand, Hak Holgersen 128
Ulrik, duke, son of Frederik II 128
Ulrik, duke, son of Christian IV 160, 226
Ulvsbäck parsonage, meeting at (1629) 170,
171
Uraniborg 80, 81, 185–6
Usedom 170
Utenhof, Wolfgang von 23, 32, 50, 54
Valdemar Christian, son of Christian IV and
Kirsten Munk 226
Valkendorf, Christoffer 40, 43, 50, 52–3, 78,
93, 101, 108, 128, 130
Varberg 114, 144
Västergötland 114
Vedel, Anders Sørensen 69. 81, 92, 186
Vejle, Hans Knudsen 177
Vejle, Jacob Madsen 174
Vendelbo region, Denmark 65–6; see also
Ålborg
Vendsyssel 27
Venice, Republic of 168
Venusinus, Jon Jacobsen 174
Verden 160, 200, 227, 233, 235, 237, 252
Viborg 13, 18–19, 24, 62, 183, 188
Viðey cloister, Iceland 75
villeinage, in Denmark 17, 95, 218
Vind, Jørgen 206
Vinhofvers, Dina 230
Vinstrup, Peder 184
Vordingborg 236
Vormordsen, Frans 64
Vries, Adriaen de 191
Wallenstein, Albrecht von 167–71, 196,
226
Walsingham, Sir Francis 121
Wedding, the Great (Det store Bilager,
1634) 192, 203
Weisweiler, Arnold 164, 180
Weser 47, 159
Westman Islands 102, 223–4
Westminster, Treaty of (1654) 234
Westphalia, Peace of (1648) 3, 202, 206, 234
whaling industry, in the Oldenburg
state 138–9
‘White Death’ epidemic (1609–10) 211
Willemsson, Sigbrit (‘Mor Sigbrit’) 13–14,
16–19
Index
William of Orange (‘the Silent) 36
Winsheim, Veit 47
Wismar 169, 252
Danish-Swedish peace talks at (1608) 153
witches and witchcraft, in the Oldenburg
state 182–3, 224
Wittenberg 20, 60–2, 64, 66, 69, 78, 174–5
Władysław IV, king of Poland 206
Wolgast, battle of (1628) 170
Worm, Ole 83, 186–7
Wuchters, Abraham 191
Wullenwever, Jürgen 25–6, 28, 33, 108
Øksnebjerg, battle of (1535) 28
Øsel 112–13, 207
Østland 99
Ålborg 27, 66, 169
Ålborg, Niels Mikkelsen 176
Ålborghus 35
Århus 188
Åsunden, Lake, battle at 15
279