Denmark, 1513-1660: The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy

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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

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With ofﬁces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Paul Douglas Lockhart 2007

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 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 on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk 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

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(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.

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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

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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

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2 The Rebirth of the Oldenburg Monarchy, 1536–1596

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3 Reformation and Culture

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4 Commerce, Rural Economy, and the Structure of Society

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5 The Mistress of the Sound: Denmark and Europe, 1513–1596

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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

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7 Baltic and German Hegemonies: Denmark and Europe, 1596–1629

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8 Church and Court: Culture in the Age of Christian IV

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9 The Death of Government by Consensus, 1630–1648

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10 State and Society, Centre and Periphery

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11 War and Absolutism, 1648–1660

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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.

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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

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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,

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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‘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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 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

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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

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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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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

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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).

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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 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.

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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(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 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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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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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.

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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 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.

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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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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).

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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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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.

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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).

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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.

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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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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).

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 d¨anische Friedensvermittlung beim Westf¨alischen Friedenskongress’, in Forschungen und Quellen zur Geschichte des dreissigj¨ahrigen Krieges (Münster: Aschendorff, 1981).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 J¨amtland and H¨arjedalen, 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.

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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

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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,

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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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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

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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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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

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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.

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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’ˆetre, 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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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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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

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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

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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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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).

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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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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).

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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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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

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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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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

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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

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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

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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

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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