Jan-Maat’s Reviews > The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Volume 1: Prehistory to 1520 > Status Update

15th c."in Denmark a balance between king & aristocrats existed while the peasants & burghers lacked influence. The Swedish situation was marked by the rivalry of aristocratic factions which sought the support of the church, the burghers of the capital, & certain peasant communities. In Norway what remained of a national political system functioned mainly on a local level, dominated by the higher stratum of peasantry

"Medieval societal organisation was built on justice. Consequently, local communal life can be studied through legislation, judicial organisation & practice, in all of which great changes had taken place in the High Middle Ages. What occurred in the late middle ages can be characterised as shifts in the system, reflecting the changing situation in each kingdom"

"the most populous Scandinavian town around 1500 may have been the commercial centre of Bergen in Norway with perhaps as many as 7000 inhabitants. Stockholm & kobenhavn, the largest towns of Sweden & Denmark, may each have had some 5,000-6,000 permanent residents"

Sweden: "in 1523, the noble landowners' so called 'right to hand and neck' was officially ratified, ie their right to prosecute their subjects before public courts of law & to carry out the sentences passed on them including the death penalty. In all this the great noble & ecclesiastical landowners strove to exclude the State from their relationship with their tenants & other subjects"

"In many localities lack of grain forced people to bake bread from flour mixed with bark, a practise still common in Finland as late as the 19th century"

"the late medieval loss of population led to large scale abandonment of farms & holdings. According to the final report of the norwegian investigations of the scandinavian research project more than half of the named farms within the present day borders of norway & even more of the holdings (c.61-2%), may have been deserted"

"A lot of medieval musical material was lost in the Reformation when manuscript liturgical books were partly cut up & used for book binding. It has...proved possible to save some of this material. From Denmark there are about 50,000 extant fragments, most of them very small, from the 14th & 15th centuries"

The building of Trondheim cathedral influenced by English cathedrals - particularly old Lincoln, then the Octagon in Trondheim is later taken up and used in Ely a century later while the Corona in Trondheim for St Olaf's shrine is influenced by that of St Thomas at Canterbury

discussion of artistic influences, English in Jutland, French in Skane, German generally throughout Denmark and both Byzantine and western European on Gotland

"It is hardly a coincidence that the sagas of Icelanders came into being in a time when an old form of society was dissolving & a new one was coming into being, in a time when questions of basic values & identity must have pressed themselves upon the Icelandic chieftain class"