AHC WI: Save the Kalmar Union

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to save the Kalmar Union from its collapse in 1523 with a POD before the 1520's. What happens next? Will the Union expand into the rest of Scandinavia and possibly Britain, Germany, or Russia? What about colonizing North America?
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
The Kalmar Union was three kingdoms with very different interests. Norway was too weak to press theirs, but Sweden had hard times approve Swedish interests being ignored. Sweden was too strong to be a province in a Danish Empire.
 
The Kalmar Union was three kingdoms with very different interests. Norway was too weak to press theirs, but Sweden had hard times approve Swedish interests being ignored. Sweden was too strong to be a province in a Danish Empire.

Von Alder has mentioned the issue of treating the Swedish peasantry in ways that they felt meant serfdom was coming, which didn't help.

And even with a king who isn't deliberately putting Denmark first, trying to balance the interests of three separate realms is a lot of work. Time spent on Sweden is time not available to deal with Danish lords, Danish commoners, Danish towns, and Danish priorities - and vice-versa.

At some point, someone is going to feel that a king of their own will suit their needs better.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Well, the Norwegian peasantry was never treated like the Danish peasantry while Norway was a part of Denmark. But the Norwegian nobility was weak, and barely existed at all, so that explains it. And the Swedish nobility was actually more hostile to Denmark than the Swedish peasantry (this of course varied from place to place), the peasants in Småland (close to the Danish border) supported the Union because it ended the border wars (no more raids, lesser wars their sons were drafted to fight in).
 
another issue why it capsized was that Swedish merchant interests where peace with the North Germanic duchies, so they had regular trading partners for their Iron ... Danish Nobility (specially the royal family) had all sorts of claims on most of the same north germanic duchies, and itched for trying to push claims for them.
 
This one pops up every now and then. Links to old ones and my replies to them at the bottom of this post.

This one is a copy of an earlier one I wrote.

The Hansa rightly feared a united Scandinavia as a threat to their trading interests, and were strong and skilled enough in diplomatics to always try to drive a vedge between the three Kingdoms. Sweden has no beef with the Hansa, especially not after Valdemar took Gotland and thus the only Swedish Hansaetic city, Visby. It is hard to make the Hansa and Sweden enemies OTL and, frankly, ATL too.

My take on how to get the Kalmar Union to survive is to remove Danish interests in northern Germany completely. Regardless of how they manage to pacify any parts they hold, conflict in northern Germany will come back to bite the Danes in their arse sooner or later, if nothing else then incited by the Hansa. Then the Danes will need money from Sweden, money that goes towards furthering Danish power and defending the personal holdings and prestige of the Danish King. The salt trade will be disrupted, and the Swedes will only see paying massive amounts of money and the salt price increasing for the benefit of the Danes. It will cause resentment, and any Swedish nobleman will either force the Danes to agree to decentralisation (which is bad for the long-time survival of the Union) or try to have himself crowned King. And then the cycle is at it again.

If you want the Union to survive, you need to change a few things.

You need a common enemy. In my opinion, it is easier to have the Danes keep Estonia and the Swedes and Danes having a common enemy in Novgorod, then Russia until the reformation, when Poland-Lithuania and the Holy Roman Empire and counter-reformation can be added to the list, than to get Sweden to be the enemy of the Hansa or any other north German state.

You need to avoid taxing and disrupting trade (especially the salt trade) for the benefit of the Danish King specifically (ie interests in northern Germany) for the Union to survive.

You also probably need to avoid the slide towards serfdom in Denmark, for the Swedish peasants were more afraid of going the way of continental and Danish peasants towards serfdom than they were of death itself.

Land ownership in the three Kingdoms (plus Finland):

Country-Crown-Freeholding peasants-Nobility-Church (roughly 1400-1500)
Sweden-6-52-21-21.
Denmark-10-15-38-37.
Norway-7-37-15-41.
Finland-4,5-90-3-2,5.

The Norwegians were especially hard hit by the plague (55-60% of the population dead) and with the "allodement" law (which meant that free-held land was owned by the user after 60 years) and lots of free-held land abandoned after the plague, the Norwegian nobility more or less ceased to exist - their tenants abandoned their land, and they were forced to become peasants themselves to survive. That is why the Norwegian nobility does not figure that much in the struggels over the Kalmar Union.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=267884&highlight=Kalmar+Union&page=2

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=258506&highlight=kalmar

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=184710&highlight=kalmar

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=252489&highlight=kalmar&page=6

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=208762&highlight=kalmar
 
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