Predominantly Catholic Sweden?

[LeftsideLock]

A question that's been on my mind lately.

With a POD after the Protestant Reformation and after Sweden becomes independent from the Kalmar Union, is it possible for Sweden to remain predominantly Catholic? Does Sweden remaining Catholic mean the rest of Scandinavia does as well?

Does a Catholic Sweden get involved in the Thirty Years' War? Or does a Catholic Sweden create enough butterflies that there is no TYW, or a very different TYW? My guess is the TYW still happens in some form.

 

[ingemann]

A question that's been on my mind lately.

With a POD after the Protestant Reformation and after Sweden becomes independent from the Kalmar Union, is it possible for Sweden to remain predominantly Catholic? Does Sweden remaining Catholic mean the rest of Scandinavia does as well?

Does a Catholic Sweden get involved in the Thirty Years' War? Or does a Catholic Sweden create enough butterflies that there is no TYW, or a very different TYW? My guess is the TYW still happens in some form.

A Catholic Sweden will likely end up a Danish province. People don't get how much money and power it gave the crown that they could confiscate Church land and make the clergy into state officials (a power which enable the Vasas to make the crown heritable). At the sam time there was a strong Protestant movement in the country which won't disappear in less than 150 years. So Sweden will stay significant weaker than Denmark, while a large minority will prefer any Protestant sovereign including the king of Denmark to the Cattholic king. So Denmark will likely reconquer Sweden between 1560-90.
Also without the Swedish reformation, we won't see a Swedish bible meaning that they will use the Danish one, that may force a Scandinavian written standard based on the old dialect of Copenhagen (like Danish and Norwegian/Bokmål are).

But the effect willl be felt, the counter-reformation has run its cause so we will likely see large part of Sweden (and Finland) which Denmark will be unable convert. So we may see a Croat-Serb style split in Scandinavia, where Protestant Scandinavians identify as Danes and Catholic ones as Swedes.
In the historical land of Sweden Norrland will likely stay mostly Catholic, Österland and Svealand will go mostly Protestant. While Götaland will likely be split. The counter-reformation was most efficient in poor isolated areas.