So, uhm, Norway AHC

And a more successful Denmark is likely to include those territories. But like Denmark, a more successful Norway is likely to include more territories, and so have a greater population. Possibly squeezing Denmark.

What I would ask is why would it be advantageous to place the capital in Norway?

If you have a still balkanized Scandinavia, it is likely that Sweden will orient itself west, Denmark south and west, and Norway to the west and northwest. If you're not really into the whole "control the straits and Baltic trade", but are oriented towards Iceland, the fishing trade, Greenland, Vinland and the Kingdom of the Isles Bergen or Trondheim may be more reasonable capitals.

If Norway controls Denmark, there is another reason to have the capital in Norway: defensibility. Norway is simply far more defensible than Denmark. So a long period of warfare and unrest around the southern Baltic, or a mongol invasion etc, may make Norway more desirable as a location.

I am thinking you could do this easily with a PoD far enough back. But the closer you get to today, the stronger the rival powers who have an interest in preventing a Scandinavian power coalescing.
 
It's worth noting that Sigurd at least had his norwegian capital in what is modern day sweden, close to where the three countries borders all met.

That's not a terrible position for a scandivanian capital.
 
Making Norway the dominant power in Scandinavia is always going to be hard as long as the Black Death, or a similar epidemic, reaches the country. Not only did it gut the population as a whole, it killed off very large portions of Norway's literate elite, eventually making it dependent on the Danes. It was a big part of the reason why Norway's native nobility was so easily displaced once the period of Danish domination started.

You'd either have to prevent Norway from being hit quite that hard, or cut its neighbors down to size to an equal extent, so they can't take advantage of the internal vacuum in Norway (I am not saying that Sweden and Denmark weren't also hit hard by the Black Death, but from what I read, they didn't seem to decline quite as hard as Norway did afterwards).

Without that, no amount of pre-plague dominance is going to hold for long, I think. Even if Norway starts off as the senior partner in a dynastic union, as it pretty much did OTL, it's eventually going to see itself gravitating towards Denmark or Sweden.
 
Last edited:
Wasn't Norway for practical purposes simply a lot of islands? AFAIK, the first road between Bergen and Oslo was constructed in the 20th century.

I know, geographically Denmark has also many islands, but from personal experience travelling form X to Y is easy in Denmark, less easy in Sweden and far more difficult in Norway, withhigh mountains, cliffside pistes and the frequent necessity of ferries.
This, combined with the more peripheral position, seems to work aginst a central role for Norway.
 
It's worth noting that Sigurd at least had his norwegian capital in what is modern day sweden, close to where the three countries borders all met.

That's not a terrible position for a scandivanian capital.

The greater Göteborg area is a good fit for centrality.
Aside: Wasn't Halmstad the de facto capital of the Kalmar Union where the royal councillors met and the king was elected?
 
But like Denmark, a more successful Norway is likely to include more territories, and so have a greater population.

The tricky bits are that Norway doesn't really have many logical expansion routes that doesn't involve jumping on a ship and sailing quite a distance. Westernmost Sweden might be one but otherwise not really. Denmark have both Sweden, Northern Germany and through the Baltics, while Sweden have Norway, Denmark and across the Baltics. Norway have what, Sweden and sailing across the North Sea, which is quite a bit more hostile than the Baltic is, the Baltic which, by and large, can be considered a very wide river more than open sea.

That said, I'd lean towards that a continued Norwegian supremacy over the Scottish highlands and Irish petty kingdoms might well be the best way to go.
 
I'm afraid I'd have to go with economic determinism here. It may be true that back around the year 1000, the population of what is today "Norway" matched or exceeded that of modern Denmark. But things have changed since then and I don't think it reflects an imperialistic Denmark grabbing from Norway, but other way round, Denmark could grab Norway and seize the territories originally colonized by Norse because the balance naturally shifted south. (Then of course the Danish kings did indeed aggrandize what was called "Danish" versus "Norwegian" in favor of Denmark--correct me if wrong but I believe for a long time it was Danish policy to pretty much deny "Norway" existed save as a geographic expression of a region of Denmark--the Norwegian language had no recognition as anything other than some local dialects, etc. Am I wrong in thinking the kingdom of Norway was completely extinguished for a while?)

Part of what has happened is the Little Ice Age; Norway and Iceland and even Greenland used to be warmer around the Viking Age. Part of it is that the more intensive forms of agriculture developed in the Middle Ages and the various phases of Modern times are much more favorable in soils and climates like Denmark's than Norway's.

So, we could play a game where the territory we call "Denmark" OTL gets absorbed into the realm claimed by a strong Norwegian dynasty, instead of the other way round, but we would be bucking the odds. Possession of the sea islands even including Iceland would not be a tremendous asset compared to the agricultural potential of Denmark, not even to mention the fact that control of the straits into the Baltic was a literal gold mine for the Danish kings. Even if the ruling dynasty originally came from the north and aggressively renames the islands and Jutland as being mere provinces of "Nprway," the economic and demographic center of this "Norwegian" kingdom would not be in Norway but in Denmark; I'd think the capital would be moved down to there sooner or later.

I would guess there might have been a fair chance for Norway to avoid coming under Danish control, or for there to be two Norways, with one a province or three of Denmark in the south, and a separate independent nation centered on Trondheim. I also think it would be in the cards for whoever controls Trondheim to have extended control over the mountains to the region of OTL Sweden that is near those passes, to the Gulf of Bothnia, and if that region remains annexed to Norway for a long time it would block Swedish expansion north, so the map might be very different, with Sweden a much smaller state that may or may not also have lost territory to Denmark (or vice versa some act of conquest or dynastic union might produce a unified nation out of both, I suppose) while Norway holds the entire northern part of the Scandinavian peninsula, but perhaps not the southern provinces it has OTL which might be Danish or Swedish.

However there is much to be said for the current borders that do seem to follow a certain natural and geographic logic.
-----
One time line that has been developed here though it seems to have gone into hibernation is Lands of Ice and Mice. DValdron having developed an excellent case for cultivars that can be grown and eaten in the high Arctic lands, his "Thule" (an ATL variant of OTL's Inuit) offer a whole basket of crops and domesticatable or anyway manageable animals that could greatly raise agricultural production in Norway and put Norway, as currently drawn on maps, back in the game. If that is, the Norwegians stoop to growing and eating Thule crops! In the canon TL DValdron actually did provide for that, with the result that a new Norwegian kingdom centered at Trondheim does spilt off from Danish control, and might manage to reclaim Iceland while eventually expanding southward to round out to OTL borders. If one can farm the Arctic, then Norway is in a much better position than if one cannot. Other fans of the TL even wanted the Norwegians, with their infusion of Thule subjects, to sweep east across the entire Arctic seaboard; I personally wanted to see what the north coastal Russians would do with a similar demographic boost from Arctic-farmable crops. But anyway Norway in that ATL could easily wind up extending farther east, perhaps taking the whole Kola peninsula. In such a TL Iceland, and even Greenland, are more desirable possessions. But Greenland is a major center of Thule culture and quite resistant, at last report, to invasion by Europeans; Iceland, it seems to me, is well on the way to becoming a republic again, or anyway an independent kingdom or duchy, and if it does associate with Norway it will be on voluntary and mutual terms, not as a mere colonial possession.

However Svalbard and other Arctic islands are also viable colonies now and IIRC that island does fall in the Norwegian sphere--or maybe it was still Danish last time we looked. However the Danes are definitely facing a challenge from Norway, and if they are going to keep their nominal claims, they are going to have to do some fancy footwork that probably will involve devolving a lot of power to their holdings, lest the colonized jump ship and turn to the Trondheim based kingdom for backing instead. (Or the English, or the French, or Spanish...)

So if you've never read Lands of Ice and Mice, I suggest you do so and perhaps lobby DValdron to resume work on it; it was always one of the most startlingly creative ATL ideas I've ever seen and DValdron can be relied upon to flesh things out interestingly and with good consistency.
------
Sadly though, without some ATL revolution in agriculture or fishery or something, I can't see Norway doing better than maintaining a poor but dignified independence, and even that is a long shot considering the resources Sweden and Denmark can bring to the struggle.
 
Lots of other people have said this before, but the plague really screwed over Norway far more than Denmark. Norway become really empty after that, so...
 
Lots of other people have said this before, but the plague really screwed over Norway far more than Denmark. Norway become really empty after that, so...

If I recall my epidemiology correctly, the reason for this is that in Denmark (And continental Europe at large), the plague and other diseases burned themself out as people started getting resistant against it, whereas in Norway they decimated if not outright annihilated a couple of cities and then disappeared before managing to be spead, with another strain hitting next.

Norway was simply to sparsely settled for a disease to get truly endemic without a much longer incubation time or much lower lethality.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Hello! I'll happily help you with the Alternate history challen-


Oh dear, I don't know what any of that means. :(

I'm thinking that if Norwegian vikings, instead of their Danish counterparts, occupy Iceland and Greenland, it'll be a huge advantage.
If Danes and Norwegians were same at the time then the AHC would be their continued control of the regions mentioned above.

The Norwegian vikings did that OTL. Iceland and Greenland only became Danish due to the union of the Danish and Norwegian Crowns.
 
The tricky bits are that Norway doesn't really have many logical expansion routes that doesn't involve jumping on a ship and sailing quite a distance. Westernmost Sweden might be one but otherwise not really. Denmark have both Sweden, Northern Germany and through the Baltics, while Sweden have Norway, Denmark and across the Baltics. Norway have what, Sweden and sailing across the North Sea, which is quite a bit more hostile than the Baltic is, the Baltic which, by and large, can be considered a very wide river more than open sea.

This is true. You could have Norway expand down the Skåne coast though, adding quite fertile lands that were often Danish through history. Demographically this would lead to a very lopsided population density in TTL Norway, though. The area from Oslo down through OTL Gøteborg to the tip of Skåne would have a large fraction of the total population. Similar to the Home Counties in the UK.

I'm afraid I'd have to go with economic determinism here. It may be true that back around the year 1000, the population of what is today "Norway" matched or exceeded that of modern Denmark. But things have changed since then and I don't think it reflects an imperialistic Denmark grabbing from Norway, but other way round

Well, no, the population is still fairly even. Per square kilometer, the carrying capacity of Denmark is much larger. But what I think people fail to appreciate is how much larger Norway is physically.

And the 13th century Norway was larger still. The largest county in Norway is still larger than Denmark. Once the potato got established, the relative carrying capacities changed of course, as some of the Danish advantage in climate was blunted.

Historically, Norway has generally produced a population surplus that has been exported, leaving hardscrabble but survivable land behind. Between 1825-1925 one third of the population emigrated, leaving enough to match the population of Denmark.

One possibility I can see is a Norway that comprehensibly looses the areas up to Oslo. (Yay! Sorry) While this would reduce the population base, it would also leave behind the more defensible terrain. I could see Norway spending centuries as a smaller and possibly poorer country but just too difficult to conquer.

Norway does have a strategic advantage compared to Denmark and Sweden: While those countries have potential enemies at all sides, Norway is tucked off in a corner of Europe and have fewer fronts and borders to worry about.
Such a Norway would be likely to focus on the west and north. Trade, and perhaps expansion into the old Bjarmish realms. And westwards from Greenland. That requires actually getting up after the plague though. Things would really take off during colonialism.

Basically, a kind of Scandinavian Portugal.
 
Here's a roundabout idea:

Harald Hardrada manages to secure the throne of England, defeating both Harold Godwinson and William the Bastard. He rules for several years before passing away, leaving England to his son Olaf and Norway to Magnus. A few years later, Magnus becomes ill and dies as well, leaving Olaf in control of both England and Norway.

Now, in OTL, Olaf was known as an innovative ruler, a strengthener of the monarchy, and a city builder, actually organizing the construction of his capital of Bergen. In the ATL he still has those same goals, but with the added advantage of having ruled England for a number of years. I suspect that he might begin to build cities on the English model, going so far as to invite English settlers to come to Norway to help found the new towns. These cities would, naturally, have strong trading connections with England and, one would assume, the Low Countries as well.

Although England and Norway would likely be impossible to rule together for more than a generation or two, I suspect that this would lead an on-going special relationship between the two nations for decades to come. This would also strengthen Norway's position in Scandinavia and could go so far as to make it he dominant northern power.
 
Top