First, I make a notice to non-Scandinavians as well as those who are not specialized in this field of research: Not a small part of modern Sweden, especially in her SW provinces, namely Bohuslän, Halland, Skåne and Blekinge, did not belong to the dominion of the king of Sweden, so they are largely out of focus below. I dare also not to deal with Finland here, despite of the fact that it belonged to the realm under the rule of the kings of Sweden, since the socio-economic condition of Finland in Later Middle Ages differed from other Swedish provinces west to the Bothnian Gulf to considerable amount.
While I cannot refer to for this comment fully, I’d strongly recommend A Description of the Northern Peoples (1555) by Olaus Magnus (English translation is available), as an indispensable primary source for your question. It’s a collection of the traditions as well as practices among the Nordic people in the end of the Middle Ages, by a brother of exiled Swedish Archbishop.
Really sorry for a very long introduction below again for those who are not familiar with this topic.
If you know something about the Swedish nobility during that period, just skip to my next post.
The Basic Premise: How to define the Status of Nobility in Medieval Sweden
- It was the statute (stadga) of Alsnö in 1280 that legally defined the (lay) nobility in Medieval Sweden: they constituted the social group ‘frälse’ (lit. trans. ‘freedom’), together with the clergy, exempted from the royal taxation in exchange for their military service. It also means that they had to keep at least some military equipment like weapons and horses. On the other hand, the Swedish Laws in the 14th century do not exclude the possibility that the freehold farmer (bonde) those who afforded them could elevate to the status of nobility, especially by way of the military service to the crown. Thus, the border between the upper strata of the freeholding farmers and the low rank nobility was not so clear-cut, especially in course of the Kalmar Union period in which the former gained also the political influence.
- The lay nobility is estimated to own ca. 20-25% of whole the land property in Sweden in the beginning of the 16th century (ca. 5.6% as crown land, and ca. 50% for farmers) (Harrison 2002: 287; Orrman 2003: 583). Compared with the land distribution of Denmark and Norway, both the freehold farmers and the lay nobility (especially the former social group) were stronger in Sweden, in contrast to the weaker economic base of the Crown as well as the Church.
- The socio-economic disparity within the lay nobility had increasingly expanded and been prominent first after the Black Death, and further in course of the Kalmar Union Period. This was partly due to the rise of upper freehold farmers (that was in fact the least noticeable in Sweden in three Nordic kingdoms), but the rulers of the Kalmar Union played a decisive role here: Regent (‘Queen’) Margarethe I of the Kalmar Union forbade the nobility to purchase the lander property of the freeholder farmers under the royal taxation (skattejord), so the aristocrats had to compete each other for the land, their source of wealth, within their own social group in zero-sum game. While many low rank aristocrats, possibly except for one special category, ‘gränsefrälse’ (lit. trans. frontier aristocracy) in SW Sweden, lost their property as well as influence so that they finally merged into the upper freeholders, some of the high aristocrats and a small number of the ‘gränsefrälse’ succeeded in accumulating dispersed land properties beyond the national border between Sweden and Denmark in the Union, by marriage in some cases and by near-coercion or even sometimes by violence. The establishment of the Union further accelerated this trend. They were the real winners in this period.
Now it’s time to answer your question, albeit very briefly, in my next comment.
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