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80 General character of this period. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. The monarchy a federation.
CHAPTER VII.
LAND AND PEOPLE DURING THE CATHOLIC PERIOD.
the swedish federative system. the yeoman and iiis rights. law and judicature. power of
the crown. the church. the nobility. the burgesses. taxes. boundaries of the kingdom.
cultivation. mines. trade. coinage. manners.
Sweden’s middle age is full of confusion, and
destitute of that splendour which fascinates the
eye. Whatever of pomp and grandeur the
hierarchy, feudalism, powerful and flourishing cities,
exhibited in the rest of Europe during those times,
extended hut in a small degree to this region ; and if
we put faith in common assertions, many admirable
qualities, which distinguished our Pagaii ancestors,
must have perished with heathenism, and have
been replaced in great part by new vices and errors
of belief. To us, neither the old excellence nor the
new corruptions are fairly apparent. In the gloom
of Paganism there is ample scope for the play of
imagination, if we refuse to hear, in the complaints
of a desolated world, the witness of the reality.
From the so-called energy of the Northmen, Europe
suffered severely ; and of the calamities which its
own excesses brought upon themselves, after they
were reduced to seek their fields of battle in civil
wars at home, the annals of the northern middle
age furnish abundant proof. But no one can deny
that the people of Sweden best withstood that trial
in which Norway lost its political independence,
and Denmark the freedom of its people. In Sweden
both were securely established, and this issue is
sufficient to awaken interest for an age which had
not laboured in vain, when such was to be its
result. This struggle of our middle age we will here
attempt to comprehend and to appreciate.
Repartition according to ties of kindred and
companionship in war, appears to have formed the
groundwork of the social structure among our
ancestors, of which the simplest elements were the
family on the one side, and the Hundred on the
other. From the arrangement of battle by
centuries 2 (whence the name hundari or hserad3),
sprang a confederacy for mutual protection during
peace, a social union founded upon compact, as the
family was one primary and formed after nature.
New relations of this compact were continually un-
folded, and at the end of the heathen period, the
whole polity wears the appearance of a
confederation ; every Hundred a league between the free
householders, every Land, or every province
within boundaries pointed out by nature, an association
of certain Hundreds united under a common law ;
and the realm itself, an association of the various
provinces or nations (as they were still called in
the fifteenth century) under the Upsala king, the
manager of the common sacrifices, as lord
paramount. He was called Folk-king 4, by way of
distinction from many others who at first shared his
power. For the name of king, properly denoting
high birth in general, was long borne in common by
the shepherds of the people, the smaller as well as
the greater, the chief of the Hundred as well as
the sovereign ; until at length the sub-kings
disappeared from the country (though recurring at
sea and in warfare), and in their place appear the
Justiciaries or Lagmeu, the elected judges and
speakers of the various provinces, themselves
yeomen without titles5, and protectors of the
people against such as bore titles.
The judicatory power is as old as the social
union. Among the ancient Germans, a
jurisdiction exercised by elected judges in conjunction
with the Hundred appears to have subsisted 6. But
the employment of the judicial office in the
Lag-men as a sort of tribunate, counterbalancing the
nobility, was an arrangement peculiar to the north,
and probably a defensive expedient on the popular
side against the rising pretensions of the court-men,
or warriors bound by personal service to the kings,
and sharing with tliem the dangers of the field
and importance at home. To be in this fashion
the king’s man became, from being a condition of
dependence, an honour, and imparted, after
brilliant achievements, even during peace, an authority
which might easily become dangerous to the rights
of the commons. Thus was created from the court,
2 Or more accurately, by companies of one hundred and
twenty; for our forefathers reckoned ten dozen to the hundred,
which in some provinces is still called storhundrade, or long
hundred. The division by hundreds is found, both as
regards the name and the fact, in Tacitus (centeni ex singulis
pagis, idque ipsum inter suos vocantur), who besides remarks
that the army was arranged clan-wise. Nec fortuita
con-globatio turmam aut cumeum facit sed families et
propin-quitates.
3 H&r, army, means in a more narrow sense a number of
one hundred, according to the Edda. llccrad was the term
usual in Gothland; hundari in Swedeland ; as may be seen
from the old laws. The hccrads were again divided into
Jierdingar, fourths, whence the fierdings-ting, or
quarter-court spoken of in the laws, but this arrangement is now
obsolete, though the name and office of fierdings-man, or
quarter-man, among the peasants, may be thence derived. In
the Westgothic law, that part of a hundred over which a
ncemndeman (or assessor in the court) had the supervision,
is called skire, the English shire. The division into
hundreds is still used throughout all that part of the country
extending to the Dal-elf. Beyond that stream and in
Norr-land, both repartition and cultivation are more recent. The
hundreds on the coast were formerly and are still partially
called skepps-lug, a name recalling the original military
import of the whole arrangement.
4 Thiod-konungr. We may not call them Folk-kings who
are tributary, the Edda says.
5 The tignar-name. Tign means honour, dignity;
properly a regal, princely, or what was at first the same, noble
dignity ; until the tignar-name was also applied to the
principal officers of the court.
0 Tacitus says of the judges among the Germans, Centeni
singulis ex plebe comites, consilium simul et auctoritas,
adsunt. Genn. 12. According to northern ideas, we should
refer this to a hundred-court.
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