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SURVEY OF ITS HISTORY.
S3
län, Jämtland, and Härjedalen belonging to Norway. And a great part, of
Northern Sweden (with the exception of the coast-district) must have been a
mere wilderness.
The Folkunga Period (1250—138!)). Under the Folkunga Line, whose
most important personage was Birger Jarl, who ruled Sweden as Protector during
the minority of his son Valdemar from 4-250 to 1266, Sweden entered into
closer relations with the rest of Europe. It had now quite settled down into
the new conditions brought about by the introduction of Christianity; and the
community more and more assumed the same forms as in other countries at
the same time. The peasant aristocracy as formerly existing gave way
completely to a thorough division into classes, in which the Church appeared as a
state within the State, and the Nobility raised itself above the people, whose
right of decision it commenced to usurp at the diets of the lords, while its
principal men, surrounded the King in the capacity of Councillors of State, and
often dominated him. The Towns and their citizens developed by means of a
brisker internal and foreign trade. Communication with foreign lands was mainly
conducted by means of the Hanse towns, from which a number of Germans
migrated into Swedish towns and also laid the foundation of a mining
industry.
Within the country great activity prevailed in the field of legislation, under
the leadership of the Kings. Here, too, general European standards of right
find their way into Sweden: the position of women became ameliorated, and
serfdom was abolished. The laws of the old provinces were committed to writing,
and collected, in 1347, into one common law for the whole State, which, at
the end of the same century, was accepted by all the provinces. Thus, a great
step was taken towards uniting the ancient Swedish confederacy of provinces
into a unitary state. The Nobility was established by the introduction of
military service by Magnus Ladulås (about 1280). by which mounted service in
war conferred exemption from taxation, and grants of landed estates were made
in payment for service to the State. An organized, hereditary feudal system, in
the general European form, did not come into existence, however, and feudalism
happily never won a footing in Sweden.
The southernmost provinces (Skåne, Halland, and Blekinge) were united for
a short time to Sweden; but lack of highroads and the easy communications
across the Sound necessarily brought them in relations with Denmark, under
whose rule they soon came again. But as mistress of both shores of the Sound,
Denmark could, at will, favour or obstruct the maritime intercourse of Sweden
with foreign parts; and the relations of Sweden to Denmark were, for centuries,
one continual conflict for possession of the Sound. In order to secure other roads
outwards, Sweden was obliged to cultivate friendship with the Hanse towns and
the Counts of Holstein; and the family ties knitted by the kings with Holstein,
Denmark, and Norway alternately, mark the course of the foreign policy of
Sweden. Towards the East, Birger Jarl (before 1250), and Torgils Knutsson
(before 1300), carried through the conquest and christianizing of Finland; but
in face of the powerful Great Novgorod they failed to restore the ancient
influence of Sweden in Russia.
A constant source of internal weakness were the unhappy fraternal quarrels,
caused by conferring, in accordance with an ancient Germanic custom, dukedoms
upon the younger brothers of the kings. These conflicts weakened the royal
power, at the expense of which that of the nobility increased. During the
reign of the well-meaning Magnus Ericsson, who was popular but weak, the
great lords became so powerful that at last they deposed the king and his line
and called in his German kinsman, Albrekt of Mecklenburg (1363 - 80), in order
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