Scandinavian kingdoms, became integrated into the wider cultural and political
community of western Christianity. New forms of lordship, new economic and social
structures, new cultural concepts emerged and were introduced, but also adapted to
existing structures. The political transformation differed, however, regionally in
Sweden.
The main element of this Europeanisation was of course Christianisation. The first
missionary to visit present Sweden was Ansgar in 829 or 830 at Birka, also with the
intent to establish relations between Emperor Louis the Pious and a king of the Svear.
But Ansgar and the foundation of an ephemeral congregation were but an incident in
the Christianisation. For a long period Christianity was brought to Sweden by Swedes
through contacts. Missionaries, mostly from the British Isles and in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, are known through later saints’ legends. From an organisational
point of view the emerging ecclesiastical organisation was under the supervision and
hegemony of the archbishopric of Hamburg and Bremen, until the archbishopric of
Lund was founded in 1103 and exercised a Danish hegemony for more than half a
century.
The assumption is often that Sweden became Sweden when the two main provinces,
Svealand and Götaland, were under the same political rule and order. But that emerged
gradually during the Middle Ages and without any direct military conquest. Medieval
Sweden remained a very confederate kingdom, consisting of different provinces (Sw land
sg., länder pl.). There were great regional variances concerning the monetary system,
land measurements, tax systems etc. The structures of new overlordships of Church and
kingdom were the results of different regional developments. There were diverse ways in
the emerging of Sweden.
The Svear and the Götar are elusive terms and not to be understood exclusively as
ethnic terms, or as tribes, but are also functional and political. The Svear were often
mentioned as seafarers and as warriors. As such they were probably more known and
notorious than the Götar. The Götar are in some sources from the ninth century onwards
a separate ‘people’, but also a subdivision or branch of the Svear. From the Middle Ages
the two terms distinctly denoted the inhabitants in the two main regions of Sweden.
Rulers of petty kingdoms are known long before Christianisation and the political
organisation can be discussed using archaeological evidence, although we have but
rudimentary glimpses of lords’ and kings’ position and functions. The kings at Birka,
recorded through the mission of Ansgar, were for example dependent on an assembly.
The pre-Christian kingdom or kingdoms in central Sweden (ON Svíþjóð) seems to have
had a rather highly structured political organisation. Gamla (Old) Uppsala is especially
in the Old Norse literary tradition, not least in the Ynglingasaga of Snorri Sturluson,
associated with kings and kingship; Uppsala was known as the political, royal and
religious, cultic centre. There is hardly any evidence of a similar kingship in the
Götaland provinces (cf. Larsson 2002 ).
The kingdom of the Svear was a loose and partly seaborne empire (Lönnroth 1977 :
7 – 16 ). According to Wulfstan in his description of a sea voyage in the ninth century
from Hedeby to Truso, the lands Blekinge, Möre, Öland and Gotland belonged to the
Svear (to Sweon). Evidently the Svear exercised a form of seaborne hegemony in the Baltic
Sea, with some territorial control. In the ninth century we know, for example, that the
Svear demanded and took tributes from the inhabitants of Curonia. The kings were often
war leaders. The power structure was based on warfare, pillage and demanding tribute.
–– chapter 49 : The emergence of Sweden––