New Era, Old Gods- an EU4 Norse Sweden AAR

[Bergil]

When I heard about the new Norse conversion events that came in with "Lions of the North", I (like many, I suspect) was intrigued. Specifically, the storyteller in me liked the idea of figuring out what something like that would actually look like, and it looks like nobody's done an AAR wit it yet, so I decided to make one. Not that due to the specific conditions required for the events, and their general unlikeliness, I won't be doing this playthrough on ironman, though I'll not reload except to get the events unless I judge that I've genuinely made a mistake.

Chapter 1- The Swedish Uprising​

In the year 1444, Scandinavian politics were in a precarious position. The entire region was theoretically part of the Union of Kalmar, comprising the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, ruled by one king, but each having their own internal structure.

Fig1- the internal divisions of the Kalmar Union.​

However, while this was theoretically a union of equals, in practice King Christopher III was King of Denmark and the other realms were managed for Danish benefit. Many Swedes chafed under the rule of the smaller and less populous Danish realm. While there had long been talk of going their own way, it was not until 1444 that anyone seriously did anything about it. Discussions between Swedish nobles seeking independence and wealthy merchants fed up with the focus on German trade to the detriment of the Baltic formed a sort of cabal- which they called the Stockholm Thing, for they envisioned it as the locus of the government of an independent Sweden, and even managed to pull in the Archbishop of Uppsala with promises of representation on the Thing and control over diplomacy.

Fig2- the initial composition and division of authority of the Stockholm Thing​

The Swedish Army, commanded by Swedish nobles mostly loyal to the Stockholm Thing and composed of their levy troops- was quietly expanded. Knowing that it would be vital to prevent the Danish and anyone who sought to intervene on their behalf from easily reaching the Swedish peninsula- for the House of Wittlesbach was originally German and was still deeply involved in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire - the Stockholm Thing began the mustering of a great fleet in the Gulf of Bothnia under the command of Gottfrid Alkmaar, where the Danes would hopefully not pay much attention. They also sent out feelers to the enemies of the Kalmar union. Burgundy, needing any ally in its precarious position, was eager to help. The English were also keen to aid, as they competed with the Kalmar Union for control of the North Sea and would benefit from a more eastward-facing Scandinavia. For this reason, Scotland also offered their help without even being asked. The Grand Duke of Lithuania was initially interested, but his inheritance of the Polish throne soon drew his attention to other matters.

Fig3- the Bothnian fleet.​

Fig4- King Christopher officially declaring his son Ulrik as heir to the entire Kalmar union lent greater urgency to the machinations of the Stockholm Thing​

Two men ultimately emerged as leaders of the Stockholm Thing- Johan Vasa and Johan Gyllenstierna. Vasa was an obvious candidate for leadership- he was the most experienced battlefield commander and leader of the largest contingent of troops, and as such was given overall command of the army. Ulrik Piper was considered as overall commander, but ultimately relegated to a more logistical role. Gyllenstierna’s path to power was an odder one- he was very young and less of a man of action, but had a keen analytical mind, being educated and very interested in how things worked. He had for a while studied to become a priest, but had left after seeing the inner workings of the Catholic Church, then at the peak of its indulgence-selling corruption and become extremely cynical about religious affairs. Still, he could speak with great passion about the future glories of Sweden and recruited many into the Stockholm Thing. The question of who would actually be king was delayed until independence was secured, but realistically it would be one of those two.

Fig5- 17th- century painting of Johan Vasa, Johan Gyllenstierna, and Ulrik Piper​

It was on November First, 1446 that the independent Kingdom of Sweden was officially proclaimed- Vasa hoped that the Danish armies would be reluctant to push north as winter approached, giving them time to regroup if things went wrong. The fortress of Elfsborg would be key to the entire battle- it was in Swedish land and blocked the key passage to Norway. As long as the Swedes held it, the Norwegian army could not contribute to the main battles in the south. The Danes knew this as well, so the first battle of the war was fought there, and Vasa’s army prevailed.

Fig 6- The First battle of Elfsborg​

After seeing off the main Danish army, Vasa turned north to see off the Norwegians who had been coming to try and join up with them. Both ultimately ended up fleeing south to Scania, where Vasa continued his defeat-in-detail plan, pursuing whichever was in better order Ultimately, both fled north to Norway to regroup. The Bothnian fleet was also mobilized, and sailed south into the Oresund to prevent Brandenburg from ferrying troops over. With local superiority assured, the local capital of Lund soon surrendered

Fig. 7- Troop movements in the Scanian front​

At the same time, Sweden’s British allies were making their presence known, with English troops landing in Jutland and Scots marching into Brandenburg. The small German city-state of Oldenburg, seeing the writing on the wall, promptly abandoned the war, paying an indemnity to Sweden in exchange for peace.

Fig. 8- Troop movements on the European mainland.​

The only remaining problem was the main Danish army. Cut off behind enemy lines, they had not quailed, but rather pushed on to Stockholm, hoping to end the war by killing the claimants to the throne and the entire Thing. The city was put to siege, and the walls constantly attacked- the attackers could not be supplied from Denmark, so there was a real risk of them running out of food. But the defenders did not know this, or of Vasa’s victories in the south. For all they knew, this could be the last stand of the Swedish rebellion.



This was Johan Gyllenstierna’s moment. He made it his full-time job to coordinate the defenses of the city and maintain morale, often wielding a bow from the city walls. Though fighting was fierce, with accounts speaking of entire sections of the walls being controlled from siege towers, the Danish army was not able to enter the city in any real numbers. Soon, word reached Vasa of the desperate situation. He was forced to turn around and drive the enemy from the walls of Stockholm, but after one more battle at the gates, the outcome was decided. Sweden would be independent with its pre-Kalmar Union borders plus all of Scania- Denmark would no longer have a toehold on the peninsula. It was done. Sweden was free.



For the king of their new land, the Thing chose the man whose valor they had personally witnessed, and who had been dwelling with them and protecting them. Disappointed but unwilling to risk Sweden being destabilized from the very start, Johan Vasa returned to his home in Rydbo.

Fig. 9- 18th century painting of Christoper III of Denmary offering terms to Johan III of Sweden and the Swedish Allthing. The supplicant pose is probably ahistorical, but the mean building is not- a proper Thing-Hall had not yet been constructed​

 

[Bergil]

@HistoryDude, one doesn't actually have much control oven when this event fires- I just set up the conditions to get it, and then hoped it did. As for when it did happen, well...

Chapter 2- The Norse Revival​

Upon regaining its independence, Sweden immediately had a lot of problems. For one thing, the Stockholm Thing had taken a great many loans in the course of the uprising, promising to pay them back using the funds that had once been sent in tribute to Copenhagen. Secondly, it needed to carve out an identity for itself as something other than a Danish province in revolt- the Nordic languages not having far derived from Old Norse. Finally, it was in a somewhat awkward place diplomatically, allied to both England and its perennial target Scotland. Required to pick a side, King Johan of course picked the stronger, and declined an offer of a Scottish princess’ hand in marriage. The Scottish understood that that they were being ignored, and soon diplomacy between the two kingdoms petered out.

Fig 1- A letter from king James II of Scotland to king Johan II of Sweden, accusing him of ingratitude.​

This opportunistic attitude was not constrained to diplomacy, as news soon came the Muscovy had declared war on the republic of Novgorod. Knowing that Novgorod had no chance and seeing that the Swedish army was still mobilized from the Uprising, the Stockholm Thing also declared war on Novgorod, hoping to claim as much of the valuable Novgorodian land as they could, rather than allowing Muscovy to establish themselves as the hegemon of far northern Europe. The Novgorodian army tried to fend off attacks from both directions, but only ended up dividing its strength and being crushed.

Fig. 2- the Battle of Viborg, an unsuccessful Novgorodian counterattack into Sweden.​

Fig. 3- It was at around this time that King Johan;s son Karl, the first prince of the independent Sweden was born.​

The remainder of the war, commonly called the Partition of Novgorod, was something of an odd conflict, with the Swedish and Muscovite armies, who were nominally not at war with each other, attempting to outmaneuver each other. Both wanted the coastal cities of Neva and Koporye- The Muscuvites to gain access to the sea, and the Swedes to avoid their only land route to the European mainland passing through a single large and likely hostile power. During the war, the Bothnian fleet again played a major role, for the Swedes sought to ferry troops across the Gulf of Finland to take control of Ingermanland, bypassing the defenses of Novgorod City entirely. Ultimately, the Swedes were able to occupy the best lands- not only the coastline, but the great city of Novgorod itself, and the area around Lake Ladoga.

Fig. 4- The final partition of Novgorod. It was at this time- spring of the year 1450- that the Swedish government under the Stockholm Thing finally assumed a peace footing​

Fig. 5- The Muscovites chose not to gobble up the entirely of their side of the partitions, creating loose protectorates in Karelia and Sapmi, and leaving a Novgorodian government-in-exile on the shores of the White Sea.​

The Novgorod war had only exacerbated the debt situation (OOC- I messed up a bit here. I should have asked for money from Novgorod, and didn’t.) However, inspiration was soon found on the problem of defining a Swedish identity. In Italy, a craze had broken out for antiquity, with what had previously been dismissed as vile paganism being embraced as part of the land’s heritage. The Swedes would do something similar. While the Danes had, to a large degree, turned their back on their Viking past and tried to act like proper normal Europeans (and indeed were currently ruled by a German dynasty) the Swedes would embrace it. The court at Stockholm embraced folk-traditions, and sought to reconstruct as much of the “true” Scandinavian culture. Modern observers believe that much of what they came up with was, in fact, misinterpreted or fabricated, but looked cool.

Fig. 6- The Flyting of Johan Vasa and Ulrik Piper, depicted in a painting not long after the event. The fact that such a crude art form was embraced at the highest level shows the degree to which Norse revivalism influenced elite culture of the time​

Indeed, King Johan even got in into his head to actually go a-Viking! The island of Gotland, historically part of Sweden, had been so neglected by the Kalmar union that it had drifted away from the Union entirely, and ended up under the rule of the small German state of Wolgast. Johan sent the army to retake Gotland and took the city of Stolp as retaliation for Wolgast’s trespassing on Swedish land. This was also an attempt to fulfill his earlier commitments to the Swedish merchant classes (and pay off some of the debt) to take greater control of the Baltic trade, for Gotland, in the middle of the sea, was a prime trading port. This proved a step too far for some, and a rebellion broke out in Abo under Simon Lewewnhupt, promising retaliation against the “half-heathen” king Johan.

Fig. 7- Minor military actions in the Baltic, 1452​

This was not the only internal issue in Sweden at the time, as Danish loyalists rose up to try to return Scania to Danish control, hoping that Stockholm would not be able to respond promptly while the king and a significant portion of the Thing were on a diplomatic visit to Bohemia, hoping to further avoid the possibility of being completely cut off from mainland European politics, a pressing concern after the Holy Roman Emperor demanded the the city of Stolp be relinquished.

Fig.8- the marriage of King Jiri’ of Bohemia’s brother to Johan III’s sister​

Lewewnhupt’s accusations were not unfounded. The Norse revival did include a lot of rhetorical invoation of forgotten gods such at Odin and Thor, and Johan III had an immensely cynical attitude towards the church. He famously drew a cartoon mocking the increased veneration of the Virgin Mary at the time, contrasting it to the concurrent stripping of authority from abbesses.

Fig. 9- a satirical cartoon allegedly drawn by Johan II. The text can be translated as follows- “Pope’s logic. Dead woman-silent-raised up. Living woman-might disagree with you-cast down.” ​

Eventually, irony became sincerity. Sweden had only been solidly Christianized in the late eleventh century, so there were still a few pagans in the backwoods, or “Christians” whose beliefs were so syncretic as to be hardly Christian at all. The contrast between the stuffiness and hypocrisy of the Christian church and the fun-loving folksiness of the backwoods pagans they met on hunting expeditions (both real remnants and opportunists trying to fill a demand for Old Norse culture) began to wear on Johan II and many of his contemporaries. Supposedly, the tipping point came when a young priest tried to convince Johan to get him a bishopric through bribery with promises of loyalty thereafter.



What happened on March Fifth, 1456 was one of the most out-of nowhere events in history. The cultural Norse Revival gives it some context, which I have tried to provide, but to truly understand why it happened, one must look to Johan III’s own history. In his youth, he had looked for God in a Christian seminary, but found only lies and hypocrisy. But it is perhaps significant that he looked at all. They say that inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist. Well, Perhaps Johan III had finally found what he had sought all those years ago. Gods who were not held back by a clergy that had been corrupted by a millennium of earthly politics, who did not scorn material existence but sought to glorify it. Perhaps that is why, on that Wednesday- Odin’s day- he made that unprecedented announcement. Converting to Christianity had been a mistake. From then henceforth, Sweden would worship the Old Gods.

Fig. 10- Religious turmoil in the 1450s​

(OOC- yes, I reset for this. I played until Johan II died and didn’t get the event chain, so I loaded my backup save and started again, and this time got it very soon).

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 3- The Church of the Old Gods​

Now, while many in the Norse Church insist to this day that its structure is consistent since a few generations after Ask and Embla, with it having merely gone underground for a few centuries, more will admit that there was a centuries-long breakdown in organized worship of the Aesir and Vanir, and that with few written records surviving, Johan III and his new Norse priests- a mixture of spiritually-minded Norse cultural revivalists, backwoods shamans (some of whom are regarded by outside historians as probable con-artists), and a few low-ranking Christian clergy who converted, had to do some interpolation at the Vaxjo-moot. This is especially true as there had previously not been any one Norse holy book- or at least none that has survived. The most complete book of myths, the Prose Edda, was also demonstrably adulterated- the author, or at least editor, was known to be Snorri Sturluson, a Christian who lived well after the conversion of his native Iceland to Christianity, and it contained a prologue stating that the characters described therein were not actually gods, but rather escaped heroes from the Trojan war (Snorri had clearly read The Aeneid). Thus, there was a general policy of not including anything from the Prose Edda unless a significant amount of backwoods oral tradition consistent with it could be found.

The Poetic Edda was a more promising source, having no such obvious flaws and even containing the Havamal, a collection of moral advice allegedly from Odin himself, but it did not, at the time, exist as a collected body, though the Skalholt manuscript contained a good portion of if, so there was still some work to be done there, and some modern historian believe that the Hrafnagaldr Óðins and the Vision of Fólkvangr might have been forgeries. With regards to some facts or events that were fairly consistently present in oral tradition but in no written account, it was, reluctantly found necessary to write ‘canonical’ versions, which were penned by Henrik of Malmo, though likely with input from other members of the Moot. The resulting manuscript- the Younger Edda, is viewed by the few unbiased historians of Norse religion as a reasonable reconstruction of what the pre-Christian Norse actually believed, containing a good deal that cannot be verified but very little that is provably inaccurate.

The same cannot be said for the hierarchy and some of the doctrines also created at the Vaxjo-moot, the former being more-or-less still intact. The leadership of the church would be a council of bishops, with one for each of the major gods. The regional high-priests would answer to the bishops, and the town priests would report to them. Ceremonies would mostly be held in sacred groves, with Johan III going so far as to plant the seedling of a sacred tree from deep in the forests of Norrland outside the gates of the palace of Stockholm. This seems to have initially been a practical decision, as mass-rededication of Christian churches was unfeasible while the population was still mostly Christian, while requiring the construction of a temple for every god in every place before they could be worshiped there would be a major endeavor, but it has endured as a distinctive feature long after this became the case. Indeed, even at the time, critics noted that this new structure rather resembled what a Christian would imagine a functional Pagan church would look like, noting elements clearly based on either Catholic or Orthodox Christianity, or on the better-documented Greco-Roman paganism- the use of “Vestal” as the female equivalent of “Bishop” is particularly blatant.

What fewer people noticed at the time was how much of the doctrines and structures were engineered to survive. Everyone knew that Christianity had overtaken Paganism in Sweden once, and they did not want it to happen again. One instance of this has already been mentioned- the presence of female clergy. As has been said, there were many in the rooms where the Norse church was being crafted who had read the history of early Christianity, and how it had largely been spread by woman to children. Johan III famously said- “Like the Christians, mother shall preach to son. Unlike the Christians, the sons shall not abandon their mothers.” It is important not to overstate this- Even under the Old Gods, 15th-century Sweden was still, by modern standards, a sexist society. While Johan III seemed to be forward-thinking for his time, he was still a man of his time, and further, challenging this specific aspect of his society was not his primary objective. Beyond this, he did not work alone, and the other men involved did not necessarily agree (the common claim that it was Johan III's ‘Personal project’ is an exaggeration. Reviving the worship of the Old Gods was his personal project, and he was not totally alone. There were a few women involved, and surely they at least agreed.). Perhaps we should not judge them, as a group, too harshly. Things do seem to have slightly improved for women under the Norse revival, and even if they had dedicated all their efforts to this, high child mortality rates probably limited how much they could have reshaped society. It is impossible at this point to say whether this was an accurate reconstruction of pre-Christian practices or pure marketing. What definitely was marketing was the declaration that dying in righteous might guarantee a place in Valhalla, but it was not the only way to get there. Thus, the farmer, the miller, and the housewife, by converting, could believe that they might get a seat at Odin’s table.

Another major engineered element may have been cribbed from an unlikely source- Islam, the one religion to successfully displace Christianity from large areas, though it is not clear if anyone involved would have known enough about said faith to copy it, so it may have been an independent invention. This is a preference for positive over negative incentives to ensure conversion. It was announced that as the Norse church was the Truth, they would not need to ‘bully’ people into seeing it. However, believers were encouraged to give those who showed good character by worshiping the Old Gods preferential treatment in many things. As there was no distinction between individual and state action, this could arguably become a justification to treat them as second-class citizens, but this would hardly be a major offense in and of itself in that aristocratic age. The ultimate effect was that pressure to convert was enacted while minimizing obvious justifications that the still-Christian remainder of Europe could use to invade Sweden and restore Christianity, especially as it still had several strong alliances.


The Old Gods found some of their first converts in an unlikely location- the recently –conquered city of Novgorod (or Holmgard, as some were now causing it). During the partition, the formerly-popular Bishop of the city had been captured by the Muscovites, and was now issuing statements from his gilded cage in Moscow for the citizens of the city to rise up, not in the name of the rump Novgorodian state, but of the Muscovite conquerors who were often more brutal then the Swedes. As such, many in what was now Swedish Russia were as disenchanted with Christianity as Johan III had been, and willingly converted to a stronger faith. It is possible that this large number of early converts from Orthodox Christianity is one of the reasons for the multi-leader structure (OOC- this was achieved using the mission to conquer Novgorod, which converts Novgorod and Neva, but I felt the need to explain it somehow).

Fig. 1- The first centers of the revived worship of the Old Gods​

There were of course those who refused this new path. In Novgorod, Afanasiy Kurlyatev heeded the words of the Muscovite puppet and raised an army to expel the “heathen conquerors”, while in Stolp, there was another uprising. The Swedish army remained busy in those days, though the kingdom was nominally at peace. Already deep in debt, Sweden was unable to strain its finances further, putting down revolts, encouraging the spread of the old ways, while trying to convince the population that the massive changes of the previous decade did not represent a crisis. It is perhaps due to the instability and strained finances that the Stockholm Thing issued a decree empowering the local nobles to maintain fortifications and “bodies of huscarls”- which, incidentally, shifted some of the responsibility for

maintaining local law and order away from themselves.

Fig. 2- Continued instability in Sweden after the Great Reversion​

Indeed, Sweden’s finances were in such a poor state that at one point they resorted to sending some of their soldiers to England as mercenaries! Though some historians have interpreted this as a method to get rid of some hardliner Christians in the army without violating the principle of getting conversion via positive incentives.

Fig. 3- Swedish troops in England​

As has been said, the reversion of an entire nation to paganism on this scale was unprecedented, and none of the other European powers really knew what to make of it. Many tried to pass it off as a temporary fit of madness, assuming that surely normalcy would reassert itself soon. Many in Sweden took the same approach, simply ignoring the pagans in Stockholm and hoping that they would go away.

Fig. 4- Left: Sacred groves in Ostra Gotland according to the records of the great Temple of Odin in 1460. Right: sacred groves that can actually be confirmed to have existed in 1460​

Though Johan III did train the army to fight along more “Viking” lines, he did not send them to war for the rest of his reign. The realm’s finances were just too precarious, and the army kept too busy fighting rebels. When he passed into Valhalla in autumn of 1562, the hopes that Sweden’s flirtation with paganism were not obvious self-deception. But neither were they accurate. The old ways had fully reasserted themselves in the Swedish ‘heartland’ of the west Baltic coast. A rebirth of old Norse culture was truly starting to reappear, and interact with the classical revivalism coming n form the mainland in interesting ways.

Fig. 5- Painting of Valkyries bearing away the soul of Johan III, unveiled at his funeral​

And the new king, Karl VIII had been barely born when his father had first taken an interest in the old gods. He had known nothing else, and was well prepared to continue along the path his father had started. Due to his youth, the general chaos of Sweden at the time, and uncertainty as to what a Norse coronation should look like, there was a two-year delay between the death of Johan III and the coronation of Karl VIII, but ultimately it occurred without incident.

Fig. 6- 17th-centure painting of Karl VIII being crowned by the Vestal of Freya. The Holy Tree of Stockholm would not actually have grown to anything like the height depicted by that time.​

Fig. 7- At around this time, gilded lead coins bearing the face and name of the nonexistent Queen Hedwig I somehow made their way into the hands of some of Sweden’s creditors. The queen mother denied any involvement in this. ​

 

[Bergil]

All right, I'm giving this another go.

Chapter 1- The Swedish Uprising​

In the year 1444, Scandinavian politics were in a precarious position. The entire region was theoretically part of the Union of Kalmar, comprising the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, ruled by one king, but each having their own internal structure.

Fig. 1- the internal divisions of the Kalmar Union.​

However, while this was theoretically a union of equals, in practice King Christopher III was King of Denmark and the other realms were managed for Danish benefit. Many Swedes chafed under the rule of the smaller and less populous Danish realm. The Kalmar Union was so unconcerned with the baltic that the heir to the previous dynasty had set up a government-in exile in Gotland- historically part of Sweden- which had become a den of piracy and no-one had been able to do anything about it. While there had long been talk of going their own way, it was not until 1444 that anyone seriously did anything about it. Discussions between Swedish nobles seeking independence and wealthy merchants fed up with the focus on German trade to the detriment of the Baltic formed a sort of cabal- which they called the Stockholm Thing, for they envisioned it as the locus of the government of an independent Sweden, and even managed to pull in the Archbishop of Uppsala with promises of representation on the Thing and control over diplomacy- though of course, there was some dispute as to how they should proceed.

Fig. 2- the initial composition and division of authority of the Stockholm Thing​

The Swedish Army, commanded by Swedish nobles mostly loyal to the Stockholm Thing and composed of their levy troops- was quietly expanded. Knowing that it would be vital to prevent the Danish and anyone who sought to intervene on their behalf from easily reaching the Swedish peninsula- for the House of Wittlesbach was originally German and was still deeply involved in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire - the Stockholm Thing began the mustering of a great fleet in the Gulf of Bothnia where the Danes would hopefully not pay much attention. Fortunately, the Kalmar Union had made many enemies. The English and Scottish were both keen to aid, as they competed with the Kalmar Union for control of the North Sea and would benefit from a more eastward-facing Scandinavia. The Grand Prince of Moscow shared the Stockholm Thing’s displeasure with Denmark’s neglect of the Baltic- they were involved with the Baltic trade, but being landlocked, could do nothing to protect it from the pirates of Gotland.

Finally, the Grand Duke of Lithuania saw the benefit of having another ally in their eternal enmity with the Baltic Crusaders.

Fig. 3- the Bothnian fleet.​

Two men ultimately emerged as leaders of the Stockholm Thing- Johan Vasa and Fredrik August Fincke. Vasa was an obvious candidate for leadership- he was the most experienced battlefield commander and leader of the largest contingent of troops, and as such was given overall command of the army. Bengt Toll was considered as overall commander, but ultimately it was decided that his skills were better suited to the home front. Fincke’s path to power was an odder one- he was a learned man with a particular interest in history, particularly military history. He had for a while studied to become a priest, but had left after seeing the inner workings of the Catholic Church, then at the peak of its indulgence-selling corruption. He could speak at length about Sweden’s past glories (and the future ones that were sure to follow) despite his family actually being Swedicized Finns (hence the name), but was said to be awkward and standoffish in personal conversation. The question of who would actually be king was delayed until independence was secured, but realistically it would be one of those two.

Fig. 4- 17th- century painting of Johan Vasa, Fredrik August Fincke, and Bengt Toll​

It was on October 18th, 1445 that the independent Kingdom of Sweden was officially proclaimed. They had intended to wait until the next year- the Bothnian Fleet wasn't even complete- but a peasant revolt had broken out in Scania, and Vasa planned to use it as bait to get the Danish royal army within striking distance. Initially, the Stockholm Thing was confidant- they had the numbers on their side- but the largest Swedish ally, England, was unlikely to commit its full forces, due to final stages of the Hundred-Year war still being ongoing.

Fig 5- Forces available for the initial Swedish uprising​

The initial phases of the war went very well for Sweden. Vasa’s ambush went off perfectly, attacking the Danish army as they were strung out pursuing the broken peasant mobs outside of Ronneby and destroying them utterly. He then marched west and besieged the castle of Lund, which lay near the southern point of Scandinavia Proper and could threaten any attempt to cross from Sjaelland. As this happened, the Muscovites marched through Lapland to attack the Norwegians from behind. Things seemed to be going well.

Fig. 6-The Battle of Bleking, 18th-century painting​

Until they weren’t. On the mainland, Lithuania was struggling to fight back the Teutonic Knights, Wanting no part of this and ironically citing the Stockholm thing’s own writings, the Polish Sjem decided not to maintain their personal union with Sweden’s Lithuanian allies, but rather make the brilliant Wladislaw Radzwill king. (OOC- One of my lessons from the test game was that I’d need an ally in Eastern Europe, even if I ultimately ended up not maintaining it for the entire game. If I try to let them fight it out while I prey on the weak, someone will win before I’m strong enough to fight said winner). The combined fleets of Denmark and the Teutons were mighty enough to defeat the Bothnian Fleet easily, and the British, with their divided attention, seemed reluctant to enter the Baltic, choosing instead to merely land troops on the west coast of Jutland. The Muscovites also seemed to want to avoid the hottest fighting and instead stayed in the north, occupying Norway. It eventually got to the point that after taking Castle Lund, Vasa retreated north after leaving a garrison, for the entire army of the Danish alliance had gathered on the Danish isles and there was no hope of defeating them in open battle.

Fig. 7- Troop movements on the Scanian front, Spring 1447​

By autumn of the year 1447, the Lithuanian army was finally able to win some victories over the Teutonic Knights, and the armies on Sjaelland moved south to repel them. Heartened, Johan Vasa decided to risk a crossing, ferrying his army to Sjaelland and laying siege to Copenhagen.Only then did word arrive that the English had agreed to cease hostilities to focus on defending their holding in France. With the English navy out of action, the Danes had complete control of the seas. Vasa’s army had reached Sjaelland, but they were trapped there. When minor Scanian nobles began launching raids against the occupiers in 1449, it fell to the Muscovites to defeat them

Fig. 8- Troop movements on the southern front, Spring 1449​

Trapped in Sjaelland, Vasa did the only thing he could- continue to attack the walls of Copenhagen. But when it fell, he could still not push any further. It was not until summer of 1450 that the stalemate was broken. The Teutonic Knights, realized that they had nothing to gain, and agreed to a peace that gave up only gold, no land. With them out of the war, the Bothnian Fleet was finally able to leave port and make its presence known. Seeing that their only remaining advantage was gone, the Danes then surrendered. Sweden would be independent with its Kalmar Union internal borders plus all of Scania- Denmark would no longer have a toehold on the peninsula. It was done. Sweden was free.


For the king of their new land, the Thing perhaps surprisingly did not choose the conquering hero. Indeed, the consensus among them appears to be that Vasa had underperformed, fleeing from the enemy, then getting stuck on an island for some of the key moment of the war. Indeed, many identified the Lithuanian nobleman Karolis Tiskevicus as the real hero of the war. In addition, there was a rumor that Vasa had caused a rival to be passed over for promotion, which lead some to doubt his character, whilst many believed that Fincke’s studious nature would allow hit to quickly adapt to his new responsibilities. Disappointed but unwilling to risk Sweden being destabilized from the very start, Johan Vasa returned to his home in Rydbo.

Fig. 9- 18th century painting of Christoper III of Denmark offering terms to Johan III of Sweden and the Swedish Allthing. The supplicant pose is probably ahistorical, but the mean building is not- a proper Thing-Hall had not yet been constructed​

It seems to be going better this time, and I think this version of the initial rebellion is a more interesting story- I at least had to scramble less to explain why they didn't make Johan Vasa King in-universe. Hope people still want to read it.

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 2- The Livonian wars​

Upon regaining its independence, Sweden immediately had some problems. In the long term, it needed to carve out an identity for itself as something other than a Danish province in revolt- the Nordic languages not having far derived from Old Norse.

In the medium term, there was the island of Gotland. Though it has traditionally been part of Sweden, it had not been handed over as part of the peace treaty simply because the Kalmar Union had not controlled it at the end- the former ruling dynasty had set up a government-in-exile there, which was on good terms with Lithuania. Reclaiming it would require some maneuvering.

In the short term, Sweden was in a somewhat awkward place diplomatically. There was naturally a desire to turn the ad-hoc opportunistic team-up against Denmark into a proper alliance structure for Sweden, but allied to both England and its perennial target Scotland. Required to pick a side, King Fredrik August of course picked the stronger, and relations with Scotland gradually atrophied.

Diplomacy, in fact, took up a great deal of the Stockholm Thing’s early business, as Fredrik August himself lacked the talent for it. His main contribution was a marriage Princess Agafya, a cousin of the Grand Prince of Moscow.

Fig. 1- the marriage of Fredrik August of Sweden and Agafya Rurikovitch, official painting. Note the empty seat where King James II of Scotland would have been sitting had he accepted his invitation.​

(OOC- In the first run, I despaired of ever getting this mission, and this time, I got it almost immediately on independence. This bodes well.)

The limited social skills of Fredrik August were such that it was not always possible for the Thing to cover for it. On receiving a letter from the pope informing him he had chosen Sven Johanson to lead a new Swedish branch of the Inquisition, he responded (and recall that the king had become rather cynical about the church’s corruption) with a letter saying simply, “There is not, at this time, any need for a Swedish branch of the Inquisition. I hope you have not already spent Mr. Johanson’s bribe.”

Fig. 2- letter from Fredrik August of Sweden to Pope Eugene IV, from the Vatican records. Note the slight crumpling where the reader would have held it.​

That is not to say that the Thing focused entirely on foreign affairs for its first years of independence. There were also major building projects around Stockholm with hopes of turning it into a major port of the Baltic. Christian Cronstedt took responsibility for ensuring that funds were found to pay for all this.

Fig. 3- plans for Stockholm Palace. Construction began on New Year’s Day, 1451.​

Of course, not everyone was happy with things. Only a few years after the conclusion of the Swedish Uprising, a revolt rose up in Scania hoping to return to Danish control.

Fig. 4- the Scanian Revolt​

Now, during the Swedish Uprising, the Republic of Novgorod had conquered most of the land that had been controlled by the Livonian Order. However, Novgorod had few friends and many enemies, being partly in Russia, partly in Scandinavia, and now partly in the Baltic. With Sweden seeking to establish itself as the ruler of Scandinavia and great power of the Baltic and Muscovy seeking to unify Russia, and the two of them allied, it was an obvious opportunity to attack Novgorod while they were still recovering from the war with Livonia, and were distracted by a rebellion in Karelia. The war was brief but brutal, with Muscovite forces laying siege to Novgorod City and Swedes attacking Estonia with unprecedented ferocity.

Fig. 5- Invasion routes into Novgorod​

By summer of 1455, it was all over- Novgorod had exhausted itself before the war had even begun. Sweden was able to dictate terms of peace, taking Novgorod’s entire Baltic coast, but not driving deep into Russia. That would risk angering the Grand Prince of Moscow.

Fig. 6- Swedish conquests after the Estonian War.​

The Baltic was very much the focus of the Stockholm Thing’s attentions in the 1450s, funding construction on the Aland archipelago and setting standards for the treatment of oarsmen in the navy. King Fredrik August, however, was more concerned with personal matters- Queen Agafya bore him a son in 1454. Young Karl seemed to have inherited his father’s bookish nature.

Fig. 7- Ruins of a dock on Geta, built c1455​

That decade also saw the start of the political career of one Viktor Scram, a merchant from Scania who had been raised into the Stockholm Thing as a reward for leadership of local loyalists during the Scanian Revolt in an attempt to make the Danish Scanians feel less like they were being subjugated. He managed to rise to a leadership role among the existing mercantile faction, who had at the time become so powerful that there were functionally two political parties in the Thing- the merchants and the coalition of everyone else. And it was fairly even.

Fig. 8- Viktor Scram, contemporary. Note that despite what this painting would imply, Mr. Scram was a very short man, but he commissioned the painting.​

Even after the Estonian Wars, there was to be no peace in the Baltic. The Lithuanians had long memories, and though they were now mostly Christian, they did not appreciate the “encouragement” of the Baltic Crusaders. With the Livonian Order much reduced after their war with Novgorod, they took the opportunity for revenge, and Sweden was called to aid them- which they gladly accepted, as it was seen as unlikely that the Livonian remnant would put up much of a fight. The conflict did not even last a year, and ended with the Livonian Order being partitioned between Lithuania, Sweden, and rebels under Vaishvilkas Bielke proclaiming Republic of Latgalia.

Fig. 9- Partition of the Livonian Order​

It was after this that the Stockholm Thing voted to officially take Sweden off a war footing. With the Baltic finally at peace and the mercantile faction in power, Stockholm was becoming a significant trade port. Unfortunately, this was not the only way that the Swedish Uprising was slipping into the past, as Bengt Toll, one of the most prominent original members of the Stockholm Thing, died of old age in 1459.

Fig. 10- Funeral of Bengt Toll, recreation in a 20th-century anthropological textbook. His tomb has been extensively studied, as it is one of the few examples of a pure Christian burial in early-modern Sweden​

In the 1460s, a solution started to emerge for the problem of creating a Swedish identity. In Italy, a craze had broken out for antiquity, with what had previously been dismissed as vile paganism being embraced as part of the land’s heritage. The Swedes would do something similar. While the Danes had, to a large degree, turned their back on their Viking past and tried to act like proper normal Europeans (and indeed were currently ruled by a German dynasty) the Swedes would embrace it. This had the enthusiastic support of King Fredrik August, who was both very interested in local history and willing to go against convention. The court at Stockholm adopted folk-traditions, and sought to reconstruct as much of the “true” Scandinavian culture as they could. Modern observers believe that much of what they came up with was, in fact, misinterpreted or fabricated, but it looked cool. Nobles even increasingly personally trained with their retinues on foot instead of fighting on horseback as the former was seen as more Viking-like.

Fig. 11- examples of renaissance architecture in Sweden. Note the long roofs, interlace patterns, and other local-inspired elements.​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 3- King of the Northmen​

Prince Karl of Sweden was much shaped by the power of the merchant faction in his formative years. He is said to have taken an interest in the nations’ finances at an unusually young age. Viktor Scram was something of a mentor to the boy, and shortly after his fifteenth birthday, they went to examine the growing markets of Noteborg. Fearing the even greater ascendance of the merchant faction with the ear of the future king, the rest of the Thing took advantage of Scram’s absence to push through a law limiting the power of the mayor of Elfsborg, a key supporter of the merchant faction.

Fig. 1- Proceeding of the Thing, August 1469​

The prominent role played by the clergy in the political maneuvering to kneecap the mercantile faction only further disillusioned King Fredrik August with the church, leading him to famously draw a cartoon mocking the increased veneration of the Virgin Mary at the time, contrasting it to the concurrent stripping of authority form abbesses. He began to frequently skip mass to hunt and attend parties, many of which leaned heavily in to Norse Revival imagery, often including rhetorical invocation of forgotten gods such at Odin and Thor. The king’s enemies occasionally tried to discredit him by spreading salacious rumors about what went on at those parties, but these gained little traction, and are generally considered false to this day, even beyond the simple fact that this has long been the go-to for discrediting someone, by the fact that Queen Agafya was occasionally invited. Some modern historians suggest that they may have been having mid-life crises.

Fig. 2- - a satirical cartoon allegedly drawn by Johan II. The text can be translated as follows- “Pope’s logic. Dead woman-silent-raised up. Living woman-might disagree with you-cast down.” ​

A decade and a half of peace had not allowed Novgorod to improve its precarious position, and in September 1469, Muscovy came back for another bite, calling Sweden in. The war was even more one-sided then the previous one, with Johan Vasa routing the entire Novgorodian armed forces in the forests near Soroka as they tried to regroup from being defeated by the Muscovites outside the walls of Novgorod itself. The war lasted barely more than a year and ending with the Novgorodian heartland, including Novgorod City itself being seized by the Muscovites, with most of Karelia being given to Sweden. Only a scattered rump Novgorodian state remained.

Fig. 3- the partition of Novgorod​

The rapid ascent of Sweden to a prominent position on European politics could no longer be ignored, and it was now well and truly out of Denmark’s shadow. Indeed, when Fredrik August declared himself “King of, and for, all Northmen” in an attempt to quell the unrest among the Scanian Danes, the new Danish king Christian I demanded that Sweden immediately renounce the implied claim to the Norwegian crown and acknowledge Danish hegemony over Scandinavia.. His response has often been quoted- “If that were true, you wouldn't need to ask my permission.”

This would be settled on the battlefield.

Fig. 4- Diplomatic correspondence leading up to the War for the Norwegian Throne​

Enraged, the Danish army crossed the Oresund, only to find themselves once again facing the mighty Castle Lund, and an army led by Johan Vasa, now aging but still as bold as ever. They were driven off, only to regroup, join up with their Mecklenburger and East Frisian allies, and attempt the crossing again- and again, be driven off. While the battles were being fought in Scania, Swedens Lithuanian allies, having marched around the Gulf of Bothnia, took on the more tedious but safer task of occupying Norway itself (which also minimized the resentment a conquered Norway might feel toward Sweden, with any pillagingbeing carried out by a third party)

Fig. 5- Troop movements in the early phases of the for the Norwegian Throne​

Unfortunately, Christian Cronstedt got it into his head that he should lead a unit into battle despite having no experience with that sort of thing. He fell in the Third Battle of Lund, with his role as second-in-command of the mercantile faction being taken up by, unexpectedly, Hans Sehsted, a Scanian former sea-captain previously notable mostly for having written a treatise on predicting weather by observing clouds. This undignified loss was a major setback for the age of mercantile primacy. There seems to have been something of a trend towards seamen from the Swedish periphery taking key positions in the Thing, as Otto Mannerheim, an Estonian naval officer (His German-sounding name leads some to speculate that he was a knight of the Livonian Order who had gone native), also rose to prominence at this time.

Fig. 6- Original manuscript of ‘On the Reading of Clouds’ by Hans Sehsted​

In 1473, frustrated by the lack of progress, Johan Vasa ordered the fleet to ferry his army to Mecklemburg, hoping to attack the Danish alliance where it was vulnerable, trusting in Castle Lund to prevent a Danish breakthrough into the Swedish heartland. This initially seemed to be a mistake, with Lund falling while Mecklenburg still stood, but the Danes were unable to push on to Stockholm without neutralizing the garrisons of Kalmar or Elfsborg, and Akershus fell soon, so the Lithuanian army was able to march south and see them off before they could do much damage.

Fig. 7- The Swedes and Lithuanians outflanking the Danes on a strategic level​

In November of 1474, the city of Rostock fell, and Mecklemburg ato cede it to Sweden, giving it a toehold on the European mainland, much to the ire of the Holy Roman Emperor. A Danish relief force arrived too late to prevent this, but in the chaotic battle, Johan Vasa was separated from his troops and slain. So passed the hero of Sweden’s early wars, and the man who was nearly king. What would have happened had he been chosen has long been a question debated by historians professional and amateur alike, for unlike Fredrik August, Vasa was always somewhat dismissive of the Norse cultural revival and was by all accounts a pious Catholic. It was in this campaign that the Swedes first began to experiment with the more extensive use of black powder. While the Swedish army had already had a few cannons, they had mostly been used as replacement catapults, to attack castle walls. However, in this battle a few were used as anti-personnel artillery, as the roman Scorpion catapult was said to have been. While they played a fairly minor role in this campaign, they were successful enough for some purpose-build field cannons to begin being cast for future use.

Fig. 8- Johan Vasa’s last stand, 19th-century painting​

The victorious army then marched west to Frisia, to force the last of Denmark’s allies out of the war. However, when word reached Sweden’s newly-conquered eastern reaches that the army was so far away, many saw opportunity and rose up in revolt. Additionally, with the merchants falling from prominence, the church was rising to prominence in the Thing. Some had taken the step from rhetorical invocation of the Old Gods to full-on pagan revivalism and they demanded the authority to stop this.

King Fredrik August refused this flat-out.

Fig. 9- deepening instability on the Swedish home front​

Lithuania was also distracted. The prince of Odoyev had died without issue and the Grand Duke of Lithuania had also been his closest living relative. However, the Grand Prince of Moscow had also been a close relative on the other side, and had marched into Odoyev himself and crowned himself, hoping that the Lithuanians would be too busy with their western war. A such, the Lithuanian armies were now marching east, supported by their Polish allies, to retake the crown of Odoyev. As both of the belligerants were Swedish allies, neither had tried to get Sweden to intervene, as neither wanted to risk them choosing to support the other side.

However, Swedish instability did not translate to Danish success. They were out of allies and the returning Swedish army completely routed the Danish royal army outside the gates of Copenhagen.

Fig. 10- Lithuania redeploys eastward​

As the last stages of the war raged on, Fredrik August became increasingly withdrawn, and began to isolate himself and think on matters of faith. The corruption of the church was indisputable. Their recent attempted actions against Norse revivalists had seemed less like a reaction to a moral evil and more like an attempt to remove a threat. And his wife seemed to have turned out well enough without a pope to guide her. What was the truth?

Fig. 11- Inconclusive writings about the nature of the divine by Fredrik August, c1476​

In 1476, Denmark finally capitulated. The crown of Norway would be transferred to Fredrik August. While this greatly expanded Swedish influence in the north Sea, from the Norwegian perspective, not much changed. Yet. They would just be bowing east instead of south. Shortly after, the Ottoman Empire, acknowledging Sweden as a power on the rise and swayed by decades of diplomacy trying to persuade them that they and Sweden were in similar situations- both peripheral European powers partially in the European mainland with their main centers of power on peninsulas beyond it, signed a formal alliance. Though the main similarity between the two was yet to become obvious. Perhaps Fredrik August knew what he would do, but had not yet worked up the courage to do it.

Fig 12- Christian of Denmark surrenders the crown of Norway to Fredrik August of Sweden​

(OOC- I didn’t know until now that if you maintained high relations with a nation, they might switch their attitude to ‘Friendly’ I’d just let it reach +100 from improve relations, and if it didn’t work, use my diplomat for something else Is this why I always struggled with diplomacy beyond the first few years of the campaign? Also, I spent the entire last run trying to get this alliance, and now I get it just before it really makes sense narratively)

Though the War for the Norwegian Crown was over, Sweden was not at peace. The rebels were still running wild and indeed almost immediately after the Swedish army left, another rebel force rose up in Rostock to throw the Swedish governor out. In addition, with the Lithuanians occupied in the east, they would not be willing to defend Gotland- it was an opportunity to regain lost Swedish land that might not come again. Immediately, war was declared on Gotland. At the same time, rebels rose up in recently-conquered Mecklenburg, hoping to take advantage of Sweden’s many distractions and reclaim independence.

But something would happen that would cause chaos surpassing all else. With the conquest of Norway came rule over Iceland. Likely no-one had thought much of the fate of this backwater at the edge of the known world at the time. But control of this backwater would soon change the course of Scandinavian history. Because the edges of the map would soon move. And, because it was a backwater, adoption of Christianity had been slow, and many pagan writings had survived…

Fig. 13- A runestone said to have been visited by King Fredrik August​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 4- The Church of the Old Gods​

Swedish hopes of taking Gotland quickly were short-lived. Though the army of Gotland was soon swept aside, the Danish pretenders had spent their pirate loot to build a mighty fortress- Castle Gryf- that would require a massive concentration of force to properly besiege- a concentration they could not afford, with the main force deployed to the east to fight various uprisings- they struggled to maintain a full siege. The main army had more luck, engaging a Sami rebel army in Enare are routing it. Henrik Hastfer, the captain of this force, was judged to have proven himself a worthy successor to Johan Vasa as captain-general of Sweden’s armies. He then marched south to relieve the siege of Reval.

Fig. 1- Henrik Hastfer’s weapons, from the Abo Museum of Military History ​

In Stockholm, removed from the chaos, the new Norse documents retrieved from Iceland even further excited interest in Old Norse culture, with artists painting pictures of scenes from Norse mythology and translating, expanding, and working into an organized canon the Icelandic sagas. Sweden had only been solidly Christianized in the late eleventh century, so there were still a few pagans in the backwoods, or “Christians” whose beliefs were so syncretic as to be hardly Christian at all. The contrast between the stuffiness and hypocrisy of the Christian church and the fun-loving folksiness of the backwoods pagans they met on hunting expeditions (both real remnants and opportunists trying to fill a demand for Old Norse culture) began to wear on many of his contemporaries.

Fig. 2- ‘Thor and Loki in Utgardr’, by Karl Gustavson, 1477​

Henrik Hastfer did not have time to read any of it yet. He had just gotten news that Rostock had fallen. As such, he kept marching south and is said to have considered pulling away some of the Gotland occupation force to fight the largest rebel army in Rostock, then decided to leave the rebel-held castle for the time being and take ship to Gotland to finally bring the war to an end. The army was then able sail back to Rostock and siege it down again.

Fig. 3- Plaque near Castle Gryf commemorating the end of the Reconquest of Gotland​

On September 21st, 1479, Prince Karl fell ill. It initially seemed like just a cold, but he simply would not recover, and his condition grew worse until he could not rise from his bed. King Fredrik August, still at the time secluding himself to contemplate the divine, knelt down in prayer. It is said that he cried out to the three-in-one that if his son was saved- his son, who had, for his person avarice, had always been a pious Christian and tithed his significant income to the church- then he would never again doubt. He would know for certain that the corruption of the Vatican was merely a temporary stain on the works of a loving, benevolent deity.

But Karl did not recover. Worse still, when King Fredrik turned to the Archbishop of Uppsala for support, he was told that Karl’s death was a punishment for his actions. For marrying the heretic Agafya. For expecting the church to pay taxes like everyone else. And for allowing his cousin to declare herself High Priestess of Njord.

Fig. 4- the Death of Prince Karl, 19th, century painting. Note the mocking expression on the face of the priest​

It was not what he needed to hear. It was probably done with the intent of shocking King Fredrik August out of his doubts. And it did. Just not in the way they had hoped. He came back into the public light filled with a new zeal. But not for their god. Their god had betrayed him, and he had no loyalty to it. No, he would be following in the path set by his cousin. In his youth, he had looked for God in a Christian seminary, but found only lies and hypocrisy. But it is perhaps significant that he looked at all. They say that inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist. Well, Perhaps Johan III had finally found what he had sought all those years ago. Gods who were not held back by a clergy that had been corrupted by a millennium of earthly politics, who did not scorn material existence but sought to glorify it. Perhaps that is why, on that Wednesday- Odin’s day- March First 1480, he made that unprecedented announcement. Converting to Christianity had been a mistake. From then henceforth, Sweden would worship the Old Gods.

Fig. 5- The Temple of Freya in Stockholm (formerly the Storkyrkan)​

This, of course, sat poorly with many. Some remaining knights on the Livonian Order, who still considered themselves Christian Crusaders, saw resisting this as the natural progression of their original order, took up arms against the crown in Reval. In this, some Orthodox Christians in Noteborg found common ground- they had felt like outsiders enough when Sweden was at least Christian! In addition, the opportunistic heir to the Gryf line declared that this decision invalidated his father’s surrender, and that he was still the ruler of an independent Gotland. The Archbishop of Uppsala also went underground, vowing to return Sweden to Christian rule. However, Henrik Hastfer was among the new converts, and returned to what he had been doing before- enforcing the rule of the Swedish crown on any who would raise arms against it.

Fig. 6- Early rebellions against the Great Reversion of Sweden.​

Now, while many in the Norse Church insist to this day that its structure is consistent since a few generations after Ask and Embla, with it having merely gone underground for a few centuries, more will admit that there was a centuries-long breakdown in organized worship of the Aesir and Vanir, and that with few written records surviving, Fredrik August and his new Norse priests- a mixture of spiritually-minded Norse cultural revivalists, backwoods shamans (some of whom are regarded by outside historians as probable con-artists), and a few low-ranking Christian clergy who converted, had to do some interpolation at the Kem-moot. This is especially true as there had previously not been any one Norse holy book- or at least none that has survived. The most complete book of myths, the Prose Edda, was also demonstrably adulterated- the author, or at least editor, was known to be Snorri Sturluson, a Christian who lived well after the conversion of his native Iceland to Christianity, and it contained a prologue stating that the characters described therein were not actually gods, but rather escaped heroes from the Trojan war (Snorri had clearly read The Aeneid). Thus, there was a general policy of not including anything from the Prose Edda unless a significant amount of backwoods oral tradition cinsistant with it could be found.

The Poetic Edda was a more promising source, having no such obvious flaws and even containing the Havamal, a collection of moral advice allegedly from Odin himself, but it did not, at the time, exist as a collected body, though the Skalholt manuscript contained a good portion of if, so there was still some work to be done there, and some modern historian believe that the Hrafnagaldr Óðins and the Vision of Fólkvangr might have been forgeries. With regards to some facts or events that were fairly consistently present in oral tradition but in no written account, it was, reluctantly found necessary to write ‘canonical’ versions, which were penned by Henrik of Malmo, though likely with input from other members of the Moot. The resulting manuscript- the Younger Edda, is viewed by the few unbiased historians of Norse religion as a reasonable reconstruction of what the pre-Christian Norse actually believed, containing a good deal that cannot be verified but very little that is provably inaccurate.

The same cannot be said for the hierarchy and some of the doctrines also created at the Kem-moot, the former being more-or-less still intact. The leadership of the church would be a council of bishops, with one for each of the major gods. The regional high-priests would answer to the bishops, and the town priests would report to them. Ceremonies would mostly be held in sacred groves, with Johan III going so far as to plant the seedling of a sacred tree from deep in the forests of Norrland outside the gates of the palace of Stockholm. This seems to have initially been a practical decision, as mass-rededication of Christian churches was unfeasible while the population was still mostly Christian, while requiring the construction of a temple for every god in every place before they could be worshipped there would be a major endeavor, but it has endured as a distinctive feature long after this became the case. Indeed, even at the time, critics noted that this new structure rather resembled what a Christian would imagine a functional Pagan church would look like, noting elements clearly based on either Catholic or Orthodox Christianity, or on the better-documented Greco-Roman paganism- the use of “Vestal” as the female equivalent of “Bishop” is particularly blatant. These new Goðar were initially granted all the powers and responsibilities that the Christian clergy had possessed.

What fewer people noticed at the time was how much of the doctrines and structures were engineered to survive. Everyone knew that Christianity had overtaken Paganism in Sweden once, and they did not want it to happen again. One instance of this has already been mentioned- the presence of female clergy. As has been said, there were many in the rooms where the Norse church was being crafted who had read the history of early Christianity, and how it had largely been spread by woman to children. Fredrik August famously said- “Like the Christians, mother shall preach to son. Unlike the Christians, the sons shall not abandon their mothers.” It is important not to overstate this- Even under the Old Gods, 15th-century Sweden was still, by modern standards, a very sexist society. While Fredrik August seemed to be forward-thinking for his time, he was still a man of his time, and further, challenging this specific aspect of his society was not his primary objective. Beyond this, he did not work alone, and the other men involved did not necessarily agree (the common claim that it was Fredrik August’s ‘Personal project’ is an exaggeration. Reviving the worship of the Old Gods was his personal project, and he was not totally alone. There were a few women involved, and surely they at least agreed.). Perhaps we should not judge them, as a group, too harshly. Things do seem to have slightly improved for women under the Norse revival, and even if they had dedicated all their efforts to this, high child mortality rates probably limited how much they could have reshaped society. It is impossible at this point to say whether this was an accurate reconstruction of pre-Christian practices or pure marketing. What definitely was marketing was the declaration that dying in righteous battle might guarantee a place in Valhalla, but it was not the only way to get there. Thus, the farmer, the miller, and the housewife, by converting, could believe that they might get a seat at Odin’s table.

Another major engineered element may have been cribbed from an unlikely source- Islam, the one religion to successfully displace Christianity from large areas. While it seems unlikely that if anyone involved would have known enough about said faith to copy it, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire had already established closer diplomatic ties at the time, so it may have been inspiration or an independent invention. This is a preference for positive over negative incentives to ensure conversion. It was announced that as the Norse church was the Truth, they would not need to ‘bully’ people into seeing it. However, believers were encouraged to give those who showed good character by worshiping the Old Gods preferential treatment in many things. As there was no distinction between individual and state action, this could arguably become a justification to treat them as second-class citizens, but this would hardly be a major offense in and of itself in that aristocratic age. The ultimate effect was that pressure to convert was enacted while minimizing obvious justifications that the still-Christian remainder of Europe could use to invade Sweden and restore Christianity, especially as it still had several strong alliances.

The reaction of the rest of Europe was…complex. As has been said, the reversion of an entire nation to paganism on this scale was unprecedented, and none of the other European powers really knew what to make of it. Many tried to pass it off as a temporary fit of madness, assuming that surely normalcy would reassert itself soon. Many in Sweden took the same approach, simply ignoring the pagans in Stockholm and hoping that they would go away. Others believed that this represented a real threat to Christendom, combined with the Ottomans pushing into the Balkans. The latter position was notably taken by the Holy Roman Emperor, who issued a statement reiterating the illegitimacy of Sweden’s rule of Rostock. But the greatest proponents of this view were Sweden’s former allies in Moscow. Not a year after Fredrik August officially renounced Christianity, the Grand Prince Ivan III Veliky denounced “Fredrik the Aposatate” and severed all ties with Sweden.

There are several theories about why Muscovy, specifically, had such a strong reaction. Some hold that the recent Orthodox experiance made them less certain of the inevitability of Christian victory. In the last few centuries, Catholicism had seen only victory- the Baltic Crusades, Lithuania’s conversion and expansion into ex-Mongol lands, the reconquista. It was easy to believe that Christianity was on a permanent path to sucess. However, the Orthodox world had seen the betrayal of the fourth crusade, and most of the Ottoman conquests had been Orthodox, while Muscovy itself (now the only significant Orthodox-ruled state) had been mostly subjugated by the (initially Tengrist) Mongols. Perhaps this made the appearance of a large pagan nation feel like a real threat to them in a way it didn’t to everyone else. Others point to a more mundane explanation- Muscovy had lost the War of Odoyevan succession to Sweden’s ally Lithuania. Expecting further conflicts and seeing that Lithuania and Sweden were more closely tied, Ivan may have viewed the alliance as unreliable even before the Great Reversion pushed him over the edge. One simple theory that the Swedes of the time themselves took very seriously was that the wrong diplomats had been sent. The Goðar had assumed from the Christian clergy a preeminent position in all embassies, but while this had made sense in the past when there was an idea of shared Christian values, it made less sense for a weird cult that essentially no-one outside of Sweden followed, and that he Grand Prince of Moscow was particularly affected because his cousin had joined said weird cult. The Goðar reluctantly accepted this logic.

Fig. 7- Sketch of the Swedish diplomatic party in Moscow sent accompanying a letter from a Muscovite nobleman to his sister in Rostov. The letter states, in part, “I strain, dear sister, to describe in detail the strangeness of this group- there are so many bizarre details that I fear that in emphasizing one, I shall forget another. I have, thus, used my small talent for art to draw them for you.”​

With in Sweden itself, the rapid change in course led to much turbulence. Outside of Stockholm and Karelia, Christianity was still dominant, and there was still much talk of revolt. The Archbishop of Uppsala showed an unexpected talent for populist agitation, speaking of a Great Christian Revolt to retake Sweden. The armies of Sweden, many said, were spent after the recent wars. Now was the chance. Henrik Hastfer’s anti-riot tactics became increasingly brutal, often arresting people on mere suspicion, while in Stockholm, the Thing passed an act to recruit more soldiers- anyone willing to fight- in case the rumored massive Christian revolt actually came.

Fig. 8- a letter from Henrik Hastfer to the Stockholm Thing-“I need more men. All that matters is that they will stab who they are told to”​

Others embraced the new order- though not all for the right reasons. In Stockholm, philosophers asked questions that had previously been too taboo to consider and made great strides. But some saw the removal of Christian morality as an excuse to abandon all morality, and the Goðar had to spend a lot of time explaining that only the fake rules were fake, and which ones those were. At the forefront of these efforts was Bergil, a weird holy man from the back-country who claimed to have had visions of a possible future where corruption had brought the ruin of Sweden.

Fig. 9- “The Two Sides of the Glass”, a political cartoon from 1482, showing magnifying glasses, for which a more reliable method of production had recently been discovered, being used by an entomologist and a forger​

Henrik Hastfer had little rest in those days. The revolts just kept coming, and Lithuania had gone on an offensive into the post-Livonian chaos, trying to claim as much of the small Baltic land as it could. Sweden was called in to help its ally, but was rarely able to send the army abroad for long.

Fig. 10- Minor conflicts in the Baltic region in the early 1480s​

In January 1484, Sami rebels attacked and slew the Vestal of Njord, King Fredrik August’s cousin, but were slain by a unit of local militia rallied by her son. The aging King Fredrik August, having no children and unlikely to have any more, officially named the lad his heir. He was named Gottfrid in honor of the god of the frothing sea (OOC- some checking on Google Translate implies that that does in fact work in Swedish. This nameset is not designed for a Viking kingdom. I reserve the right to reload from an autosave if I get a “King Christian” in a situation where I can’t rename him). Gottfrid moved to the palace in Stockholm, where his strong Karelian accent received some comment, but he most respected him for his valour

Fig. 11- Prince Gottfrid, official painting​

Not long after, the planners of the Great Christian Revolt made a mistake. They had gathered in Gotland for a meeting between the Archbishop of Uppsala and another Gryf pretender who had offered to serve as a Christian alternative to the pagan Finckes. However, Henrik Hastfer, having fought the Gryfs twice, was even more mistrustful of them than he was of everyone else, and had ensured that loyal, reliable troops were garrisoning Castle Gryf. The rebels were thus caught off-guard and forced to make a stand on the island, and with nowhere to run, they were promptly crushed.

Fig. 12- Graffito on a rock outside Visby saying ‘Has God abandoned us?”​

With things finally calming down slightly, Fredrik August was able to turn his attention to less bloody matters. To counter corruption, he made a great show of enforcing all rules absolutely universally. This earned his some respect from the Norwegian Christian administration, who had previously worried that they would be treated poorly, and his position as King of Norway was secured. It helped that the Norwegians had for the first time seen a potential benefit to the Norse revival, for one of the Icelandic sagas had recently gotten everyone’s attention. It had received less attention previously, as it lacked flashy supernatural stuff, ultimately ended with an undignified failure, and one of the main protagonists had converted to Christianity. However, some wondered whether the Saga of Erik the Red made some claims that, if true, could be very important.

Fig. 13- Fredrik August holding court in Bergen​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 5- The Western Shore​

His name was Christain von Ascheberg. He was a merchant captain originally from the Rhineland and a low-level member of the Hanseatic League who has spent most of his career trading with Scandinavia, and had spent much time in Iceland. Here, he had heard of the failed colony of Greenland, which had only been abandoned in living memory. He was aware of the Norse Revival, but initially took little interest in it- he had no cultural connection to it, and given his name, converting religions would be absurd. Still, he was a literate man, and one needed to do something during those times when a ship was holding a tack for hours on end, and somehow he had gotten his hands on a copy of the Saga of Erik the Red.

He was the right man in the right place at the right time.

Now, in the late 15th century, the Silk Road was not in a good state. The collapse of the Mongol Empire and the devastation unleashed by Tamerlane had already disrupted trade, while the eastern Mediterranean was increasingly dominated by the Ottoman Empire, who were not enthusiastic about trade with Christian Europe. The rising prices of silk, spices, and other Eastern luxuries combined with advances in shipbuilding and navigational technology had lead many in Europe to speculate about the possibility of a direct sea route to the source. However, this was not an easy thing to do. Going south around Africa would require rounding Cape Bojador- a just-underwater shoal of iron-rich (creating magnetic irregularities) rocks extending miles out to sea. The challenge of sailing out of sight of land around invisible obstacles out of sight of shore as the compass spins and turns required a truly exceptional captain and crew- hardly a reliable trade route. The possibility of going the long way around was occasionally raised, but was generally dismissed. Eratosthenes’ (accurate) estimate of the Earth’s circumference was widely known among the European educated classes, and it was generally accepted that even advanced modern ships could not possibly manage a trip that long.

But Von Ascheberg thought it might be possible to decrease the distance to something more manageable. Per Erik the Red, there existed a series of islands in the northwestern ocean- Greenland, Vinland, Markland, and Helluland. If a resupply point could be made on each of these islands, a ship might, by a series of manageable legs, get quite far west. Indeed, similar “Island-hopping” strategies had been occasionally attempted by the Iberian powers using the Azores and Canaries. The northern route had the advantages of being closer to the pole so the distance around the earth was shorter and the promise of many stops, which would get a ship possibly far enough west that Japan, which was said to be to the Northeast of China, might be reachable in one more jump. (It should be noted that many in this age imagined Asia as being larger than it actually is, and also that von Ascheberg seems to have imagined Helluland being west of Markland rather than north of it). Besides, at least some of these islands were said by the saga to be inhabited, so it might not be necessary to sail all the way if one of them was in contact with the Orient and was more cooperative then the Turks. He presented this plan to Hanseatic League higher-ups, even managing to find an elderly Icelander who had been to Greenland in his youth to corroborate its existence.

He was dismissed for believing in such heathenish nonsense (never mind that the discoverer of Vinland, Leif Erikson, had in fact been a Christian convert). Rather than discouraging him, that just gave him and idea of how to proceed. If this was heathenish nonsense, why not present it to a heathen! Indeed, the Swedish court found the idea of such a voyage into the unknown incredibly exciting- retracing the path of their Viking ancestors and achieving something that Christian Europe had for so long tried and failed to do, and King Fredrik August himself agreed to back the voyage of exploration. Von Ascheberg had no shortage of volunteers, and in 1484, he set out from Iceland with a fleet of three ships- the Fortuna, the Rode Draken, and the Erik Segersall.

Fig. 1- Christian von Aschesberg’s fleet leaving Reijkavik, 18th-century painting​

The seas were rough, but the idea of island-hopping worked perfectly. Greenland was found exactly where it was expected, and the man-shaped cairns thereon were identified as man-made, though they were wrongly assumed to have been made by Norse settlers until the first kayaks were seen (at the time of the events in the Saga of Erik the Red, the Inuit had not yet migrated east). As the food stocks were still high and the terrain of Greenland seemed too frigid for a good waystation, they sailed on to the southeast looking for Vinland. Soon, birds were seen off the port bow and followed to this land only dimly known to Europe thus far.

When word got back to Stockholm, it caused quite a stir. The immediate discovery led to a wave of zeal in the Goðar, who saw this as proof positive that the old tales could contain truth. As the voyage of exploration was still, at this time, an attempt to open new trade routes, Hans Sehsted’s mercantile faction outlined the first plans for a Swedish settlement in the new world. His plans were informed by three things- the initial intended purpose of thee settlements as resupply stations for ships, the idea that Vinland was rightful Norse land due to Leif Erikson claiming it centuries ago, and the precedent of Finland, Lappland, and Karelia. While the first two were more discussed at the time, modern historians tent to treat the latter as what really guided their thinking, considering how similar Sehsted’s plan was to “do Finland again”, especially as the colonial powers in general seem to have leaned on precedent- for instance, the Iberians trying to do the reconquista again and England trying to do Ireland again. The initial plan was to exert control by just being the only organized state in the region, and only worry about building the waystation and not micromanage the affairs of the skraelings, who were said in the saga to be fierce fighters but seemed to have no government above the tribal level (how to deal with the larger tribes on the mainland was to be determined at a later date.). This would come to change somewhat as Vinland came to be viewed as a source of value in its own right rather than a stepping-stone to the Orient.

Fig. 2- Map sent by Christian von Ascheberg back to Stockholm showing the new lands. There was some uncertainty as to what Leif Erickson’s “Markland” corresponded to.​

The “make sure we’re the only organized state” part of the plan was well in display in Finland at the time. Muscovy had decisded that it was finally time to deal with the Novgorodian rump state on the shores of the Karelian lakes, and Sweden, and Sweden, no longer their allies decided to grab up some of the collapsing Novgorodian state. However, unbeknownst to them, a small Novgorodian force had been taking refuge in what they had presumed to be neutral Viborg, and the Russians heard word of the war before the local garrison, so they were able to seize the city by stealth, forcing the Swedish invasion force to turn around and retake the city.

Fig. 3- The Last Stand at Viborg, from a 20th-century Swedish-Varangian action movie. Worshipers of Odin are supposed to respect courage even among the enemy, and this is a virtue easily practiced when nineteen generations have passed since the battle in question.​

However, Fredrik August did not live to see the conclusion of this war. By the mid- 1480s, his health was clearly deteriorating, and doctors of the time struggled to even identify the disease, let alone cure it (his cause of death is still unidentified, bus one currently prominent theory is that he had amyloidosis) and On 15th November 1486, he perished in his sleep. His four-decades in power had been some of Sweden’s most influential, seeing it go from a Danish province in all but name to the hegemon of Scandinavia, reject the course that European religious development had been taking for a millennium, and discover a new continent. To his enemies, he was called “Fredrik the Heathen” or “Fredrik the Aposatate”, while his allies called him “Fredrik the Godly” or “Fredrik the Restorer”. His like would not be seen soon.

And certainly not in his immediate successor. There was no controversy as to his sobriquet- he would be “Gottfrid the Brief”, for he assumed the throne, crowned by his mother’s successor to the title of Bishop of Njord, and was in the next month victim to a coup by the mercantile faction, increasingly concerned that their loans during the Swedish Uprising (which had by now, in many cases, been made to their parents) would never be paid back. He was forced to abdicate in favor of his own son, Karl. As Karl was a literal infant at the time, he was also forced to appoint a regent. Now, Hans Sehsted was too wily to name himself the child’s regent- the Goðar were upset enough to see the son of a vestal booted off the throne- instead he named his ally, Sten Gstavsson Sture.

Fig. 4- Events during the reign of Gottfrid I. All of them.​

Sture was soon able to show his quality. Muscovy had claimed control of all the former Novgorodian lands save for the area between lakes Ladoga and Onega, which had been claimed by the Swedish invasion force before they had been turned around. However, the Novgorod government-in-exile had fled to friendly Yaroslavl and were refusing to yield. Further, Muscovy refused to give the Swedes passage, due to a combination of fear that an army of Vikings commanded by Henrik Hastfer would pillage on their way through and a hope that Sweden would give up and let them complete their conquest of Novgorod. However, Sture showed the same forcefulness that had gotten him into power and persuaded the Lithuanians to ready their armies. Believing that the Swedes might actually be willing to risk invading Muscovy, Yaroslavl capitulated, and Olonets was absorbed into Sweden. However, many in the hinterlands around Noteborg were displeased with Sture’s actions- both in overthrowing Gottfrid, a fellow Karelian, and in risking war with Muscovy, when they would be on the front lines, and rose up in revolt.

Fig. 5- the end of the Ultimate Partition of Novgorod​

While Sture was in Lithuania negotiating this, he learned of a surviving Lithuanian pagan named Alexandras Radvila, who was a scholar, and agreed to become the man’s patron. This willingness to thumb his nose at the Christians went a way towards easing the Goðar’s concerns with him. However, Sture was still the Merchant faction’s man, enacting protectionist policies in the Gulf of Finland and resolving to fund construction in Stockholm’s merchant quarter. He also sought to find a way to deal with the constant unrest in Sweden short of deploying Henrik Hastfer to brutalize people until they ceased to complain audibly. There was a theory, which he agreed with, that the stated purposes of the rebellion, Christianity, nationalism, and such, were highly aggravated by the inability of Stockholm to address local issues across the wide span and varied geography of the Swedish lands, so the Stockholm Thing approved the creation of a series of lesser Things to handle local issues.

Fig. 6- Sten Gustavson Sture, contemporary portrait​

By 1490, the colonization of Vinland was well underway, with parts of the island of Vinland Proper being claimed by both Norwegian Christian and Swedish Pagan colonies. It was at around this time, when large numbers of second-generation Asatruar started to come of age, that the standard forms of modern Norse rituals began to emerge. Interestingly, the coming-of-age traditions show some influence from Skraeling traditions.

Fig. 7- a Blot to initialize the Swedish “resupply station” on the south shore of Vinland.

(OOC- yeah, I seem to have failed to catch a screenshot of the founding of my first colony (and got ninjaed by my own subject), but it happened at around this time)​

In 1490, an English incursion into Ireland was complicated when Scotland decided to intervene. England, in turn, called Sweden in, leading to a major war in the North Sea. This they enthusiastically embraced- the War for the Norwegian Throne was well in the past, and this was a proper Viking raid if anything was! Christian von Aschesberg’s fleet was recalled from Vinland to help the war effort, but he died on the way back. The discoverer of Vinland died before the resupply stations he had planned out had amounted to more than a few huts.

Fig. 8- Valkyries bearing Christian von Aschesberg into the Great Unknown, 19th-century painting​

Relations with Muscovy continued to deteriorate, with the Partition of Novgorod making it clear that each was not willing to stay in their side of the line.

Fig. 9- Diplomatic correspondence between an Moscow and Stockholm, 1494. Explicatives redacted.​

After the Scottish war, many captains decided to keep raiding! While the Baltic was a major source of income, Vinland, with its stone-age inhabitants who had no large ships, was an easy target and, as little was known of it, great boasts from those who went a-viking in the Gulf of Vinland were impossible to debunk. Many began to move to the New World purely for potential piracy. The large numbers of ships in the area led to fishing of the Grand Banks not just to supply the colonies, but to ship food back to Scandinavia.

Fig. 10- Treasures from Poland and Vinland in the Swedish treasury.​

The merchant faction continued to take advantage of having one of their own as regent, redirecting as much of the plunder as possible to repaying loans to themselves, kicking nobles out of the Stockholm Thing for fairly minor scandals, and generally neglecting all proposal coming from someone who was not one of their own.

Fig. 11- Proceedings of the Stockholm Thing, 1495​

This was back in the day when being self-made was viewed as a bad thing, so the increasingly obvious dominance of the merchant faction was not popular, and the east rose up again, with even more Livonian Order stalwarts emerging from the woodwork. Henrik Hastfer’s axe was drawn again.

Fig 12- Henrik Hastfer depicted as a demon in a Christian propaganda piece in Livonia​

However, it was from more internal issues that the mercantile faction started to see its first setbacks. In 1499, their leader Hans Sehsted died of old age and the copper mines of Falun on which many of them had depended for income, experienced a number of accidents, leading to decreased profits. In addition, the now-teenaged King Karl started to make public statements, and he did not approve of what had been done to his father.

Fig. 13- the funeral of Hans Sehsted, contemporary painting. Attendants noted that the new Vestal of Odin spent an unusual amount of time expounding on the temporary nature of his worldly achievements, possibly because one of her rivals was rumored to have appealed to Sehsted for support.​

 

[Bergil]

Europe and Environs in 1500​

Map of Europe in 1500​

The late 15th century was, for the most part, an era of power consolidation. Muscovy had defeated all the remaining Russian states, the Ottomans all the other Turkish beys, and Spain had gained a personal union with Aragon and completed the reconquista (even pushing on into Algeria). There were, however, exceptions. The Kalmar Union had collapsed, though Sweden was quickly establishing themselves as the unifying power of Scandinavia, and the short-lived union between Poland and Lithuania had failed to cohere, though the two remained allies and had both done well for themselves. The Holy Roman Empire was a mixed case- they had lost control of Northern Italy, save for the Free City of Sienna, but the Habsburg house of Austria had further ensconced themselves as the natural emperors, expanded their direct holdings in the Alps, and expanded the formerly-weak powers of the imperial throne. However, the Kings of Bohemia were establishing themselves as credible rivals.

The Holy Roman Empire in 1500​

The most successful nations of the period were probably Muscovy, who had unified the Russias and was now, from a European perspective, a significant portion of the Eastern edge of the map, the Ottomans, who had consolidated their rule of both sides of the Bosporus, and France, who had decisively won the 100-year war, driving Britain out of the mainland save for the city of Calais, tamed its once-troublesome vassals, and was now expanding into newly-undefended Italy.

France in 1500​

Religiously, not much had changed- despite the Swedish great reversion, Europe was still largely a Christian continent, with Catholicism domination. The new Ottoman subjects were in no hurry to adopt the religion of their conquerors, and the generally-tolerant Ottomans were in no hurry to coerce them. Only the city of Constantinople itself had converted, and that might have been as much to do with the entire Ottoman royal family, court, and bureaucracy moving in and influencing the local demographics. The reborn Norse faith was only practiced outside of remote backwaters in some of the Swedish heartland, but was failing to catch on in the rest of the Swedish realm, save for a few parts of southern Finland, many of which had heavy Swedish settlement. The biggest religious development was the spread of European religions to the New World.

Approximate map of majority religions, 1500.​

The Age of Exploration was well and truly on, and the Iberian and Scandinavian powers had both independently reached the New World and established colonies, though they were yet unaware of each other. France had heard rumors of this, and was sending out their own explorers. Indeed, from a Swedish perspective, their explorers were encountering the opposite problem they had expected- too much land too close! Vinland, Markland, and Helluland weren’t as far west as they had hoped, so it might still be a long way to Japan, and Markland was much larger than the Greenland-sized island they had expected, so it was proving difficult to find a clear route to the open sea beyond!

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 6- The power struggle​

It does not require a degree in psychology to determine why King Karl VIII of Sweden turned out the way he did. He had known for as long as he could know anything that his father should have been in charge, but had been forced out, kicked around by a greater power. Young Karl thus viewed this as the way of the world. The powerful did as they wished, so to be safe, he had to become powerful. You were either a hammer or a nail. He was not a subtle man, and spent much time with the army, preparing them for war.

In 1501, he announced his marriage to a Scanian noblewoman named Ulrika Cruus, and they soon had a son, who was also named Karl. It was at around this time that he started to move, planning to become King in more than just name.

Fig. 1- Coronation of Karl VIII by the Bishop of Odin. Note the many armored men present.​

However, at present, Sten Sture was still in charge, and he continued his course of focusing on Vinland, sending out a new voyage of exploration under Gustrav Hjarne. He initially tried to sail north around Markland, only to find that the land extended north to the polar ice.

At around this time, a Goði in the Vinland waystation learned that the skraelings of the region feared a trickster deity named Lox. He believed that this was, of course, Loki, and as such was able to persuade some of them to adopt Norse rites. As the new world was still very obscure outside the Iberian and Scandinavian powers, outside the Baltic where Vikings raided Sweden seemed to not be doing much at all, and the southern European and middle-eastern nations somewhat ignored Sweden, increasingly seeing Muscovy as the big story of Northern Europe.

Fig. 2- Gustav Hjarne’s 1502 map of Markland​

Now, Karl may have been aggressive, but he was no fool. He saw the world in terms of power, and knew full well that Sture, not himself, had it right now. He had been setting himself up for the last 15 years, and the Karelian branch of the house of Fincke still had something of an air of foreignness to them. Thus he had to go about building his own power base. His first instinct was to continue to train his personal levy troops, who were building up a reputation for cutting-edge military technology. His new bride brought another opportunity to his attention, helping to set up a charity in Vaxjo (and possibly pocketing some of the money passing through it).

Fig. 3- extract from a 15th-century Swedish military treatise. Note the speculation of possible future developments in black-powder technology. ​

In Christian Central Europe, the mood had taken a turn for the grim. The Great Reversion was now clearly not a passing phenomenon, but a truly reborn, vital paganism encroaching on them. In the south, the Ottomans were expanding rapidly. Christendom seemed to be on the retreat everywhere. People whispered that something had gone wrong, that a new course was needed. Some theologians began to declare declared that the Pope had decadent, the structure of the Catholic Church ponderous and unresponsive, too concerned with worldly politics to enforce morality or respond to local crises. While initially, they wanted a better, wiser pope (presumably themselves), but supporters took it further and further, declaring that as long as one man ruled the church, everyone in the church would be preoccupied with becoming that man and that man with enforcing his will on the world. It was just the nature of fallen man. It was in the Free City of Goslar that the final step was made- the bishop of Rostock that he would be going it alone. Obscure, little-understood Latin would be replaced with German. Understanding was what mattered.

Fig. 4- Statue of the Reverend Gotthilf Fischer, the first bishop to embrace Protestantism.​

Ironically, this new theology began to become popular among Scandinavia’s Christian population. The bottom-up organization appealed to a people that was so often on poor terms with the pope and often felt bound by the strict rules of the church, especially when compared to their Norse neighbors. Both Denmark and Norway soon converted. However, so did some Swedish Christians. In particular, there was one man, Nils Dacke, a wealthy peasant who became something of a figurehead for both Christian resentment of the Great Reversion and peasant activism in general. He was able to tie Christianity and anti-noble sentiments into a full-on movement.

Fig. 5- Painting of Nils Dacke, 17th-century​

After the failure of his Northward expedition, Gustrav Hjarne decided to look instead for the southern tip of Markland. As he sailed south, he found something unexpected- the Portuguese had colonized some islands off the southeast coast, and were uncertain if they were in some far-flung part of the Indies or somewhere else entirely. Hjarne was happy to tell them that they were off the coast Markland, which soon became the generally accepted name for the northwestern continent. However, from them he learned that the peninsula he had rounded had not been the southern tip of Markland, but the northern mouth of a vast bay that connected to another land to the south of the islands, which they had named Verdea due to the lush jungles of the nearby coast. This was bad news for his hopes of finding a route to the East, but made it clear to everyone that the new world was bigger than either of them had imagined- both literally and figuratively. In Sweden, and also Iberia, the powerful began to discuss its usefulness not merely as a place on a route to somewhere else but as a possible source of value in its own right

Fig. 6- Letter from Gustav Hjarne to friends in Reval, telling them of Verdea​

With Sweden at peace and Sture’s merchant faction in control. For the first time since the Swedish uprising, the economy was truly stable. The long-standing debts from the Swedish Uprising were finally being paid off, in some cases to the grandsons of those who originally loaned them, with trade and plunder from the Baltic and the New World. With the true scale of these new lands becoming clear, the Thing were no longer satisfied with an the island of Vinland Proper and wanted to start claiming territory on the mainland.

Fig. 7- Charter for the first colony on the Marklandish mainland​

In 1505, King Karl VIII though himself ready to make his first move. He had his personal levies arrest several of Sture’s most prominent cronies on charges of corruption ranging from “probably made up” to “The constant level of grift you get in all but the best-functioning societies.” Sture did not take this lying down and, seizing on the fact that one of the appointees was the Bishop of Sif, started a rumor that the king was planning to convert back to Christianity, which lead to some minor riots and required an extensive campaign to debunk. Clearly this power struggle would not be over that quickly.

Fig. 8- propaganda from the 1505 riots found in Kexholm.​

With the obvious solution attempted and unsuccessful, King Karl decided to get a bit clever. The powerful merchant faction was entirely behind their man Sten Sture, but did that have to mean that they were against him? What if they had to acknowledge him?

With the profits starting to come in from the colonies in Vinland, it was becoming clear that there were some issues actually collecting them. The sailors on the trade ships in the Atlantic were mostly Norwegians and Scanians- groups that were still mostly Christian. As such, many of them didn’t particularly want to do business with the pagan regime in Sweden. It didn’t help that the Hanseatic League were full-on encouraging this, seeing it as an opportunity to both make some money and develop a reputation as a pro-Christian business- in a way that would plaster over rather than alienate the increasing numbers of protestants among their numbers. Thus, a significant amount of the bounty of Vinland was ending up in Denmark or Lubeck. King Karl VIII thus declared his intent to conquer the hanseatic cities under Danish control, to both chastise the Hansa and the Danes for their meddling and to have routes back from Vinland that did not pass through the Skagerrak, thus minimizing the opportunity for traders to pop over to their co-religionists and sell some cargo that should have gone to Sweden. As the merchant faction had been complaining about this for a while, Sture had little choice but to acquiesce. The Lithuanians and English, also not fond of the Hansa dominating the Baltic and North Sea trade, agreed to fight as well.

Fog. 9- Hanseatic league advertisement, 1506 “The Hanseatic league guarantees that all our factors tithe to Christian churches”​

The Hanseatic League, for the most part, did not bother to defend their cities, hoping that Denmark would do it for them. But Denmark was not the power it had been sixty years ago. The Swedish Army, protected by the largest fleet in the Baltic and led by King Karl’s personal fief, the so-called “burning huscarls” (because of their extensive use of gunpowder), was able to cross the Oresund and lay siege to Copenhagen, driving the Danish army from the home islands. The Danes fled, hoping to find sanctuary among their fellow Protestants in Bohemia, but Lithuania had negotiated passage, and was waiting for them. The only Danish success came from Mecklenburg loyalists in Rostock allowing their fellow German Christians to take the city.

Fig. 10- Troop movements in the Slesvig War​

The Fall of Copenhagen was expected to bring an end to the war. The Danes had, in the past, built few fortifications, relying on their now-vanished naval superiority to defend their home islands. However, Nils Dacke took advantage of the absence of the Swedish army and the unexpected death by illness of Prince Karl to finally emerge from the shadows and launch his rebellion.

Fig. 11- Transcript of a speech by Nils Dacke- “Now is the time to take back Sweden for God!”​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 7- the Dacke War​

King Karl found an unexpected ally against Dacke. In the previous decade, Stockholm had become something of a centre for European Jewish culture. The religious clashes in Germany between had occasionally spilled over against the perennial targets for European religious strife. The Swedish Pagans, however, were on decent terms with the local Jewish population- from a theological perspective, they were exactly as far from Asatru as were the Christians that they could not feasibly persecute due to sheer numbers, and from a historical perspective, they had simply never really opposed them- unlike the Christians. Indeed, some of the old backwoods Pagans viewed the Jews as fellow victims of Christian persecution. As such, Stockholm’s Jewish quarter had been swelled by refugees from across the Baltic drawn by the promise of authorities who were actually reliable for once. However, that also meant that they were nervous about the possibility of that sort of religious violence breaking out is Sweden. The prominent Swedish Jewish painter Karl Eriksson thus approached King Karl with a plan to contain Dacke’s influence and possibly even turn events to his favor. And the king was already well-disposed to Eriksson, who had some years prior painted a picture of him at the head of the Burning Huscarls. And thus, on June Second 1507, the famously belligerent King Karl VIII did something unexpected. He apologized to Dacke’s followers.

Fig. 1- Karl Eriksson, self-portrait. The fur hat was something of a fashion trend at the time​

Specifically, he apologized for the actions of Sten Sture, who he assured them was to blame for the excessive taxation that motivated many of the less religiously devout among them. He apologized for letting things get so out of hand. And he promised to fix everything and make sure that it would never happen again. This did little to assuage those already wielding weapons in revolt, but the Lithuanian army had already left the front lines to deal with them (it was judged better optics to avoid Swedes killing Swedes at this delicate moment). However, the Republic of Dithmarschen issued a proclamation recognising Dacke as the true ruler of Sweden. Now, Dithmarschen was something of a legal grey area. The local peasants had long since overthrown their lords, and were run as a sort of early democracy strongly influenced by the local churches, however, they had never officially renounced the Holy Roman Empire. Occasionally a minor German noble tried to add them to his domain, but none had succeeded. It was thus understandable that they were on the side of Dacke. What was less understandable was that they would do so when the entire Swedish army was on their doorstep. They had just declared war on an army beyond the minor counts that had opposed them before, and they soon fell. With Denmark fully occupied and Dithmarschen fallen, some captains who had previously been blockading Jutland took the opportunity to go a-viking in the Netherlands.

Fig. 2- Plunder from Frisia in the Swedish royal treasury​

Indeed, Denmark officially capitulated not long after, with Sweden taking all of Slesvig-Holstein, the isle of Bornholm, and annexing the rest of Mecklenburg. Henrik Hastfer, upset at having been denied a decisive battle, vented by ordering a castle in Neubrandenberg demolished and sent stones from it to some suspected Dacke sympathisers explaining that the same thing would happen to them if they crossed him.

Fig. 3- the ruins of Neubrandenburg Castle​

After three defeats, it was no longer possible for anyone to deny that Sweden was unambiguously the hegemon of Scandinavia, with Denmark no longer a competitor. The rise of a pagan power right on the northern border of Germany was yet another defiance of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope’s collective claim to be the co-rulers of all Europe, so Central European Christians continued to drift away from Catholicism.

Fig. 4- Diplomatic correspondence between Stockholm and Vienna, early 16th century.​

In the summer of 1509, Gustav Hjarne returned from his voyage of exploration in the southern Atlantic. His news was not good. No matter how far south he went, he could not find the couthern tip of either Verdea or Africa. He was starting to believe that they both connected to the conjectural Terra Australis Ignota, and the Atlantic was in fact just a gigantic inland sea. He also brought back new foodstuffs from Caribbeas and Castille’s new colony on the western tip of Verdea.

Fig. 5- Gustav Hjarne’s 1509 map of the known world​

Nils Dacke continued to have an incredible talent for rallying men to his cause, whether Christian zealots, people on Sweden’s periphery who were dissatisfied with foreign rule, or general malcontents. And the king continued to acknowledge all their complaints and blame them on on Sten Sture. It is said that he was so overjoyed with Karl Eriksson’s plan to play his enemies against each other that he indirectly named his secondborn son after the artist- as patronymics were still widely used instead of family names in Sweden at the time, many would call the young prince “Erik Karlsson”

Fig. 6- Allegorical painting of Strife, by Karl Eriksson. Occasionally misidentified as Loki by persons who do not know the artist was Jewish.
(OOC- I got that “Dacke revolt spreads” a lot, and picked the same choice every time. I hope that wasn’t a terrible choice).​

In an attempt to preserve the illusion that things were under control, King Karl financed the construction of a great palace in Stockholm, complete with a massive library. But Dacke was impossible to pin down, popping up everywhere then disappearing without a trace even after Henrik Hastfer adopted the policy of quarantining every town where he was reliably reported to be as though he were some sort of disease.

Fig. 7- Cartoon of the grand opening party by a Dacke supporter. The caption reads “If we don’t talk about him, he’s not really there, right?”​

In summer of 1511, the aging warrior Henrik Hastfer died after falling from his horse on the a march between two battles against Dacke’s followers in lappland. He had fought in many battles, mostly against his own countrymen. It is notable, and says something about his reputation, that despite being one of the prominent figures of the Great Reverasion, being a warrior, and arguably dying in battle, he was not officially confirmed as an Einheri until some time later, when the memory of his methods was not so vivid. Magnus Brahe, a minor noble and former Burning Huscarl assumed command of the army, and promptly requested that their advanced weapons be made available for the entire army. King Karl, the Burning Huscarls' patron, assented, and enthusiastically went about ensureing that enough black powder could be produced.

Fig. 8- Magnus Brahe with a pistol, painting by Karl Eriksson​

Revolts kept springing up, but Dacke didn’t have it all his way. The cell-based command structure that made it hard to pin him down also meant that it was difficult to coordinate an overall plan between all cells- most notably when a cell of Novgorod loyalists decided to run off and try to retake Novgorod City from Muscovy. The common threat of Dacke even lead to something of a reconciliation between King Karl and the merchant faction, with a balance of power emerging with the latter being given much latitude within their own cities, but forgoing their Sture-era ambitions of dominance. This was largely due to the latest explorqation of the Atlantic- the Orient would clearly not be reached any time soon, so if Vinland was to be profitable, it would have to be from itself. That meant conquering it, so the Royal Army would be needed.

Fig. 9- Proceedings of the Stockholm Thing 1512. Key events are ratifying city charters and explaining to the Grand Prince of Moscow who exactly the army that just attacked Novgorod was​

As chaos continued to consume the Scandinavian homeland, many fled to Vinland, encouraged by rumours from Spain of gold. Even the Ottomans seemed to be taking an interest. The Thing even resorted to shipping some particularly hardened Dacke supporters to a frozen corner of Vinland in an attempt to get rid of them.

Fig. 10- The bleak architecture of the Chisdek Old Town speaks of its origins​

In 1515, things were starting to calm down. The bishops of Tyr and Freya and the Vestal of Thor approached the Stockholm Thing with plans expansions of temples in Stockholm. This was in accordance with the mood of the time the Protestant Reformation and the Great Reversion of Sweden were both spreading rapidly, and everyone believed that the future of Europe’s history would be decided soon- it had been about a millennium since the Pope had established his pre-eminence. How long could it hold. Would Christendom fall to the incursions from north or south? Would the Pope restore unity or be cast down? Was he a source of unity or a single point of failure. Across the continent, people wondered. It was, some said, the calm before the storm.

Fig. 11- The temple of Freyja​

But Sweden's warlike king saw the internal calm only as a chance to unleash his Burning Huscarls on one of his many percieved external enemies…

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 8- the Great Northern War​

The Norse Revival had found converts in odd places. Holy Kem, after all, had not historically been a center of Norse culture the first time around. While it was mostly limited to Sweden, there were small pockets of sympathizers in other parts of Scandinavia, and even a few scattered across the rest of Northern Europe (to say nothing of one small ve in the Algerian back-country that claims to date to the 16th Century). One place that had proven unexpectedly rich ground was the city of Novgorod, or as some had taken to calling it again, Holmgard. The city had been founded by the Viking-ruled Kievan Rus’ but said Vikings had gone native not long after, and the Republic of Novgorod had often fought with the young Swedish state, both before and after its reversion. However, during the partition, the formerly-popular Bishop of the city had been captured by the Muscovites, and was now issuing statements from his gilded cage in Moscow urging his former flock to submit to the Muscovite conquerors. This had lead to a significant number of Novgorodians becoming somewhat disillusioned with Christianity, including a sizable minority who had abandoned the religion entirely, with the Norse faith, newly revived, vital, and with some historical roots in Holmgard, being the most common destination. As had been said, the Muscovite royal family were no friends of the Old Gods, and they sought to bring the people of Novgorod back into compliance by force. The court in Stockholm had been aware of this, and there had been occasional talk of liberating the “Holmgard-Hof”, but it had come to nothing. Muscovy was strong, and Sten Sture had had little interest in a European war, seeing Vinland and the potential route west to the East as Sweden’s future, while Karl VIII though sympathetic to the idea, had been preoccupied with the Danish was and internal conflicts.

However, in 1516, the young Grand Prince of Moscow, Dimitri VI, decided to go to war once again against the Tartars. Seeing that the armies of Moscow would thus be on the opposite side of the vast Muscovite realm, the belligerent Swedish king gathered his armies in Finland and sent out messages to the Ottomans and Lithuania (who were nervous about Muscovy’s claims to be the heir of the Kievan Rus’, as they controlled much of that realm’s old heartland including the city of Kyiv itself)

Fig. 1- Forces massing against Muscovy​

The Swedish and Lithuanian armies crossed the border, seizing the weekly-defended lands of the former Novgorod Republic before Dimitri could hear word of what had happened and turn his army around to fight this new threat. The rest of Europe tried to work out how to deal with this new development. The holy Roman Emperor used this as a way to reemphasize the infidel threat to his empire which was increasingly divided along sectarian lines, even persuading the Pope to call for another crusade. Many observed that this was potentially a battle for the future of Eastern Europe and Poland wasn’t even involved.

In 1518, in an encampment of the main Swedish army near Ustyuzhna, a soldier named Nils Christiansson was found trying to desert. This was not remarkable at first, but when he was brought before the high command for trial, he was recognized as actually being Nils Dacke! It was later determined that Dacke had achieved his feats of evading the authorities because the secretary of the man in charge of coordinating the attempts to hunt him down had been a secret sympathizer, and had been warning him whenever someone had been looking for him in teh right place- however, he had received no warning of the press-gang coming through the village he had been hiding in, as they had not been looking for him at all and thus were not in communication with the investigation, and in fact had not recognised him when they found him. Thus finally ended the Dacke war- with the rebellion’s leader being picked up by accident. The choice was made to officially execute him for desertion to make it more difficult to turn him into a Christian martyr.

Fig. 2- The Apprehension of Nils Dacke, 18th century painting. Commissioned by a Bohemian priest.​

Of course, Dacke was not the only one to desert. As Swedish troops laid siege to Moscow, their logistics were becoming very strained, as Muscovy was vast and the Swedish army could not rely on resupply by sea, as they were accustomed to, so their supply lines were long. Meanwhile, the Muscovite army, personally led by Dimitri himself, was able to use the scale of the campaign to his advantage, moving through the northeastern wilderness to get behind enemy lines.

Fig. 3- troop movements, summer 1518​

His objective was simple- retake Novgorod City, cut the Swedish supply lines completely, and make an example out of the Holmgard-hof. However, he had not accounted for the fact that the Turkish army had finally made its way north to the front lines. The walls of Moscow and Novgorod fell within weeks of each other. But as Dimitri was trying to reestablish himself in Novgorod, the Turkish expeditionary forces under Yakub Koka arrived, and the Swedish army returning from Moscow not long after, and the decisive battle was fought.

Fig. 4- the Battle of Novgorod, from a 21st-century animated music video​

Muscovy was broken in that battle and surrendered not long after. Sweden demanded Novgorod City and the surrounding lands, plus the isthmus of Soroka. In addition, Moscow was to restore the independence of the Duchy of Perm, a mostly non-Russian-speaking land on under Moscow’s control right on the ill-defined border of Europe and Asia.

Fig. 5- Muscovite losses after the Holmgard War​

As for the Holmgard-hof, they did become an example- in the opposite way Dimitri had wanted. They had held out against Christian persecution, protected the city when the Muscovite army- theoretically its own people- had ravaged it, and been vindicated when the armies of Sweden, the Norse great power (and also the Turks, but people didn’t talk about them so much) had ridden to their aid. The already-chaotic European religious situation spiraled even further out of control, with some Polish protestants declaring that the end times were upon them.

Fig. 6- Painting of Goði Yegor of Holmgard, by Karl Eriksson. Commissioned by Yegor’s followers after the war​

After the war, the Stockholm Thing mediated a dispute between Swedish and Norwegian nobles by paying the former a significant portion of the plunder to drop the issue.

Fig. 7- Official map of the internal border between Sweden and Norway, 1522
​

I wasn't trying to mislead with that last teaser image, I just like to screenshot missions being complete. Sorry.

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 9- Pain and Glory​

European involvement in the New World only continued to grow, with the Iberians starting to establish plantations for valuable, exotic crops in their southwestern colonies, worked by thralls purchased from Africa at a scale that would probably not be feasible in the home country where people would have to look at the gory details. The increase in ship traffic through the Caribbean lead to some enterprising Vikings establishing a base on the island of Sunnasland to effectively launch pirate raids on them.

Fig 1- Early Swedish settlement of the Caribbean​

Karl VIII only saw more opportunity for more conquest. If the new world was worth having, he would have it! Him, and not his English allies who had begun settling the area. Encouraged by the words of Stefan Hardenberg, who had been to Vinalnd and heard from the Skraeling of a land called Vyndott not far to the west that was said to be surrounded by water, he declared that he would expend Vinland at the expense of the local tribes, against the advice of his son that the Swedish army was too weary after the Dacke and Holmgard wars. The Burning Huscarls were piled onto ships and sent to Vinland. After all, the locals did not even have metal weapons! And his armies were so mighty that they had shattered Denmark and utterly ruined Muscovy to the point that the Tartars were taking another swing at them! They just needed to fill in a few gaps in their formations.

Fig. 2- the Hardenberg Plan​

The Miqimaq fought bravely, but were completely outmatched- they were outnumbered, and completely outgunned. It was perhaps the closest thing that has ever happened to an alien invasion- Swedish steel and caravels must have seemed to them like lasers and starships would to people whose frames of reference were stone, wood, and canoes. The English, also interested in the region, eagerly joined in the attack.

Fig. 3- Ruins of a Miqimaq settlement near modern Sygnygtåt​

Hearing of these easy victories and also that with the assistance of the Holmgard-Hof, the land around Novgorod City was adjusting easily to Swedish rule, King Karl soon broadened the scope of his conquests, attacking also the Pequot of the end of the Gulf of Vinland. He would reach Vyndott! Gustav Hjarne warned against him. His voyages had given him a better sense of the sheer scale of the Atlantic and the difficulty of running a supply line across it.

The Novgorodians were not the only unexpected converts to the Norse rites in those days, as the cult of Tyr proved popular in the city of Holstein.

Fig. 4- temple in Holmgard, formerly Orthodox Christian church. Rededicated Spring 1524​

Fig. 5- letter from Gustav Hjarne to King Karl VIII warning against excess aggression “We cannot maintain this pace for much longer.”​

And, at first, it seemed to be working. More tribes capitulated, more villages submitted to the Swedish yoke, and the merchants only redoubled their focus on settling these new lands.

Fig 6- Swedish charters in Markland​

The English were reluctant to join the war against the Pequot, but eventually were persuaded. It was hoped to give them the lands of the distant Powahattan, who had rallied to the defense of the Peqot, and thus minimize competition between the Swedish and English colonies in Markland.

Fig. 7- Troop movements in Markland, 1525​

The meeting of the old and new worlds did not bring only destruction, though. The Verdean potato proved a good match for Lithuanian soil conditions, leading to a small population boom. King Karl began corresponding with some of Sweden’s learned men to see if the same would apply in Scandinavia.

Fig. 8- a traditional Lithuanian dish of baked potatoes, mushrooms, and cheese.​

There was no cooperation among the invaders of Markland. Spain had began settling the region, and expressed a desire to kick the Swedes out and take it all. What’s more, the English showed no interest in accepting the Chespeake and splitting the continent neatly with Sweden. This should perhaps have been seen as a sign of things to come.

Fig. 9- disputes over Markland​

Then, news reached the armies in Vinland of a rebellion by Muscovite loyalists. Not all in Russia were as pro-Sweden as the Holmgard-Hof. It is said that Gustav Hjarne died of a heart attack upon hearing the news. Sweden's finances were clearly strained after the long war. And the Swedish armies were weary. Knowing that they would only turn around and fight again, far away, they would go no further. Karl VIII, like Alexander the Great, had his conquests stopped when his armies would not follow him on to Vyndott.

Fig. 10- the Mutiny at Käbbäkk, 20th-century painting​

Even Karl VIII had to admit that the army was starting to have trouble replacing its losses. He agreed to return to Sweden, and set about rebuilding the treasury and recruiting replacements in Finland.

Fig. 11- Finnish-language recruitment poster, early 16th-century​

The Muscovite loyalists were defeated soundly by the returning Swedish army, now assured that only this battle lay between them and home. However, the religious situation continued to be unpredictable. 1n 1529, two unexpected conversions happened. The people of Sygnygtåt decided that it was best to join the winning side, and King Henry VIII of England had rejected the primacy of the Pope and declared himself supreme moral authority over Christendom.

Fig. 12- the Battle of Soroka​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 10- The Deluge​

The expedition to Vinland had made it clear to the government in Stockholm that it the New World was just too far away to micromanage from Europe. There needed to be someone on teh continent empowered to respond to situations as they happened. Ultimately, 1n 1530, the Stockholm Thing appointed Olof Engelbrekt, a minor noble from Norrland, as the first Thane of Vinland. He was not, however, granted authority over the settlements in Sunnasland, which had now expanded to a small island off the coast of Verdea, which they had named after the goddess Freyja.

The existence of the Thanedom lead to a major disruption of power in the Stockholm Thing. With the merchant faction having spent much of their social capital to establish colonies in the New World only to have to compromise their control of it, they were clearly no longer in such a position of power. Instead, a rising faction of local nobles, emboldened by Engelbrekt’s elevation, began to call for more power for themselves. This faction as particularly influential in Scania, which contained many of Sweden’s largest urban centers, but was only then starting to renounce Christianity in any significant numbers, and the few new Danish-speaking heathen nobles felt it was time for them to have a place at the table!

Fig. 1- Olof Engelbrecht’s commission as Thane of Vinland.​

King Karl VIII, unable to actually continue his conquests, instead returned to theory, even providing sanctuary the disgraced French scientist Claude de Dampierre after he was chased out of Paris due to persistent rumors that he was some sort of undead- the cumulative effects of a lifetime working with odd chemical had left him in such poor health that he looked like a walking corpse and often acted noticeably unhinged. However, he had learned much from it, and promised a method to produce black powder on greater scale then previously envisioned.

Fig. 2- Claude de Dampierre, portrait by Karl Eriksson. Though Dampierre was supposedly very satisfied with this portrait, the artist has failed to make him look entirely like a normal human.​

However, Karl's wars had given Sweden a fearsome reputation. The Mamluk Sultans of Egypt conspicuously eased off their belligerent rhetoric against Sweden, and when the Ottoman Empire invaded Hungary in 1531, most of their allies did not defend them, though in fact the Swedish army was still in a very ragged state at the time and was barely deployed to the front lines at all.

Fig. 3- the Ottoman Conquest of Visoki​

Dampierre remained a fixture in the royal court, and though his odd looks and tendency to cackle maniacally meant that many questioned the king’s insistence on inviting him to high-society events, no-one questioned his skill, particularly after he presented designs for more modern ships. Sweden’s fleet at the time was composed mostly of ships that had been built before the discovery of Vinland, and thus were not designed for extensive spans on the open sea. The Stockholm Thing had been aware that this was proving increasingly inadequate to manage a colonial empire, but had been dreading the cost of replacing so many ships, so Dampierre’s plans to cheaply retrofit several of the larger ships to take into account the lessons of the Age of Exploration were most appreciated. The money saved was instead used to pay off war debt.

Fig. 4- Claude de Dampierre’s plans to upgrade the fleet. Note the shaky handwriting and description of them as able to ‘Dominate the seas forever! Mwahahaha!’​

In 1534, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania invaded Muscovy in the belief that Sweden, their long ally and Muscovy’s old enemy, would surely come to aid them. However, the Swedish army was still in poor shape, so King Karl declined, citing a contradictory obligation to the Duke of Perm, who had drifted back into Muscovite orbit. Jonas Albertas was not satisfied with this explanation, however, and immediately severed ties with Sweden.

Fig. 5- Letter from Grand Duke Jonas I Albertas to King Kerl VIII accusing him of betraying him
(OOC- I had assumed that I would keep the alliance because it was an offensive war, but didn’t think it was necessarily a huge setback at the time, as Lithuania was always intended to be a temporary alliance)​

As has been said, by the 1530s the Scanians no longer felt much loyalty to a Danish state that was increasingly irrelevant and few that lived could remember being part of, and were increasingly integrated into Swedish society. Some were even beginning to convert back to the old ways. This obviously led to tensions with the Protestant reformers who made their homes there. In an attempt to prevent this from spilling over into violence, the aging Karl Eriksson (who presented himself as a neutral party) arranged a disputation between the Danish protestant theologian Emmanuel Kaas and the up-and-coming Goði Nils Tre Rosor from Kerelia (the future Bishop of Odin). The Disputation of Lund lasted for hours and covered many points, including scientific plausibility (Kaas claimed that Jormungandr could not exist as described on a round world, while Tre Rosor claimed that Jesus’ command to spread his word to every part of the world would be impossible with the maritime technology of the first century, showing that he had been unaware of the existence of the new world. Heliocentric theory was not discussed, as Copernicus had not published yet), effect on followers (Kaas characterized Asatru as violent and sexually permissive, while Tre Rosor claimed that Christianity promoted weakness and stagnation), behavior of deities (Kaas called Odin a liar and a schemer, while Tre Rosor called Yahweh a tyrant and Jesus a weakling), character of historical authorities (Tre Rosor cited the fact that Christianity had, for most of its existence, been dominated by the papacy, an institution that Kaas admitted was irreparably corrupt, while Kaas claimed that Fredrik the Restorer had hidden his conversion until Johan Vasa was dead, because he was a coward), and textual reliability (The Council of Nicaea and the Kem-moot were both accused of having twisted the faith to fit their political agendas, with Kaas bringing up the “Arbitrary” exclusion of the Hyndluljóð from the Younger Edda, which claimed that Freyja, King Fredrik August’s patron goddess, had named a human protoge whom the House of Fincke could not claim descent from, while Tre Rosor spoke of the cover-up of Saint Junia’s gender to hide the historic existence of Christian ‘vestals’). In the end, neither conceded that he was wrong and it was generally described as having been a great show of intelligence, but ultimately indecisive, but the pagan side seems to have benefited from it more, as it was seen as proof that the revived Norse religion could produce actual theory rather than just being backwoods primitivism.

Fig. 6- Partial transcript of the Disputation of Lund​

At around that time, the Estonian and Finnish languages began to converge. They were already closely-related, and were now in one realm. In addition, Sweden was building up its eastern possessions, but due to Estonia having been under foreign control for essentially its entire recorded history, nearly all the literate people in the region were German-speakers, most stubbornly Christian due to the legacy of the Livonian Order. As such, Stockholm (where many already viewed Estonian as a dialect of Finnish) often appointed loyal Norse Finns to local administer the region.

Fig. 7- Finnish-language documents describing wood from Kholm passing through Reval, 1536​

In Muscovy, Lithuania was rapidly making gains, and the Khan of Kazan had seized upon their weakness to try to expand his own holdings in Russia. This worried Karl VIII. As has been said, he viewed the world in terms of power, and if the newly-hostile Grand Duchy of Lithuania was able to conquer Muscovy in its entirety, it would become a real threat. Thus, in Spring of 1537with the army finally recovered and full of righteous fury, the conqueror sent them to war once again.

Fig. 8- Invasions of Muscovy, 1537​

However, there was more life in Moscow then King Karl had believed, and the Swedish invasion had been launched hastily, without proper time to organize and supply the army, which was still fairly green. Grand Prince Ivan IV personally lead a counterattack and held the Swedish army off at Kargopol, soundly defeating a much larger force and putting them to retreat.

Fig. 9- the Battle of Kargopol, 18th-century painting.​

However, total disaster was prevented when a captain named Svante Hjarne took command of the left flank and covered the retreat, allowing most of the army to escape in good order and regroup. Impressed, King Karl granted him overall command. With the army properly supplied, Hjarne returned to the front and took revenge, defeating the Muscovite Princely army by the shores of Lake Ladoga.

Fig. 10- Uniform of the Burning Huscarls as of the Battle of Ladoga​

At this point, it was largely a race to Moscow between the Swedes, Kazanis, and Lithuanians- a race that the Lithuanians soon bowed out of, taking the lands around Rzhev and the Luki exclave as their war-spoils and the Swedes ultimately won. However, the city’s defenses were formidable, and Hjarne settled in for a long siege. The Goðar proclaimed the triumph of the old ways, which was not only preemptive, but counterproductive, as the pious Norwegian nobleman Harald Sverrsson declared the he would not be complicit in such a thing, and proclaimed himself the true king of Norway, counting on the Swedish army being to far away to do anything about it.

Fig. 11- the Siege of Moscow​

The war did not stop the colonization of the New World- after all, no ships were needed to fight the largely landlocked Muscovy. Though the Goðar wanted to ensure that all the Swedish colonies were properly pious, the overwhelming concern of most of Swedish society was that the profit from them actually made its way to Sweden rather than being eaten up by the Hanseatic league. To this effect, after Stefan Hardenberg died, his job was given to Magnus Lauden, a former Hanseatic captain who now worked for Sweden, in the hope that he would have inside information on how his former masters operated.

Fig. 12- Magnus Lauden, contemporary portrait​

In 1541- Moscow finally fell, and was forced to sign a peace deal, ceding to Sweden the lands around Tikhvin and Beloozero, and the shores of the White Sea. Kazan also took much, and now shared a border with Lithuanian. The Grand Prince of Moscow was found dead not long after, and it remains disputed to this day whether he was assassinated for failing to prevent this loss or committed suicide out of shame.

Fig. 13- Russia after the Deluge​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 11- Awkward Relationships​

By this time, Sverrsson’s rebellion had taken over significant parts of Norway, and it required a lengthy campaign for the Swedish army to dislodge them, though the balance of numbers made the outcome inevitable.

Fig. 1- Harald Sverrsson’s last stand, later 16th-century painting​

After the war, King Karl sought to learn from what had gone wrong in the early phases, formalizing a supply structure and training the Burning Huscarls to even greater efficiency. However, he was not as young as he had been. He insisted on personally training in the use of the ceramic grenade, as he had with every weapon, but at the age of 58, with much of that spent out in the field under rough conditions, his hands were growing unsteady. King Karl VIII of Sweden, called Karl Red-Spear, who had for all his life died on May Fourth 1543 in the most appropriate way possible- in an explosion.

Fig. 2- Funeral urn of Karl VIII Red-Spear. There was not enough left for a ship burial.​

King Erik XIV was of a different mind than his father. Having spent his adult life smoothing over the results of his father’s aggression had made him somewhat cautious and highly aware of what other people were thinking. He thus was immediately concerned with Sweden’s diplomatic situation. Relations with Lithuania had likely deteriorated beyond repair, and relations with England were becoming strained by the fact that they were both trying to colonize the same areas of northern Markland. He thus tried to shore up what he viewed as Sweden’s only solid ally, the Ottoman Empire, by marrying a Turkish princess. The Stockholm Thing was not opposed to less aggression, desiring to rebuild the army after Karl’s many wars. However, the very Muslim Queen Huna was on somewhat distant terms with more-or-less everyone in her homeland, and was said to have wept before leaving Constantinople, saying that she was being sent away to appease some northern savages.

Fig. 3- the Marriage of King Erik of Sweden and Princess Huna of Turkey, contemporary painting. The royal cooks was said to have been displeased when she refused their pork and mead for carrots and water, though she at least enjoyed the wedding cake.

(ooc- I didn’t get a screenshot, but her personality trait was ‘Zealot’. This is going to be a really awkward marriage)​

The colonization of the new world continued apace, with Europeans moving into lands laid empty by virgin-soil disease outbreaks. With neither Sweden nor England really taking much of East Markland, the Spanish made their own claim, which was backed by the pope. France was also settling the north coast of Verdea. The thane of Vinland had begun cutting the old-growth forests to provide masts for the Swedish navy-works in Sunnasland.

Fig. 4- shipyard in Vinland, contemporary sketch​

However, England and Sweden were still formally allies, and in 1548, the English King called in Sweden to help put down some troublesome tribes. The Swedes accepted, though with some controversy in the Stockholm Thing. They had already mobilized the army to deal with some rebels near Holmgard and perhaps they would get a share of the spoils in Markland. King Erik XIV increasingly saw Vinland as an opportunity for low-risk expansion and resource-grabbing.

Fig. 5- Tally of votes in the Thing on the question of joining the English war. Note that it was fairly close.​

As awkward as Erik and Huna’s marriage had initially been, she eventually found herself quite at home in Sweden. In 1548 she invited the Sultan Ahmed I to visit and meet his new-born nephew. In it, she spoke highly of the local people (“The Swedes are honest, bold, and garrulous. They have been welcoming to me, and often invite me to hunts as though I were a man.”), climate (“It is a beautiful place. The summers are never unbearable, and the winters are not so dreadfully cold as I had feared. Many of the local trees do not shed their leaves even in the coldest of weather, so the landscape becomes all of green and white for that part of the year, and there are often strange and beautiful rainbows in the dark.”), and King Erik (“He is a perfect gentleman and seems genuinely interested in our home (though I have all but given up on swaying him from his heathen ways), and I imagine that you would learn much from each other.”) Ahmed did not make the journey north, but sent several of his courtiers.

Fig. 6- Queen Huna’s letter to her elder brother “We had intended to name the lad either Karl Osman or Osman Karl, after a great warrior on each side of his ancestry, but it was pointed out to us that the latter ran together into a semi-common Swedish name. Young Oskar is already beloved by the court’s other noble children”​

The Swedish troops landed in Markland full of aggression, but King Erik was dismayed when the English returned a village they had captured to its original chieftains in exchange for gold and a promise to leave them in peace. It was increasingly clear that there was not enough room in Vinland for the two empires.

Fig. 7- Penobscot village, in miniature, from the Newfoundland Historical Museum​

Detailed news of this reached Stockholm quickly, for the Hanseatic League had recently begun wholesaling movable-type printing press at an unprecedented scale

Fig. 8- page from a Bible printed in Lubeck, 1550​

His news worried many in Stockholm. Sweden’s only solid alliance now was the Ottomans. And yes, they were strong, but they had made a lot of enemies, and the warlike Padishah Ahmed- a man of great military prowess but little tact, seemed to feel no desire to stop! They might well have to defend the Turks, rather than the Turks defending them.

Fig. 9- Letter from Dodge Pasquale Polani of Venice to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. “The Grand Turk is a threat to all around him. He will not stop unless stopped.”​

 

[Bergil]

@Bullfilter Thanks, but if you're looking to learn the game form this, noite that I can't screenshot and write up everything, between a desire to keep the AAAr a reasonable length and maintain some sort of narrative through-line. For instance, I try to use the "Advancement Effort" edict as possible, but don't think I've alluded to it at all. Also, I'm probably not playing perfectly, though I do try to call out my own mistakes when I notice that I've made one. Anyways, here's teh next update.

The Atlantic World in 1550-​

The colonization of the New World had only accelerated over the course of the last 50 years. Though Sweden and England informally squabbling over the Northeast of Markland, the other three colonial powers had mostly picked out areas and help to them staying away from each other. As they were all Catholic, the popes had attempted to mediate this, for if any of them controlled a part of the continents, his writ grew. Spain was the big winner, being granted Papal stay on essentially the entire Marklandish mainland and also the eastern part of Verdea. Portugal had claimed the Caribbean Islands and the southern cone of Verdea, while France had claimed the northern Verdean jungles (which they had named after a sea captain they had recruited from their Italian conquests, who had proven vital to the initial exploration efforts) and had also begun colonizing West Africa. Spain had also begun making claims on the African continent.

Maps of the New World in 1550​

However, the natives of the region were not being passively swept aside. The Creek and Iroquois had weathered the First Contact plagues relatively well, and taken the opportunity to establish local hegemonies, with the former controlling a truly significant portion of Southeastern Markland. The Nahuatl-speaking lands remained divided, with the balance of power moving between the various minor powers as they fought each other for hegemony and sacrifices (the Tarascans probably being at the top at the time), but their high populations even after the plagues and military skill driven by all this combat experience and a religion so violent, even the Norse found it shocking. The Spanish might claim to be rulers of Markland, but they would find it difficult to actually control it all. The Andean powers also remained largely undisturbed, due to their isolated position, but who knew how long that would last.

The Creek Confederacy, 1550​

The Middle East had somewhat stabilized around strong alliances. The Ottomans were powerful, but could not expand south due to the Mamluk Sultanate’s strong alliance bloc, while the Sultans of Tunis had negotiated a peace between the other Mediterranian powers. Despite these alliance structures, the Ottomans and Moroccans sought to expand their power by expanding outside of them, in the former case into Europe and Fars, which has slipped between the cracks, and the latter south in to the Sahel.

Alliance blocs in the Middle-East, 1550​

In Europe, the formerly-ascendant powers of Muscovy and Hungary had collapsed, with their outlying lands being divided between their neighbors. Sweden, Lithuania, the Khanate of Kazan, Bohemia, and Austria had all taken their shares of the spoils. The Austrian Archduke had even managed to claim the Hungarian crown for himself.

Europe in 1550​

And the Austrians might end up needing all the help they could get, for increasingly little of his domains as Holy Roman Empire followed the faith that had given it the first title. For all that Catholicism was spreading into the New World, it was suffering many setbacks in Europe, with the various new faiths now prominent in the HRE, the British Isles, and Scandinavia. In Scandinavia, in particular, there were few who heeded the Pope’s words at all, for the Old Ways were not dominant in all of Sweden’s directly-ruled territory in Scandinavia, though the Russian-speaking lands (except for the areas around Holmgard) were more reticent, having little cultural connection to the faith. The situation seemed unstable…

Approximate map of European religions, 1550​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 12- Those who Fight Alone​

With the alliance with Lithuania broken and the alliance with England increasingly nominal, the Stockholm Thing began sending out feelers to other potential allies (OOC- I weas actually loading my most recent save as the largerNahuatl nations to see if any were close to reforming their religion, and thus a potential ally. As far as I could tell, none had more than one reform), However, between being the Atlantic’s primary sponsor of piracy and being closely allied to Europe’s other most hated state, they had few friends. Only the Kingdom of Naples- hardly a major power, but a fairly significant one- was willing to talk. The Ottomans were known to be considering invading southern Italy, and King Giuseppe I of Naples believed that they might be dissuaded if there was a common ally.

Fig. 1- sample of complaints received by the Swedish diplomatic corps, min-16th century.​

In Markland, Sweden, realizing that they would see no gain from assisting the English, ordered their armies do disengage from England’s enemies and instead attack the Innu, whose homelands on the northern shore of the Gulf of Vinland had theoretically been granted to the Thane of Vinland, but were in practice not controlled by him. However, the Innu had many allies, and one of them, the Wampanoag, dwelt directly on the route back from Penobscot, no they were the first to fall.

Fig. 2- Wampanoag battle-axe. Note the material-The skraelings were beginning to reverse-engineer ironworking.​

In Spring of 1550, the Anglo-Maliseet war ended. Immediately afterwards, Sweden formally severed the alliance with England. It was judged better to do so now than to wait for them to unexpected abandon Sweden when they were needed. That’s not to say that people liked what had to be done- in fact, the local aristocrats passed a law in the Stockholm Thing very shortly after calling for increased recruitment. If the Swedes would have few allies, they would have to defend themselves.

Fig. 3- the former Swedish embassy in England. It would be sold a few times, and is currently ​

The Innu war was over in less than two years, with the Swedish armies showing unprecedented aggression, with the Swedish having recently adopted the practice of actually test-firing cannons near drilling troops to better prepare them to the chaos of the battlefield. After the English and Swedish wars, nearly all the coast of northeastern Markland was under European control.

Fig. 4- map of the Gulf of Vinland after the Innu War​

Shortly after the war, King Erik’s diplomatic efforts finally paid off. Sweden signed a formal alliance with the Kingdom of Naples, which was recognized in the treaty as the rightful king of all Italy, in defiance of the Republic of Venice. Emboldened by this success, the Stockholm Thing sent an embassy to the King of Bohemia, a state that was becoming the main rival to Austria for control of the Holy Roman Empire, the de facto leader of European Protestantism, so perhaps they would sympathize with Sweden’s position as a religious outsider. They were also completely landlocked save for their vassal Stettin, so they had not been raided by Vikings.

Fig. 5- Painting of King Giuseppe I of Naples, by King Erik XIV (who was an amateur painter, inspired by his namesake). Though the painting not of any particular quality, the fact that it was entitled “King Josef of Italy”probably made up for it in Giuseppe’s eyes​

The 1550s also saw the ascendance of Nils Tre Rosor to the position of Bishop of Odin. He had earlier won renown by representing the Old Gods in the Disputation of Lund. He also had a reputation for inflexible moral righteousness, even to the point of being humorless. However, this was not seen as a strong negative at the time, as Sweden was reeling in the aftermath of a major corruption scandal- money that had been intended for the maintenance of the copper mines of Dalecarlia was instead being spent on chocolate and sugar from Florida. People felt that someone of Tre Rosor’s moral fiber might be needed to clean things up.

Fig. 6- Nils Tre Rosor’s writings against excessive luxury “they live and die like pampered dogs!”. Tre Rosor is not known to have ever commissioned a painting of himself, so clearly he practiced what he preached.​

Tre Rosor was also supported by King Erik, for the simple reason that he was a major proponent of expanding royal power. In Tre Rosor’s eyes, as Sweden was the only realm in the world that worshiped the true gods, it was vital that it be able to act decisively, with one purpose. The embarrassment after the Dalecarlian Mines Incident was so great that the Thing had no choice but to go along with Tre Rosor and King Erik’s proposals to grant the crown the power to appoint people to key local offices unilaterally.

Fig. 7- list of royal appointees in Sweden, 1552 and 1553. The latter list is significantly longer​

King Erik’s first action was to actually restore the mines’ to their previous condition. He also sponsored major infrastructure work around the Gulf of Finland, which made him very popular with the Finns (recall, Finns were often chosen for government offices in Estonia at that time).

Fig. 8- the Old Jetty in Borga​

In 1553, the Khanate of Kazan declared war on the remnant of Muscovy. Not wanting to let them have all of the collapsing Russian state, all of Muscovy’s enemies soon followed suit- Nogai, Lithuania, and Sweden as well. The Muscovites could not fight against such numbers, and the Grand Prince was reduced to cursing King Erik’s ancestors in great detail.

Fig. 9- Invasions of Muscovy, 1553​

The Tartars and Vikings met little resistance, with Swedish troops sizing the city of Torzhok and the White Sea coast in half a year. However, before the war could be fought to its conclusion, Sweden was forced to turn from this minor conflict to a more difficult one. The Ottomans had once more sent armies into Hungary, but now that meant conflict with Austria and many had rallied to the Holy Roman Emperor to drive back the Turk. Padishah Ahmed asked his Swedish allies to outflank the empire from the north. Rather than risk alienating their only strong ally, Sweden had no choice but to fight this, a significant portion of the armies of Central Europe...

Fig 10- Belligerents in the Alfold War​

 

[Bergil]

@Bullfilter EU4 doesn;t really have a lot of options for expanding your religion beyond your borders, and the obstacles to expanding it beyond your culture within ytour borders aren;t that great, so the final limits of the Norse faith are probably going to be fairly close to my final borders. The real reason I'm not converting everything as fast as I can is that there's an event when you hit 90% that revives Norse culture and converts all your Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic provinces to it, and I don't want to trigger it before i hold all of Scandinavia directly and have gotten all missions that specifically require Swedish provinces.

Anyways, here's the next part.

Chapter 13- the Alfold war​

Everyone knew from the start that this war would not be over quickly. The Duke of Munich, a loyal vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor, upon hearing that the Protestant King of Bohemia meant not to heed the call, offered to pay the Catholic elements of the Bohemian army if they would fight under him. The war had also taken on something of a religious tine in Sweden, with many Goðar redirecting tithes to fund the war effort.

Fig. 1- Bohemian mercenaries in Estonia​

The only person who did not understand the gravity of the situation, it seemed, was the captain of the Swedish forces in Russia! As Swedish possessions in Mecklenburg. Estonia, and Novgorod fell to the Imperial forces, he did not leave the siege lines around Moscow City, certain that he could finish this conflict and then focus entirely on the new war.

Fig. 2- the Baltic Front, spring 1556​

Eventually, the Stockholm Thing was able to persuade him of the urgency of the situation, he turned around and marched towards the Baltic, and attacked what appeared to be an isolated Imperial Austrian army near Luki. But perhaps Loki was in Luki on that day, for the levies of the Duke of Brandenburg had been moving to unite with the Imperial forces, and attacked the Swedes from behind, driving them into a rout.

Fig. 3- The Battle of Luki, modern reenactment​

Once news of this disaster reached Stockholm, reactions were understandably extreme. The royal guard had to break up a shouting match between Nils Tre Rosor and Queen Huna in the middle of the royal curt, with Tre Rosor claiming that this crisis was partially Huna’s fault because her brother had started it, while Huna accused Tre Rosor of defeatism and called for him to be sacked. King Erik tried to keep a more level head, instead signing a peace treaty with Muscovy that took less then he would have liked, being concerned that with the Imperial armies loose in the area, Sweden might not be able to maintain its occupation.

Fig. 4- Swedish gains after the Final Partition of Muscovy​

The effectiveness of the Brandenburgian army had caught many eyes, and for the 1557 campaign season, the Allied armies converged in northern Germany, to retake Sweden’s Mecklenburgish holdings and deal as much damage to Brandenburg as possible. In November of that year, the Duke of Brandenburg agreed to not only withdraw from the conflict, but to surrender the city of Prignitz to Sweden.

Fig. 5- troop movements, summer 1557​

However, the Bohemian mercenaries continued their advance into Swedish land, sneaking north through Lapland to seize Stockholm in a bold sneak attack. The Emperor took the opportunity to demand Sweden’s surrender. The court-in exile in Kalmar refused, but would ultimately take the unprecedented step of condemning the previous Swedish commanding officer to a sort of damnatio memoriae- his name would be struck from all official records and replaced with “The fool of Luki” or some such phrase. This was pursued to such an end that his name remains uncertain.

(OOC- the real “Fool of Luki” may be me- one thing I have learned from writing up this AAR is that I am not great about ensuring that my armies always have a general)​

Fig. 6- Austrian demands​

Despite the desperate situation, the Stockholm Thing (or perhaps we should be calling it the Kalmar Thing) sought to maintain the appearance of normalcy by continuing to deal with non-war related matters, such as approving the increased use of penal colonies, paying off state debt, placating protestors in Varangia, and subsidizing printing presses for temples. This successfully projected the image of Austria being utterly unable to neutralize Sweden. The royal family went with them. It should be noted that Prince Oskar was nine years old when he far forced to flee his home. These were his formative years, and would echo for the rest of his life.

Fig. 7- Proceeding of the Stockholm Thing, 1558​

By now, the fool of Luki had finally been removed from power, but the Swedish army was in such a poor state that everyone was reluctant to have it fight in pitched battles in against the Imperial forces. As such they stayed close to the Southern front where the Turkish army could, if necessary, reinforce. Rather than trying to retake Swedish lands, they laid siege to Straubing, knowing that the small duchy of Munich was having an outsized effect of the war effort due to the Bohemian mercenaries. It didn’t work- the Imperial army relieved the city and forced the Swedes to flee into occupied Hungary.

Fig. 8- the Siege of Straubing, contemporary painting by an Austrian artist. The wicker men are a massive anachronism- there are no records of this ancient Celtic practice having ever reached Scandinavia​

Things were so chaotic that one Nestor Shleshpansky proclaimed himself Grand Prince of Beloozero and raised arms against both the Imperial forces and the Swedes, hoping that both would be too occupied in Austria to oppose him so far away! However, the brutal fighting between the Imperial forces and the Swedes had given the Turkish army time to occupy the Austrian heartlands and force several key Imperial allies, including Genoa, the Pope, and most importantly Munich- to make peace.

Fig. 9- Troop movements on the southern front, autumn 1559​

In the dawn of the year 1560, the Emperor conceded, but despite the gain of Prignitz, there was little celebration in Sweden- Everyone knew that this had been a Turkish victory, and they had just been along for the ride, and suffered heavily for it.

Fig. 10- the Peace of Sozolnok​

 

[Bergil]

The q1 2023 ACAs aren;t getting a lot of votes, to the point that they've okeyed writers plugging the awards in their threads. Feel free to vote for me in the EU4 category if you think I deserve it. Anyways, here's the next chapter.

Chapter 14- From an Old World’s Demise, see an Empire Rise​

After the Alfold war, Sweden’s appetite for further involvement in European affairs was low. Though they had won the war, they had lost a lot of battles, the army was weakened, and Varangia was restive. There was real doubt as to what would happen in the event of a full-on confrontation with one of the mainland’s real great powers without the Turks to save them. This was in accordance with King Erik’s cautious inclinations. Instead, Sweden would focus on their colonies. As the Thanes of Vinland had managed their charge well, the Thing decided to create a similar office to oversee Sunnasland. The first person chosen for the title was Oskar Sture, the son of the former regent. He was the owner of a large plantation on the island of Sunasland Proper, and it was hoped that this would serve as a reconciliation between the sons of the two arch-rivals, however unbeknownst to them, he had died of old age a few days before the decision was made to create the office, so the first actual Thane of Sunnasland was Jakob Piper.

Fig. 1- Grave of Oskar Sture in Sunnasland. He is described as “Thane of Sunnasland” on it despite never actually holding the title​

(OOC- I realized that I didn’t screenshot the name of the first viceroy of Sunnasland at the time, so I loaded up the save file as them and checked the history panel, and saw that he had been replaced after a few days and did nothing, so I had to work that into the story. Also, the reason I focused so much on the Caribbean was that Sweden has a mission to have trade buildings in five Caribbean provinces, and it has a good reward. However, by the time I had the money free to build them, Sunnasland had a colonist, and with all the Carribean already being claimed, was using it to develop a province, so I could only build four trade buildings. Eventually (in what will be chapter 16), I found out that there is a subject interaction to forbid “promote settlement growth”, but it’s not available for colonies for some reason. I then decided that this constitutes a bug, so it was fair for me to play as Sunnasland for a day and recall that darn colonist so I could finally finish that mission. I think that’s within the spirit of a fair run-through, though you’re free to disagree.)

The tattered Swedish army returned home, bringing with them a small force of Italian mercenaries who claimed to have converted to the Norse faith, but in all probability were mostly just looking for a steady paycheck now that the war was over (in the words of Nils Tre Rosor, “Some of them can name three Aesir”, but Sweden was in no position to be choosy in the face of multiple rebellions). After distinguishing himself while relieving the siege of Holmgard, Fredrik August Anckarstrom was appointed to Captain-General of Sweden, an office recently vacated by the dismissal of the Fool of Luki. The only solace was that the Empire was having its own difficulties recovering, with France attempting to take advantage of their weakened state. The Emperor was forced to grant the count of Nassau an electorate to maintain everyone’s trust in the Imperial system.

Fig. 2- Letter found in a private collection in Perugia from a mercenary to a former colleague, encouraging him to come north to Sweden where steady employment could be found for any warrior willing to worship “Odin the Elf-Father”(sic)​

After the active revolts in Sweden had been quelled and the army more-or-less rebuilt, they were promptly shipped over to Vinland. Joran Persson, unofficially head of Sweden’s spy network, had uncovered word that England was considering an invasion of the Iroquois, so to maintain Sweden’s hegemony over northern Markland, they would invade first! The Portugese, who viewed themselves as the discoverers of the new world and the rightful overlords of all of it, did not approve of this action.

Fig. 3- Joran Persson’s report on a potential Iroquois war- “The Iroquois are distracted with another war, andTheir attempts to reverse-engineer black powder have thus far been unsuccessful. Their armies would crumple like parchment before the English- or to ourselves.”​

This rather arrogant assessment initially appeared to be accurate, with the Iroquois’ Abenaki allies collapsing in a few months, as the Swedish army occupied the Mohok lands, historically the heart of the Iroquois economy. The conflict seemed so decisive that one Swedish naval captain complained of being unable to contribute and get any glory, due to the not being navigable beyond Sjubrander before locks were constructed there(OOC- I often don’t realise that I need a Swedish name for a place until I’m writing the AAR up, so this won’t show up on maps in screenshots for a while. If you’re wondering where I got it, the Wikipedia page for Montreal says that one of its native names comes from something called “the Prophecy of the seven Fires”, and though there was no way the Vikings would leave aside a name like that!).

Fig. 4- Letter from a Swedish sea captain- “Why couldn’t we have attacked the Creek, they have a sea coast!​

While the Swedish army won victory after victory in Markland, the situation back at home was, it turned out, not as much under control as had been believed. Nationalists in Livonia and Mecklenburg sought to take advantage of the entire Swedish army being an ocean away and rise up in revolt. With the Iroquois apparently in retreat, it was decided to return the main Swedish army to Europe to deal with that situation and let the Thanes of Vinland and New Norway deal with the Iroquois. The collapse of the Creek Federation to Spanish aggression at the same time lead many to believe that no New World army could stand against steel and gunpowder. Of course, making such statements in public did not do much for King Erik’s reputation.

Fig. 5- Battle lines in Markland, 1565​

The Stockholm Thing was so confident that they passed a bill formalizing the office of Thane in 1566, assuming that there would in the future be many more Thanes.

Fig. 6- Proceedings of the Stockholm Thing, 1566. It was a very productive year for them.​

However, under the effective leadership of Kaungyanhequee Canowaroghere, the Iroquois armies were able to stymie expectations and throw the Swedish occupation out of the Mohok lands and even push back into Vinland, forcing the Swedish army to turn back from Vinland proper before they could even take ship and retake the land that they had already taken. However, in the End Swedish steel prevailed, and the war ended with the Mohok lands being ceded to Sweden.

Fig. 7- Swedish gains in the First Iroquois War​

Despite the recent victories, the rest of Europe was not impressed by Sweden’s recent achievements- In the words of one Lithuanian noble, they had “Served as the Turk’s sidekick, struggled to defeat literal primitives, had difficulty controlling their own populace, and are yet to master bookkeeping.”

Fig. 8- Lithuanian caricature of a stereotypical Swede, mid-16th century​

With the colonies in Markland increasingly turning a profit and the idea of reaching the East by sailing west looking increasingly implausible in the face of a New World that extended nearly pole to pole, Swedish exploration slowed, but did not stop. Increasingly widespread knowledge of open-sea navigational techniques and Swedish control of Sunnasland meant that the dread Bojador was much less of an obstacle then it had been in the past, and sailing down the African coast was much less of a risk- Swedish ships could follow the gyre on the way back and stop off in Sunnasland and Vinland. As such, some merchants began to discuss the possibility of reaching the East by sailing South, as the Iberians were rumored to be doing. Sweden even established a resupply station on the Guinean coast and taking the opportunity to trade with the Africans. Prince Oskar even visited the new settlement, and promptly was laid out with malaria for several weeks, but eventually made a full recovery.

This also tied into an unspoken reason for the creation of the Thanedom of Sunnasland. The Iberian model of vast thrall-worked plantations, as practiced in the other Caribbean islands, was distasteful to many in Sweden, but was too profitable to simply forgo. The Iberians and French had established the precedent, and a major export of many of the tribes Sweden would trade with in Africa was member of other tribes they didn’t get along with. By splitting off Sunnasland into its own sub-realm, the Stockholm Thing sought to distance itself from everything that was happening on the island- by some estimates the domains of the Thanes of Sunnasland contained more thralls then the rest of the Swedish Empire put together at every time between its formal establishment and the eventual abolition of slavery in the 18th century (OOC- I haven't even reached the 17th century yet, but I always take that decision if available even if when not writing the campaign up and trying to make my empire look like a lighter shade of grey to a bunch of people on the internet!). The Swedish African colonies were actually less focused on the slave trade then their European contemporaries, though this was less due to any moral principle and more due to the fact the Viking raids from Sunnasland often captured people as well as treasure. This meant that early European critics of slavery tended to focus disproportionately on Sunnasland, rather than the far larger slave populations of the Portuguese, Spanish, and French empires, simply because the thralls in Sunnasland actually included members of their own in-groups.

Fig. 9- Swedish colonies in Guinea.​

 

[Bergil]

Chapter 15- Winning the Hard Way.​

Not everyone was satisfied with the near-total focus on the New World. Per Brahe the elder famously said in a speech at the Stockholm Thing “European politics aren’t something that will go away if you ignore them.” He wasn’t wrong- in those days, there were increased tensions between Sweden and the Khanate of Kazan. The Kazanis viewed themselves as the conquerors of Russia and the inheritors of the Golden Horde’s claims on the entire thing, and were unhappy with distant Sweden taking a cut. In addition, in the year 1568 queen Mary of Bohemia died without issue. Her relative, the Grand Duke Stanisliovas I of Lithunaia claimed the throne for himself, but the Archduke of Austria, Ferdinand II claimed that as Holy Roman Empire, the vacant title was his to distribute. The two dukes sent their armies to contest the Bohemian crown, but whoever won, a rival of Sweden’s would benefit greatly.

Fig. 1, Transcript of Per Brahe’s speech on the War of Bohemian Succession​

Brahe’s words were somewhat heeded. “There will be only the conquerors and the conquered”, he had said, claiming to have heard the line from an African warlord who had traded with the Sweden in guinea (though most historian believe that he actually coined the phrase himself), and the Stockholm thing surely wanted to stay out of the latter category. To avoid getting into a fight Sweden could not win, King Erik suggested pressing his ancestor’s claim to the title of “King of, and for, all the Norsemen against the only contender- the much-diminished Kingdom of Denmark, which had dared to settle in land that had been granted to the Tanes of Vinland.

Fig. 2- Balance of forces at the outset of the First Jutland War.​

The Danes, however, heard news of these discussions while they were still happening, and mobilized their forces. The Danes' Wolgaster allies seized Castle Rostock in a sneak attack, and The Danish navy under Henrik Pederson was able to ambush a Norwegian fleet off the coast of Stavanger. The Swedish royal fleet was able to get itself into position on time, to prevent a rout, but their command structure was disorganized, with Ragnvald Lindschold of the high-sea Fleet only assuming overall command in the run-up to the battle, though the captains of the altic Fleet were reluctant to accept his primacy. It had been too long since Sweden had fought any sort of peer opponent on the sea, but Lindschold claimed that the high-sea fleet had more experience, having participated in some capacity in the wars in Markland. Still, they were able to see off the Danish navy.

Fig. 3- Shipwrecks from the Battle of Boknafjord​

With the seas cleared for the time, Swedish forces landed in Jutland and swiftly occupied the peninsula, hoping to drive east and crush the Danish army against the walls of Castle Lund. However, the Danes had not been idle, and their army was well- supplied with modern cannon, a and was able to knock down the walls of that once-proud fortress in not much time and get loose in the Swedish heartland. Meanwhile, at sea the wily Pederson had observed the disagreement between the High-see fleet and the Baltic Fleet and struck when they were apart, dealing a crushing defeat to the High-sea fleet. The militaristic elements in the Stockholm Thing were displeased- their plans to expand the army had come to nothing. Ashamed, King Erik approved a less ambitious plan to expand recruitment in Aland.

Fig. 4- Transcript of a speech in the Stockholm Thing, 1570- “Where are Sweden’s armies?”​

Things had become so desperate, that many fed to Swedish Africa, putting so little trust in the Swedish army that malaria seemed the lesser risk.

Fig. 5- Swedish settlement in Whydah.​

Fredrik August Anckarstrom sought to defeat the enemy in detail, moving south into Germany and attacking Wolgast, hoping that the fall of Castle Lund had been a fluke. However, this was not the case, and soon Stockholm fell for the second time in a generation It reached the point that some were questioning wither the advanced technology of the burning Huscarls had any real benefit at all.

Fig. 6- Troop movements, late 1570​

In 1571, Sweden finally saw some good luck. Wolgast City fell, and the duchy was forced to sign over their western provinces, including the island of Rugen, which was said to have once been host to a great heathen fane, allowing the Swedish government to turn this into a symbolic victory beyond its actual value. Notably, much of the Wolgast ducal library was pillaged by Varangian troops occupying the city, including a printing press.

Fig. 7- Varangian-language books printed in the Latin alphabet in Tikhvin, late 16th century. The Latin alphabet was used as that was the only printing press they had.​

With the Norwegian army busy occupying the Danish home isles, the main Swedish army under Fredrik August Anckarstrom carried on northwards to drive the Danes from their homeland. The decisive battle was fought near the city of Abo. The Danes were by this point horribly overextended- their supply line running from besieged Copenhagen past the castle of Elfsborg, which had been retaken by the Norwegians. Consequently, the Danish commander Fritjolf Hoegh-Guldberg did not even have enough black powder to keep his cannons firing throughout the battle, and the Swedish troops were able to close.

Fig. 8- the Battle of Abo, 17th-century painting. The artist claimed to have spoken to one of the few surviving veterans.​

The defeated Danish army had nowhere left to run, and in the immediate aftermath of the battle, a peace deal was signed, with Sweden claiming more of Jutland and Denmark relinquishing its holdings in Markland to Sweden.

Fig. 9- the Treaty of Kolding​

Once again, victory was achieved, but it was hollow, shorn of glory. Sweden had struggled against a much smaller nation, and was weary from war. Further, the Danish colonies had not yet begun to turn a profit, so having conquered them; Sweden had to immediately start supporting them. Even beyond that, the ever-restive Varangians and recently-conquered Mohoks sought to take advantage of the Swedish army being occupied elsewhere and rise up in revolt. Fredrik August Anckarstrom had no rest.

Fig. 10- Annonymous Anti-Swedish pamphlet, 1537- “The heathens are spent! Rise now or regret your inaction forever!”​

As Anckarstrom led his troops through Markland, he was able to observe the difference between the human geography of most of Vinland and the newly-conquered Mohok territories. Even before the first-contact plagues, the frigid northeast of the Marklandic continent had been thinly populated, and the Thanes of Vinland had been largely in charge of finding Scandinavians to people it. However, the lands south of the Leifsflod had been much more heavily settled, and had recovered very swiftly from the plagues, with natives driven west from the English and Spanish colonies on the coast, and a few English and Spanish freeholders on poor terms with their governments replacing those who had perished. The problem in this region, thus, was not to people it but to manage the people already there. Furthermore, the Old Gods had found a few high-profile converts among the Mohoks. Having observed this, he sent back a suggestion, which was ultimately accepted, to create a Thane of Mohokland to manage the region and avoid future unrest.

Fig. 11- the first Thane of Mohokland, Sven Brahe. He was chosen due to being half-Stadaconan on his mother’s side, in the hopes that this would lead the locals to view him as less of an outsider.

(ooc- now I’ve looked up Swedish phonology to decide what to call Quebec, I think this should actually be Mohokkland, but it’s too late now)​

Humbled by the recent struggles of the Swedish army, the aging King Erik followed in his father’s footsteps, upgrading the Swedish artillery so extensively that the nation is said to have run short of metal afterwards. This would have strained the Swedish budget even further, but Nils Tre Roser had recently died of old age and left all his material possessions to the state, which helped ease the burden, and Sweden’s African colonies were finally starting to turn a profit.

Fig. 12- Late- 16th century Swedish cannon, from the Abo Museum of Military History​