Portrait of Christian II, painted by Michel Sittow (c. 1469–1525) of Flanders in 1515. The portrait is painted in Renaissance style and depicts the self-confident prince, who rules by virtue of his own abilities and individuality. There are approximately forty extant portraits of Christian II, most of which are by artists from the Netherlands. These many portraits should be seen as the result of a deliberate image policy designed to promote the king and his power. Photo: National Gallery of Denmark

Christian II’s trade policy was an extension of his predecessors’ efforts to bring trade into Danish hands, but it was more far-reaching than ever before. For example, the burghers in Denmark’s two most important towns, Copenhagen and Malmö, were favoured more than previously. The king was to a large extent inspired by the Netherlands, where strong urbanisation had led to the accumulation of great wealth. The desire to emulate the Netherlands was made clear in Christian II’s reform laws of 1521–1522, which prescribed detailed regulation of life in the towns. Following the Dutch model, urban administration was to be managed by a newly invented official, the skultus, who was directly under the king’s control. The reform laws, which represented the larg--est legislative initiative since the provincial laws of the thirteenth century, also contained provisions on an array of other social issues. In general, they aimed to modernise society and to centralise the power of the king. Some of the provisions favoured the peasantry; for example, vornedskab (villeinage) in Sjælland was abolished. Other provisions restricted the Church’s freedom and tended towards the introduction of a state Church. In his reforms of the Church, including the school system and poor relief, the king was inspired by Humanism and Reform Catholicism.

Discontent among the nobility and the clergy

The reform laws created a great deal of discontent among the nobility and the clergy, who were already dissatisfied with the headstrong king’s regime. In 1517, for example, Christian II had a member of the nobility executed without a fair trial, most likely because of suspected involvement in the alleged poisoning of the king’s mistress, the Dutch burgher’s daughter Dyveke. Christian II’s continuation of his father’s practice of appointing non-noble royal stewards also stirred up anger. The worst thing, however, was that the king made Dyveke’s mother, Sigbrit Villoms (also referred to as Mother Sigbrit), into a kind of finance minister. The Church could rightly complain that the king intervened more than his predecessors in its internal affairs. This was most clearly expressed in 1519, when the king rejected the Lund cathedral chapter’s choice of new archbishop and instead forced them to elect one of his own chancery secretaries. When this archbishop failed to lead the diocese in a way that pleased the king, the king appointed a new archbishop, whom he had executed for heresy a few months later. Following this he imposed the third archbishop in three years on the cathedral chapter.

The Stockholm Bloodbath

The growing dissatisfaction with the king was counteracted for a time by the hope that his overall policy would actually succeed. Crucial to this was whether he would be able to reconquer Sweden. Just as Christian I and Hans had taken Sweden with the help of Swedish nobles, Christian II received support from the pro-union party led by Swedish archbishop Gustav Trolle. Trolle had long been an enemy of the Swedish viceroy Sten Sture (the Younger), who among other things had kept him imprisoned. In 1520, a combined army and naval operation succeeded in surrounding and conquering Stockholm, and Christian II was crowned king of Sweden. Shortly after the coronation, and with the king’s blessing, Gustav Trolle convicted a large number of Swedes for heresy and for their shared responsibility in his imprisonment. The punishment was death. Over two days, the king’s executioners beheaded eighty-two Swedish bishops, noblemen and burghers in the so-called Stockholm Bloodbath.

The fall of the reform king

Christian II hoped that this heinous misdeed, which resonated across Europe, would deter the Swedish from resisting the re-established union monarchy, but the effect was the exact opposite. In 1521, the Swedes rebelled and expelled Christian II. After this fiasco, the Danish nobility’s patience with Christian II was stretched to breaking point. They also feared that Christian II would one day decide to cut off the heads of the Danish nobility, just as he had done with the Swedish. It was, to put it mildly, surprisingly brave of Christian II to issue the above-mentioned reform laws in 1521–1522. When war broke out with the Hanseatic towns in 1522, the nobility had had enough.

The Jutland nobles approached Duke Frederik of Schleswig, who was summoned to be king. Shortly after, in 1523, the nobility renounced their loyalty to Christian II with reference to the rebellion clause in the coronation charter and burned his reform laws. Christian II did not resist for long, and fled to the Netherlands. Frederik I was crowned as king, and the burghers in Copenhagen and Malmö, who had clung to the deposed king, were forced to surrender. In the same year, the Swedish nobleman Gustav Vasa was elected as king of Sweden, and with this the Kalmar Union was finally over. The reform king’s project had failed.

♦ The Late Middle Ages – crisis and growth

Christian II’s attempt to modernise Danish society failed because Denmark was still essentially an agricultural society dominated by a warrior nobility who refused to accept being deprived of their privileges. The reform king had overestimated the power of the burghers and underestimated the economic and military strength that the nobility and clergy possessed through their dominion over the peasantry, which still accounted for the majority of the country’s production. Before, during and long after the Late Middle Ages, control of agricultural resources was the key to power in Denmark.

This did not mean that Danish society was static, however. In the Late Middle Ages, society underwent a number of social and economic processes that led to shifts in power relations at the top of society. The rural community was decisively changed as a result of population decline after the Black Death, the lower layers of the nobility were weakened, and the Church also lost power. The monarchy was strengthened, as was an elite group of noble landowners who made it through the crisis.

Towns also became increasingly prosperous in the fifteenth century, and the burghers’ attempt to gain more power was not definitively suppressed by the nobility’s deposition of Christian II in 1523. During the Reformation period, the conflicts between different societal groups were interwoven with religious antagonisms that had their roots in the Late Middle Ages. The Black Death led to a new religious revival, which, along with widespread dissatisfaction with the existing Church organisation, led to a ‘democratisation’ of faith that pointed forward to the Reformation. This development was strengthened by influences from Renaissance culture, which came to Denmark from Italy via the Netherlands and Germany.

During the Late Middle Ages, the Danish monarchy went from being close to non-existent to being a regional great power. The Kalmar Union, founded in 1397, marked a new high point in Denmark’s ability to dominate its closest neighbours, and in 1460, the seemingly endless battles over Schleswig ended when Christian I became lord of both Schleswig and Holstein. Even though the Danish monarchy at the time was quite extensive, it was not as aggressive and expansive as it had been during the Age of the Valdemars, and it was soon to decline once more. Sweden effectively detached itself from the union as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, and definitively in 1523, which would later prove fateful for Denmark.