Debating the King in Fourteenth-Century Sweden:
Combining the Evidence from Romance and Chronicle
Kim Bergqvist
Stockholm University
In the fourteenth century, Swedish aristocracy as a social group posed a real (and imagined) threat
to the power and authority of the monarch. I examine the literary evidence from the first half of
the fourteenth century, analysing the means by which the authors put the figure of the king into
question, and to which factors and aspects of kingship and its legitimacy these strategies were
linked. These aspects include considerations of lineage and rightful rule, the ordering of society
and its upkeep by acts of violence, as well as notions of masculinity. I read these strategies as
expressions of aristocratic ideology; a conception of how the social world should be ordered that
is constructed in these texts. My aim is to discover and explain the ideological underpinnings of
the texts studied, focussing on the particular topic of questions raised around the nature of
kingship. Thus, the paper engages in the socio-historical reality surrounding the production of the
texts by analysing their content.
The romances were crucial to the construction of an aristocratic ideology in late medieval
Sweden. These literary texts reflect a past reality that they also helped create. The main texts for
this inquiry are the three early fourteenth-century Old Swedish verse romances jointly known as
the Eufemiavisor: Herr Ivan (a translation of Yvain: Le chevalier au lion), Flores och Blanzeflor
(Floire et Blanchefleur), and Hertig Fredrik av Normandie (original unknown). But the romances
also influenced other genres of Swedish vernacular texts such as the writing of chronicles. This is
particularly true of the Erikskrönika, an historical narrative that spans the preceding century
before its composition in the early 1320s. Previous research has pointed out the influence of the
romances on the chronicle, but not examined its importance for the political or social aspects of
the narrative, explored in this paper.
Select bibliography
Primary sources
NOREEN, Erik, ed. Hertig Fredrik av Normandie. Kritisk upplaga på grundval av Codex Verelianus.
Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1927. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 163.
---, ed. Herr Ivan. Kritisk upplaga. Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1930-31. Serie 1, Svenska
skrifter 164-166 (1-3).
OLSSON, Emil, ed. Flores och Blanzeflor. Kritisk upplaga. Nytryck av häft. 157 (med ett tillägg).
Stockholm, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1956. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 214.
PIPPING, Rolf, ed. Erikskrönikan enligt Cod. Holm: D.2 jämte avvikande läsarter ur andra
handskrifter. Nytryck av häft. 158 (med ett tillägg). Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1963.
Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 231.
Secondary literature
BAMBECK, Florian, ed. and transl. Herzog Friedrich von der Normandie: der altschwedishe
Ritterroman Hertig Fredrik av Normandie: Text, Übersetzung, Untersuchungen. Diss. Würzburg U,
2009. Wiesbaden, Reichert, 2009. Imagines Medii Aevi 24.
BAMPI, Massimiliano. ”Translating Courtly Literature and Ideology in Medieval Sweden: Flores och
Blanzeflor.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 4 (2008): 1-14.
BAREFIELD, Laura D. Gender and History in Medieval English Romance and Chronicle. New York,
Peter Lang Publishing, 2003. Studies in the Humanities 63.
BENGTSSON, Herman. Den höviska kulturen i Norden. En konsthistorisk undersökning. Diss.
Stockholm U, 1999. Stockholm, Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1999.
Antikvariska serien 43.
FERRARI, Fulvio. ”Literature as a Performative Act: Erikskrönikan and the Making of a Nation.”
Lärdomber oc skämptan: Medieval Swedish Literature Reconsidered. Ed. Massimiliano Bampi and
Fulvio Ferrari. Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 2008. Serie 3, Smärre texter och undersökningar
5. 55-80.
GRIEVE, Patricia, E. Floire and Blancheflor and the European Romance. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1997. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 32.
HUNT, Tony. ”Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren”. Mediaeval Scandinavia 8 (1975): 168-186.
JANSSON, Sven-Bertil. Medeltidens rimkrönikor. Studier i funktion, stoff, form. Diss. Uppsala U, 1971.
Stockholm, 1971. Studia litterarum Upsaliensia 9.
LAYHER, William. Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe. New York, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010. Queenship and Power 7.
NOREEN, Erik. Studier rörande Eufemiavisorna, Vol. 1-3. Uppsala, K. Humanistiska
vetenskapssamfundet, 1923-1929.
PÉNEAU, Corinne, ed. and transl. Erikskrönika = Chronique d'Erik: première chronique rimée suédoise
(première moitié du XIVe siècle). Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005. Textes et documents
d’histoire médiévale 5.
REUTER, Timothy. ”Nobles and Others: The Social and Cultural Expression of Power Relations in the
Middle Ages.” Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations. Ed.
Anne J. Duggan. Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2000. 85-98.
SMÅBERG, Thomas. ”Bland drottningar och hertigar - Utblickar kring riddarromaner och deras
användning i svensk medeltidsforskning”. Historisk tidskrift 131.2 (2011): 197-226.
THOMPSON, John B. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge, Polity Press, 1984.
VILHELMSDOTTER, Gisela. Riddare, bonde och biskop: studier kring tre fornsvenska dikter jämte två
nyeditioner. Diss. Stockholm U, 1999. Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1999.
Stockholm Studies in History of Literature 42.