ABSTRACT
T. Weidling has mostly focused on the economic activity of the Norwegian nobility arguing that the Norwegian nobles succeeded in promoting their economic and social interests despite weaker political position than their Danish counterparts. Even though most of the Danish nobles were not members of the Danish Council of the Realm, they were members of the formal state elite in the composite state with its centre in Denmark. Based on the widespread perspective of ‘national states’ in early modern Europe, one might have expected the authorities in the Oldenburg conglomerate state after 1537 to have organised the nobility in Denmark and Norway as one group, under the name of Danish nobility. Daniel H. Nexon, an American political scientist, emphasises that all political systems are based upon implicit and explicit bargains that specify rights and obligations, and the Norwegian political strategies in this period were hardly an exception.
