ABSTRACT
Sweden had been for the last 130 years nominally linked to Denmark and Norway by the Union of Calmar (1397). But national spirit was opposed to the Union, and though several Danish kings had been duly crowned, it was only intermittently that they had been in real possession of Sweden. For the last fifty years a line of capable statesmen—‘administrators’ as they were called—of the great noble house of Sture had reigned with quasi-royal power. John, the last Danish king who had been crowned and striven to assert his authority, had been beaten in battle and expelled in 1501 : his father Christian had suffered exactly the same fate in 1464.
