ABSTRACT
The years from 1628 to 1630 form one of the turning-points in the history of Sweden. Before 1628 it was still conceivable that she might remain a purely Scandinavian power, preoccupied with her traditional policies to east and west, pursuing against Denmark the old rivalry for supremacy inside the Baltic, trying as best might be possible to liquidate the troublesome heritage of dynastic war with Poland. After 1630 she was directly involved in the ever-widening complications of German politics, and had become a chief actor in the vast European drama of the Thirty Years War. The great-power status and obligations thus incurred, and the territorial acquisitions which resulted from the intervention in Germany, would thereafter drag her with fatal logic into policies and enterprises which were alien to Swedish traditions, but which were imposed upon her by the need for security and the inadequacy of her own resources to meet that need.
