Conflict of Succession in The Kalmar Union
After the death of king Christopher in 1448 the Kalmar Union experienced a period of crisis, due to the late king having had no direct heir with Sweden choosing Charles VIII as king while Denmark supported Christian I. Charles VIII was the first, in November 1449 to proclaim himself king of Norway, as Charles I of Norway, but only a few months later, in early 1450, he was deposed by the Dane Christian I who took over the Norwegian throne. At this point war within the union seemed certain, and in response the Swedish national council asked king Charles to withdraw his claim to the Norwegian throne.
Charles would however have nothing of the sort and in 1452 sent his knight Ørian Karlson Skanke from Jemtland to conquer Trondheim, the ancient centre of Norway's kings. Control of this vital city would have greatly strengthened Charles' claim to the throne. The answer from the Danish side came quickly with knight Ørian's own relatives, Olav Nilsson Skanke and his brother Peder, marching up from the south and pushing Ørian out of Trondheim. The same thing happened all over again in 1453 with Ørian seizing Trondheim and Olav and Peder driving him out once more. This second battle finally concluded the conflict over succession and ended the battles between knights of the Skanke family.
Read more about this topic: Olav Nilsson
Famous quotes containing the words conflict, succession and/or union:
“There is no prescribed method for resolving every specific conflict a mother has with her child, and there is certainly no method that will enable her to have exactly what she wants....There is, however, a larger goal, which is to establish and over-all climate of reasonableness, one in which she and her child can hear each other.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“A mother’s life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)