Europe · High and late Middle Ages
Kalmar Union
1397–1523
Danish/Norwegian/Swedish Kalmarunionen. A personal union agreed at Kalmar (inception 17 June 1397) joining Denmark, Sweden (with much of Finland), and Norway (with its Atlantic colonies) under one monarch.
- Existed
- 1397–1523
- Shown on the map
- 1402–1525
- Peak area
- 1.3M km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Danish/Norwegian/Swedish Kalmarunionen. A personal union agreed at Kalmar (inception 17 June 1397) joining Denmark, Sweden (with much of Finland), and Norway (with its Atlantic colonies) under one monarch. It was the work of Margaret I of Denmark, who had her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania crowned king of all three realms while she ruled in fact until her death in 1412. The kingdoms remained legally separate sovereign states with a common monarch (with a Riksråd and Herredag in each); the union was punctuated by revolts (the Engelbrekt rebellion, 1434–1436) and Swedish resistance under the Sture regents. It effectively ended with the Stockholm Bloodbath (1520) and Gustav Vasa's election (6 June 1523); Denmark and Norway continued as Denmark-Norway, and Denmark renounced its claim to Sweden at the Treaty of Malmö (1524).
Common questions
- What was the Kalmar Union?
- Danish/Norwegian/Swedish Kalmarunionen. A personal union agreed at Kalmar (inception 17 June 1397) joining Denmark, Sweden (with much of Finland), and Norway (with its Atlantic colonies) under one monarch.
- When did the Kalmar Union exist?
- The Kalmar Union existed 1397–1523. On this map it is drawn 1402–1525.
- How large was the Kalmar Union?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kalmar Union covered about 1.3 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, German History in Documents and Images, national institutions such as the Swiss Federal Council and the National Museum of Denmark, and the scholarship of Peter H. Wilson and Joachim Whaley on the Holy Roman Empire. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Kalmar Union en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar_Union
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
See the Kalmar Union in its world
Open the atlas at 1464 and every neighbour, rival and successor is on screen with it — then drag the slider and watch what happens next.
Open the map at 1464 →