...Middle Age...

in Stavanger, Norway.

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The year 1130 was a water-shed in Norwegian history. A period of peace was disrupted by conflicts; the civil wars which lasted right up to 1227.

But 1130 was a special year in other ways too. It is regarded as the start of the so-called High Middle Ages, a period of population growth, consolidation within the Church, and the rise and development of the towns. As Crown and Church brought district after district under their rule the degree of public administration and authority increased. Historians say that only then could Norway be termed one realm.

The power of the monarchy increased in the 1100s and 1200s, ending in victory both over the Church and the nobles. The traditional secular aristocracy was replaced by a serving aristocracy. The status of the farmers changed in this period, from that of freeholder to that of tenant. However, the farmer, who usually rented his lands on a lifetime basis, enjoyed a free status that was rare indeed in most of contemporary Europe. The slaves of the Viking age also disappeared in the High Middle Ages.

During this period the political center of gravity in Norway moved from the southwest to the districts surrounding the Oslofjord. During the reign of King Håkon V, in the 1200s, Oslo became Norway's capital. Prior to this it had been an insignificant clutch of houses in the innermost reaches of the Oslofjord. When the Black Death reached Norway, in 1350, the town allegedly housed no more than 2,000 people. At that time Bergen had a population of 7,000 and Trondheim 3,000.

The state revenues in the High Middle Ages were extremely modest by European standards. Towards the end of the period they were scarcely adequate to finance any expansion of the administrative apparatus of Crown and state. The Black Death had raged with terrible effect, reducing the population to one half or possibly only one third of its pre-1350 level. This development prompted the King and the nobility to seek revenues from lands and feudal estates, regardless of national boundaries. This contributed towards the growth of the political unions in the Nordic lands.

Right from the 1319 to 1343 period Norway and Sweden had a joint monarchy, an institution later expanded through the arrangement of inter-Scandinavian royal marriages. Håkon VI (1340-80) -- son of the Swedish king Magnus Eriksson, and Håkon V's daughter Ingebjørg -- was lawful heir to the throne of Norway. He married Margrete, daughter of the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag. Their son, Olav, was chosen to be Danish king on the death of Valdemar in 1375. He inherited the throne of Norway after his father in 1380, thus bringing Norway into a union with Denmark which lasted right up to 1814.