Amrita Rao

For other people named Magnus Eriksson, see Magnus Eriksson (disambiguation).

Magnus Eriksson or Magnus VII of Norway and Magnus IV of Sweden was king of Sweden (spring 1316 – December 1, 1374), Norway, and Terra Scania, and was son of Duke Erik Magnusson of Sweden and Ingeborg, daughter of Haakon V of Norway. Also known by his nickname "Magnus Smek" (Eng. "Pet-Magnus").

Magnus was elected king of Sweden on 8 July 1319, and acclaimed as hereditary king of Norway at the thing of Haugathing in Tønsberg in August the same year. Under the Regencies of his Grandmother Queen Helvig and his Mother Duchess Ingeborg the countries were ruled by Knut Jonsson and Erling Vidkunsson.

Magnus was declared to have come of age at 15 in 1331. This caused resistance in Norway, where a statute from 1302 made clear that kings came of age at the age of 20, and a rising by Erling Vidkunsson and other Norwegian nobles ensued. In 1333, the rebels submitted to king Magnus.

In 1332 the king of Denmark, Christopher II, died as a "king without a country" after he and his older brother and predecessor had pawned Denmark piece by piece. King Magnus took advantage of his neighbour's distress, redeeming the pawn for the eastern Danish provinces for a huge amount of silver, and thus became ruler also of Terra Scania.

On 21 July 1336 Magnus was crowned king of both Norway and Sweden in Stockholm. This caused further resentment in Norway, where the nobles and magnates wished a separate Norwegian coronation. A second rising by members of the high nobility of Norway ensued in 1338.

In spite of his many formal expansions his rule was considered a period of decrease both to the Swedish royal power and to Sweden as a whole. Foreign nations like Denmark (after its recovery in 1340) and Mecklenburg intervened and Magnus himself does not seem to have been able to resist the internal opposition. He was regarded a weak king and criticised because for giving favourites too much power.

In 1336 he married Blanche of Namur, daughter of Count Jean of Namur and Marie of Artois, a descendant of Louis VIII of France.

Opposition to Magnus' rule in Norway led to a settlement between the king and the Norwegian nobility at Varberg on 15 August 1343. In violation of the Norwegian laws on royal inheritance, Magnus' younger son Håkon would become king of Norway, with Magnus as regent during his minority. Later the same year, it was declared that Magnus' older son, Eric would become king of Sweden on Magnus' death. Thus, the union between Norway and Sweden would be severed. This occurred when Håkon came of age in 1355.

Magnus' young favorite courtier was Bengt Algotsson, whom he elevated to Duke of Finland and Halland, as well as Viceroy of the province of Scania. Because homosexuality was a mortal sin and vehemently scorned at that time, revelations about the king's alleged love relationship with Algotsson, and other erotic excapades, were spread by his enemies in the Roman Church, particularly by his demonstrably hateful relative St. Bridget (Birgitta) who had turned on him for political and financial reasons. The allegations earned Magnus the epithet of Magnus the Petter (M. Smek), and caused him a lot of harm, but there is no factual basis for them in historical sources. Magnus and Blanche had at least five children, of whom three daughters died in infancy.

Because of the raise in taxation to pay for the acquisition of the Scanian province, some Swedish nobles supported by the Church attempted to oust Magnus, setting up his elder son Eric as king (Eric XII of Sweden), but Eric died supposedly of the plague in 1359, with his wife Beatrice of Brandenburg and their two sons.

King Valdemar IV of Denmark conquered Terra Scania in 1360. He went on to conquer Gotland in 1361. On the 27th of July, 1361, outside the city of Visby, the main city of Gotland, the final battle took place. It ended in a complete victory for Valdemar. Magnus had warned the inhabitants of Visby in a letter and started to gather troops to reconquer Scania. Valdemar went home to Denmark again in August and took a lot of plunder with him. Either in late 1361 or early 1362 the inhabitants of Visby raised themselves against the few Danish that Valdemar left behind and killed them. In 1363 a rebellion against Magnus broke out. It was supported by Valdemar and resulted a few months later (February 1364) in that Magnus was deposed from the Swedish throne being replaced by the Duke of Mecklenburg's son Albert of Sweden. Magnus was seeking refuge with his younger son in Norway, where he drowned in 1374.

According to an allegedly autobiographic account known as the "Rukopisanie Magnusha" (Magnus's Testament) which has been inserted into the Russian Sofia First Chronicle composed in Novgorod (against whom Magnus had crusaded in the 1340s and 50s), Magnus in fact, did not drown at sea, but saw the errors of his ways and converted to Orthodoxy, becoming a monk in a Novgorodian monastery in Karelia. The account is apocryphal.

Literature

• Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, Magnus versus Birgitta : der Kampf der heiligen Birgitta von Schweden gegen König Magnus Eriksson, Hamburg 2003 (german)

See also

• Unions of Sweden

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