New Approaches to the Study of Civil Wars in Medieval Scandinavia

Abstract

This work is a review of the collective monograph New Perspectives on Civil Wars in Medieval Scandinavia, edited by H. J. Orning, K. Esmark, and the Icelandic historian Jón Viðar Sigurðsson. The book was published last year, as well as H. J. Orning's separate work Constant Crisis: Deconstructing Civil Wars in Norway, ca. 1180–1220. These studies elevate the scholarship on the period of civil wars (borgerkrigstida) in Scandinavia to a new level of discourse. They primarily examine the socio-political causes of this conflict and the specific ways in which the state of society was regulated through the persistent confrontation of various factions. By investigating the genealogies of the ruling dynasties, the social and political connections of the kings, and the course of the conflict, the researchers reassess the key dates of this period, along with its cause-and-effect relationships. They conclude that the civil wars did not have a single, common starting point, emerged at different social levels, and were not characterized by the extreme level of violence as was thought previously, when such conflicts were studied. A key conclusion of the reviewed works is that such “wars” were a commonplace feature of Scandinavian society and served as a system of social regulation and “balance of power”. To emphasize the specific nature of this type of conflict, Orning proposes a new term — “Constant Crisis”.