Margaret I of Denmark Facts & Worksheets

Despite King Canute the Great’s victories in Norway, Denmark and England during the 11th century, the Scandinavian kingdoms remained separate nations with separate monarchs until the 14th century. Margaret Waldemarsdatter, later known as Margaret I of Denmark, was the one who brought the three together.

EARLY LIFE OF MARGARET I

• Margaret was born in March 1353 as the sixth and youngest offspring of King Valdemar IV and Queen Helvig of Denmark. She was born in the prison of Søborg Castle, where her mother was confined. Margaret spent her first ten years of life at her father’s court on the island of Sealand. When she was 11, she married the Norwegian king, Haakon VI, and was soon taken to the fortress of Akershus in Oslo to become familiar with the nation of which she would be queen.
• Because she was considered too young to consummate her marriage, she was placed under the care of a Swedish noblewoman, Merete Ulvsdatter. Merete was a displaced royalist. When a party of Swedish nobles dethroned Magnus Eriksson (Haakon’s father) and asked a German duke, Albert II of Mecklenburg, to take his place, she and her husband stood behind the Swedish king.
• Margaret’s marriage was therefore a part of the Nordic power dynamic. Some people were dissatisfied with this, and political activist Bridget of Sweden criticised the accord in a letter to the Pope as ‘children playing with dolls’. King Valdemar hoped to reclaim Scania, which had been mortgaged to Sweden since 1332, through marriage.
• While under Merete’s care, Margaret became close to her daughters Ingegerd and Catherine. Ingegerd was the one who taught religion and monarchy to Margaret. In the years following Margaret’s wedding, Scandinavia experienced several important political upheavals. Shortly after her wedding, her sole brother, Christopher, Duke of Lolland, passed away, leaving her father without a clear male successor.
• In 1364, the Swedish nobles ousted Margaret’s husband and father-in-law from the Swedish throne and installed Albert of Mecklenburg as King of Sweden.

REIGN OF MARGARET I

• Margaret was summoned to Denmark in 1375, at the age of 22, after King Waldemar IV died. No successor to the Danish throne had been chosen, even though Waldemar’s son, the acknowledged heir, had died some years before. At the time, the first in line was Albert, the son of Waldemar’s eldest daughter, Ingeborg, who had married Henry, Duke of Mecklenburg.
• As the younger daughter, Margaret had a smaller claim to her son, but she appeared with her son Olav by her side soon after learning of her father’s death and persuaded the state council to crown the five-year-old Olav as king of Denmark and her as the guardian. 
• After King Haakon of Norway passed away in 1380, his ten-year-old son Olav inherited the kingdom, and Margaret was appointed as his guardian once more. She and Olav journeyed to Norway, where Olav was officially crowned King in Oslo.
• Margaret was prepared to fight the Hanseatic League’s dominance in Baltic trade and considerable land ownership in the Scandinavian lands, with two crowns on her head.
• The land holdings were acquired through purchases and leases from the succession of profligate monarchs who had succeeded Margaret’s father. She began with the most lucrative, the estates in southwest Sweden (Scania) with their castle fortifications guarding the gateway to the Baltic.
• Her father had been compelled to mortgage them for 15 years, but the deadline for repossession was in 1385. However, the merchants refused to release either property or castles. Hence, Margaret had Olav send a letter expressing his royal fury at being denied his princely claims and threatening serious repercussions.
• Margaret’s letter to the Hanseatic merchants later pledged her assistance in resolving issues provided they agreed to her son’s demands. Simultaneously, pirates launched unprecedented attacks on Hanseatic vessels in the Baltic. 
• When the Hanseatic League complained to Margaret, reminding her that it was the Danish king’s responsibility to maintain the sea safe for trade, she agreed but claimed she couldn’t do much without her Scanian strongholds.
• The Hanseatic merchants surrendered their lands after realising they had been outwitted and were unwilling to go to war to protect them. Margaret had gotten her way, and obtained possession and control of both sides of the Sound that joins the North Sea and the Baltic, demanding and receiving the tax from ships entering the inland sea.
• Her great patience and ability to compromise were also valuable assets in realising her aim of establishing a Baltic empire. To be successful, Margaret needed to incorporate Sweden into her Dano-Norwegian sphere of influence.
• Again, time and circumstance were on her side, so she seized the opportunity. She discovered that the same nobility who had become tired of Magnus Eriksson, Olav’s grandfather, and deposed him had grown equally dissatisfied with Albert of Mecklenburg.
• Margaret strategically had her son declared heir of Sweden as the final descendant of the Swedish royal line while regaining control of the Scanian regions. The good outcomes of the announcement reflect the Swedish nobles’ dissatisfaction: they would rather align themselves with the daughter of King Waldemar, their former adversary in the war for Baltic domination, than be dominated by their king.
• Margaret’s position was further solidified by the fortunate event of the death of Bo Jonsson, Sweden’s most prominent and wealthiest landowner. Without any successors, he entrusted his properties to a group of nobles appointed executors of his will. Their task was to further the interests of the Swedish aristocracy and ensure that his holdings and manors did not return to the crown. The Swedes were anxious, however, that Albert of Mecklenburg would claim the country’s wealthiest estate and the power that came with it and that they would be unable to stop him.
• When Olav died unexpectedly in 1387, Margaret saw the opportunity to attain the Swedish crown. She wept as a mother over the death of her child, yet she moved quickly and forcefully. She had the Danish Council of State declare her ‘Mistress of our realm, Master of our House, and Guardian’.
• In Norway, Margaret I was appointed ‘Regent for Life’. In Sweden, she conversed with the discontented nobility, avoiding conflict with Albert of Mecklenburg until all other options were exhausted. In 1389, she faced and destroyed Albert’s soldiers at the Battle of Falkoebing in Southern Sweden. Albert of Mecklenburg was apprehended by the Danes and imprisoned until he was willing to abandon all claims to Sweden, especially the city of Stockholm, where the Germans exercised the most influence.
• Albert’s lands and assets, the possessions he left to German officials and those he had endowed, returned to the crown. Property lost during the war was returned to the nobles, and all castles and fortifications built during Albert’s reign were dismantled. However, Margaret was adamant in her belief that a country could not be successfully governed without a royal king. She therefore adopted her sister’s six-year-old grandson, Bugislav of Pomerania, whom she diplomatically renamed Eric of Pomerania in honour of the Swedish national saint and numerous Scandinavian kings.