Monarch Profile: King Gustav I of Sweden

In the Sweden of today, King Gustav I may not be as much remembered as he is no doubt quite politically incorrect, however, once upon a time, not so long ago, he was regarded as the “father” of his country. He was the founding monarch of the Vasa dynasty, something of a liberator and the man who took Sweden from the Roman Catholic to the Protestant camp in the division of Christendom that was going on at the time. For this reason he is sometimes referred to as the “Henry VIII of Sweden” though, not surprisingly, such a description will anger as many as it satisfies. He was, in any event, a giant figure in Swedish history, a man who changed the course of history in Sweden and thus, to receding degrees, that of the rest of Europe as well. In the long national story of the Swedish people, King Gustav I is one of those monarchs you absolutely have to know something about. If you understand Gustav Vasa, you will know what a formidable power the Swedish nation is capable of being.

Gustav Eriksson Vasa was born on May 12, 1496 to Erik Johansson Vasa and his wife Cecilia in his father’s castle northeast of Stockholm. This was during the period when Sweden was, along with Norway, under the Crown of the Kingdom of Denmark at the time ruled by King Christian II. It is no coincidence that this same monarch, a formidable figure in his own right, came to be known as “Christian the Tyrant” to the Swedes. This personal union of the crowns of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, known as the Kolmar Union, had been on rather shaky ground for a while and the Swedes were becoming increasingly restive. One of the leaders of the independence movement was Gustav’s father, though he was not the primary leader. Naturally, his son Gustav supported him and supported the struggle for Swedish independence from Denmark. At one point, Gustav was captured but escaped and maintained his resistance to Danish rule.

King Christian II of Denmark launched an attack on the pro-independence faction in 1520 and was successful. However, his victory was followed up by the mass execution of 80 to 90 nobles and clergymen who had been invited to the palace after his coronation as King of Sweden. Some were executed for treason, some on charges of heresy, though Christian II did try to play a bit of a double game on this point, apologizing to the Pope for having cut the heads off several Catholic bishops while telling the public that they had been heretical and that the Pope was about to place Sweden under the interdict if he had not taken such drastic action. In any event, this became known as the “Stockholm Bloodbath” and one of the most infamous events in Swedish history. Most pertinent to Gustav Vasa was that his father was numbered among the massacred. He had opposed Danish rule before, now Christian II had made it personal. Accusations of heresy being tossed around, as well as the story that this was done to assuage the Pope, combined with the fact that the King of Denmark had married the sister of Emperor Charles V of Germany and King of Spain, certainly made for “bad optics” as we would say today for the Roman Catholic Church in Sweden.

For the moment, however, Christian II was in charge and Gustav had to flee for his life, ultimately all the way to Norway. This period later became legendary in Sweden with all sorts of tales springing up about Gustav’s adventures in trying to arouse the national spirit of the Swedish peasants while dodging the authorities of the King of Denmark. Ultimately, he did manage to gather together a small but growing rebel army under his command and in April of 1520 won a smashing little victory over the pro-Danish forces after which support for his cause came pouring in. Shortly thereafter the local nobles elected him regent of the Kingdom of Sweden, causing many more Swedish nobles to abandon the Danish cause and rally to his banner. Those who did not fortified themselves in their castles but these began to fall to Gustav one by one.

By 1522 much of Sweden, though not Stockholm, was under his control and more support began to come in from the German city-states of the Hanseatic League which saw it as advantageous for them if the domination of the Baltic by the Kingdom of Denmark could be broken. This additional support provided sufficient momentum for the Swedish council of nobles to decide to elect Gustav Vasa to be their king. The representatives of the German city-state of Luebeck backed the decision, saying it was the will of God, and Gustav accepted. In light of later events it is interesting to note that Gustav had a very traditional, Catholic celebration to mark the occasion including Eucharistic adoration and singing of the Te Deum. In June of 1523 when the rebel forces finally marched into Stockholm, this was topped off with a mass of thanksgiving. Not long after, the remaining Danish garrisons in Finland surrendered and King Frederick I of Denmark (who had replaced the ousted Christian II) decided to quit before Gustav conquered any more territory. In 1524 the Treaty of Malmo was signed, ending the Swedish War of Liberation and dissolving the Kolmar Union, making the Kingdom of Sweden completely independence once again.

This, however, is when problems of a religious nature began to bubble up. The previous Archbishop of Uppsala and chief cleric of Sweden had been Gustav Trolle, who had taken the side of King Christian II of Denmark during the pro-independence movement, for which he had been attacked. Later, Archbishop Trolle was said to have, in response to this, prepared the list of the men to be massacred in the “Bloodbath of Stockholm”. As the tide turned against the Danes, he was forced to leave Sweden and take refuge in Denmark. As he was no longer in the country, King Gustav I considered his see vacant and wrote to Pope Clement VII requesting that Johannes Magnus be made archbishop in his place in 1523. However, Pope Clement VII absolutely refused and demanded that Archbishop Trolle be reinstated immediately, which is something that King Gustav, nor any other monarch in his position, would have ever done. Nor was Johannes Magnus, the King’s choice, in any way unorthodox, indeed, he would quickly make enemies due to his staunch opposition to the spread of Lutheranism.

Historians ever since have puzzled over the actions of the Pope on this issue. Given the recent change in Sweden, and the fact that the former Archbishop had been on the opposing side of the new king and even implicated in the murder of his father, combined with the fact that his proposed replacement was a solid Swedish Catholic, makes it difficult to say the least to understand why the Pope decided to force the King to choose between restoring such a cleric or separating the Kingdom of Sweden from the Catholic Church. The best that defenders of the Pope can propose is that he was simply not very well informed about the situation, though that too would raise questions about why he stubbornly insisted on the reinstatement.

The result, not surprisingly, was that King Gustav appointed his own choice anyway but was suddenly much more “tolerant” about the spread of Lutheranism in his country. When the King’s appointed Archbishop Magnus came into conflict with this growing support for Lutheranism, the Archbishop the Pope had opposed left the country, leaving a vacuum which the Lutherans were only too happy to fill. In fact, King Gustav had tried to go even farther when the Pope refused to confirm Magnus. He put forward other candidates but the Pope refused them all and when the King proposed other bishops to fill five vacant sees in Sweden, the Pope again turned down all but one of the King’s suggestions. With the Pope refusing to budge an inch, the King finally made the switch and in 1531 appointed a pro-Lutheran cleric to the post of archbishop, breaking with Rome and beginning the transition of the Kingdom of Sweden from a Catholic country to a solidly and officially Lutheran one. This, as was ever the case, ultimately led to a crackdown on those who continued to adhere to the Catholic Church, most of whom were also accused of being pro-Danish traitors. Obviously, the actions of the Pope only encouraged this view.

A series of generally small scale rebellions broke out in the aftermath of this change, sometimes due to taxes and other secular issues but also due to the confiscation of church lands by the state and the switch to Lutheranism. King Gustav was ruthlessly thorough in his elimination of all opposition to this new state of affairs, having the most famous of the rebel leaders quartered. It was an unfortunate and bloody business, however it is difficult to see how the King could be blamed for the break and his intolerance of opposition did spare Sweden from the sort of drawn-out religious civil wars that were seen in other European countries. It was because of these events, most of all the shift from Catholic to Protestant Christianity, that King Gustav is often compared to King Henry VIII of England who broke with Rome shortly thereafter. However, the two cases are actually quite different. There was a legitimate religious reason for the Pope to oppose King Henry and it also came at a time after Emperor Charles V had invaded Italy, defeated the papal forces, sacked Rome and basically taken the Pope prisoner, making it rather impossible politically for the Pope to have just given Henry his damn annulment for the sake of keeping England, a staunchly Catholic country, in union with Rome. No such circumstances applied in the case of King Gustav in Sweden.

Most of the rest of the reign of the first Vasa king in Sweden was spent dealing with the aftereffects of this religious change (he had his problems with the Lutherans too) as well as establishing the state of the Kingdom of Sweden as it would be for a very long time to come. As the leader of a victorious independence movement, King Gustav became a legend in his own time and showed a positive gift for what we would today call “public relations”. In no time at all he came to be viewed as a great heroic figure, a liberator from Danish rule and the stern but wise ‘father of his country’. A plethora of art, literature, coins, songs and books were produced hailing King Gustav as the champion of his country. Married three times in his life, the King fathered nine children, including three future Swedish monarchs, so he certainly did his duty as far as securing the succession was concerned.

The last, and largely only, foreign policy problem of his reign involved the Russian Empire where Czar Ivan the Terrible viewed the new Swedish monarch as an upstart. When King Gustav sent envoys to Moscow, the Czar refused to meet with them and in the message conveyed to them, basically said to tell Gustav that Russia is awesome and Sweden is a puny weakling (and I really am not exaggerating much at all there). This, as you might imagine, did not go over well in Stockholm and in 1554 the Swedes raided a Russian monastery and when a Russian envoy came to complain, he was taken prisoner. Ivan the Terrible launched a formal offensive and the Russo-Swedish War was on. However, neither side gained much satisfaction. The Swedes besieged Oreshek but failed to take it. The Russians, in turn, besieged Viborg but also failed to take it. Swedish diplomats also had no luck in enlisting other northern powers to join their fight against Russia, seeing it all as a silly and pointless enterprise and so, in 1557 a peace was signed and the two sides left each other alone.

By this time, King Gustav I was in obviously declining health and he finally passed away on September 29, 1560. Memories of King Gustav Vasa have changed considerably over time. For much of modern Swedish history, he was as much a figure of legend and folklore as anything else. Stories abounded of his cunning and daring escapes from Danish pursuers, his heroic rallying of the country to his cause to fight for independence and later, when Lutheranism became firmly established and accepted, as the king who had delivered them from the clutches of the “papists”, giving them a Swedish church for Swedish people rather than one ruled by an Italian prince in faraway Rome. Later, however, when Sweden became more liberal and “enlightened” (feel free to roll your eyes there), King Gustav was portrayed as a grasping and ambition man, still a national hero perhaps, but a bit on the tyrannical side. In truth, he was a brave man, a clever man and a hard man. He was a lover of music, a great patriot and, while not unreasonable or harsh without purpose, was certainly a man who would not tolerate defiance. The many legends about him may be simply that but in the context of his place in Swedish history, he was the sort of monarch about whom there should be legends. He really was the father of his country, or at least, the father of what it was for a very long time.

The (Very Real) Crisis in Sweden

After one remark by President Trump at a rally for his supporters, everyone is suddenly talking about the Kingdom of Sweden. Trump referred to a huge upsurge in violent crime and sexual assault since the Swedes opened their borders to massive waves of immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. The Swedish Prime Minister immediately said that this was a total fabrication, indeed, seemed shocked and bewildered that someone would make such an outlandish accusation. However, for those who have been keeping your ear to the ground, this was neither shocking nor anything new. In fact, Trump seemed to go overboard in making it sound like it should be hard to believe, that the peaceful, idyllic Kingdom of Sweden could be so beset by violence and social chaos. However, plenty of people have been pointing this out for quite some time, for about as long as this “refugee” crisis has been going on. Sweden is in a perilous state and the government would not be trying so hard to suppress information and retroactively scrub the statistics if everything was all cakes and ale in the land of the Swedes.

For a country with so small a population as Sweden, the amount of non-Swedish immigrants that have already been taken into the country is well beyond the point that the total extinction of the Swedish people has become inevitable in the long term barring drastic measures that most in modern, Western Europe today seem to view as unthinkably horrific, by which I mean mass-deportation of these people to their actual homelands (yes, I know, “the horror”) and that is something most seem unwilling to countenance. The Swedes, of course, would not be the first people to succumb to death by demographic drowning (see if you can find a Manchurian these days) but they do stand out in being so willing to sacrifice themselves and their descendants to oblivion. No one is forcing Sweden to do this. No one is holding a gun to their head. They are, as things stand, willingly allowing themselves to be displaced in their own homeland, willingly giving the land of their ancestors to the descendents of people from a foreign culture, a foreign religion, even foreign continents. That is rather unprecedented.

Some, I have noticed, seem to have no sympathy for the Swedes because of that, even holding them in contempt because of it. I am certainly not among them. Their plight may be their own fault but it is no less tragic in my mind for that. The majority in Sweden seem to have taken liberalism to its ultimate, unfortunate, conclusion and are embracing death purely for reasons of self-image. They seem to think it makes them morally superior to sacrifice themselves for the less fortunate peoples of other lands. That is not something to hate them for but rather something to pity. The Kingdom of Sweden is a part of the rich tapestry of western civilization and I do not wish to see the kingdom nor the Swedes themselves depart from the world. Evidently, saying that, makes yours truly quite an evil person in the eyes of many but so be it. Sweden is more to me than lines on a map. It is for that reason that the level of crime, while certainly terrible and worth talking about, is not finally the point.

In any talk about immigration or the “migrant crisis” or the “refugee crisis” you will usually hear a great deal about how it would all be okay if only the immigrants would, in this case, learn Swedish and adopt Swedish values and customs and assimilate into Swedish society. For me, that is ultimately irrelevant because Sweden is more to me than a language or a name on the map of Europe. As I have said before about France, Sweden, without Swedish people, would not be Sweden to me. There have been many changes in Sweden since the reign of King Eric the Victorious but the Swedish people have always been Swedish, not Arab or African or Pashtun and that is how I would wish it to stay. Such a sentiment should not be sufficient to warrant the label of “racism”. Has the world changed so much in my lifetime that wishing to preserve a people from extinction is “racist” rather than believing your own people are inherently superior to all others? It seems fantastic but, for many, it seems to be the case. Again, so be it.

There is, of course, little I can do about the matter other than what I already have done which is to make my opinion on the subject known. I have also tried, in the small way I can, and as I have done with others, to remind people of their own glorious past. To remind people, in this case Swedish people, that they are better than this current population of willing victims to demographic suicide. I admire the history and heroes of the Kingdom of Sweden, even if I would have been on opposite sides to some of them, for their great achievements. I have posted here before about King Charles XII, “the Last Viking”, about the Swedish empire overseas, the brilliant Marshal Torstensson, “the father of field artillery”, King Gustavus Adolphus, “the Lion of the North”, the controversial Queen Christina who caused such a splash in her own time, one of only three women to be buried in the crypt beneath St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and King Sigismund III of Poland who dominated Eastern Europe and, for a time, was also King of Sweden. The blood that flows through the veins of Swedes today is no different than that which flowed through the people who dominated northern Europe, made the Baltic a Swedish lake and left their mark on far distant shores.

I hope that the Swedes awake from this nightmare because I don’t want to see the people of Sweden become extinct. The problem is that the longer they wait, the harder it will be to set things right again and it should be of serious concern to people in Sweden that they do not suppress their natural patriotic impulse to the point that drastic solutions become the only possible solutions. That point is rapidly approaching and it is dangerous to ignore it and not, I should add, primarily for the Swedes alone. The only thing more dangerous to them, as a people, is ignoring the problem indefinitely. I want the Swedes to survive, they are a vital part of the tapestry of Europe and western civilization. They are, as I have tried to show in these pages, a great people with a glorious history of fantastic achievements. I do not consider the Swedes expendable or replaceable. It should also go without saying that a key component of this is the Swedish monarchy. Like Sweden itself, I have seen far too many take an ambivalent attitude toward the Swedish monarchy. I am certainly not among them, regardless of the fact that I have no doubt that they would not wish someone so, let us say, ‘politically incorrect’ as myself, as a supporter.

Just as I am unwilling to give up on the Swedes, so too am I unwilling to surrender on the subject of the monarchy. Yes, it would be nice if the Swedish royals themselves were standing up for their people but this is a totally unrealistic expectation. For one thing, as I have said of many other royals, they have been raised to think in much the same way as most people in Sweden have been raised to think. They have no actual political power to effect change, one way or the other, and given how biased and dishonest the mainstream media is, all around the world, they may not even be aware of the full extent of what is going on in their country. If the Swedish royals did speak up in defense of their own people, they would certainly be swiftly denounced and, given current voting patterns, would most likely lose everything they have and all to no effect. Giving up everything in return for nothing is hardly a brilliant move.

I view the Swedish royals as being not far removed from hostages at this point. They are under the power of their captors with a sword of Damocles constantly hanging over their heads. Monarchists who feel no support or sympathy for the Swedish royals because they do not think as you do would be well advised to keep in mind what sort of people you would be making common cause with by opposing them. The Swedish Republican Association, while having some members from what passes for the “conservative” right, is largely dominated by Social Democrats and open-borders globalists. They even considered changing their name in years past for fear of being associated with American Republicans like Sarah Palin. Their Secretary-General, in 2010, Mona Abou-Jeib Broshammar is a native of Lebanon with a Syrian father and Swedish mother. Her father evidently fled Syria for Lebanon and then the family fled Lebanon, due to the war there, for the Kingdom of Sweden. Yet, two failed republics in her own family background has not dissuaded Ms. Broshammar from campaigning to bring republicanism to Sweden.

The Swedish republicans have not hesitated to blast their enemies as racists and to use race  as well as “multiculturalism” as a propaganda tool for their own goal of bringing down the Swedish monarchy, the cornerstone of the traditional cultural heritage of Sweden. When President Obama was elected in the United States, the Swedish republicans seized on his widespread popularity in Western Europe to promote their own cause. They put out an ad campaign changing Obama’s slogan of “Yes We Can” to “No We Can’t”, lamenting that Sweden could never have a Black President like those lucky Americans as long as they have that stuffy, old monarchy with its boring, White Swedish Royal Family. Sweden could, of course, have a Black monarch someday, if the proper choices of spouse are made, but then he wouldn’t really be a “Swedish” monarch anymore than a blue-eyed White guy with sandy brown hair could ever really be a “Japanese” emperor even if by some extremely unprecedented marriage arrangements  such an heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne was produced. But, all of that would take too long anyway. The Swedish republicans were trying to seize on a moment when it seemed so ‘cool’ and so progressive to have a Black Head of State in a majority White country. Their ad campaign no doubt turned a lot of heads but it did not ultimately bring down the Swedish monarchy in favor of an African presidency. Nonetheless, they made it perfectly clear as to where they stand, not only on their opposition to the monarchy but also on their position that Sweden is just too Swedish to be a really ‘great’ country (though they may not want to be great either as I think Trump has tainted that term for them).

We tend to forget but should not, that even though they rarely make anything of it, practically all the leftist parties in Sweden contain in their programs the ultimate abolition of the monarchy and these are the same people of the same parties who are the ones doing their best to replace the native Swedes with a totally foreign population. This is something that should not be allowed and all I can do is to implore the people of Sweden to come back to reality before it is truly too late and there are no more Swedes in Sweden. I want Sweden to survive. I want Swedes to remember who they are and be proud of their great achievements, be proud of their people and history, to carry on so that their culture is not something to be seen only in isolated pockets of the American Midwest or like a carcass on display in a museum. Read some of the past posts linked to above and remember that you have the same blood in your veins as the people who accomplished all of those great deeds. Do not forget who you are, where you came from and what you are capable of. Sverige Vakna!

World War II and the Scandinavian Monarchies

Across Europe, even among those monarchies which survived World War II, none had as much influence as they did before the conflict. The war itself, however, was not always the direct cause of this but, nonetheless, it came at a time when wider events over a number of years brought about such an outcome. The fact is that the monarchs who reigned during the time of the Second World War had considerably more authority, regardless of any actual constitutional changes, than those who came to the throne after the conflict was over. This was certainly true in the Low Countries but, while perhaps less noticed, was equally true in the monarchies of Scandinavia. Even the one country which managed to avoid actually participating in the war, the Kingdom of Sweden, was not untouched by the conflict or unaffected by the wider repercussions of both the First and Second World Wars. The monarch on the throne throughout the period was His Majesty King Gustav V who is remembered as the last Swedish monarch to date to intervene in the affairs of his government.

In 1907, when he came to the throne, King Gustav V had extensive legal authority in political matters. However, in the reign of his father, parliament had more strongly asserted itself and, originally, King Gustav V went along with this new way of doing things. This changed with the coming of World War I. The King favored increasing Swedish military strength while the recently elected Liberal government did not. When a crowd of concerned citizens demonstrated in front of the palace in favor of strengthening the Swedish military in case the country were to become engulfed in the upcoming conflict, the King acted on his own to address the crowd, whose views were in accord with his own, to assure them that this would be done. The Liberal prime minister objected to this, King Gustav V responded that he was well within his rights to speak to his subjects on such a matter, as both their sovereign and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, which prompted the government to resign at which time the King appointed a more conservative administration to replace them.

That would be the last time that a Swedish monarch would directly intervene in government. The collapse of Russia, spread of communism and the economic disaster that accompanied the end of World War I, worked to pull Sweden dramatically to the left. In 1917 the King tried to appoint another conservative government but found no support, the most power being held by what amounted to democratic socialists on the one hand and less-than-democratic socialists on the other. Still, World War II played a part as well and in a way related to World War I. The Queen consort, Victoria of Baden, was a German and in the First World War the King was widely believed to be sympathetic with the German Empire and the cause of the Central Powers. Similar accusations would be made concerning the King and Nazi Germany in World War II which certainly had a more negative impact on his popular perception than any possible sympathy on his part for the Kaiser would have had. Little to nothing on that score can be proven but the allegation alone was enough to do damage.

The most serious accusation in this regard, though again, it has never been proven, revolved around the King interfering in government again. The issue was the 1941 demand from the Germans, at the time of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, to allow German military forces to move from Norway, through Sweden to their fellow Axis partner of Finland. According to the prime minister, King Gustav V intervened in this matter, threatening to abdicate if the government did not accede to the German demand. Anti-royal controversialists often mention this in conjunction with another allegation, accusing the King of sending congratulations to Hitler for his victories against the “Bolshevik pest” of the Soviet Union. Others have claimed that the King similarly favored allowing Allied troops to move through Swedish territory but that it was the government which refused and there is no doubt that the King also spoke up on behalf of the Jews and that he tried to arrange peace talks to end the war early on.

All of this was used to smear the character of King Gustav V after the war ended in an Allied victory. However, few people care to consider the basic fact that if the Germans wanted to move troops through Sweden they were certainly capable of doing it whether the Swedish government agreed or not. Given the depleted state of the Swedish armed forces, the Germans could have conquered the country and occupied it with as little difficulty as they did in Denmark and Norway. At a time when Sweden was literally surrounded by Germany, German allied Finland and German occupied Denmark and Norway, the British could have done nothing to help them and Hitler could have wiped out Sweden easily if they had defied him. Under the circumstances, a refusal would have been hailed as noble and courageous in the rest of the world but it could easily have resulted in invasion, occupation and the total loss of Swedish independence. If the King did intervene to urge the government to let the Germans move through, in such a situation, it would be hard for any rational person to say he did wrong.

There was, in any event, no shortage of gossip and allegations against King Gustav V, even among his fellow monarchs. There were rumors that he tried to interfere in the Norwegian succession, bypassing the King and Crown Prince for the royal grandson, today’s King Harald V and King Haakon VII of Norway reputedly referred to the King of Sweden as ‘the old scoundrel’ and believed him to be pro-German. The fact that Sweden would have been much the worse off by taking a hostile attitude toward the Germans or the fact that a great many Jews found refuge in Sweden because of its neutrality, did not amount to much in the post-war years where mere mention of the word “Nazi” and any hint of being in the least bit tainted by anything less than a zealous commitment to their extermination is sufficient to cause people to switch their brains off and become totally irrational. After Gustav V died in 1950 at age 92 he was succeeded by his son King Gustav VI Adolf and by the next decade republicanism and the total abolition of the monarchy had become mainstream. By the time of the next monarch, new constitutional changes saw the Swedish Crown stripped of absolutely all residual powers, which did tend to thwart some of the arguments of the republicans as there is no president on earth with less power than the King of Sweden.

The Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway are a different story. Both were pulled into World War II for the same reason. The short version is that Winston Churchill was so convinced the Germans would violate Norwegian neutrality that he decided to violate it first, laying mines in Norwegian territorial waters. A landing by ground forces was also planned by the whole British campaign in the far north was an utter fiasco. Germany responded with swift and overpowering force. To move against Norway, Germany had to go through the Kingdom of Denmark. After a long period of decline from the ranks of being a major power, as well as a long period of peace which many people thought would last forever (something seemingly everyone is likely to do), the Danes were practically powerless to resist the German invasion. So, they basically didn’t and the Kingdom of Denmark was occupied in less than 24 hours.

The Kingdom of Denmark was supposed to be Germany’s “model protectorate”. They assured the Danes that they were friends, not conquerors and that their independence would be respected with German occupation forces remaining only so long as was necessary for the war situation. The Danes didn’t buy it and soon began carrying out acts of sabotage. Their monarch, King Christian X, condemned such actions, as he was bound to, but also defied the Germans as far as he was able. He refused to enact anti-Semitic legislation they pushed, refused to hand over Danes to the hands of German justice who had been caught in acts of sabotage or helping Jews escape to Sweden and he famously continued his solitary horseback rides every morning through the streets of Copenhagen. The Germans wanted him to stop, particularly as these came to be occasions of outbursts of public support for the monarchy and Danish patriotism, but the King refused. When the Germans demanded he accept a German escort to act as his bodyguard on such occasions, the King famously said that every Dane was his bodyguard. King Christian X did finally have to stop though when he was thrown from his horse and injured in late 1942 (allegations that the horse had Nazi sympathies have not been corroborated).

By the end of World War II and the German occupation, the Danes and their monarch never seemed to be closer. It was a stark contrast to how the unfortunate King Leopold III of the Belgians was treated for also remaining in his country during the German occupation. King Christian X of Denmark was admired and respected by almost everyone and his prestige seemed to have never been greater. Yet, even in the oldest monarchy in Europe, which has weathered the republican storm better than most with its very deep roots, no monarch after King Christian X would ever have quite the same level of power and influence in state affairs. It is hard to see how the war played a part in this change, yet that it happened cannot be denied. The monarchy before the war was very different from the monarchy after the war, or, at least, after Christian X. Under his successor, King Frederick IX, the Kingdom of Denmark began to change, becoming, as it was known, a “democratic monarchy”.

In truth, however, the wartime prestige of the monarchy was no more than King Christian’s ‘Indian Summer’. After World War I there had been a dispute over the territory Denmark had lost to Prussia in the 1864 war. The Danish government wanted the inhabitants to vote on whether they wished to rejoin Denmark while Danish nationalists wanted the territory annexed outright. King Christian X agreed with annexation, intervened and the government fell which the King replaced with a more conservative temporary government until the next election. This was the “Easter Crisis of 1920” and it resulted in a fierce left-wing backlash against the monarchy led by the Social Democrats. Faced, for the first time in her ancient history, with the loss of the Danish monarchy, King Christian X had been forced to retreat, dismissing the government he had just appointed and accept his status as a virtually powerless monarch. The war years boosted his prestige but it did nothing to change the political situation. The monarch retains some considerable powers on paper but Danish judges have interpreted these to belong to the King’s government and not the King (or Queen in today’s case) personally.

One other point of contention for Danish monarchists, widely overlooked in foreign lands, which resulted directly from World War II was the loss of the Danish Kingdom of Iceland to republicanism. From 1918 to 1944 Iceland was an independent kingdom in personal union with the Crown of Denmark. However, in May of 1940 British troops invaded and occupied Iceland. The local government protested this violation of their neutrality but made no effort to resist. The British later handed the keys over to the United States and in 1944 a referendum was held which resulted in Iceland becoming a republic, severing all ties with the Crown of Denmark. King Christian X showed impossibly good grace by sending them his congratulations but many on the right in Denmark felt betrayed and not unjustly so. As they were under German occupation at the time, they could hardly argue their own case for maintaining their existing relationship with the island and even if there was nothing untoward about it, one cannot escape what political pundits today would call very “bad optics” to have a referendum during wartime while being occupied by a foreign army which is at war with the foreign army occupying the ‘home’ country.

Finally, any talk of Iceland, monarchy and World War II, will usually produce some mention of the so-called conspiracy for a Nazi monarchy. I mention it only because someone is bound to speak up if I do not but there really is not much to say on the subject. It was never a conspiracy, never something that was going to happen, it did not happen and so is hardly much of a story. An important, though often left-out point to make clear though, is that this suggestion of a Nazi monarchy in Iceland was made *before* the Germans had occupied Denmark (seat of the existing Icelandic monarchy) and thus also some time before the Allied occupation of Iceland. There is some variation in accounts of this episode but the usual version is that a group of pro-Nazi Icelanders approached the German government about making Prince Friedrich Christian zu Shaumburg-Lippe the King of Iceland. The Prince had been a fairly early member of the Nazi Party, joined the Brown-shirted Storm Troops (SA) and rose to be an assistant to Dr. Joseph Goebbels in the Propaganda Ministry. He was in fact, considered to be on the leftist, socialist, side of the Nazi Party. In any event, it didn’t happen. The Prince said Goebbels favored the idea but Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop did not. However, regardless of that, it is not as though Iceland was ruled by a pro-Nazi party at the time, so such an offer would have had no real meaning anyway.

Last, but not least, we have the situation in the Kingdom of Norway. The Norwegians were the most recently independent of the Scandinavian monarchies, having detached themselves from a personal union with Sweden in 1905. The people voted to establish a monarchy rather than a republic and invited Prince Carl of Denmark to take the throne as King Haakon VII of Norway. He realized that there had been a sizable minority who had favored a republic and the recent democratic process which had brought about the break with Sweden was a sign of the times so he knew from the outset that his royal powers would be limited and was partly chosen for the very reason that he made no objection to such restrictions. By 1928 he was obliged, by the democratic process, to appoint a government led by the Norwegian Labor Party which advocated abolishing the monarchy (something later dropped from their program).

World War II spread to Scandinavia, as mentioned, because of events in Norway. Denmark was a mere stepping stone, invaded and occupied within a day. Norway would take somewhat longer for, as Norwegians at the time proudly said, “we are a longer country”. The British effort to establish a Scandinavian front was a total fiasco, very ill-organized and the German attack was swift, efficient and overpowering. King Haakon VII knew his country stood no chance and immediately made plans, upon the outbreak of war, to establish a government-in-exile in Britain. The Germans did their best to capture him and the Royal Family but in an arduous series of movements, they were able to elude them and ultimately take a British warship into exile. The German attack had begun on April 8 and the last major Norwegian stronghold fell on May 5 with the King and party leaving the country on June 7. The King and Crown Prince Olav, the symbols of Norwegian resistance, went to England while other family members were sent to safety in the United States. Pockets of Norwegian forces carried on fighting for much longer and, of course, Norwegian forces in exile and underground resistance movements persisted in fighting for the duration of the war.

It would be hard to overstate the significance of the King during this time of crisis for Norway. He had taken the lead in rejecting the German demands to submit peacefully to their occupation, expressing his desire to abdicate if the government chose to cooperate with the Nazis and as the King he was the living symbol of Norwegian government legitimacy in the fight and in the years of exile. Unlike Denmark, there was no room for any doubt at all that the fate of the Norwegian monarchy depended on an Allied victory. The Germans had a willing client in Vidkun Quisling standing ready and after efforts to coerce the government in Norway to depose the King, the top German official simply declared on his own that the King of Norway had forfeited the Crown and that he, nor any of the Royal Family, had any right to ever return to Norway again. King Haakon VII was the symbol of Norwegian resistance to the Germans, he was also very much the “voice” of the resistance due to his BBC radio addresses to Norway and thanks to him the Norwegians were able to contribute a great deal more to the Allied war effort than most people realize. He was extremely popular as a result of all of this and when he died in 1957 he was mourned almost as much in Britain as in Norway.

His son and successor, King Olav V, had played a major part in the Norwegian war effort, being appointed an admiral in the Norwegian navy, a general in the Norwegian army and in 1944 the Norwegian Chief of Defense. He oversaw the Norwegian contribution to the Allied armed forces and at the end of the war was in charge of dealing with the disarmament of the surrendered Germans. Nonetheless, by the time he came to the throne, things had already changed from what they had been in the war years when his father was so identified with Norwegian patriotism that “H7” became the symbol of the resistance. Although, legally, the royal powers did not change, having been limited at the outset, there was definitely a new, more republican, sentiment about the country. When King Haakon VII had come to the Norwegian throne, he had been given a proper coronation. For King Olav V there would be no coronation, only a church service after his swearing-in ceremony which was officially boycotted by the ruling Labor Party (though some members attended anyway).

Like his father, King Olav V never made any trouble for the politicians but, seeing which way the winds were blowing perhaps, he also made an effort to be seen even more as “down to earth”. The closest his father ever came to a confrontation was taking a drink of illegal alcohol after coming into a hotel, cold and soaked. King Olav V would not even go that far, even using public transportation during the energy crisis of 1973. He could also often be seen driving his own car. All of this had the intended effect on public opinion as this egalitarian style caused him to be dubbed, “the People’s King”. Again, to be sure, the current Norwegian monarchy started out a much shorter chain than their neighbors in Sweden or Denmark but, nonetheless, one cannot escape the fact that the style of the monarchy even in Norway was rather different in the first reign after the war that it had been before the conflict, whether the war actually had any impact on it or not.

What we can see is that many monarchs had an increased status during the war years due to the state of emergency that, of course, ended when the war was over. There was also an increase in national unity because of the war which, likewise, ended when it was over. This was something that some monarchs commented on as being regrettable. The status of many monarchies also saw the status of the monarch decline with the status of the country due to things like de-colonization and the polarization of the world into an American camp and a Russian camp. European monarchies also often saw leftwing parties come to power after World War I, then brought back after World War II and with a huge influx of American aid money which made unsustainable spending programs and social welfare states take root which governments have become more desperate to try to uphold. It is certainly no coincidence that the leftist parties pushing these policies have invariably been either openly anti-monarchy or at the very least possessing a very republican mentality even if not openly calling for the establishment of a republic.

Consort Profile: Queen Victoria of Baden

The young lady who would one day become Queen consort of Sweden was born Princess Sophie Marie Viktoria on August 7, 1862 in Karlsruhe to Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden (who had a Swedish mother) and Princess Luise of Prussia (the only daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm I). Perhaps strangely for a woman later known as a staunch conservative, she spent her childhood in fairly liberal surroundings, her father disliking court ceremony but having no animosity towards a little democracy. While still a teenager it was decided that she would be wed to the heir to the Swedish throne, Crown Prince Gustaf of Sweden and Norway. It seemed a natural choice. Her paternal grandmother was Princess Sophie of Sweden who was herself the daughter of a Swedish King and a Princess from Baden. In fact, because of these long family ties, she had ancestry in the old Swedish dynasty, the House of Vasa, which made the match quite popular in Sweden. To a limited degree, the marriage would mean the mingling of Vasa and Bernadotte blood for the future royals of Sweden. She was in her nineteenth year when she was married to the Crown Prince in Karlsruhe on September 20, 1881.

By this time, the German Empire was well established and, given that the Baden royals had also married in with the Prussian Royal Family, the wedding had the full support of the German government as a way of bringing Sweden and Germany closer together. Kaiser Wilhelm I and Kaiserin Augusta of Saxe-Weimar attended the ceremony as a display to the international community that the ties between the Kingdom of Sweden and the German Empire were strong. It all must have seemed quite idyllic. When the couple came home to their two kingdoms they were given an enthusiastic welcome in both Stockholm and Oslo as the people cheered their dapper crown prince and his charming young bride. The problem was that, while arranged royal marriages have worked out quite well (probably more often than one today might think), this one did not. The pair never really hit it off and it soon became obvious to those around them that this marriage was not destined to be a happy one. The reasons for this have been the subject of much speculation, usually revolving around the gossip concerning the sexuality of the crown prince but there were also rumors of infidelity on the part of the crown princess. However, both were products of royal training that stressed duty before personal happiness so there was never to be a divorce and their marital problems remained strictly private.

The Crown Princely couple did their duty by the monarchy to secure the succession and in 1882 a son and future monarch was born, Prince Oscar (later King Gustaf VI Adolf), followed by Prince Wilhelm in 1884 (who later married into the Russian Imperial Family) and finally Prince Erik in 1889. With three sons the future of the monarchy was safe and that mission being accomplished, the two separated in all but name. It was never official of course and, dutiful royals that they were, both put on a good public face and appeared together when necessary but they essentially lived separate lives. Crown Princess Victoria fell victim to post-partum depression after the birth of their first child and she went abroad. This became part of her regular routine and she invariably left the country when the weather turned cold as she found the Swedish winter intolerable. After a bout of pneumonia she was given a medical validation for this and so she spent much of her time in the warmer climate of southern Europe. This, of course, made her popularity drop in Sweden and also caused friction with the King and Queen who disapproved of the length and expense of her absences. This was, probably, at least somewhat unfair as the winters of Scandinavia would be difficult for anyone not accustomed to them and she was always very definite about being the Crown Princess of Sweden.

Nonetheless, her time away from the country undoubtedly led to the popular perception of her as being aloof and rather too “grand” for everyone else. This too is probably unfair. She was simply a very conservative royal who placed great importance on royal status in a way that, in a different time and place, would not have been at all unusual. Victoria of Baden was not the cold woman many made her out to be but she did not approve of royals marrying below their status, was very assertive and decisive and generally determined that things be done and that people behave in the proper way. In fact, she was quite an artistic person. She was an accomplished horsewoman, a good painter, an excellent photographer and a very skilled pianist with a great love for classical music. Even if she did not get a great deal of popular acclaim for it, she also supported numerous charitable works in Italy, Germany and Sweden, particularly after becoming Queen. That momentous occasion came on December 8, 1907 and despite only being in residence in Sweden during the summer time, left no room for doubt that she was the Queen.

Queen Victoria of Baden was not the type of royal who would be merely symbolic or keep her opinions to herself. She was very definite about maintaining friendly relations with her native Germany, was very upset about the separation of Norway from Sweden and detested the rise of trade unions and socialism in Sweden. For Queen Victoria, elected politicians were people who simply had to be tolerated and she had very strong views about keeping the politically class at a distinct distance from the Royal Family. She was a strong, strict, ‘by the book’ type of lady who did not hesitate to have members of the Royal Guard placed under arrest if they failed to salute her. When, on an official visit to Germany, she was made colonel-in-chief of a Prussian regiment (the Prussian army being famous for its iron-discipline) many thought she had missed her true calling. This caused a further drop in her popularity in Sweden after the outbreak of World War I in which Sweden was neutral but during which time Queen Victoria left no doubt that she was definitely on ‘Team Central Powers’.

Once again, this may be overblown and is somewhat unfair. The Queen was from Baden and it should have come as no surprise that she would sympathize with her native land. Nor was she alone in this and she may have been made a scapegoat for that fact as some murmured that she was influencing the King to be partial toward the Germans. Yet, there was really no need for that as Sweden was neutral and would remain so and many Swedes did sympathize with Germany, particularly as Sweden suffered (as did other neutrals) from the British blockade. The Queen made no secret of her own opinions and she sent a gift to every Swede who volunteered to go and fight in the German Imperial Army. She visited Germany a number of times during the war, met with and corresponded with Kaiser Wilhelm II and set up her own committee to raise money for Swedish defense in case the kingdom was forced into the conflict. In fact, Queen Victoria was in her native Baden visiting her mother at the end of the war when the forces of the revolution moved to destroy the monarchy and evict her family from their ancestral home. They had to slip away and take refuge in the nearby home of a Swedish aristocrat and the new republican government gave orders that they were to be protected because if any harm came to the Queen of Sweden it would surely provoke an international incident.

The changes that came to Sweden during and after the war were very much to her disappointment but, with the fall of Imperial Germany, she lost what influence she had previously had in state affairs. Her marriage had been to strengthen ties with a regime that no longer existed and her health, which had never been robust, began a steady decline. Her last official royal duty on behalf of the Swedish monarchy was a visit to Finland and she settled for the rest of her life in the Kingdom of Italy. She did make one final visit to Sweden but it was strictly private. Queen Victoria of Baden died in Rome on April 4, 1930 at the age of only 67. Her remains to moved to Sweden and she was buried in Riddarholm Church in Stockholm.

What About Scandinavia?

I probably talk about predominately monarchial Scandinavia less than I think I do (wow, three I’s in the first sentence, how solipsistic of the awesome me). It is not because of any lack of respect for the Scandinavian countries, all but one of which are monarchies (unless you count Iceland) which, I assure you, is not the case. For someone who was enthralled with Viking stories as a boy and who had a very colorful aunt who was fond of telling people, “I’m not a damn Jankee, I’m a Norwegian!” I have always had a soft spot for Norway. The Kingdom of Denmark also holds a special place in my heart, as I think it should with all monarchists, as the oldest monarchy in Europe and for being so comparatively revolution-free. I’m also very fond of Queen Margrethe II, though maybe not for the best reasons. I have long admired Sweden, mostly for the great military leaders it produced in centuries past and even republican Finland earned my respect ever since first learning about the valiant defense they offered against the Red Army in the Winter War. One reason you don’t hear much about Scandinavia is because they tend to all be rather orderly countries. What problems they have tend not to be broadcast around the world, they tend to be neutral and they just don’t rock the boat so to speak.

However, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the monarchies of Scandinavia because there do seem to be some misconceptions about them. Especially in the United States, the Scandinavian countries can be quite divisive. People on the left portray them as being absolutely heaven on earth (ignoring the whole monarchy part) where rich people do not exist, everyone is taken care of, Christianity is dead and everyone embraces multiculturalism thanks to a government program encouraging people to show how un-racist they are by having sex with African immigrants (*and no, that is not a joke, they actually did that). On the other hand, people on the right in America tend to view Scandinavia as resting somewhere around the seventh circle of Hell as a region where people are taxed into state dependency, having all their creativity and ambition purged by an oppressive government and where conformity has created a population of wimps who only take pride in how quickly they are dying out and how efficiently they use the corpses of their loved ones as an environmentally friendly energy source (*and no, that is not a joke, that actually happened). So, who is right? Are the Scandinavian countries a utopia that proves socialism works or simply crowned Marxist republics that must be lying about how happy everyone there is?

The truth is really neither one. The Scandinavian countries are not as wonderful as some people think but nor are they as bad as others seem to think. It is true that they are big believers in wealth redistribution so that there is very little income inequality in the Scandinavian countries. Some think that is good, others think that is bad. Society is not so divided by class in these places but that does go with limits to individual rights because it places limitations on success. It is true that crime is very low in these countries, at least compared to some other parts of the world but it is also true that many crimes go unreported because they are concentrated amongst the immigrant community and the authorities prefer to ignore it for fear of being accused of racism if they arrest someone who is not light complexioned. It is true that the monarchies in these countries are totally or effectively ceremonial, however, it is also true that they are widely popular still and are considered by most to be an integral part of the culture and framework of the country. Their populations are, on the whole, quite conformist in that they do tend to hold the same values and opinions on most things but this is not too different from most of the rest of Europe these days and differing points of view do exist. So, let us take them one at a time:

The Kingdom of Sweden is probably the most often singled out as being a socialist success-story (as if such a thing could exist) and being the most nominal monarchy in the world (I would say at least Andorra has them beat on that front). First of all, it is true that Sweden has a tax rate that is nothing short of punitive and they are very free with the government handouts. However, they are certainly not Cuba or North Korea. Socialism does not work, as has been proven all around the world, but Sweden is not so socialist as some might think. First of all, in the old days before the 1960’s the Kingdom of Sweden was one of the most economically free countries on earth. It had very low taxes, very few but quite common-sense government regulations and it had a booming economy and was a major industrial powerhouse. However, as I have often said, one of the biggest problems with capitalism is that it makes countries rich enough to think they can afford socialism and that is basically what happened in Sweden. They got so rich that people started crying about fairness and income inequality and so they went drastically in the socialist direction and, as a result, economic growth ground to a halt, production plummeted and successful people fled the country. However, because of that, Sweden was almost forced to start moderating and moving back in the opposite direction, at least somewhat so that today, although Sweden has the reputation of being very socialistic and the United States has the reputation of being very capitalistic, the amount of regulation and wealth redistribution in Sweden is not that different from the United States.

Now, like the United States, the level of promises made to the people by the government in terms of entitlements is simply not sustainable because these types of socialistic programs depend on an ever increasing number of young workers to pay the tax burden for the sick, the old and the unemployed and the numbers just don’t exist even with Sweden opening its borders to a huge influx of foreigners. These policies cannot carry on indefinitely, the numbers just don’t add up and that will be a big problem in the future. Sweden has never had a huge population, it is simply a country that cannot support one and the native population is practically stagnant while the immigrant population is growing. It’s still not enough to save the future of the welfare state but it does not take a math genius to see that it will ultimately mean that the Swedish population is simply going to be replaced by an ethnically non-Swedish one in the not-too-distant future. It is also true that it is one of the most irreligious countries in the world. However, it is still an officially Christian country, with the Lutheran church as the official state church of Sweden and, of course, it is still a monarchy. The monarch is officially ceremonial with no role in government at all but he does chair the Council of State, opens parliament, appoints the prime minister and all the usual duties so he is at least still able to inform, be informed and give his advice on government matters. He is not totally inconsequential and the majority of the people support the monarchy.

The Kingdom of Norway, the youngest of the Scandinavian countries in terms of its current monarchy, is also a very heavily taxed and heavily regulated country with little income inequality and a generous welfare state. Though, again, it is really not that different from the supposedly hyper-capitalist United States. All of the Scandinavian countries, in fact, have a lower corporate tax rate than the United States so, in a way, they are friendlier to those “evil” big businessmen and corporations than the United States of “Greed is Good” America. What keeps the Norwegian economy in such seemingly good shape in spite of these socialistic policies is the fact that they have a great deal of mineral wealth and I mean, of course, oil. The Norwegian government makes a ton of money from oil and that money is used to fund social welfare programs and so people are going to tell the survey-takers that they are very happy when they get a big oil check from the government on a regular basis. It also helps that they have a very small population in Norway. Like many Middle Eastern countries, when one has huge oil income (in government hands) and a small population (there are far more people -as in several million more- in New York City alone than in the entire Kingdom of Norway), it is easy to have a high standard of living even when the government is wasting money extravagantly.

On the social front, Norway has a higher birth rate than many European countries, but it still is not good, it just is not quite as bad as others. Statistically, Norwegians are still going extinct but they will probably be around to see other European peoples go extinct first. Like Sweden, they are a predominately irreligious country but, again, also still an officially Christian one with the King of Norway titled as the “High Protector of the Church of Norway” which is, of course, Lutheran. However, before one thinks of blaming social ills in Norway on the King because of this, remember that it is not dissimilar from the situation with the Church of England. The King is not a cleric and many of the Lutheran bishops, like so many others in so many other churches, have at times seemed more interested in being relevant and popular than being doctrinally traditional. About 20% of the population are immigrants but their natural growth rate is much higher than that of the native population so, again, it is not difficult to see what those numbers mean for the future of Norway, long-term. Conformity is high but not total and what seems like a population united in shared liberal values can be misleading. The refusal to give a legitimate voice to dissenting views leads to frustration and then violence such as was seen in the mass-shooting of 2011. Many other festering problems are simply being ignored because it would be “politically incorrect” to address them. However, in Norway the King does play a part in government, not being purely ceremonial but more like Britain for example, and Norway has a much greater “independent” streak than many realize. Norway, for example, is a member of the European Economic Area but did not and has not become a member of the European Union and is not a part of the Eurozone which is very much to their credit. So, problems exist, but compared to others, Norway is in a better position to reject bad policies and get back on the right track.

Finally, we have the Kingdom of Denmark, most venerable of the monarchies of the Old World. Here again, I think many people have many misconceptions about Denmark simply because these countries are often lumped together as being part of a uniform, leftist, socialistic, egalitarian Scandinavia which is an over-simplification. The Kingdom of Denmark, for example, is a member of the European Union but is not a member of the Eurozone and still uses the Danish krone as its official currency. It is a typical tax and spend country but it may surprise a great many people to know that on two of the major indexes for measuring economic freedom, the Kingdom of Denmark was ranked higher than that supposed champion of free market capitalism the United States of America. Who would have guessed that? It certainly is not the reputation Denmark has and yet, it is true; Denmark is basically a more economically free country than America. This is due almost entirely to the level of government regulation of the economy. Compared to America, Denmark has a very low level of government regulations while it does have a punitive tax rate and a very generous welfare state. So, the basic difference is that it is actually easier to go out and make money in Denmark than in the United States but, on the other hand, the government will take more of it away from you to give to your unemployed neighbor. As in the other Scandinavian countries, this government generosity with other people’s money attracts many immigrants and while some of that can be regulated, immigration among EU-member states of course cannot so there is a demographic problem similar to that in Norway and Sweden. What is being paid out or is promised to be paid out, compared to what can possibly be taken in by the state just cannot be sustained long-term in Denmark or any of these other countries as things stand.

As elsewhere, the level of irreligion in Denmark is quite high but it is an officially Christian country, no separation of church and state but with freedom of religion. Like the others, it is very egalitarian but I think many would be surprised by how traditional the Danish monarchy remains. Until the middle of the Twentieth Century it had probably the most old fashioned and strict court protocol of any monarchy in Europe and even today, traditional ceremony and protocol are maintained by the Danish court to a degree probably present nowhere else in Europe. The Queen is enthusiastically supported by the people with a roughly 90% approval rating and she retains considerable authority. She presides at meetings and her views are taken seriously. She can even issue laws on her own in an emergency according to clause 23 of the Danish constitution. Some may be surprised that the Danish monarch has a much more free hand than many of her fellow sovereigns. The Queen writes her own speeches and her public messages are much less regulated by the government than in, for example, Great Britain. She is not mere window-dressing and while she certainly shares the overall values of most of her people, she does not bend to fashionable trends either. When people criticized her smoking habit, she told them to butt out; when activists condemned her for wearing fur, she told them to go climb a tree and when multiculturalism led to violence over Danish cartoons the Queen was the only head of state to single out the culprits by name and say that they had to be confronted even if it meant to, “run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance”. If I haven’t said so lately, I think the Queen of Denmark is awesome.

And that, is the overall situation in the monarchies of Scandinavia. Honestly, they are not all that different from the supposedly so much more capitalistic United States when it comes to taxation and wealth redistribution. In truth, most First World countries have adopted fairly similar models of a mixture of socialism and capitalism with governments simply arguing over the degree to which they allow people to keep what they earn. Sweden used to be very economically free, went far to the left, living off the wealth accumulated in the past and since that well ran dry has been moving ever so slightly more to the right in economic terms. Norway is doing pretty good thanks to few people, lots of oil and telling the EU, “no thanks” and Denmark has low regulations, a rather grand monarchy and recently put out a sign saying “Seek asylum elsewhere”. They all have problems to be sure and the basic economic model used by all three (and so many more) is simply not possible to continue in the long-term. However, they still have the tools to correct and rebuild and the monarchies in these countries provide something important, socially and economically even in the cases where they are reduced to only a ceremonial status and that is a sense of unity and stability. Monarchists say that a lot and republicans tend to dismiss it but anyone who follows the stock markets of the world can tell you that the simple perception of stability by people can make a huge difference. Even communist Chinese state-run CCTV once made this point, asking an expert why Japan, with its rapid turnover of governments, does not scare away investment like many other countries do with similar political instability. The expert replied that a big part of it was His Majesty the Emperor who, even while having no part in politics, provides a sense of stability just by being there. Even symbols can be very important and if you don’t believe me, try burning the Stars & Stripes in middle America or wearing a t-shirt with the Dalai Lama on it in downtown Peking. The Scandinavian countries have their problems and they have their positive aspects and their monarchies are definitely positives.

Monarch Profile: King Charles XII of Sweden

In the early eighteenth century, the Kingdom of Sweden dominated the scene in Europe and that was thanks entirely to the military genius and the astounding audacity of King Charles XII, the monarch who earned the nickname of “the last Viking”. He was born on June 17, 1682 in Stockholm, the only surviving son of King Charles XI and, during his youth, was given a superb education in both the civil and military spheres. He also learned his trade alongside his father and succeeded him upon his death in 1697. For a short time there was a regency to assist the young King Charles XII but his maturity and talent were so impressive that within a year the teenage monarch was ruling on his own. Early on matters of national defense seemed to dominate much of his agenda and he set to work taking the already efficient, disciplined and veteran army he inherited from his father and making it even better. For a country like the Kingdom of Sweden, living on the harsh, northern edge of Europe with a very small population to draw on, having an extremely large army was never an option. Since the Swedes could not be bigger, they had to be better. They had to fight smarter and Charles XII took steps to ensure that.

In the spirit of the great King Gustavus Adolphus who had gone before him, King Charles XII further integrated the infantry, cavalry and artillery in his army as well as putting a renewed emphasis on close combat and bayonet training. Although a vicious weapon, many people misunderstand the bayonet. It is primarily a psychological weapon. More often than not a bayonet charge did not end in violence at all but with the enemy force having retreated before the attackers arrived. Like most of the greatest military leaders in history, King Charles XII also did not neglect the art of logistics and he modernized the transportation of his army so that supplies could more readily keep pace with the advancing forces at the front. A soldier who is well fed, watered and clothed will always fight better and the results were so noticeable that other European armies began to follow the Swedish example and organize themselves in the same way. By better combining the different branches of the army and streamlining his logistical support, King Charles XII really made the Swedish army like a well-oiled machine, every part working together to produce a fighting force that was able to perform out of all proportion to its size. Unfortunately, not every neighboring power was quick to recognize this. They assumed that the young and inexperienced monarch would be easy to defeat which would make Sweden easy to dominate. They were proven disastrously wrong.

During April of 1700 the Kingdoms of Denmark, Poland and the Russian Empire joined in alliance against the Swedes, starting what later became known as the “Great Northern War”. At first, Charles XII mostly remained on the sidelines. He was a new monarch and it was only naturally that not everyone should trust him immediately. However, his father had chosen good generals to command the army and the King mostly left matters to them and they were able to mount such a defensive that the forces of the alliance against Sweden were stopped. From then on, however, King Charles XII took a more decisive part in fighting the war and showed his aggressive nature by ordering a counterattack against the Danes. It was a swift and stunning success and in no time at all the Swedes had overrun Denmark and forced the government to withdraw from the alliance with the Treaty of Travendal on August 28, 1700. Not allowing the enemy to regain the initiative, King Charles XII went on the attack again and rushed to Livonia (the coastal area of what is now mostly Latvia and Estonia), where Russian forces were besieging the Swedish-held city of Narva in October. He was faced by no less a figure than Tsar Peter the Great who was leading a Russian army of almost 70,000 men but King Charles XII, with only 10,000 men, advanced through a raging blizzard, attacked and totally defeated the blinded and bewildered Russian army.

At that point, following their surrender, the Russians had lost almost all of their modern military equipment and would have been almost defenseless in case of attack. However, King Charles XII still had other enemies to deal with and so he turned his army against Poland and Saxony. In the three years that followed, King Charles XII and his Swedes dominated the battlefields, defeating the Polish and Saxon armies and occupying each of their capital cities in turn. When 1705 rolled around the Baltic had essentially become a Swedish lake and King Charles XII stood triumphant over all of his enemies. The Russians, with their massive reserves of manpower, were the only ones still standing and Tsar Peter the Great had no desire to continue the fight as things were and was anxious to make peace. The Swedish monarch responded to peace well but his experience probably made him over-confident, especially regarding the Russians. He did, quite wisely, use the peace to refurbish his army, rebuild and strengthen it but he also displayed a lack of respect for the Russians he had so easily defeated before. King Charles XII famously said, “There is nothing in winning victories over the Muscovites; they can be beaten at any time.” It was a rather condescending attitude to take, but given his crushing victories thus far, one can understand why the mentality existed.

King Charles XII won battles by skill, quick-thinking and stunning audacity. In 1708 he made his most audacious move ever and, quite probably, his biggest mistake. He decided to invade the Russian Empire. He had already put down all his other enemies and no doubt reasoned that Russia would have to be dealt with permanently at some point and so it would be better to strike fast before the odds grew even more slanted in Russia’s favor. All the same, one can only marvel at the audacity of a King of Sweden launching an invasion of Russia. This was Sweden, not Napoleonic France or Germany that was dominating most of the continent, with numerous countries to draw support from, and it took no small amount of nerve for the King of Sweden to look across the border to the massive Russian Empire and say, ‘I think I can take’ them’. Peace offers were cast aside and the King took his Swedish army into Russia. What played out was something that Napoleon would have likely found familiar. On February 5, King Charles XII captured Grodno, he sat out the spring thaw in Minsk and as summer began resumed his offensive. However, the Russians refused to meet him in a face-to-face battle. They retreated before the Swedish army, destroying anything of value while at the same time harassing Charles XII with small-scale attacks of attrition.

The harsh winter had reduced his small army at the outset and his forces had been further bled from minor skirmishes and the privation caused by the loss of his supply train to attacks by the Russian cavalry. Nonetheless, Charles XII was nothing if not combative and on June 28 he finally met the main Russian army in battle at Poltava (in what is now Ukraine). With only 14,000 men to start the Swedes battled around 45,000 Russians (later more) in bitter fighting that went on and on for eighteen hours. To make matters worse, the King had earlier been wounded and had to pass field command to Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld. Although they put up a long and grueling fight, in the end, the Swedes were defeated and almost wiped out. The Marshal was captured and only the King and about 1,500 soldiers were able to escape. The Swedes had reached their ‘high water mark’ and would never be quite the same again. One participant in the battle had been the Cossack Hetman of Ukraine Ivan Mazepa, a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, who had defected to the Swedes when he learned that Tsar Peter intended to replace him. He had hoped to create an independent Ukraine but found himself a refugee with the Swedish King after the battle (the Skoropadsky replacing him).

Encouraging a Ukrainian rebellion against Russia had not worked but Charles XII did not give up. He and his little party made their way south to the territory of the Ottoman Empire where he tried to persuade the Turks to make war on Russia. Unfortunately for him, he was not successful in this either and the Turkish Sultan finally became so tired of his nagging and his presence which was offensive to Russia that he set his own army against the Swedish King and his tiny, ragged band of soldiers. King Charles XII was forced to flee again and made an epic trek across Eastern Europe, through Ottoman territory, across the Hapsburg lands of the Holy Roman Empire before finally arriving in Swedish Pomerania (in what is now Germany and Poland). He had not been home for ten years but had continued to rule Sweden all that time, as best he could, from a distance. He had been through a terrible ordeal but it had done nothing to dampen his zeal and determination. He set to work immediately to rebuild his army and drive out those who had taken advantage of his absence to encroach on Swedish territory.

Showing the same skill and tenacity, Charles XII battled for two years, winning for the most part, before gaining sufficient strength, in his estimation, to launch an invasion of Norway in 1718. Sadly, it was to be his last campaign. On November 30 at a battle near Halden he was shot in the head and killed. He was only thirty-six years old but had lived quite an extraordinary, and quite an adventurous life, in that short span of time. He was succeeded by his sister, Ulrika Eleanora, who immediately made peace, surrendering most of the Swedish possessions in the Baltic. With the death of King Charles XII the era of Swedish domination had come to an end and the era of Russian domination was just beginning. His accomplishments were astounding and probably all the more because he died so young and on the field of battle, facing the enemy. His daring attacks and adept maneuvering of his army allowed him to defeat forces greater than his own time and time again. He knew that in his position he would have to take risks to be successful and he was certainly not afraid of taking risks and the bolder the better. His one, greatest mistake will always be the invasion of Russia and historians will probably always argue over why he turned down the chance for peace to embark on a campaign with the odds so heavily stacked against him. Perhaps he felt that, as poor as they were, they would only be worse later and conflict was inevitable. We may never know, however, he will always be a favorite of mine simply for his audacity and, once again, it certainly takes audacity, whether rightly or wrongly, for a King of Sweden to try to conquer Russia. I cannot but admire audacity on such a grand scale as that.