Magnus IV of Sweden

Magnus IV Eriksson, king of Sweden of 1319 with 1363, and king of Norway of 1319 with 1343.

Magnus Smek Eriksson was born in 1316. He is the son of Erik Magnusson (1282-1318) - duke of Södermanland and brother of the king Birger of Sweden - and of his wife, Ingeborg Hakonsdatter of Norway.

Magnus is elected king de Norvège ( Magnus VII ) the June 28th 1319, like successor of its maternal grandfather, the king Håkon V of Norway; then, king de Suède the July 8th according to, by the partisans of his father, after the deposition of his/her uncle. He is placed under the regency of his mother Ingeborg Hakonsdatter until in 1323, and of noble Magnus Ketilmund, 1319 to the April 24th 1332, when its effective reign began.

The first years of reign of the young king were beneficial. He benefitted from the collapse of the Danish power to acquire in 1333 the detached southernmost coastal provinces of the kingdom of Denmark - Scanie, Blekinge, and later, Halland. In 1350, it made carry out the compilation of an applicable code in all the campaigns, and of a general municipal law. These two measurements were to contribute largely to the administrative unification of the country. A little later the kingdom was touched by the Black Death and its population was decimated.

King Magnus neglecting the Norway with the profit of the Sweden, noble dissatisfied Norwegian obliged it, as of 1343, to give up the throne in favor of his/her son junior Håkon VI by Norway. A council peerage-book then controlled Norway in the name of the young king, and the personal union between the two kingdoms was broken.

During following years, the needs for money of the king encouraged this one to implement an anti-aristocratic fiscal policy and anticlerical. In Sweden, the rebellion of his/her Eric oldest son drove out it capacity of 1356 with 1359. In 1362, after the untimely death of the young king Eric XII, king Magnus had to agree to associate Håkon VI of Norway with the throne of Sweden. In 1360, the king Valdemar IV of Denmark made profitable these disorders to recover the Scanie, the Halland and the Blekinge.

The alliance of Håkon with the king Valdemar IV of Denmark - from which he married the girl Marguerite - caused the deposition of the father and the son, and the accession with the throne of Sweden of Albert de Mecklembourg, the nephew of Magnus IV. This last, captured in the combat which followed, remained imprisoned of 1365 with 1371.

Maguns IV died drowned close to Bergen, in Norway, where it had withdrawn on February 1st 1374. In 1335, it had married Blanche of Namur, girl of the count Jean de Namur. The couple will have two children:

Sources

  • Lucien Musset, Scandinavian People with the Middle Ages , PUF, Paris, 1951.

Category: Death in 1374

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