Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[Tobtor]

You wound me sir! I'm always shocked how little respect I get in this forum after all these years. The herring market actually crashed for the first time in the end of the 14th Century. From the wiki:

I did not mean to "wound you". But you come with very sweeping statements, and some of them are actually very wrong. You say I "confuse" or "misunderstand" things, So I could have equal rights to be wounded.

On the Skania and the Herring markets

The herring market actually crashed for the first time in the end of the 14th Century

While the wiki-pedia has:

"The abundance of herring around Scania abruptly ceased in the beginning of the 15th century and the region lost its importance as a trading place."

So that seems to imply that it did NOT crash in the 14th but in the 15th century. Though it is at odds with Danish sources I have sayng it happens in the 1500-hundred (16th century). To mavoid "english" versus danish sources i here quote the Swedish wikipedia:

Fiskemarknaderna i Skanör - Falsterbo drog årligen under 1200-talet fram till början av 1500-talet till sig tiotusentals besökare. Den danske kungen garanterade genom sina fogdar att ordning och lag upprätthölls på fiskmarknaden.

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skan%C3%B6rs_borg
and

När sillen uteblev 1560 slutade marknadens storhetstid i Skåne, Skanör och Falsterbo nästan ödelades, samtidigt med de vendiska städernas stagnationsperiod.

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sk%C3%A5nemarknaden

Skanör (danish Skanør) and Falsterbo was the two most important herring markets in Scania. Perhaps its a translation error in the English wikiepedia (a situation were 15oo-talet became not 1500-hundreds but 15th century thing?). I can find my old medieval history professor wrting that the top of the herring trade was around 1400, thus excluding a crash in the late 14th century. I am more inclined to trust the combined statements of a history professor, the Danish and Swedish wikipedia, Danish encyclopedias etc, than the English wikipedia about stuff happening in Scania in the medieval period.

More broadly, this is how I understand the Skania market. The market was seasonal and moved every year as it was always located wherever the herring were running.

Again this is wrong. Sorry, but it is. I respect you knowledge on the Baltic, town history etc, but here you are out of you area. The Scania market is referring to a series of markets, often many held each years. They where held annually at both Skanør, Falsterbo and even on the island of Amager at Dragør (Amager is a island of the Zealand coast). The main sites where used every year, castles where built to run the trade and gather the taxes etc, thus not moving about every year! A few smaller markets where held in other places during high periods.

More than once the Danes were thrown out.

Really? Can you come with other examples than the one already discussed?

The other booths selling various other more general trade items - beer, weapons, textiles, glassware, and so on, was an adjunct to the main show, i.e. the fish harvest and fish market.

As I mentioned earlier: this is true in the early parts of the market history, but as towns grew in the 13th-14th century the Scania markets stopped being important for other trade, and became specialised herring places.

On Scania and the political situation in Sacandinavia in the medeival period

Scania may have technically been ruled by the Danish crown, but of course in theory Sweden was part of Denmark through out the Late Middle Ages, but one Kingdom laying claim to a given area was usually a matter of degree in those times.

and

in the Middle Ages it's a bit fraught to declare a given piece of land as "Swedish" or "Danish" or "German" or "Russian" since whatever government ostensibly laid claim to it often had a tenuous level of actual control.

Here you should be careful. You are mixing very different parts of Europe (did not you warn about that sort of things a few posts back?).

First of: Scania was as Danish as Zealand during the medieval period (and until the 17th century!). They spoke danish, followed danish laws, elected danish kings, sat in the "dane court" and the bloody Danish archbishop was placed in Lund! It is as Danish as Kent or East Anglia is English. No one in the medieval period contested this! In Scandinavia there was much more agreement about which lands lay where than in "continental" Europe.

The main issues like this was the border to Germany, as the danish lords (later dukes) of Slesvig also ended up with Holstein and was thus both Danish and German lords, and then situations arising from the "Baltic crusades" (Rügen became part of the Danish bishopry of Roskilde, even after the kings lost control).

Secondly yes Sweden was sort of under danish control, but Sweden was not "part of Denmark". It was ruled with Swedish laws and a Swedish council under a common king/queen. So its like the "united kingdom". Scotland didn't become part of England, it became part of the united kingdom (though England was - and is- clearly the dominant party in the union...).

Denmark was mostly, though not always inimical, as they were in an almost permanent power struggle with the larger Hanseatic towns over control of the Oresund (

and generally opposed to the burgher estate it seems

).

Refering to the bolded opart.
NO, not always. After Lübeck had been founded by Henry the Lion, it served a short period as Danish royal town (early 13th century) and theycontinued the rights and expanded the town (then due to shifting alliances it became German again and became a free town in 1220'ies). Also Christian the second was very popular among the burghers,and one of his main advisors was the mayor of Malmö (in Scania...), another was the Dutch born Sigbrit Villoms, mother of Dyveke who was mistress of the king. Even after the dead of Dyveke Sigbrit acted almost as chancelor for the king and he promoted dutch immigrant to Copenhagen and gave the towns extended rights etc. In general the kings was more on the side of the peasants and burghers of Denmark than the Hanseatic league who often supported the danish nobles in their struggle against the king. The nobles sought to limit burgher and peasant rights, this was supported by the Hnase partly due to wanting to damage the danish kings (and perhaps to avoid competition from Danish towns?).¨

Well I guess it depends on how you define a 'minor battle', but you do have quite a few incidents. For example the Dalarna rising in 1434, led by Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson (say that 3 times with a mouth full of beer I dare you) which had quite significant consequences. As far as I'm aware it led to the expulsion of Danes from Sweden. And the army was mainly peasants, as well as some miners and a few burghers and petty nobles.

Which is the ones I mentioned in my previous post:

The Peasant rebellions during the rule of Erik (1412-1439)? Because in that war Erik fought against the Hanse and Holstein duchy, but the taxes cause rebellions in Sweden and Norway (AFTER the war had ended!).

You often in these threads alude to Swedish peasant being well armed as a result of mercenaries defeated, that requires that there is at least a few good of examples of such defeats...

Did you read the wikipedia article? Englebrekt killed off a few locally appointed nobles, not a mercenary army. Then he lost power to another Swede (a noble): Karl Knutsson. Karl became King of Sweden when Eirk gave up bieng a king to turn pirate (much more fun!).

Karl Knutson (the swede) was then thrown out by the peasant reinstating a Danish king, first Christopher, then Karl Knutson again when Christoffer died without children, and later the "lower nobility" and burghers got Christian I of Denmark installed. Karl Knutson came back several times though, finally he won power with an army of german and polish mercenaries (due to Christian 1 imprisoning a memeber of a leading Swedish noble family who had helped him gain the throne in the first place).

The medieval period have many examples (Swedish, norweigean, finish, Danish etc) peasant rebellions. They are typiccally only succsful if they gain support from either a royal pretender or the nibility (often the lower nobility), or the Hanse.

... the one in Sweden being notable that it is only one of two I'm aware of on that scale in which the Peasants were specifically represented as one of the Estates.

In the meeting of the estates in Denmark in the late 15th and the 16th century the peasants was represneted through elected peasant at the local things (herredsting - county things)....

The three national things had been lawgiving and elected the kings in the early medieval, but had lost power to the court (Dane hoffet - the dane court - A sort of large assembly of nobles and bishops etc, and in afew cases possibly even peasant) in the 14th ad early 15th century. They at this time was mainly judicial in natur (judging according to the law, not making the law). But as the dane court gradually lost power in the 15th to a "rigsråd" (natinal counsel consisting of a small group of leading nobles), the meetings of the four estates became sort of a way for the King to limit the power of the high nobility (they at least in theroy had to elect the kings, and approve taxes etc). Note that Scanians was part of both natoiional things, the dane court, the national counsil, and the assmblages in their respective periods... Sweden and Norway had their own institutions separately but all under the Danish king (during the union period).