1523 – Gustav Vasa is elected King of Sweden by the Swedish Parliament and the Kalmar League breaks down.
The Kalmar Confederacy (1397–1524), also known as the Kalmar Union or Kalmar Confederacy, was a Scandinavian confederation of Denmark, Sweden (including southern Finland) and Norway in the late 14th and early 16th centuries
The Confederation of scandinavian states formed in June 1397 in Kalmar, Sweden, was formed, and the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark shared a monarch. States surrender their sovereignty without prejudice to their independent status and divergent interests.
The Swedes were not happy that the Danes often strengthened ties with Schleswig, Holstein, Mecklenburg and Pomerania in the German region, because the Swedish economy at that time was dominated by the export of iron to the European continent, especially the German region. At the beginning of the Alliance, Margaret I's gentle means made the Danish royal family popular with the nobles of various countries.
But then the Danish royal family continued to try to control the internal affairs of Norway and Sweden, which led to the separation of the alliance from Germany. Frequent wars affected Sweden's revenues, and Denmark's centralized government raised suspicion among the Swedes. TheRefore, the Swedish Privy Council demanded that the Government maintain a fair degree of autonomy. However, during the Union period, the Danish king could not always be the regent or king of Sweden at the same time.
Such as the reign of King Carl VIII of Sweden. In these intervals, the de facto ruler of Sweden was usually a regent elected from among the country's nobles. The alliance of the three kingdoms placed the entire Nordic region under the rule of a single king, favoring the Nordic countries against the German Hanseatic League's monopoly on trade in the Baltic and North Seas.
In order to break the Hanseatic Alliance's domination of Baltic trade and continue to expand abroad, Denmark annexed the German Schleswig and Holstein after a long war. Christian I of the Denmark Dynasty of Oldenburg gained control of Schleswig and Holstein in the German region. At the end of the 15th century, the contradictions between the Danish royal family and the Swedish nobility intensified, and conflicts against the alliance continued to break out.
Christian II (reigned 1513-1523) personally led a heavy army to conquer Stockholm, the capital of Sweden occupied by the Swedish independenceists, in 1520, and massacred a large number of Swedish nobles who participated in the rebellion, known as the "Stockholm Massacre". The incident triggered an uprising in Dalarna Province.
In 1521 the Swedish nobleman Gustav Vassa re-recruited an army against Denmark in Dalarna Province. In 1523, Gustav Vasa invaded Stockholm with the help of the Hanseatic League, the Danish army was defeated, and Sweden regained its independence.
Gustav Vasa was re-elected King of Sweden on 6 June 1523, restoring Swedish sovereignty and breaking up the union. Until now, Gustav's coronation day remains Sweden's national holiday, but it was not until 2005 that Sweden's national day officially became an official holiday.
By 1523, the Swedish nobleman Gustav Vassar had become King of Sweden, and the alliance had collapsed. The Kalmar Union officially ended the following year, beginning with Margaret I, serving as 5 monarchs and 12 regents for a total of 93 years, but Norway and its overseas possessions continued to be ruled by the Oldenburg dynasty under the name of Denmark-Norway for many centuries until the end of the alliance.
After Sweden regained its independence, the Kalmar Union had disintegrated, but Denmark and Norway remained union states. In 1534 Norway was stripped of its status as a kingdom and demoted to a province of Denmark. In the 17th century, Sweden was constantly at war with Denmark for supremacy in the Baltic Sea. In 1658, Sweden finally recovered the long-occupied southern coastal area of Scandinavia.
In 1809, the Russian Empire annexed Finland under Swedish rule. After the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark transferred Norway to Sweden under the Treaty of Kiel in 1814. After a brief period of armed resistance, Norway became a kingdom under the king of Sweden. In 1905, Norway became independent from Sweden peacefully. In 1944, Iceland became independent from Denmark. The Faroe Islands and Greenland remain Danish territories today.