I’ve been watching ‘Vikings’ on television again this summer, and always find it fascinating to see how Norwegian and Danish seafaring culture impacted the culture of the British Isles in the early medieval period. But this series, or the series ‘The Last Kingdom’, focuses almost entirely on the eastern and southern realms of Anglo-Saxon England:Continue reading “The Princes of the Isles: From Viking Warlords to the Great Clan MacDonald”
Category Archives: Scandinavia
The Prince of Wedel: Last one in, shuts the door
The northernmost kingdoms of Europe never had much of a high aristocracy; in marked contrast to Naples, which had hundreds of ducal and princely titles, Norway, Sweden, Denmark had almost none. Neither did the northern German principalities like Brandenburg or Pomerania. At most, nobles were junkers, barons, and occasionally counts. What this northern domain didContinue reading “The Prince of Wedel: Last one in, shuts the door”
The Lieven Princes: How minor nobles from the Baltic spread their wings on the currents of Swedish and Russian empires
The Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia were long dominated by German nobles who settled in the wake of conversion crusades led by military orders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Over the centuries that followed, they formed a fairly closed set of families, intermarrying and retaining their authority over the local native populations (Estonians,Continue reading “The Lieven Princes: How minor nobles from the Baltic spread their wings on the currents of Swedish and Russian empires”
A New Royal House for Denmark: Laborde de Monpezat
In the long and varied history of European monarchy there have always been aspirations by the families of dukes and princes to move up in rank into the world of royalty. There have been some great success stories, for example the princes of Orange forging a new monarchy in the Low Countries in the eighteenthContinue reading “A New Royal House for Denmark: Laborde de Monpezat”
Fouché d’Otrante: French Neapolitan dukes in Sweden
Some dukedoms are awarded to die-hard republicans, based on a territory not connected in any way to the grantee, the title formally removed by one country, then reclaimed by descendants living in another. Not often, it has to be admitted. But such is the story of the ancestors of one of the grandest Swedish aristocratsContinue reading “Fouché d’Otrante: French Neapolitan dukes in Sweden”
Dukes of Oldenburg and Schleswig-Holstein
The name Windsor was chosen to represent the royal family of the United Kingdom in 1917, taken, quite rightly, from the castle that had been at the centre of royal operations in England since the 11th century. But if we go back to an older way of giving names to royal dynasties, the name traditionallyContinue reading “Dukes of Oldenburg and Schleswig-Holstein”
Dukes and Princes 