To Create a Dynasty. «The Kin of Sverre» And Norwegian Medieval Inheritance Law

The article suggests a hypothesis that in so-called periods of «civil wars» (1130–1240) and «epoch of greatness» or «storhetstiden» (1240–1319) in Norway there was prospective and retrospective dynastic planning as part of the state policy. It provided by order of Sverrir, an impostor, who become the king of Norway, and his successors («the Sverrir clan») this planning and realized by the compilers of sagas and laws who were in their service. The main methods of this planning were manipulation of historical memory reflected in the monuments of historical writing, and also name-giving. By the use of these methods within the dynasty of the Norwegian kings from its legendary founder Harald Fairhair and the «Sverrir clan» as its part were modeled linages as specific mental schemes. They did not reflect real agnatic structures as representations of kinship relations, which had to connect real and imaginary ancestors and descendants. These constructions were intended for legitimizing of the origin and rights to power both Sverrir himself and those representatives of the royal dynasty he descended from as well as his own offspring. Lineages were composed both of those members of the royal family who had the same names, which made the descendants like their ancestors, and on the basis of similar kinship configurations that appeared as a result of marriages between representatives of the royal dynasty and the Norwegian nobility. The need of dynastic planning was closely linked to changes in Norwegian inheritance and family law. The article shows how the situation within the «Sverrir clan» influenced to the formation of succession laws of 1273 and 1302, and the assertion of the principle «Norway is the king’s honor» led to the contamination of their norms with the general inheritance law ones.

Norway, Sverrir, inheritance law, genealogy, historical writing, «civil wars» in Norway, odal, Hakon V