Akademisk avhandling--Stockholms högskola. / Leaf containing thesis note in full inserted in front. "Källor och litteratur": p. [ix]-xviii.

The purpose of this study is to examine the seldom researched Swedish geopolitical interests inNorway in the first half of the 17th century, with the brief 1658 conquest of Trondheim as itscentral event of inquiry. Through the study of privy council protocols and chancellor AxelOxenstierna’s correspondence, the study builds a case for the confluence of security, commerce, andthe concepts of nations as the influencing factors that shaped Swedish imperial foreign policy in thedecades leading up to the dramatic war of 1658, yielding a theoretical construction of the Empire’sBaltic doctrine, or the Oxenstierna doctrine, as an explanatory model for Sweden’s early modernexpansion patterns. Subsequently through understanding of the Empire’s expansionist rationaleleading up to 1658, the conquest of the Norwegian province of Trondheim is put in a new light ashaving been an interruptive and complicated re-imagining of what the Swedish Empire should be.

This thesis is a micro-historical study of the role of honour in interpersonal conflicts in the Danish-Norwegian crown colony of Greenland between 1728 and 1731. In the two settlements that constituted the colony, the highest-ranking officials, including the governor, were all oath-sworn royal servants; they were also almost constantly embroiled in personal quarrels. The thesis asks why and how this strife arose, how it developed over time, and what its consequence was for the short- lived crown colony. The argument is that the strife was due to a volatile combination of cramped living quarters in an inhospitable milieu, an ambiguously defined leadership structure, the remoteness of the colony, and, above all, the royal servants’ tendency to view their charge as being closely linked to their personal honour. Furthermore, there was not a sufficiently developed legal system in the colony to handle the strife and attempts by the colonial council to do so made the conflicts worse instead of settling them. The ongoing strife divided the colonists between those loyal to the governor and those loyal to his enemies, but over time the governor became increasingly politically isolated in the face of a united colony council. Ultimately, the thesis argues that, as a final consequence of the antagonism, a sort of silent coup was carried out against the governor. This, in turn, contributed to the termination of the Greenland crown colony. Honour was not the main cause of conflict, but it helped the conflict to grow from technical disagreements into bitter grudges and anxieties, and finally into an attack on the integrity of the colonial leadership structure itself. / Activating Arctic Heritage, National Museum of Denmark