The Civil Wars Revisited (original) (raw)

(Norwegian) Historisk Tidsskrift 2003:1, pp. 43-73; and in Offa: Berichte und Mitteilungen zur Urgeschichte, Frühgeschichte und Mittelalterarchäologie, Vol. 58, Neumünster 2003, pp. 179-194

have been devoted to these conflicts and their causes, but little has been done to study them in a Scandinavian perspective. The early accounts of this period all treat them as personal struggles for power between rivals and their adherents. In the twentieth century most historians were not satisfied with such simple and personal explanations, and have, instead, looked for more fundamental causes, ideological, constitutional, economic or regional. It cannot be denied that such factors had a role, but here it is argued that rivalry for royal power was far more important, and attention is drawn to the individuals involved and the strategies planned by and for them. Throughout Scandinavia these involved the creation of power networks, in which women were not only pawns but also important agents. The