Christoffer of Bavaria was elected king of Denmark April 9 1440 and shortly afterwards of Sweden and Norway as well. The Kalmar Union had been restored, but now worked under entirely new conditions. The Councils of the Realm in all three countries had secured power by deposing Erik of Pomerania, which meant that instead of the heavily centralised and relatively absolute Danish reign – as had been the case under Margrethe and Erik of Pomerania – there was now one king who was forced to negotiate with the three councils. The politics of the councils worked to ensure that only domestic nobles got leading posts in the administrations of respective countries; that there was a national government to rule when the king was in one of the other countries; and that the revenue of the individual country was not used for purposes irrelevant to it. In addition to this, there was a gradually increasing interest in acquiring more noble privileges, as well as right of veto for the Councils of …show more content…
History would repeat itself in 1464, this time the other way around as Christian was deposed and Karl returned as king. Apart from a few brief exceptions, this would prove to be the end of the joint rule between Denmark and Norway on one side, with Sweden on the other. The issue remained a part of the political agenda until 1523, however. Sweden was in this period marked by political power struggles of varying amounts of violence between different factions, who either supported or were against the Danish king taking the Swedish throne (or merely used the point of contention to further their own ambitions). In Denmark, the king’s efforts to claim the Swedish throne by means of war or diplomacy drained the national coffers. The consequences of this were additional taxes on the population and occasionally large concessions to the political interests of the Danish