As the result of over three centuries of foreign and domestic war,
Norway and her people and her industries were prostrate when in 1389
Queen Margaret of Denmark claimed the succession to the throne of
Norway for her son Eric of Pomerania. The council of Norway and the
people were willing to accept a union with a more populous country
under a powerful sovereign in order to obtain peace and reestablish
order and prosperity. Norway had not been conquered by Denmark, and
the union was supposed to be equal. The Danish sovereigns, however,
without directly interfering with the local laws and usages of the
people of Norway, filled all the executive and administrative offices
in Norway with Danes; the important commands in the army were also
given exclusively to them. The result was that the interpretation and
execution of the laws of the land were in the hands of foreigners,
and Norway became and remained for four hundred years a province of
Denmark and unable to throw off the yoke because her army was in the
control and command of her oppressor, and her material resources
inadequate to wage successful war against him.

Like Norway, the most that we know of prehistoric times in Sweden we
gather from the early sagas, which are more or less faulty in their
statements, romantic and tragic though they be. Like the Norwegians,
the early Swedes are reported to have migrated from Asia under the
leadership of a chief who called himself Odin. And for centuries under
different kings and queens, the romantic and tragic story of Sweden
goes on to form at last her authentic history. In this brief survey we
can not go into details, and its history is very much the same as that
of Norway, except that Sweden was oftener her own mistress and at
longer intervals.

The sources of Swedish history during the first two centuries of the