For most of the Viking Age, there was no single kingdom of ‘Sweden’: instead, there were a series of petty kingdoms, the most prominent of which were the kingdom of the Svear and the kingdom of the Gautar. The Svear were the inhabitants of eastern central Sweden comprising the modern regions of Uppland and Södermanland (an area historically referred to as Svealand), whereas the Gautar lived in southern Sweden, in Östergötland and Västergötland (collectively called Götaland, and often identified with 'Geatland', the homeland of Beowulf in the Old English poem of the same name).

​

Throughout early Swedish history, we are left with the impression that Swedish kings had a weaker position in society than those elsewhere in Scandinavia. There is some evidence in written sources to support this. It is implied that magnates wielded a lot of power and were sometimes able to overrule the king. The Life of Anskar describes the activities of the missionary Anskar, who travelled to Birka in Svealand in the mid-ninth century and experienced modest success in converting the local population to Christianity. According to the pattern of the Life, the Swedish kings with whom Anskar interacted were generally receptive to the idea of Christianity (or at least prepared to allow fate rule on the topic, as in the second mission when the Swedish king cast lots to determine if missionaries would be allowed in. It was amongst their nobles that Anskar encountered resistance. Nearly two centuries later, Svear king Olaf Skotkonung may even have been exiled from Svealand by his nobles, retreating to rule Götaland.

​

Nevertheless, we have to be careful about making comparisons with Norway or Denmark based on the nature of the evidence that is available. After all, there is plenty of evidence, particularly from Norway, that suggests that the power of kings could be limited. For example, Hakon the Good was unable to convert the people of Trøndelag to Christianity and had to yield to their threats of physical violence. Jarl Hákon, Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf Haraldsson were all brought down by their own subjects.

​

Because we know less about Sweden than about Norway, stories of weak kings unable to assert their will make up a larger proportion of what we do know and so have been allowed to define our perspective more. Furthermore, it took longer for Sweden to have a stable monarchy than Denmark or Norway, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that kings there were any weaker. This idea stems from a nationalistic view of history which views the formation of a stable kingdom as the natural endpoint to an evolutionary process. By this logic, if it took longer for the kingdom of Sweden to become established, its kings must have been ‘weaker’. Increasingly, scholarship is moving away from the tendency to define political processes by their end results (this is sometimes referred to as ‘teleology’) and most scholars are prepared to accept that the creation of a single Swedish kingdom was no more likely than, say the formation of separate kingdoms of the Svear and Gautar: the way things eventually turned out was circumstantial.