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Margaretha Nordquist

About me

Margaretha Nordquist is researcher and senior lecturer at the Department of History and the Centre for Medieval Studies at Stockholm University.

I defended my PhD thesis (A Struggle for the Realm) at Stockholm University in 2015. My thesis is a study of late medieval Swedish history writing, Sturekrönikan and Cronica Swecie, as ideological expressions. My research interests are related to political, cultural, and social history, in particular people’s conceptions about the past, in the form of memory. I am interested in how such conceptions have been expressed in historiography and other narrative sources from the Middle Ages, and how they were used to sustain identities, norms, and arguments about power. I am also conducting research on gender, genealogy, women and power in the Middle Ages and early modern era.

Research areas:

  • Medieval historiography and chronicles
  • Cultural memory
  • Identity formation processes and premodern conceptions of collective identities
  • Women and power in medieval and early modern societies
  • Genealogy

Research

My general research interests concern historiography, memory and cultural continuity, and identity formation in medieval society. In my dissertation I analysed vernacular rhyme chronicles from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries as ideological expressions, where the representation of the past constituted arguments about power and the realm.

 

Women writing genealogy. Memory, kinship and identity formation in Sweden and Denmark c. 1400–1750

Currently, I am working on research project financed by Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) that investigates constructions of family, community, and self in genealogical writings by aristocratic women in Sweden and Denmark between c. 1400–1750. There are several extant genealogical manuscripts, or family books (släktböcker), written and compiled by women from this period that point to the importance that they ascribed to the past. The project explores the varied contents of these manuscripts as expressions of memory culture, whereby the notion of genealogy as a gendered cultural phenomenon is seen as fundamental for conceptions of kinship, memory, and identity in the late medieval and early modern eras. These genealogical accounts can also potentially be seen as a bridge between family memories and the narratives of the realm or the state; or as a way of inscribing the family into the history of the community.

 

Conceptions about the past: identity formation, genealogy, and myths of origin in late medieval Scandinavia

In a previous project "Conceptions about the past: identity formation, genealogy, and myths of origin in late medieval Scandinavia", financed by Åke Wiberg Foundation, I examined how conceptions of the past are represented in various forms of discourse in the period c. 1350–1450, with a focus on genealogical models of memory and continuity, origin myths, and processes of identity formation on different levels in the Scandinavian area.

 

Regent consorts in medieval Sweden

Together with Kim Bergqvist, I am also doing research on the consorts of the Swedish regents of the realm in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The project investigates women’s agency, authority, and power within aristocratic and royal systems of rulership respectively (queenship studies).

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Sankt Eriks vrede

    2021. Margaretha Nordquist. Lychnos, 125-139

    Article

    The purpose of this article is to discuss the expression of political emotions and memory in the vernacular rhymed chronicle Karlskrönikan (Karl’s chronicle), written on behalf of the Swedish king Karl Knutsson (Bonde) in the 1450s. Historical studies of emotions and memory have been prominent in the dynamic field of cultural history but more rarely as a combined approach to explore the temporal aspects of emotional expressions. This article focuses attention on the chronicle’s communicative function and the notion that emotions and memory are integral parts in the construction of human experience and validation of power. Expressions of emotion in the chronicle were analysed as scripts, or narrative sequences, and the result shows how emotions appear in clusters of feelings such as wrath, shame, and sorrow. Emotions are instrumental in the characterization and moral evaluation of actors, their actions, and motives. They provide a visual acuity and energy to the narrative that reinforce the memorability of past events. The chronicle’s reference to the wrath of Saint Erik illustrates the complex uses and meanings of wrath in the chronicle. Wrath can be used both as a mark of legitimate power and of uncontrolled envy or lust for power. This is particularly apparent in the chronicle’s attempt to represent Karl Knutsson as a legitimate ruler, who shows emotional restraint and honorable conduct both in dealing with unruly peasants and envious contenders for power.

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  • Celebrating the Memory of Victory

    2020. Margaretha Nordquist. Scandinavian Journal of History 45 (1), 121-142

    Article

    This article investigates different, but partly overlapping, memorializing processes linked to the Battle of Brunkeberg (1471). In the decades after the battle, memories of the battle not only served to construct the event as a narrative of victory that reinforced notions of legitimate power and a Swedish community, but also formed the basis of potentially divisive emotions of fear and anxiety among the people in periods of political turbulence. The analysis of memory as articulations of co-existing, partly contradictory, and selective narratives and symbolic expressions shows how various memory practices and formats intersect in the political culture and identities of the past.

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  • Constructing Political Time

    2020. Margaretha Nordquist. The Medieval Chronicle, 223-246

    Chapter

    The representation of time in historiographical narratives reveals important conceptions about origin, continuity and change, and the perceived links between the past, present and future in a society. Through temporal structures of meaning such as genealogy, political power can be explained, legitimized and reinforced in narratives of the origin and history of a people and its rulers. The aim of this article is to investigate the construction of political time in two fifteenth-century Old Swedish narratives, Prosaiska krönikan and Lilla rimkrönikan. These chronicles constitute some of the first attempts to write continuous histories of the Swedish realm and its rulers from time immemorial. While the two chronicles share basic temporal structures, their different narrative forms also involve shifting emphases in their representation of a political time that functions as the basis for claims to a precedence of power and authority in relation to the other Scandinavian kingdoms. By considering temporal structures of meaning in the two chronicles, light can be shed on the political and ideological utility of history writing in late-medieval Sweden.

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  • Eternal Bonds of Love or Foreign Oppression?

    2018. Margaretha Nordquist. Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 23, 379-403

    Article

    This paper investigates the occurrence of two common but contradictory themes in the political discourse in fifteenth-century Scandinavia: on the one hand proclamations of the essential bonds existing between Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and on the other hand expressions of hostility against what is represented as foreign rule. The aim is to examine how different forms of discourse reveal coexisting and sometimes oppositional expressions of identity, with a particular focus on the role of cultural memory in the elaboration of these themes. A crucial political framework for the analysis is the Kalmar Union, which throughout the century constituted a common, if not always implemented, form of government of the Scandinavian kingdoms.

    The article explores the occurrence of nativist ideas of origin and identity within the pragmatics of a game of power in fifteenth century Scandinavia. In the vernacular chronicles of fifteenth-century Denmark and Sweden, differentiating between categories of men such as inborn and foreigner was a prominent way of expressing views about legitimate claims to power and privileges in the realms. In the construction of coherent and meaningful narratives of a common past, identities linked to birth and regnal belonging were apparently important. At the same time, personal bonds based on friendship, kinship and allegiance, played a fundamental role in the political dealings of the period. Particular bonds of love were also perceived to exist between the realms, as shown in the treaties negotiated between the realms. Rather than giving priority to the importance of one specific sense of identity in the political game of the period, it is argued that the complex relationships governing political action and discourse in late-medieval Scandinavia should be conceived in terms of entangled identities, where the different forms of identification and allegiance remain distinct, while at the same time inseparable from each other.

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  • A Struggle for the Realm

    2015. Margaretha Nordquist.

    Thesis (Doc)

    The period from the mid-fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century was characterised by recurrent political turmoil and conflict in Scandinavia in general, and in Sweden in particular. Political power was contested, not least because of the disputed conditions on which the Swedish realm should be governed as part of the Scandinavian union monarchy. Contenders for power based their claims on support from various factions of the ecclesiastical and secular aristocracy. Other groups within the realm played a crucial role as allies, supporters or armed levies.

    In A Struggle for the Realm, Margaretha Nordquist examines the late-medieval Swedish rhyme chronicles Sturekrönikan (c. 1496–1497) and Cronica Swecie (c. 1520–1523) as ideological responses to contemporary conflicts of power. The rhyme chronicles describe some of the key events and actors in the period, in ways that both differ and overlap. As partisan narratives written in support of particular political factions, the rhyme chronicles can be seen as verbal contributions in a struggle for the realm. Nordquist's analysis shows that the realm functioned as a fundamental ideological construct in the chronicles. The realm and the Swedish community were key mobilising elements in the efforts to legitimate and consolidate certain positions of power, but the precise meaning and implications of the Swedish realm and the Swedish community were not fixed. The community of Swedes is primarily envisioned as a political and social entity, although the common, ancient origin of the people is an important element in Cronica Swecie. The concept of regnal ideology is used to describe the creation of ideological meaning in the rhyme chronicles. While the realm possesses substantial ideological validity in both chronicles, they differ in the particular configuration of power they advocate as a basis for the government of the realm.

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  • Rikets första damer

    2021. Kim Bergqvist, Margaretha Nordquist. Historiskan (3), 68-75

    Article

    För 500 år sedan försvarades Stockholms slott av den unga Kristina Gyllenstierna mot den danske unionskungen Kristian II. Hon var den sista i raden av handlingskraftiga svenska riksföreståndargemåler vilkas roll inom den nordiska politiken under Kalmarunionens slutskede sällan uppmärksammats.

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  • Fru Birgittas förräderi

    2020. Margaretha Nordquist. År, 29-39

    Chapter

    År 1452 dömdes frälsekvinnan Birgitta Olofsdotter Tott till döden för förräderi. Vem var denna kvinna och vilka omständigheter låg bakom dödsdomen mot henne? Den här artikeln handlar om det dramatiska händelseförlopp som ledde fram till dödsdomen mot Birgitta, men också om hur släktband och lojaliteter sattes på prov i tider av politisk oro och krig i senmedeltidens svenska rike.

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  • Anna Fickesdotter Bülow

    2023. Margaretha Nordquist. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages

    Chapter

    Anna Fickesdotter Bülow (1440s–1519) was the abbess of Vadstena Abbey, a Birgittine monastery in Sweden, in the early sixteenth century. She came from an aristocratic family of German and Danish origin and entered Vadstena Abbey in 1462 to become a Birgittine nun. She was elected abbess of Vadstena Abbey in 1501 and remained in this office until her death in 1519. Anna Fickesdotter was described as a learned woman in the Diarium Vadstenense, the monastery’s memorial book. She contributed to the monastery’s literary production as author, translator, and supervisor of the sisters’ manuscript production. Among her translations are the Legend of Saint Joachim and the Revelations of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, which were part of a compilation of texts intended for the sisters’ table reading. Around 1515, she also wrote Chronicon Genealogicum, one of the earliest genealogical chronicles in medieval Sweden, which was printed in 1718. The chronicle was written on behalf of the bishop of Linköping and contains information about Anna Fickesdotter’s own family history, personal memories, as well as a survey of kinship relations within the Swedish aristocracy mainly from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries.

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  • Genealogy, gender, and memory culture in late medieval Sweden: the chronicle of Anna Fickesdotter Bülow

    2024. Margaretha Nordquist. Scandinavian Journal of History

    Article

    Anna Fickesdotter Bülow (1440s–1519), abbess of the Birgittine Vadstena Abbey in Sweden, was also the author of Chronicon Genealogicum (c. 1515), a genealogical narrative of aristocratic families in late medieval Sweden. Anna Fickesdotter’s chronicle is one of the earliest examples of women writing genealogy in Sweden. It sheds light on the roles of women in the transmission and commemoration of family history, genealogy as a gendered imagination and practice, but also the scripting of self as a subjective voice and a woman remembering the past. The account is analysed as an expression of medieval memory culture, where genealogy as a gendered phenomenon had a fundamental impact on the mental, material, and social dimensions of memory.

    Read more about Genealogy, gender, and memory culture in late medieval Sweden

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