Rex Insularum : the king of Norway and his "Skattlands" as a political system c.1260-c.1450

This book encompasses the results of the transnational project 'The Realm of Norway and its dependencies as a political system c. 1270-1400', financed by the Research Council of Norway. Known in Norwegian historiography as 'Norgesveldet', the realm consisted of the mainland Norwegian kingdom and a range of island communities at Scotland's northern and western seaboards, as well as the Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland. Within this national historiographic tradition, "Norgesveldet" is often portrayed as a kind of Norwegian empire. The aim of this project has been to elucidate the relationship between Norwegian kingship and the Crown's 'tributary lands' in the west and the ways in which kingship influenced socio-political developments at the margins of the realm. The Scandinavian frontiers, which were never fully integrated into Norway during the Middle Ages, have also figured into this project. We have chosen to focus our attention on the period after c. 1260, when the Norwegian monarchy was reconstituted as a state-like institution encompassing all the king's lands and dominions. The axial themes of this book are the degree to which the kingship succeeded in its enterprises and the ways in which the state development process transpired in the tributary lands and frontier provinces.