La Bataille de Berlin 1813

House of Bernadotte Turns New Page

Sweden Not Always A Neutral In War—Once Bully of the Baltic In Its Viking Past Sweden has had a long history neutrality in world affairs and peace with her neighbors in Scandinavia and the rest of northern Europe. But it always wasn’t that way. Perhaps due to its origins as a Viking nation; or it being surrounded by hostile neighbors; Sweden has had a long history of warfare and conflict with its neighboring states. In fact, truth be it known, one could say that Sweden, for several hundred years, could have been called the Bully of the Baltic. What led the Swedes to be what they are today? The origins of this substantial change in national direction came about in a five-year period at the end of the Napoleonic period when Sweden decided to take on a French King…the family of the same person whose dynasty still rules Sweden today: the Bernadottes.

Sweden’s past remains shrouded in fog…the stuff half of legend and half of dim memories arising out of Varangian legends. While Vikings coming out of Danish lands made western Europe and the Atlantic their focus of travel and conquest, Vikings coming out of what would be called later called Sweden, would spread eastward over the Baltic; into northern Germany; and upon the rivers of Russia (the work Russia come from the word Rus for “men who row,” referring to the Vikings to had come all the way from Sweden, and eventually serving Byzantine Rome).

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