Territorial fiscal systems in Medieval Sweden

This article provides an overview of the evolution of territorial fiscal systems in medieval Sweden. It is shown that persistent financial strains forced the Crown to implement a whole range of fiscal strategies. A rough five-stage chronology of different territorial and fiscal policies is presented. It demonstrates that a budget balance was never really achieved except for short periods, but also that the combined challenge of budget deficits and political pressures from the nobility and the peasantry were handled quite diligently. That was especially the case during the low-tax regime established by the Engelbrekt uprising in 1434–1436. No attempt was made in the article to assess the level of income of the Swedish Crown in quantitative terms.