Introduction: some aspects of the social scene in the Scandinavian countries with epidemiological relevance

The two terms ‘the Scandinavian countries’ and ‘the Nordic countries’ are not identical. The concept of Nordic countries includes Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Finland, while the Scandinavian countries do not include the two last-mentioned countries. Politically, Finland was at the time a part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Below, in Chapter 32, ‘Some Countries or Regions that Escaped the Black Death’, it is made clear that the Black Death did not arrive in Iceland or Finland, evidently for reasons of tiny populations and very little contact abroad. Plague never reached Iceland, and did not reach Finland until the end of the 1400s. The history of the Black Death in the Nordic countries is the history of the Black Death in the Scandinavian countries. The history of the Black Death in the Scandinavian countries will be presented in chronological order but the temporal outline in Denmark and Sweden is very much the same and interchangeable.

The Scandinavian countries cover together roughly 850,000 km2, and constitute quite a large part of Europe, about the size of the territories of Italy, France and England taken together, but had only a tiny fraction of the population, something of the order of 1.6 million (a guestimate), or 5% of the population in these three countries, around 33 million. This raises interesting questions of the Black Death’s (plague’s) epidemiology and mortality rates as a function of territory, settlement and population density.

At the mid-1600s, Sweden made substantial and permanent territorial conquests, especially from Denmark, which lost the regions of Halland, Scania and Blekinge, present-day southern Sweden, containing around one-third of Denmark’s population. Norway ceded four counties to Sweden, which contained about one-eighth or 12.5% of its population. Thus, the modern territories of the Nordic countries differ from the medieval, as does the relative size of the populations, Sweden’s having been much enlarged and Denmark’s much diminished. This will make necessary some awkward explanations meant to be helpful to readers in connection with the accounts of the spread of the Black Death.

At the time of the Black Death, Bohuslen, Jemtland and Herjedalen, which covered about 55,000 km2, belonged to the state of Norway.