Born in her father's prison, Margaret ended up ruling all of Scandinavia
Margaret came into the world in March 1353 inside Søborg Castle's prison, where King Valdemar IV had already locked up her mother. The youngest of six children, she seemed a minor piece in Nordic dynastic games. Within four decades she governed Denmark, Norway and Sweden at once, earning the admiring nickname Lady King.
Her marriage began as a bargaining chip. Engaged at six to the 18-year-old Haakon VI of Norway, she saw the deal collapse when alliances shifted, prompting Bridget of Sweden to complain to the Pope about children playing with dolls. Then fate intervened: Haakon's replacement bride was blown off course by a storm to Bornholm, where the archbishop of Lund ruled the new match unlawful because of the earlier engagement. Margaret wed Haakon in Copenhagen on 9 April 1363, aged ten.
Power came through her son. After her father died in 1375 she secured the Danish crown for young Olaf, and Norway's followed when Haakon died in 1380. When Olaf died suddenly at 16 in 1387, Margaret was chosen to rule in her own right. Swedish nobles, fed up with King Albert of Mecklenburg, invited her in, and at Dalaborg in March 1388 they named her Sovereign Lady and Ruler. Albert mocked her as a king without trousers and returned with mercenaries, but her army beat him near Falköping on 24 February 1389.
Her master stroke was the Kalmar Union. In June 1397 she gathered the councils of all three realms, and on 17 June her adopted great-nephew, Erik of Pomerania, was crowned king of the lot. She reassured each country that its own laws and native officials would remain. Even after Erik came of age she kept real control until her death on 28 October 1412, and the Danish-Norwegian link she founded lasted until 1814.
Churchmen disliked her readiness to curb clerical power, and some Norwegian and Swedish historians say she favoured Denmark. Admirers called her the Semiramis of the North, and the historian Knut Gjerset judged her the first great ruling queen in European history.
Source: Margaret I of Denmark
