Simple Swedish Podcast - #227 - Stormaktstiden (Swedish Empire)

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Nivå: A2-B1 (for English - scroll down) Här kommer ett historiskt avsnitt om en intressant period i Sveriges historia, nämligen stormaktstiden. Tiden då Sverige var som störst och mäktigast! Den här perioden varade i lite mer än hundra år - från 1611 till 1721. Sverige räknades då som en europeisk stormakt, och kontrollerade större delen av Östersjön. Här kan du se ett program om det på UR Play. -------------------- För att stödja podden och få transkript till avsnitten - bli patron för bara 5€ per månad – klicka här! Vill du ha en GRATIS PDF med de 20 vanligaste misstagen folk gör i svenska? Vill du få mejl på lätt svenska med intressant info och uppdateringar varje vecka? Klicka här och prenumerera på nyhetsbrevet! -------------------- Here is a historical episode about an interesting period in Sweden's history - the time of the Swedish Empire. The time when Sweden was at its greatest and most powerful! This period lasted a little over a hundred years - from 1611 to 1721. Sweden was during this time considered a European great power, and controlled most of the Baltic Sea. You can watch a program about it on UR Play here. To support the podcast and get transcripts to the weekly episodes – become a patron for only 5€ per month - click here! Would you like a FREE PDF with the 20 most common mistakes people make in Swedish, and how to correct them? And how about emails every week in simple Swedish with interesting information and updates? Click here and subscribe to the newsletter! ------------------- Instagram: swedish.linguist YouTube: Swedish Linguist Website: www.swedishlinguist.com Language Lock-in: https://www.languagelockin.com/ ------------------- Ett smakprov (sample) på transkriptet: Hallå, hallå! Välkommen ska du vara till Simple Swedish Podcast. Och idag så har vi ett avsnitt om svensk historia, nämligen stormaktstiden.   En intressant epok ur den svenska historien. Innan vi börjar ska jag tacka några nya patrons.   Det är Juliet, Leonie, Bernd, Luciano och Burak.   Tack till er för att ni stödjer podden. Om du också vill bli patron så gå till www.patreon.com/swedishlinguist. Du kan såklart också gå till www.swedishlinguist.com. Där hittar du alla olika saker som jag håller på med. Att vara patron kostar bara 5 euro per månad och du får transcript till alla avsnitt. Det finns också en 10-euro-nivå, och då får du också tillgång till vår server på Discord där du kan chatta med mig, ställa frågor till mig, prata med de andra som är där och träna på att skriva på svenska. Jag har också börjat med extraavsnitt varje månad. Det senaste extraavsnittet handlade om troll, och nu håller jag på med ett avsnitt som handlar om Abba.   Det är för patrons på 10-euro-nivån. Nu ska vi prata lite historia och vi ska prata om stormaktstiden. Den här tiden, det var när Sverige var som störst och mäktigast. Det var från början av 1600-talet till början av 1700-talet. Lite mer än 100 år.   Stormakt, vad är en stormakt? Det är ett land som har mycket makt, mycket inflytande.   ....för att läsa hela transkriptet till detta och alla andra avsnitt, klicka här!  

Hello, hello! Welcome to Simple Swedish Podcast. Today we have an episode about Swedish history, namely the Great Max era. An interesting era in Swedish history. Before we start, I would like to thank some new Patrons. It's Juliet, Leonie, Bernd, Luciano, and Burak. Thank you for supporting the podcast. If you also want to become a patron, go to... Swedish Linguist... No. Go to patreon.com slash Swedish Linguist. You can of course also go to Swedish Linguist.com. There you'll find all the different things I do.

And... Being a patron only costs 5 euros per month month and you get a transcript for all episodes. There is also a 10 euro level and then you also get access to our server on Discord, where you can chat with me, ask questions to me, talk to the others who are there and train on writing in Swedish. And I have also started with an extra episode every month. The last extra episode was about trolls and now I'm continuing with talk about a episode about ABBA. So, it's for patrons on the 10 euro level. And yes, now we're going to talk about history.

We're going to talk about the great power era. And this era was when Sweden was the biggest and most powerful. And that was from the beginning of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th century. So, a little more than 100 years. A little more than 100 years. And what is a great power? It is a country that has a lot of power, a lot of influence. And you could say that today, USA and China are great world's great powers, global great powers.

And at this time in Europe, you could say that the Ottoman Empire was a great power, so it was something like Turkey today. But at this time, it was much bigger, much more powerful. And it was called the Ottoman Empire. So, that was one of the great powers at that time. There were some other great powerful countries. For example example Russia.

Yes, it was in the process of becoming powerful. Poland, Lithuania was also a big country at that time. Denmark was also a little bigger at this time and Denmark was before this the most powerful country in the Baltic Sea. But during this time, the Great Power period, Sweden took over that role from Denmark as the most powerful country in the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is the sea between Sweden and Finland. Finland was of course a part of Sweden at this time and also before because Finland had always been part of Sweden for many hundred years and yes at this time Stockholm was in the middle of the Swedish Empire so Stockholm

had a very very good position in the Swedish, because it was right in the middle. Now Stockholm is very far east in Sweden, but at this time Stockholm was in the middle. Germany and Italy didn't exist, but there were a lot of small states. So that was a bit of a historical context. So what happened during this time, during the Great Power period, it was the Vasa period, the 1500s. You can listen to episode 193 about the Kalmar Union, because that was what happened before this. But in the beginning of the 1500s Sweden became a independent country and a united kingdom. The king got more power, the state got better control, there was a much better organization. So the state became much stronger during the 1500s.

And the goal was to control the Baltic Sea. To get control of the Baltic Sea in general. on the Baltic Sea. The first thing that happened was that they took over Baltic, or more specifically, what is now Estonia and Latvia. The rest of Baltic was controlled by Poland, Poland Polish Litauen. So it starts with the fact that Sweden took over Baltic countries. Then in 1630 Sweden joined the Protestantants in the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War is a very big event in European history. It was a bit like the First World War, but it was 300 years earlier. So a very, very big war with all of Europe in principle. And it was Protestants against Catholics. So it was a religious war. And Sweden was on the side of the Protestants. And then Sweden won a lot. protestanternas sida och då vann Sverige väldigt mycket och man områden i norra tyskland blev svenska och sedan var det också krig mot Danmark och innan det här så Denmark and before this, the southernmost parts of present-day Sweden were Danish.

Before this, for example, Skåne, Blekinge, Bohuslän and Halland were parts of Denmark. But these parts took Sweden over after they won the war against Denmark. So, the result was that Sweden became the, plus Finland, plus Balticum, plus some parts of northern Germany. And it was also a strong economy, a strong army, a strong state. So Sweden became a great power. So, how did you manage that? So, apart from winning wars, you also had a very strong and effective state, a strong and effective bureaucracy. So you started new institutions, for example the post office, that is, the post office, you can say. You started high schools, universities, you developed the courts. The courts, you can google the word, sounded under the state. So the church was forced to do as the state or the king simply said.

And the church was like a link between the state and the people. So the priests, they were like that, a kind of control. They controlled the people through the priests. And yes, for the priests, they gave information to the people, so they functioned as a channel for the state propaganda. And so it still functioned in many places. And the country also had a lot of natural resources, such as forest and metals, especially iron and copper. Sweden had almost a monopoly in Europe on metals such as iron and copper. The military, they also developed the military Man utvecklade också militären väldigt mycket och landet blev en militärstat. Nästan alla resurser gick till militären och det var såklart en stor fördel att man hade mycket järn. För järn är både ett bra material att bygga vapen med och man kan också sälja The iron is both a good material to build weapons with and you can also sell it, export it and earn a lot of money.

And you built good weapons, the Swedish cannons were the best in Europe and they exported cannons and other weapons. War was also business then, just like now. And of course the Swedish army was also an effective army with high discipline and also very easily equipped so that you did not have so heavy equipment. For example, the cannons were very mobile so that you could transport armies quickly and effectively. And that despite the fact that the population was quite small, because Sweden had in the beginning of the 16th century only about one million people. And that grew quite a lot, or very much, during the 16th century, thanks to this strong economy and so on. And at the end of the 16th century, the population was almost twice as large, almost two million. But it is still a small population, it is still not that many people.

But despite that, the army was very strong. The military was very strong. And that was thanks to a new system. And in this system, every Socken was given the task of handling soldiers for the state. geographical surface, or geographical, it's like a region, but much smaller. So maybe a socket is a few villages, a few small villages is a socket, or even smaller. It's maybe just a few gardens. So it's a rather small unit. But Vargesocken had a mission. That... You need...

to have a certain number of soldiers. And the soldiers got a small house. So they got quite good pay for it. They got something for it. That meant that Sweden always had a very well-trained army.

There were always a lot of soldiers. It was better than Bunder. So you managed to build a strong army, despite the fact that you did not have such a high population. And yes, as I said, And yes, as I said, this Stormax time, it lasted for a little over 100 years, a little more than 100 years. For the year 1700, a triple alliance of Denmark, Poland and Russia. They declared war on Sweden. So all these three countries declared war at the same time. And that is the so-called Great Nordic War. And it went well in the beginning for Sweden and you won against Denmark and you won important fights against Russia. A fight in war is a specific, for example, a battle, In English.

A battle. Where it's hard to explain some words in Swedish. I think you understand. So you won several big battles against Russia. And then you were in Poland for several years and fought and you lost many soldiers. Not only in different ways, but also, yes, there were deserters and there were diseases and yes, and it was diseases and yes, think about it, you are in several years and are far, far away from your homeland and yes, you are in a foreign country and you are there and fighting. not been a particularly pleasant life, to be a soldier there. And then what came to an end was when the king, Karl XII, He decided to invade Russia and go to Moscow. And everyone knows that it is not a good idea.

There is a very famous battle called the Battle of Poltava. Poltava is a city in the current Ukraine. There, Karl XII and Sweden lost to Russia. The king fled together with about 1000 soldiers. about a thousand soldiers, they fled to the Ottoman Empire, in part of the Ottoman Empire, which is now Moldova, to a small town called Bender. The Ottoman Empire was also an enemy to Russia and the Sultan gave asylum to the king and his men. The king stayed there for six years. It was not easy to get home because this was between Sweden and the Ottoman Empire.

Poland was the enemy of Sweden, so you could not just go home. They stayed there for six years. And when he came back, he started a war against Norway. But quite early in that war he was shot. And with that the war was over, the great Nordic war was over, and Sweden's great power was over. They lost all provinces in Baltic and Germany. They lost their strong military. So that was the end of the Great Power period. But it was the beginning of another era called the Freedom period. And that was an era when the king didn't have much power, but the majority of the power was in the parliament,

and there were two political parties that had power there. There was weak military, weak king and weak foreign policy, but there was more development in science and culture. So, it's interesting and I saw that there is a program about the Stormax-time on UR Play. I'll link that in the description. It's a good website, because there are many interesting shorter programs with Swedish subtitles. I hope this was an interesting episode about an epoch in Swedish history. So I'll see you again next week.

Have a good one!