Charles XII of Sweden - Legacy

Legacy

Charles' reputation (favorable and otherwise) was confirmed by the attentions of Voltaire and Johnson among other writers. Exceptional for abstaining from alcohol and women, he felt most comfortable during warfare. Contemporaries report of his seemingly inhuman tolerance for pain and his utter lack of emotion. His brilliant campaigning and startling victories brought his country to the pinnacle of her prestige and power, posthumously earning him the epithet "last of the Vikings," although the Great Northern War resulted in Sweden's defeat and the end of her empire within years of his own death.

Charles' death marked the end of autocratic kingship in Sweden, and the subsequent Age of Liberty saw a shift of power from the monarch to the parliament of the estates. Historians of the late 18th and early 19th centuries viewed Charles' death as the result of an aristocratic plot, and Gustav IV Adolf, the king who refused to settle with Napoleon Bonaparte despite the latter's superiority, "identified himself with Charles as the type of righteous man struggling with iniquity" (Roberts). Throughout the 19th century's romantic nationalism Charles XII remained a national hero, idealized as a heroic, virtuous young warrior king, and his fight against Peter the Great was associated with the contemporary Swedish-Russian enmity (in the century following the king's death, Russia had through several wars won all of Finland from Sweden). Examples for the romantic heroization of Charles XII in several genres are Esaias Tegnér's song Kung Karl, den unge hjälte (1818), Johan Peter Molin's statue in Stockholm's Kungsträdgården (unveiled on 30 November 1868, the 150th anniversary of Charles' death)and Gustaf Cederström's painting Karl XII:s likfärd ("Funeral procession of Charles XII", 1878). The date of Charles' death was also chosen by a student association in Lund for annual torch marches starting in 1853.

In 1901, August Strindberg in his play Karl XII broke with the heroization practice, showing an introvert late Charles XII in conflict with his impoverished subjects. In the so-called Strindberg feud (1910–1912), his response to the "Swedish cult of Charles XII" (Steene) was that Charles had been "Sweden's ruin, the great offender, a ruffian, the rowdies' idol, a counterfeiter." Verner von Heidenstam however, one of his opponents in the feud, in his book Karolinerna instead "emphasized the heroic steadfastness of the Swedish people in the somber years of trial during the long-drawn-out campaigns of Karl XII" (Scott).

In the 1930s, the Swedish Nazis held celebrations on the date of Charles XII's death, and shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Adolf Hitler received from Sweden a sculpture of the king at his birthday. In the late 20th century, Swedish nationalists and neo-Nazis had again used 30 November as a date for their ceremonies, however these were regularly interrupted by larger counter-manifestations and were therefore abandoned recently.