The Kalmar Union (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: Kalmarunionen; Latin: Unio Calmariensis) is a historiographical term describing a series of personal unions (1397–1523) that intermittently joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including Finland), and Norway (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and, prior to their transfer to Scotland in 1471, Shetland and Orkney).
Legally the countries remained separate sovereign states, but with their domestic and foreign policies being directed by the same common monarch. Diverging interests (especially the Swedish nobility's dissatisfaction over the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein) gave rise to a conflict that would hamper the union in several intervals from the 1430s until its definite breakup in 1523 when Gustav Vasa became king of Sweden.
Norway and its overseas dependencies continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries until its dissolution in 1814.
Read more about Kalmar Union: Inception, Conflict, Final Dissolution, In Fiction
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“[Let] the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into paradise.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)