Trade Paperback. Publisher: Svenska fornsskriftssällskapet | 2013 | Trade Paperback | 558 p. | This book is like new. | Series: Serie 1. Svenska skrifter | Language: Svenska --- Information regarding the book: In medieval western Europe, no capital cities existed. The rulers and their court were constantly travelling from place to place. In this book, the Swedish ‘travelling kingdom’ has been extensively studied. Everything known from the source material about day-by-day migrations of the royal court during four centuries (1200s- 1500s) can be easily surveyed here. The life-conditions of the itinerant kings are described. Travel patterns have been reconstructed. Attempts are made of establishing where ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ were geographically located - and to what extent these concepts were relevant - in an age when power was still based mainly on oral and personal communication between the monarch and local communities, not on written correspondence. (Knowledge of this is important to historians because core regions and outback territories generally behaved in different ways vis-à-vis the sovereign, and were likewise treated differently by him.) Since the studied period was also the time when ‘bureaucratic’ tendencies started to gradually evolve in the royal administration, much attention is devoted to the changes which occurred. (E.g. how the incipient need for records management and archives affected the rulers’ traditional ambulating life-style.) Sweden wa ...