1.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
2.
Christian II of Denmark
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Christian II was a Scandinavian monarch under the Kalmar Union. He reigned as King of Denmark and Norway from 1513 until 1523, from 1513 to 1523, he was concurrently Duke of Schleswig and Holstein in joint rule with his uncle Frederick. Christian was the oldest son of King John and belonged to the House of Oldenburg, Denmark was then an elective monarchy in which the nobility elected the new king, who had to share his power with them. He came into conflict with the Danish nobility when he was forced to sign a charter, more strict than any previous, through domestic reforms he later sought to set it aside. Internationally, he tried to maintain the Kalmar Union between the Scandinavian countries which brought him to war with Sweden, lasting between 1518 and 1523 and his problems grew as he tried to limit the influence of foreign trading nations in Denmark. His reign in Denmark and Norway was cut short in 1523 when his uncle deposed him, Christian was then exiled to the Netherlands, then ruled by his brother-in-law, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. After attempting to reclaim the thrones in 1531, he was arrested and held in captivity for the rest of his life first in Sønderborg Castle, supporters tried to restore him to power both during his exile and his imprisonment but they were defeated definitively in 1536. In 1515, he married Isabella of Austria, granddaughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, however, he is most known for his relation with Dyveke Sigbritsdatter, a commonner of Dutch ancestry who became his mistress before his marriage and whose mother became his closest advisor. When Dyveke suddenly died in 1517, Christian had the nobleman Torben Oxe executed, on dubious ground, dyveke’s mother would follow Christian in exile but his in-laws forced him to break their friendship. As a captive, he was treated well and as he grew older he was given more freedom. He died aged 77, outliving not only his uncle but also his cousin and he was intelligent but irresolute, which is also part of his legacy in fiction literature. His wife was offered to return to Denmark while in exile but declined and died in 1526, Christian tried to have his son John recognized as heir to the throne, however, this was denied and John died only a year later. His daughters, Dorothea and Christina, the only of his children to survive childhood, also claims to the throne on behalf of themselves or their children. Christian was born at Nyborg Castle in 1481 as the son of King John and his wife, Christina of Saxony. Christian descended, through Valdemar I of Sweden, from the House of Eric and his rival Gustav I of Sweden descended only from Sverker II of Sweden and the House of Sverker. Christian took part in his fathers conquest of Sweden in 1497 and he was appointed viceroy of Norway in 1506, and succeeded in maintaining control of this country. In 1513, he succeeded his father as king of Denmark, Christians succession to the throne was confirmed at the Herredag assembly of notables from the three northern kingdoms, which met at Copenhagen in 1513. The Swedish delegates said, We have the choice between peace at home and strife here, or peace here and civil war at home, a decision as to the Swedish succession was therefore postponed
3.
Monarchy of Sweden
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The Monarchy of Sweden concerns the monarchical head of state of Sweden, which is a constitutional and hereditary monarchy with a parliamentary system. The Kingdom of Sweden has been a monarchy since time immemorial, Sweden in the present day is a representative democracy in a parliamentary system based on popular sovereignty, as defined in the current Instrument of Government. The monarch and the members of the Royal Family undertake a variety of official, unofficial and other duties within Sweden. Carl XVI Gustaf became King on 15 September 1973 on the death of his grandfather, Sweden has been a kingdom since prehistoric times. Originally, the Swedish king had combined powers limited to that of a war chief, a judge, the Royal Court of Sweden, however, does count Olofs father as Swedens first king. The king was elected from a favored dynasty at the Stones of Mora. The ceremonial stones were destroyed around 1515 and that dynasty formed a pre-Kalmar Union Sweden into a strong state, and finally king Magnus IV even ruled Norway and Scania. Following the Black Death, the union was weakened, and Scania was reunited with Denmark. In 1397, after the Black Death and domestic power struggles, Queen Margaret I of Denmark united Sweden, Denmark, continual tension within each country and the union led to open conflict between the Swedes and the Danes in the 15th century. The unions final disintegration in the early 16th century led to prolonged rivalry between Denmark-Norway and Sweden for centuries to come. Catholic bishops had supported the King of Denmark, Christian II, Gustav Vasa was elected King of Sweden by the Estates of the Realm, assembled in Strängnäs on 6 June 1523. Inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther, Gustav I used the Protestant Reformation to curb the power of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1527 he persuaded the Estates of the Realm, assembled in the city of Västerås, to church lands. At the same time, he broke with the papacy and established a state church. Legally Sweden has only been a monarchy since 1544 when the Riksdag of the Estates, through Västerås arvförening. Crown tax revenues increased, but more importantly the new system was perceived as fairer, a war with Lübeck in 1535 resulted in the expulsion of the Hanseatic traders, who previously had had a monopoly on foreign trade. With its own burghers in charge, Swedens economic strength grew rapidly, Sweden now built the first modern army in Europe, supported by a sophisticated tax system and an efficient bureaucracy. At the death of King Gustav I in 1560, he was succeeded by his oldest son Eric XIV and his reign was marked by Swedens entrance into the Livonian War and the Northern Seven Years War
4.
Heresy
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Heresy /hār ə sē/ is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs, the term is usually used to refer to violations of important religious teachings, but is used also of views strongly opposed to any generally accepted ideas. It is used in particular in reference to Christianity, Judaism, the word heresy is usually used within a Christian, Jewish, or Islamic context, and implies slightly different meanings in each. The founder or leader of a movement is called a heresiarch. Heresiology is the study of heresy, according to Titus 3,10 a divisive person should be warned two times before separating from him. The Greek for the phrase divisive person became a term in the early Church for a type of heretic who promoted dissension. In contrast correct teaching is called not only because it builds up the faith. The Church Fathers identified Jews and Judaism with heresy and they saw deviations from orthodox Christianity as heresies that were essentially Jewish in spirit. The use of the word heresy was given currency by Irenaeus in his 2nd century tract Contra Haereses to describe. He described the beliefs and doctrines as orthodox and the Gnostics teachings as heretical. He also pointed out the concept of succession to support his arguments. By Roman law the Emperor was Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the College of Pontiffs of all recognized religions in ancient Rome. To put an end to the doctrinal debate initiated by Arius, Constantine called the first of what would afterwards be called the ecumenical councils and then enforced orthodoxy by Imperial authority. The first known usage of the term in a context was in AD380 by the Edict of Thessalonica of Theodosius I. Prior to the issuance of this edict, the Church had no state-sponsored support for any particular legal mechanism to counter what it perceived as heresy, by this edict the states authority and that of the Church became somewhat overlapping. One of the outcomes of this blurring of Church and state was the sharing of state powers of legal enforcement with church authorities and this reinforcement of the Churchs authority gave church leaders the power to, in effect, pronounce the death sentence upon those whom the church considered heretical. The edict of Theodosius II provided severe punishments for those who had or spread writings of Nestorius and those who possessed writings of Arius were sentenced to death. For some years after the Reformation, Protestant churches were known to execute those they considered heretics
5.
Siege
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A siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. This derives from sedere, Latin for to sit, Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static defensive position. Consequently, an opportunity for negotiation between combatants is not uncommon, as proximity and fluctuating advantage can encourage diplomacy, a siege occurs when an attacker encounters a city or fortress that cannot be easily taken by direct assault and refuses to surrender. Failing a military outcome, sieges can often be decided by starvation, thirst, or disease and this form of siege, though, can take many months or even years, depending upon the size of the stores of food the fortified position holds. During the process of circumvallation, the force can be set upon by another force of enemies due to the lengthy amount of time required to starve a position. During the Warring States era of ancient China, there is textual and archaeological evidence of prolonged sieges and siege machinery used against the defenders of city walls. Siege machinery was also a tradition of the ancient Greco-Roman world, during the Renaissance and the early modern period, siege warfare dominated the conduct of war in Europe. Leonardo da Vinci gained as much of his renown from the design of fortifications as from his artwork, Medieval campaigns were generally designed around a succession of sieges. In the Napoleonic era, increasing use of more powerful cannon reduced the value of fortifications. In the 20th century, the significance of the classical siege declined, with the advent of mobile warfare, a single fortified stronghold is no longer as decisive as it once was. Modern sieges are more commonly the result of smaller hostage, militant, the Assyrians deployed large labour forces to build new palaces, temples, and defensive walls. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were also fortified, by about 3500 BC, hundreds of small farming villages dotted the Indus River floodplain. Many of these settlements had fortifications and planned streets, mundigak in present-day south-east Afghanistan has defensive walls and square bastions of sun-dried bricks. City walls and fortifications were essential for the defence of the first cities in the ancient Near East, the walls were built of mudbricks, stone, wood, or a combination of these materials, depending on local availability. They may also have served the purpose of showing presumptive enemies the might of the kingdom. The great walls surrounding the Sumerian city of Uruk gained a widespread reputation, the walls were 9.5 km in length, and up to 12 m in height. Later, the walls of Babylon, reinforced by towers, moats, in Anatolia, the Hittites built massive stone walls around their cities atop hillsides, taking advantage of the terrain. In Shang Dynasty China, at the site of Ao, large walls were erected in the 15th century BC that had dimensions of 20 m in width at the base and enclosed an area of some 2,100 yards squared
6.
Fortification
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Fortifications are military constructions or buildings designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and also used to solidify rule in a region during peace time. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs, the term is derived from the Latin fortis and facere. From very early history to modern times, walls have been a necessity for cities to survive in a changing world of invasion. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were the first small cities to be fortified, in ancient Greece, large stone walls had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae. A Greek Phrourion was a collection of buildings used as a military garrison. These construction mainly served the purpose of a tower, to guard certain roads, passes. Though smaller than a fortress, they acted as a border guard rather than a real strongpoint to watch. The art of setting out a camp or constructing a fortification traditionally has been called castramentation since the time of the Roman legions. Fortification is usually divided into two branches, permanent fortification and field fortification, there is also an intermediate branch known as semi-permanent fortification. Castles are fortifications which are regarded as being distinct from the fort or fortress in that they are a residence of a monarch or noble. Roman forts and hill forts were the antecedents of castles in Europe. The Early Middle Ages saw the creation of towns built around castles. Medieval-style fortifications were made obsolete by the arrival of cannons in the 14th century. Fortifications in the age of black powder evolved into much lower structures with greater use of ditches and earth ramparts that would absorb, Walls exposed to direct cannon fire were very vulnerable, so were sunk into ditches fronted by earth slopes. The arrival of explosive shells in the 19th century led to yet another stage in the evolution of fortification, steel-and-concrete fortifications were common during the 19th and early 20th centuries. However the advances in warfare since World War I have made large-scale fortifications obsolete in most situations. Demilitarized zones along borders are arguably another type of fortification, although a passive kind, many military installations are known as forts, although they are not always fortified. Larger forts may be called fortresses, smaller ones were known as fortalices
7.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
8.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
9.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
10.
Mercenary
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A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national or party to the conflict and is motivated to take part in the hostilities by desire for private gain. Mercenaries fight for money or other recompense instead of fighting for ideological interests, in the last century, and as reflected in the Geneva Convention, mercenaries have increasingly come to be seen as less entitled to protections by rules of war than non-mercenaries. However, whether or not a person is a mercenary may be a matter of degree, Protocol Additional GC1977 is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Article 47 of the protocol provides the most widely accepted definition of a mercenary, though not endorsed by some countries. The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, a mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war. All the criteria must be met, according to the Geneva Convention, according to the GC III, a captured soldier must be treated as a lawful combatant and, therefore, as a protected person with prisoner-of-war status until facing a competent tribunal. That tribunal, using criteria in APGC77 or some equivalent domestic law, may decide that the soldier is a mercenary. The only possible exception to GC IV Art 5 is when he is a national of the authority imprisoning him, if, after a regular trial, a captured soldier is found to be a mercenary, then he can expect treatment as a common criminal and may face execution. As mercenary soldiers may not qualify as PoWs, they cannot expect repatriation at wars end, the four mercenaries sentenced to death were shot by a firing squad on 10 July 1976. The legal status of civilian contractors depends upon the nature of their work, on 4 December 1989, the United Nations passed resolution 44/34, the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It entered into force on 20 October 2001 and is known as the UN Mercenary Convention. Article 1 contains the definition of a mercenary, Article 1.1 is similar to Article 47 of Protocol I, however Article 1. – under Article 1.2 a person does not have to take a part in the hostilities in a planned coup détat to be a mercenary. Critics have argued that the convention and APGC77 Art,47 are designed to cover the activities of mercenaries in post-colonial Africa and do not address adequately the use of private military companies by sovereign states. While the United States governed Iraq, no U. S. citizen working as a guard could be classified as a mercenary because he was a national of a Party to the conflict. S. However, those who acknowledge the United States and other forces as continuing parties to the conflict might insist that U. S. armed guards cannot be called mercenaries. The laws of countries forbid their citizens to fight in foreign wars unless they are under the control of their own national armed forces. If a person is proven to have worked as a mercenary for any other country while retaining Austrian citizenship, in 2003, France criminalized mercenary activities, as defined by the protocol to the Geneva convention for French citizens, permanent residents and legal entities
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bain, Robert Nisbet (1911). "Christian II.". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 274–276.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the