Vinnare och Förlorare : En studie av gästande adelskretsar och deras politiska övertygelse på Kalmar slott, 1579-1600

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to examine whether visiting noblemen at the castles of Borgholm and Kalmar with their vast network of acquaintances can determine a tendency towards a political stance in the civil war of Sweden in the late 16th century. This is done by examining the guests and the company of the bailiff, born as a commoner but later governor and nobleman, Christoffer Gyllengrip Andersson, who in the end of the century would perish in the same manner as many of the peerage who fell at the bloodbath of Linköping in the year 1600. The networks are analyzed with the help of accountings and census records from the above mentioned castles between the years 1579-1592 whereon by the year 1593 the following national as well as local events will be analyzed and presented until the year 1600. The essay shows that allegiance to one or the other side can be seen to certain degree in the presented era delving into Kalmar Castle generally, allthough the true nature of one’s political ideals become most visible in the later 1590s when the noblemen actually are forced to take sides, instead of the double-agent poppycock of which they were in the antecedent decade of 1580. The essay shows that the information given by the census-records can be anchored in history’s more famous line such as when Olof Andersson Oxehufvud (one of many) is assigned as governor in the year 1594 to prevent the eminent empowerment of his uncle Karl, Duke of Södermanland, Närke and Värmland.