a safe haven in the shadow of war? – mia korpiola 59 However, looking at the activity of the Svea Court of Appeal in 1614 through its sources, it is difficult to see signs of the glorious predetermined plan one reads about in the research. Rather, establishment the Court of Appeal in 1614 looks like one more stage in a string of attempts to manage the royal judicial power, especially since the accession of the Vasa dynasty, as has been discussed in the previous chapter of this book. In similar ways, the Vasa kings started to make the central administration more efficient as attested by such documents as the Chancery ordinances that existed ever since the reign of King Gustav Vasa. The need for administrative reform was also taken up at the Diet in 1611, where the Estates and the Council of the Realm requested that the king reform the Chancery and Treasury in order to maintain good order and policy.134 Moreover, the existing records of the Svea Court of Appeal indicate that the reality of the daily work of the Court in 1614 seems more untidy and imperfectly sketched out in advance than the customary account suggests. In fact, even though the newhovrätt was partly based on pre-existing plans from the reign of Charles IX, many facets of its activity, competence and administration were left nebulous, ambiguous or even entirely unregulated in 1614, as will be seen below in more detail in this article. Why was the Svea Court of Appeal established, then, and why in 1614? The basic assumption of this article is that one risks falling into the pit of anachronism if one explains the establishment of the court as part of the remodelling of the Swedish state administration that only became apparent in the late 1620s and the 1630s. The success story of Sweden “bursting onto the world stage as a major European power,”135 the victories of the valiant Gustav II Adolf or the political acumen and administrative genius of his Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, have coloured the early history of the Svea Court of Appeal with the sheen of hindsight. Similarly, explaining the establishment and functions of the court by how it functioned in the later 1610s or 1620s – or even later, after the establishment of other courts of appeal – leads one perilously close to methodological pitfalls. Explaining what the Court was, less by a close analysis of the sources of the period than by what happened and what it became at a later 134 The proposition (framställning) of the Estates and the Council of the Realm on the King’s assurance (konungaförsäkran), 19 Dec. 1611, Svenska riksdagsakter, 1. serien, 2:1, ed. Ahnlund, pp. 60-62. 135 Peterson, Gary Dean 2007 p. 115.
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