"Innumerable Others": Reassessing King James VI/I's Scandinavian Sojourn

Resumé

’Innumerable Others’: Reassessing King James VI/I’s Scandinavian Sojourn

John F. L. Ross

This article addresses the circumstances surrounding a six-month whirlwind Scandinavian trip by Scotland’s King James VI in 1589-90, an event that has long puzzled historians. The late-autumn sailing to Norway, where he married Anna, Princess of Denmark, and their subsequent overwintering in Denmark, gave the future King James I of England and Scotland his only foreign experience. While traditional analysis has ascribed youthful passion to the young sovereign’s sudden departure, evidence presented here suggests the trip as a politically risky but shrewdly timed exercise in reputation enhancement for James – the putative yet unnamed successor to Queen Elizabeth I on the English throne – and a means of bolstering Scotland’s trade and foreign policy prospects at a critical time of national reorientation.