Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Who started the Swedish Empire?
Denmark had always threatened Swedish naval dominance in the Baltic Sea, and even during the reign of a tactical genius such as Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish navy remained somewhat inferior to their southern adversaries. The "Vasa" was built in a response to this, and was the most heavily armed warship of its time. But the "Vasa" did not pass its maiden voyage and sunk in 1628, leaving Sweden without its most powerful vessel and causing financial problems within the naval ministry. No expenses had been spared decorating the warship, and many tonnes of gold and bronze statues were now very difficult to salvage. Instead of relying on a naval power of his own, Gustavus sought to ally with the dominant Protestant naval powers in Europe (namely England and the Dutch Republic). But a strong navy was not considered important by the king – it was on land that the battles against Catholicism would be fought and not in the small Baltic Sea. The concept of "Dominium Maris Baltici" was not a primary goal for Sweden during the Thirty Years' War, as it was overshadowed by the struggle to protect Protestantism. Nevertheless, Sweden did possess a quite powerful naval force compared to most adversaries other than Denmark – the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire both had inadequate naval forces to stop a Swedish landing of troops in northern Germany, and only Denmark was granted immunity against this.
Suleiman I ( "Süleymān", ; almost always "Kanuni Sultan Süleyman") (6 November 1494  – 5/6/7 September 1566), was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. Suleiman became a prominent monarch of 16th century Europe. Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies to conquer the Christian strongholds of Belgrade, Rhodes, and most of Hungary. In 1541 he annexed central Hungary while Transylvania became an Ottoman vassal. However rest of the Kingdom of Hungary including western and northern (Upper) Hungary and Croatia still were Habsburgs possessions. Suleiman also conquered Iraq in his conflict with the Safavid dynasty. Under his rule, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Suleiman I ( '; or '; 6 November 1494 – 6 September 1566), commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent in the West and Kanunî Sultan Süleyman (; "The Lawgiver Suleiman") in his realm, was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566. Under his administration, the Ottoman state ruled over 15 to 25 million people.
Finnish has been spoken in Sweden ever since the (then provincial) borders were drawn in the 13th century. Sweden has always had a significant migration to and from Finland. As the two languages belong to different language families it is easy to distinguish them, unlike the neighbouring languages Norwegian and Danish. The number of Finnish speakers in Sweden today has been estimated to over 460,000. Even though many current Swedes are of full or mixed Finnish descent, Swedish is the main language in practice for many bilinguals.
After the Kalmar Union period, just before his death in 1560, King Gustav I continued the tradition by making his sons John, Magnus and Carl powerful dukes, together ruling much more of the kingdom than their older half-brother Eric, who had held a duchy in the southeast. When Eric became King Eric XIV, the imbalance of power his father had created became destructive. John, with the aid of Carl, eventually revolted, dethroned Eric and became king; Magnus proved unimportant due to mental health issues, but Carl's duchy of Södermanland prospered as a separate territory for several decades and also made his eventual rise to the throne possible. His duchy was inherited by his younger son, Carl Philip, who died in 1622 having been the last holder of one of the semi-autonomous Swedish duchies, which his brother, King Gustav II Adolph, officially abolished in 1618.
The Christianization of Scandinavia as well as other Nordic countries and the Baltic countries, took place between the 8th and the 12th centuries. The realms of Scandinavia proper, Denmark, Norway and Sweden (Sweden is an 11th or 12th century merger of the former countries Götaland and Svealand), established their own Archdioceses, responsible directly to the Pope, in 1104, 1154 and 1164, respectively. The conversion to Christianity of the Scandinavian people required more time, since it took additional efforts to establish a network of churches. The Sami remained unconverted until the 18th century. Newer archaeological research suggests there were Christians in Götaland already during the 9th century, it is further believed Christianity came from the southwest and moved towards the north.
On N.4 Stockholms Stads Brandförsäkringskontor ("The Stockholm Fire Insurance Office"), in short Brandkontoret, was established in 1746 as a result of the devastating fire at the Royal Palace in 1697. It is thus the oldest insurance company in Sweden, a company owned by its insured customers. In 1806 the building was acquired and the office of Brandkontoret has since then been located here. The building was earlier known as the Rosendal Palace ("Rosendalska palatset"), designed by C F Adelcrantz (1716–1796) and Erik Palmstedt (1741–1803) in a transitional style bridging Rococo and Gustavian Classicism, in 1773–1780 the location of the Royal Academy of the Arts.
The Kingdom of Sweden is a nation-state for the Swedish people, and as such, their national language is held in very high regard. Of Sweden's roughly ten million people, almost all speak Swedish as at least a second language, and the majority as a first language (7,825,000, according to SIL's Ethnologue). Swedish is also an official language in Finland where it is spoken by a large number of Swedish-speaking Finns. The language is also spoken to some degree by ethnic Swedes living outside Sweden, for example, just over half a million people of Swedish descent in the United States speak the language, according to Ethnologue.
While the Poles fought the Swedes, Peter founded the city of Saint Petersburg in 1703, in Ingermanland (a province of the Swedish Empire that he had captured). It was named after his patron saint Saint Peter. He forbade the building of stone edifices outside Saint Petersburg, which he intended to become Russia's capital, so that all stonemasons could participate in the construction of the new city. Between 1713 and 1728 and in 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia.
The Great Saxon Revolt was a civil war between 1077 and 1088 early in the history of the Holy Roman Empire led by a group of opportunistic German princes who elected as their figurehead the duke of Swabia and anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfeld, a two-way brother-in-law of the young Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (Henry was crowned at the age of six and took on his offices when aged sixteen). It followed the Saxon Rebellion of 1073–75.
The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its matrilineal branch of patrilineal German descent the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov ruled from 1762. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean, into Alaska and Northern California in America on the east. With 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, and religion. There were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts; they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia.
Swedish is the official language of Sweden and is spoken by the vast majority of the 10 million inhabitants of the country. It is a North Germanic language and quite similar to its sister Scandinavian languages, Danish and Norwegian, with which it maintains partial mutual intelligibility and forming a dialect continuum. Five "national minority languages" are also recognized by Swedish law: Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani and Sami.
The chief towns of Upper Moesia (and wider) were: Singidunum (Belgrade), Viminacium (now Old Kostolac), Remesiana (now Bela Palanka), Naissos (Niš), and Sirmium (now Sremska Mitrovica), the latter of which served as a Roman capital during the Tetrarchy. Seventeen Roman Emperors were born in the area of modern-day Serbia, second only to contemporary Italy. The most famous of these was Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor, who issued an edict ordering religious tolerance throughout the Empire.
When the Roman Empire was divided in 395, most of Serbia remained under the Eastern Roman Empire, while its northwestern parts were included in the Western Roman Empire. By the early 6th century South Slavs, present throughout the Byzantine Empire in large numbers, merged with the native population (Dacians, Illyrians, Thracians) and assimilated them.
Not much is known about the queen and the dates of her birth and death are unknown. She is the possible mother of an alleged son of Blot-Sweyn, Erik Årsäll. She was married to Sweyn before he became king and was alive to be queen during his reign. She is the last known Pagan queen in Sweden and in Scandinavia. She became queen of Sweden when her spouse ascended to the throne. About 1087 her husband was deposed and killed; according to tradition, by being surrounded in his home, which was set on fire. No murder of a female is recorded, and it was also the custom to allow the women of the household to depart from the building in such a situation. The queen is therefore expected to have survived the death of her spouse. The above is related from legend. Nothing factual about her life is known.
Following the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, the authorities in Sweden immediately sought to ensure that the next games would be held there. There were two Swedish members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at the time, Viktor Balck and Clarence von Rosen. The pair proposed to the Swedish governing bodies of athletics and gymnastics in order to ensure that they backed any potential bid. Support was given by the national associations on 18 April 1909 for a bid to host the Olympics in Stockholm on the basis that suitable financial arrangements could be made. King Gustaf V was petitioned on 6 May 1909 following the publication of preliminary plans for the Stockholm bid that the expected cost of hosting the Games would be 415,000 kronor (£23,050 or $115,250). The Government accepted the petition on behalf of the King and supported the bid.
He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten, and Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. His father died on 26 January 1947 in an airplane crash in Denmark when Carl Gustaf was nine months old. Upon his father's death, he became second in line to the throne, after his grandfather, the then Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf. Following the death of King Gustaf V in 1950, Gustaf Adolf ascended the throne and thus Carl Gustaf became Sweden's new crown prince and heir apparent to the throne at the age of four.
The oldest part of Stockholm is Gamla Stan ("The Old Town"), which contains some of the city's oldest buildings and ruins. One example is the ruins of the Castle Of Three Crowns, which was erected in the 13th century by the Swedish king Birger Jarl.
King Frederick's competition with Sweden for supremacy in the Baltic broke out into open warfare in 1563, the start of the Northern Seven Years' War, the dominating conflict of his rule. He tried in vain to conquer Sweden, which was ruled by his cousin, King Eric XIV. It developed into an extremely expensive war of attrition in which the areas of Scania were ravaged by the Swedes, and Norway was almost lost. During this war, King Frederick II led his army personally on the battlefield, but without much result. The conflict damaged his relationship with his noble councillors; however, the later Sture Murders of 24 May 1567 by the insane King Eric XIV in Sweden, eventually helped stabilize the situation in Denmark.
In the early modern period, the Holy Roman Empire was a union of territories in Central Europe under a Holy Roman Emperor the first of which was Otto I. The last was Francis II, who abdicated and dissolved the Empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. Despite its name, for much of its history the Empire did not include Rome within its borders.
At the time of Suleiman's death, the Ottoman Empire was one of the world's foremost powers. Suleiman's conquests had brought under the control of the Empire major Muslim cities (such as Baghdad), many Balkan provinces (reaching present day Croatia and Hungary), and most of North Africa. His expansion into Europe had given the Ottoman Turks a powerful presence in the European balance of power. Indeed, such was the perceived threat of the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Suleiman that Austria's ambassador Busbecq warned of Europe's imminent conquest: "On [the Turks'] side are the resources of a mighty empire, strength unimpaired, habituation to victory, endurance of toil, unity, discipline, frugality and watchfulness ... Can we doubt what the result will be? ... When the Turks have settled with Persia, they will fly at our throats supported by the might of the whole East; how unprepared we are I dare not say." Suleiman's legacy was not, however, merely in the military field. The French traveler Jean de Thévenot bears witness a century later to the "strong agricultural base of the country, the well being of the peasantry, the abundance of staple foods and the pre-eminence of organization in Suleiman's government".
The Roman Empire, at its height (c. 117 CE), was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization. By 285 CE the empire had grown too vast to be ruled from the central government at Rome and so was divided by Emperor Diocletian into a Western and an Eastern Empire. The Roman Empire began when Augustus Caesar became the first emperor of Rome (31 BCE) and ended, in the west, when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer (476 CE). In the east, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. The influence of the Roman Empire on western civilization was profound in its lasting contributions to virtually every aspect of western culture.
Starting in 1870, a Swedish-immigrant colony was established by the State of Maine in Aroostook County. The State of Maine had appointed William W. Thomas, Jr., who had served as American Consul in Sweden during the administration of President Abraham Lincoln, to be State Immigration Commissioner. On March 23, 1870 the Legislature passed an Act authorizing a Board of Immigration and Thomas was named Commissioner of Immigration. Thomas went to Sweden, recruited the first 51 immigrants, and led them into the township that became New Sweden. Early hardships were overcome and the colony prospered and grew into the neighboring townships of Westmanland (1879), Stockholm (1881) and the surrounding areas.
New Sweden has maintained many Swedish traditions since its founding, including the celebrations of St. Lucia Day and "Midsommar." Founders Day is also observed on July 23 every year. The Swedish language can sometimes still be heard in the older generation. The New Sweden Folk Dancers typically perform at many of the Swedish celebrations and Swedish foods are known to grace the tables.
During the reign of Gustav Vasa, a continuous Swedish realm started to form. He managed to suppress the regional communities who had been driving their own politics. In turn, the reformation suppressed the church. The high nobility, already weakened by the bloodbath, was now attached to support royal politics. However, the governing was still done in the medieval tradition: the king had numerous noblemen and scribes to help him, but these were not really officials. Also the government did not have a clear distinction of jobs, but tasks under the king's service changed according to the situation. In the 1530s, Gustav Vasa started to bring in German government officials to the country, along with whom new visions of royal power arrived in Sweden. During the 1544 Västerås Diet, the royalty was changed to hereditary and Gustav Vasa's eldest son Erik was named heir to the throne.
Sweden founded overseas colonies, principally in the New World. New Sweden was founded in the valley of the Delaware River in 1638, and Sweden later laid claim to a number of Caribbean islands. A string of Swedish forts and trading posts was constructed along the coast of West Africa as well, but these were not designed for Swedish settlers.
In early 1915, Arthur Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary of State at the German foreign ministry, approached Hammarskjöld, who was on a visit to Berlin, with an offer of potentially forming a "Nordic Block" under Swedish leadership in return for an alliance between Sweden and Germany. Whilst Hammarskjöld rebuffed this first offer, Zimmermann persisted and approached Ludvig Douglas with an offer for a renewed Swedish Empire covering Finland and the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. Douglas then conveyed this offer to King Gustaf on 8 June 1915, and also to Hammarskjöld and Wallenberg, however only King Gustaf received it positively.