"Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe" offers a unique perspective on aspects of female rulership in the Scandinavian Middle Ages. Working with historical as well as literary evidence from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, this book shows how three queens -- Agnes of Denmark, Eufemia of Norway, and Margareta, the union queen of the Scandinavian kingdoms -- marshaled the power of the royal voice in order to effect political change. In conceptualizing the political landscape of late-medieval Scandinavia as an acoustic landscape, Layher charts a new path of historical and cultural analysis into the reach and resonance of royal power in the Middle Ages.

This book examines female lordship and the power of the political voice in medieval Northern Europe, focusing on three prominent, foreign-born queens of medieval Scandinavia - Agnes of Denmark (d. 1304), Eufemia of Norway (d. 1312) and Margareta of Denmark/Sweden (d. 1412) - who acted as cultural mediators and initiators of political change.