Before the year of 1060 Sweden is an Old Teutonic state, certainly of later form and a larger compass than the earliest of such, but with its democracy and its elective kingdom preserved. The older Sweden, such as it had existed at least since the days of Ingiald Illrade, was in regard to its constitution a rudimentary union of states. The realm had come into existence through the cunning and violence of the king of the Sviar, who made away with the kings of the respective lands, making their communities pay homage to him. No change in the interior affairs of the different lands was thereby effected; they lost their outward political independence, but remained mutually on terms of perfect equality. They were united only through the king, who was the only centre for the government of the union. No province had constitutionally more importance than the rest, no supremacy by one over the other existed. On this historic basis the Swedish realm was built, and rested firmly until the commencement of the Middle Ages. In the Old Swedish state-organism the various parts thus possessed a high degree of individual and pulsating life; the empire as a whole was also powerful, although the royal dignity was its only institution. The king was the outward tie which bound the provinces together; besides him there was no power of state which embraced the whole realm. The affairs of state were decided upon by the king alone, as in regard to war, or he had to gather the opinion of the Thing in each province; any imperial representation did not exist and was entirely unknown, both in the modern sense and in the form of one provincial, or sectional, assembly deciding for all the others. The latter form is one of transition, the modern form the ripe fruit, both brought out by the historic development. In society there existed no classes. It was a democracy of free men, the slaves and freed men enjoying no rights. The first centuries of the Middle Ages were one continued process of regeneration, the Swedish people being carried into the European circle of cultural development and made a communicant of Christianity. With the commencement of the thirteenth century Sweden comes out of this process as a mediæval state, in aspect entirely different to her past. The democratic equality among free men has turned into an aristocracy, with aristocratic institutions, the hereditary kingdom into an elective, or, at least, into one close upon turning into an elective, kingdom, while the provincial particularism and independence have given way to the constitution of a centralized, monopolistic state. No changes could be more fundamental.