When King Magnus, surnamed Smek, reached his majority, he assumed the government in both countries (1332). Being born a Swede, he lacked comprehension of the Norsemen, and showed little interest in their affairs. He was a weak and good-natured man, anxious to please all, and therefore succeeded in pleasing no one. In Sweden he had his hands full, in endeavoring to control the unruly nobility, whose pretensions were supported by his oldest son, Erik. He therefore rarely came to Norway, and made no adequate provision for the government during his absence. Erling Vidkunsson then made himself the spokesman of the universal discontent, and with other magnates compelled the king, at a meeting in Bergen (1350), to take his second son, Haakon, as co-regent and to abdicate the crown of Norway, in his favor, as soon as he should have reached his majority. It was then understood that Erik would be his father's successor in Sweden. But unforseen events frustrated this expectation. In 1359 Magnus and his queen, the wily and malicious Blanca of Namur, made a visit to King Valdemar Atterdag in Copenhagen. It was there arranged that Haakon should marry Valdemar's eldest daughter and heir, Margaret, and that the Danish king should extend his protection to Queen Blanca's favorite, Bengt Algotsson, whom Erik had declared to be a public enemy and was determined to destroy. At the instigation of King Valdemar, she chose, however, an easier way to accomplish her baneful purposes. She poisoned her son. Haakon was now heir both to Norway and Sweden, and his and Margaret's issue, presumptively, to Denmark. The Swedes were by no means pleased with this arrangement, and the Norwegian magnates would, if they had been consulted, have expressed themselves no less strongly against it. They must have foreseen in this union the inevitable decay of the Norse national spirit and the gradual extinction of their nationality. The Swedes, being a larger people, had less to fear from it, but yet regarded it as prejudicial to their interests. Their feeling toward Denmark was not, just then, of a friendly character, chiefly owing to the pusillanimity of their king, in ceding the provinces Skaane, Halland, and Blekinge to the latter country, without any adequate return, unless it was a pledge of aid from King Valdemar against his own subjects. So secure felt Magnus in his new alliance, that he actually helped the Danish king to conquer the Swedish island Gottland, and permitted him to sack the town of Visby, which was one of the principal depots of the Baltic trade.