The project studied the civil wars in the Nordic realms in the period c. 1130-1260. The civil wars started around 1130 in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In Denmark they ended c. 1160, whereas in Norway and Sweden they continued until the middle of the thirteenth century, when strife reappeared in Denmark. In Iceland, civil wars raged in the period 1220-1262/64. Similar conflicts occurred in other European kingdoms. The project was guided by the two hypotheses that the Nordic civil wars were less extensive, less chaotic and more complex processes than earlier research has claimed; and that these conflicts should be studied as regional conflicts, not as national ones. In order to investigate these theories, we adopted a cross-disciplinary and comparative perspective. By involving political scientists and social anthropologists working on civil wars in a contemporary setting we obtained new approaches and theoretical perspectives on civil wars. By co-operating with scholars working on English, French and German medieval history, we gained a deeper understanding of how the Nordic civil wars can be situated in a broader contemporary European context.