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The medieval Swedish kingdom was a complex political structure with many layers of administration. The main goal of this thesis paper was to deepen the understanding of how this polity was organized into subdivisions with a special consideration of the regional differences. After examination of the prior research and writings on the subject three major administrative divisions were observed. These were the legal districts, with tradition from both the older pre-christian society and continental feudal and canon law, the clerical dioses of the catholic church and lastly the “fiefdoms” or “län” organized during the high Middle Ages for de purpose of tax collection. This last type of division became very central in this instance due to the fact of its unclear boundaries and divisiveness in the literature. 

By using the theoretical framework of historic materialism in its view of feudalism as an economic system of exploitation, fiefdoms or “duchies” were able to be distinguished from royal domains by the fact of where the surplus value was being directed. In this way the feudal units within the Swedish realm could be placed on a map interlaced with the already well-defined legal districts, dioses as well as loosely connected non-feudalized units to illustrate a more complex visual representation of a medieval kingdom or polity. This result was then connected to another theoretical model for the state, the conglomerate state. The conclusions were made that the Swedish kingdom could be described with as feudal in the Marxian sense of exploitation but also in the sense of devolvement of power into fiefdoms. These fiefdoms interlaced with the legal districts and dioses display a conglomerate of intersecting units that together make up the realm. This type of polity was named “the intersecting conglomerate state”.