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Rh tranquillity to the North in the earlier part of Henry's reign, and in 1049 Svein had sent his fleet to help Henry in the Flemish war. But between 1049 and 1052 the alliance was strained by Adalbert's assertion of his ecclesiastical authority. In 1049 Adalbert had obtained a bull from Leo IX recognising the authority of Bremen over the Scandinavian lands and the Baltic Slavs up to the Peene. Anxious for peace, at first Svein had acquiesced, but when Adalbert reprimanded him for his moral laxity and his marriage with his kinswoman Gunnhild, he threatened war. Yet prudence or maybe religious scruples won the day. Gunnhild was sent home to Sweden and king and bishop made friends (1052). Thus Svein was ready to renew the ancient friendship as useful to Henry against Baldwin as it was to Svein against Harold Hardrada.

In 1052, a papal brief of Leo IX gave Adalbert wider and more definite power to the farthest North and West: Iceland, Greenland, the Orkneys, the Finns, Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, the Baltic Slavs from the Egdor to the Peene, all were definitely put under the ecclesiastical headship of Bremen, as were, indeed, inclusively, all the nations of the North. The Slavs under Godescale "looked to Hamburg (Bremen) as to a mother": Denmark was submissive: Sweden, at first reluctant, was brought round by a change of kings in 1056: Norway fell in later. It is true that Svein made proposals, approved by Leo IX, for a Danish archbishopric, which would issue in a national Danish church. Adalbert failed to carry out his large scheme of a Northern Patriarchate for Hamburg-Bremen, for which, had he been able to count twelve suffragans, he could have pleaded the sanction of the Pseudo-Isidore. Yet even so he was himself papal legate in the North, and the greatness of Hamburg-Bremen under him is a feature of German history under Henry III.

Early in 1053 at Tribur an assembly of princes elected the young Henry king and promised him obedience on his father's death, but conditionally, however, on his making a just ruler. Thither too came envoys from Hungary, peace with which was doubly welcome because of trouble raised by the ex-Duke Kuno in Bavaria and Carinthia. King Andrew, indeed, would have become a tributary vassal pledged to military service everywhere save in Italy, had not Kuno dissuaded him. Rebellions in Bavaria and Carinthia, intensified by Hungarian help, kept Henry busy for some months. But the duchy of Bavaria was formally given to the young king under the vigorous guardianship of Gebhard, Bishop of Eichstedt. In Carinthia some quiet was gained by the appointment of Adalbero of Eppenstein (son of the former Duke Adalbero deposed by Conrad II, and cousin to the Emperor) to the bishopric of Bamberg, vacant through Hartwich's death. Early in 1054 Henry wen northwards to Merseburg for Easter and then to Quedlinburg: Casimir of Poland was threatening trouble, but was pacified by the gift of Silesia, now taken from Břatislav, always a faithful ally.