Viking law was based on the Thing, an assembly of free men to wfiich the king's power was subject. Each largely autonomous province had its own assembly and its own leaders: where several provinces united, the approval of each Thing was needed for any choice of leader. For centuries in Sweden the new king had to make a formal tour to receive the homage of each province. The arrival of Christianity Christianity was slow to take root in Sweden. Whereas Denmark and Norway had accepted the faith by the turn of the eleventh century, Swedish contact was still in the east and the people remained largely heathen. Missionaries met with limited success and no Swedish king was converted until 1008, when Olof Skotonung was baptised. He was the first known king of both Swedes and Goths (that is, ruler of the two major provinces of Vastergotland and Ostergotland) and his successors were all Christians. Nevertheless, paganism retained a grip on Swedish affairs, and as late as the 108Qs the Svear banished their Christian king, Inge, when he refused to take part In the pagan celebrations at Uppsala. By the end of the eleventh century, though, the temple at Uppsala had gone and a Christian church was built on its site. In the 1130s Uppsala replaced Sigtuna original centre of the Swedish Christian faith as the main episcopal seat and, in 1164, Stephen (an English monk) was made the first archbishop. The warring dynasties The whole of the early tVliddle Ages in Sweden was characterised by a succession of struggles for control of a growing central power. Principally two families, the Sverkers and the Eriks, waged battle throughout the twelfth century. King Erik was the first Sverker king to make his mark; in 1157 he led a crusade to heathen Finland, but was killed in 1160 at Uppsala by a Danish pretender to his throne. Within 100 years he was to be recognised as patron saint of Sweden, and his remains interred in the new Uppsala Cathedral. Erik was succeeded by his son Knut, whose stable reign lasted until 1196 and was marked by commercial treaties and strengthened defences. Following his death, virtual civil war weakened the royal power with the result that the king's chief ministers, or Jarls, assumed much of the executive responsibility for running the country: so much so that when Erik Eriksson (last of the Eriks) was deposed in 1229, his administrator Birger Jarl assumed power. With papal support for his crusading policies he confirmed the Swedish grip on the southwest of Finland. His son, Valdemar, succeeded him but proved a weak ruler and didn't survive the family feuding after Birger Jarl's death. Valdemar's brother Magnus assumed power in 1275. Magnus LaduISs represented a peak of Swedish royal power not to be repeated for 300 years. His enemies dissipated, he forbade the nobility to meet without his consent and began to issue his own authoritative decrees. Preventing the nobility from claiming maintenance at the expense of the peasantry as they travelled from estate to estate earned him his nickname LaduISs or "Barnlock".