Lade (The Once and Never Kings)

The Kingdom of Sápmi, often translated to Lapland in some Albionic languages, is a large Monarchy located in northern Fennoscandia. It shares a small border with Denmark to the southwest, and another small border with Novgorodian Karelia to the southeast. But its longest border is shared with Svealand to the south.

It is divided into 17 republics and earldoms. The capital, Trondheim, is located in the Earldom of Trondheim.

History
Much of the eastern and northeastern portions of modern Lapland were part of the medieval Kingdom of Norway, united under Harald Fairhair in the ninth century. The rule of the Fairhair dynasty would be interrupted by the conquest of Norway by Cnut the Great in 1028, which ousted. Olaf would die in exile in 1030, making his son Magnus Olafsson the Fairhair pretender.

Magnus would enlist the help of Svealands King Anund in an attempt to reclaim Norway. By this time, Cnut had placed his son, Sweyn Knutsson, in charge of Norway as his regent. The heavy taxes demanded by Sweyn, in addition to the troops Norway had to supply to aid Cnut in the War of Wessexian Succession, didn't do much to increase their popularity among the Norwegian nobility.

It was during this discord and foreign war that Magnus attacked. Aided by a general rebellion in Trondheim itself, he was able to secure large swaths of the northern expanses, including Trondheim. The Svealandic-Norwegian, forces were unable to take much of southern Norway before the end of the war in Wessex. As Cnut had died in England, the task of taking back Norway fell to one of his sons, Cnut III. Landing in Viken in early 1036, Cnut III's armies made little headway before winter began. When the next spring came around, Magnus' positions were fortified, and the Svealandic army were advancing into Skåne. Cnut made peace, releasing the Earldom of Trondheim and the northern territories to Magnus. Two rival Norwegian kingdoms existed for a time, until the Fairhair portion integrated a number of Sami tribes, and Magnus II was proclaimed "King of the Sami".

Lapland would expand west, and would aid Svealand on several crusades in Finland. Attempts to reclaim Iceland, which asserted its independence in the chaos that was Magnus' war, never came to. Peasant revolts became common as the government tried to pay its ever increasing debts. When the Kola territories were taken over in a particularly bad revolt in 1589, Lapland was forced to go into administrative reform. The country was federalized into 17 subdivisions, some remaining as earldoms, while others becoming republics.

While initially divided when the Reformation spread to its borders, the majority of its citizens ended up converting to Lutheranism. As such, Lapland would follow Svealand onto the Protestant side of the Forty Years War. While its armies would never see action in Germany, it would mop up Danish forces in southern Norway after Svealands King Gustav II swept their armies aside in Sjæland and Jutland. Despite moderate success, Lapland couldn't afford to field its armies, and dropped out of the war following Svealands defeat and Gustavs death at the Battle of Mainz.

In the aftermath, Lapland settled into routine internal bickering over money. Lapland finds itself constantly having to take loans from Svealand. Thanks to this it is often mocked internationally as a Svealandic satellite, waiting to be incorporated as its "fourth kingdom". Attempts by successive governments to pry the state out of its Svealandic orbit, only to be turned back by the Swiss, Italian, and London banks.