In Scandinavia, the early modern period brought significant transformation in law by way of the Reformation of the 1520s and 1530s, and dynastic change in Denmark-Norway and Sweden. In Denmark, the decisive turn to the Reformation is usually dated to the year 1536, although the evangelical movement had spread to urban areas already in the 1520s. The Danish Reformation was more of a movement from below than the Swedish Reformation, especially as the towns on both sides of the Sound were influenced first by humanist thinking and then by reforming preachers. Not only did the Reformation change legal norms, but the church’s disciplinary powers became a central instrument of social control. The discipline that the church was able to enforce by way of delegation from the secular power restored much of the prestige that the Catholic Church had enjoyed in the Middle Ages and that had been lost in the Reformation.