sweden – Scandinavian History

Walking into a Medieval church that has either preserved its ceiling paintings or restored them can be like entering a completely different dimension of devils and saints, mythological images and depictions of everyday life when the paintings were made.

Härkeberga church, Uppland, built in the14th century and known för its many paintings by Albertus Pictor.

Unlike the rest of Europe, Swedish churches were built quite late, between the late 11th and early 12th centuries. They were often adorned with rich decorations, and the church paintings we know today span from the early 12th century to the 16th century.

They were painted on the ceilings and walls of the stone churches using lime-based paint. The names of the painters who created the works are often unknown, but some are still alive, such as Johannes Rosenrod and Johannes Iwan.

In the cases where the names of the individual painters do not survive, their works are divided between the Mälardal School and the Tierps School, the latter of which was a style used during the latter part of the 15th century.

Leading the way was the ”Tierpsmästaren,” – the Tierp master – a painter whose name has not survived the centuries, as well as Anders Eriksson, Peter Henriksson, and Peder Jönsson, as well as two painters who today are only known by the names Alfabetsmästaren – The Alphabet master- and Edebomästaren.

Jona, about to be devoured by the whale. Härkeberga church.

But the most famous master of them all during this time, and whose name we know, was Albertus Pictor, or Albertus Pärlstickare (pearl knitter) as he was also called.

Albertus was most likely born in Germany, and in some of the decorative ribbons on his paintings, he called himself Albertus Ymmenhausen and Immenhausen, respectively. However, this has been interpreted more as a hint of his origin than an actual surname.

Unfortunately, it does not make it easier to confidently say where he came from. During his lifetime, several German places had variants of this name. Still, the presumed German is strengthened, among other things, by the presence of Jewish caricatures in his paintings, which was common in Germany at this time, while Sweden, for its part, had no Jewish population.

In the language ribbons with which some of the paintings are decorated, certain ”Germanisms” also appear.

”Remember me, Albertus, this church’s painter”. Lid’s church

There is a single preserved self-portrait of Albertus Pictor in Lid’s church in Strängnäs diocese. The face in the painting has been destroyed almost as if to preserve the mystery surrounding his identity. But the text tape says, ”Remember me, Albertus, this church’s painter.”

Of course, we ”remember” him, not least through the colourful and multifaceted paintings, which contain everything from nightmarish depictions of hell to humorous mythical creatures.

He is believed to have been born around 1440. Throughout the following decades, immigration from Germany to Sweden was significant, and it was common for artisans to make long journeys to find new places to work. Albertus Pictor may have directed his steps towards Sweden to find work.

One of the many German traders already here may also have recommended him. We know that in 1465, he was in Arboga, and according to the city’s reference book, he was included among the town’s burgess.

This shows that he was already established as a master painter.

In 1479, Albertus Pictor appeared for the first time in Stockholm’s land register, a list of landed property that was the basis for taxation and contained the farm’s location, size, yield, owner’s name and other relevant information.

The dance around the golden calf, Härkeberga church.

He was married to Anna, widow of Johan Målare (painter), and according to the register, he also saw Anna’s children receive their inheritance from their father this year.

Marrying the widow of a master painter was advantageous for a newly arrived artisan; it meant he could take over the deceased husband’s place in the town’s guild.

He also gained access to Johan Målare’s workshop and clientele, while Anna and any minor children from her previous marriage could rely on being supported.

There is no indication that Anna and Albertus had children of their own. Maybe Anna was older than Albertus was.

They lived in a house next to the current Parliament building, an address in central medieval Stockholm worthy of such a distinguished church painter as Pictor.

According to the tax records and the so-called Scots books, he was a painter and a pearl embroiderer.

This craft involved sewing and embroidering with gold thread and pearls. It was mainly used to decorate church robes, altar cloths, and ceremonial clothing. Flags and banners also would have been commissioned.

During the years he was active as a church painter, he primarily worked in the Mälar Valley, with a detour to churches in Norrbotten and Nederluleå, where Albertus Pictor, or someone from his workshop, is believed to have done the ceiling paintings sometime in the 1490s.

Just as Michelangelo did not personally paint everything attributed to him in Rome, neither did Pictor.

Instead, the master artisans had apprentices who worked according to the manner, motifs, and colouring the master instructed them to follow.

Today, 37 churches are considered to have paintings by Albertus Pictor, most of them in Uppland, where Uppsala Cathedral is one of them. Even the tiny church in the shadow of the cathedral, the Trinity Church, has paintings by Pictor.

Art scholars who have studied him, such as Pia Melin, believe that the combination of quality and quantity that Pictor exhibited during his active years makes him unique in Swedish church painting.

A difference noted between Albertus Pictor’s work and that of the contemporary painters mentioned is a lively and moving expression, with highlights and shadows, and not least the fact that the faces of the figures are both individual and anatomically correct.

He also used more pigments than usual, layered the paint, and used different tinted glazes. This technique is mainly recognized in Germany, and the techniques he brought to the art of church painting are what have made him unique among his peers.

His paintings have left their mark on contemporary cultural expressions. The most famous is probably the knight who plays chess with death in Ingmar Bergman’s film ”The Seventh Seal.”

The original, if you may, can be viewed in Täby church in Uppland.

Between 1479 and 1508, Albertus Pictor is mentioned in Stockholm’s reference books at least ten times, often in connection with various disputes.

In 1507, it was recorded that he was sick and bedridden, and after 1509, he was never mentioned again. Sometime during those two years, the master painter passed away.

Sources:

Albertus Pictor – Erik Lundberg

Albertus Ymmenhusen alias Albertus Pictor – Thomas Hall/Fornvännen 2003

Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (Swedish biograpical lexicon) – J.
Roosval

Albertus Pictor: bilder i urval samt studier och
analyser/kriterier för attributeringar av målningssviterna – Pia Melin
(selected images and studies)

Härkebergas rika skrud: möte med målaren Albertus Pictor –

Harlin, Tord; Norström Bengt Z., Bergman Sten,
Davidson Nikolaus von

Images:

Härkeberga church – Kevin Cho/Creative Commons

Jonas devoured by the whale – Lars-Olof Albertsson/Creative Commons

Remember me….. – Creative Commons

Dance around the golden calf – Creative Commons

Vaults – Max Ronnersjö/Creative Commons

Death plays chess – Håkan Svensson/Creative Commons

16th Century

The Princess and the Vadstena Rumble

18 mars, 202414 mars, 2024 Scandinavian History

The Royal Palace Tre Kronor in Stockholm, about thirty years before it was completely destroyed in a fire in 1697.

On November 6, 1540, a baby girl was born at the royal palace Tre Kronor in Stockholm.

She was named Cecilia, and if princesses at that time had surnames, it was Gustavsdotter. However, just as her father is not primarily remembered as Gustav I or Gustav Eriksson, Cecilia is also not recognised for the patronymic icon she possibly had.

Instead, she and her father have gone down in history under a name more recent than themselves: Vasa. Gustav and Cecilia Vasa.

Margareta Leijonhuvud, contemporary painting by Johan Baptista van Uther.

Cecilia was Gustav’s fourth child, the third with Margareta Leijonhuvud, daughter of Erik Abrahamsson (Leijonhuvud), who, like Gustav’s own father, was executed during the Stockholm massacre in November 1520.

Margareta was probably born in 1516 or 1517 in Lillkyrka in Närke. Through her mother, she was Gustav’s cousin-granddaughter and about 20 years younger than her husband, the king.

Most of Cecilia’s siblings have made their mark on history, but with her half-brother Erik XIV and his fate, she is the most interesting of Gustav I Eriksson’s children.

Not least because today, it would be said that she gave the traditions a middle finger throughout her life.

Much was said about Gustav Eriksson during last year’s celebration of the 500th anniversary of his becoming Sweden’s king.

But most of it was about hard pinches, rebellions and state formation.

Not much was said, nor were seminars held, about the fact that there are signs in the sources that Gustav was also a caring father who worried about his children. Not least, when they fell ill, he advised their caregivers on how to treat them, made lists of foods they should be served during the illness to get better quickly, and warned them about which foods to watch out for.

There are letters about Gustav’s concerns when Cecilia, in particular, fell ill.

But Cecilia Gustavsdotter Vasa would not only make her father worried and concerned but also furious, and one occasion when this happened that went down in history was when Cecilia was 19 years old.

This painting was for a long time considered to be a portrait of Cecilia Vasa. It’s now put into question.

Of course, the plan was that she, as a princess, one day would be married off so that the marriage contracts benefited Sweden and the Swedish royal house. The same was the case for her sisters as, indeed, for any other princess.

In 1556, it was decided that Cecilia’s sister Katarina would marry the East Frisian Count Edzard.

Two years later, in 1558, he arrived in Stockholm with his entourage to finalise the marriage negotiations for the impending wedding. This process tested Gustav’s patience more than once, not least when the wedding, which was supposed to have taken place at Pentecost 1559, was postponed another few months until October 1 of the same year.

It was not only the protracted preparations for the wedding that caused the relationship between the bride’s father and the son-in-law to chafe; this continued even after the wedding vows were pronounced.

As soon as the festivities were over, Edzard announced that he and his new wife would go to Ostfriesland, something Gustav objected to because it was difficult to travel so far in the winter. However, Edzard did not budge an inch but used means of pressure: if he could not return home with his new wife, he would leave her in Stockholm and travel home alone.

Gustav, who was not a fool, realised that this would leave his daughter and himself open to gossip and malicious speculation, and he simply had to go along with it.

That conflict and the tense atmosphere had meant that Cecilia, who would dance to her own tune for the rest of her life, could operate in obscurity.

What is beyond all doubt, however, was that she and the groom’s brother Johan had opened their eyes to each other, and Cecilia now began to beg and ask to accompany the bride and groom on their journey.

At first, her father the King answered with the most definite ”no”, something Cecilia, however, was not satisfied with. After more persistent nagging and finally assurances from her siblings Katarina and Erik (later Erik XIV) that they would look after her, Gustav gave her permission to accompany her as far as Vadstena, where her brother Magnus was based at Vadstena Castle.

There would have been a festive atmosphere at Vadstena Castle – Sweden’s only Vasaborg in the true sense of the word, completed in 1545 – barely 15 years before what came to be known as the Vadstena Rumble.

On the night between December 13 and 14, Jon Andersson, sitting on guard in the castle courtyard, saw something he didn’t expect. Up the castle wall, towards the window of Cecilia’s bedroom, a man climbed on a rope ladder that was hung out the window.

The man was Johan, and if there had been any doubt as to his identity as he struggled up the wall, these were dispelled when the guards stormed into Cecilia’s room.

They found Cecilia and Johan in a stage of scantily clad clothing, which, according to the standards of the time, did not suit them. Johan was described as ”hardly wearing his trousers”.

Gustav is said to have burst into tears when the news reached him. For decades, he had worked to establish his kingship and family as equally worthy as other European regents whose families had a much longer history on the throne. From his perspective, what had just happened was a disaster that risked ultimately lowering Cecilia’s chances of a good marriage.

Cecilia is said to have received a beating and had her hair pulled so hard that she later said she thought it would come off her head. Katarina also got an earful because she had failed to supervise her sister.

But he was most furious with Erik, not primarily because Cecilia was found more or less undressed with a man, but because Erik didn’t have the sense to put a lid on it.

Instead of handling the crisis as discreetly as possible, he alerted everyone who could be alerted and interrogated both guards and guests. The rumour immediately gained wings and flew to castles and huts in Sweden and mainland Europe. In the beerhouses, they quickly began singing songs mocking the king’s daughter.

Erik’s clumsy handling of the situation caused Gustav to express his dissatisfaction in a letter to Erik:

” You have pursued this cause to the utmost, not as a brother against his own flesh and blood, but as the supreme enemy. We fear that as long as you follow the advice and encouragement of your own mind, your servants and such of your young company, not only in this paragraph but also for many adventures, both you and all of us Swedes will once wash our heads in our own blood. God better that at some point we should be fathers to such children”.

Before the scandal, Cecilia had been betrothed to Count George Johan av Valdentz, an engagement that immediately came to nothing.

To mitigate the scandal, and probably also because she was simply in love, she expressed her wish to marry Prince Johan, who, after the fateful night, spent six months in prison custody at Örbyhus. He wasn’t interested, though; it might be easy to think he already got what he wanted. But the fact is that Johan never married at all. Maybe it was true, the rumour that Gustav had him castrated.

Cecilia Vasa did well and married Margrave Kristoffer II of Baden-Rodemachen five years later. Regarding adventure and scandal, the Vadstena Rumble was just the beginning.

But all this chaos and disappointment in his children took a toll on her father, and during the spring, his health steadily deteriorated. Just over seven months after the ”rumble”, Gustav Vasa was dead.

Sources:

Cecilia Vasa – The National Archive

Vasarna i Vadstena (The Vasas in Vadstena) – Eva Mattson

Cecilia Vasa – Georg Landberg, Swedish Biographical Archive

Images:

The Royal Castle Tre Kronor – Govert Camphuysen, 1661/Creative Commons

Margareta Leijonhuvud – Johan Baptista van Uther/Creative Commons

Woman formerly believed på be Cecilia Vasa – painter unknown/Creative Commons

Vadstena, castle and bedchamber – blog owner

14th century

Feuding brothers and death

4 mars, 20244 mars, 2024 Scandinavian History

In February 1306, Torgils Knutsson was executed by beheading on Pelarbacken, better known as Götgatsbacken in today’s Stockholm.

Torgils Knutsson, statue in Viborg. Photo: Andrew Zorin, Creative Commons.

Despite opening with his death, he’s not the main character here.

Instead, it’s King Birger Magnusson – ward of Torgils Knutsson – and his brothers, Dukes Erik and Valdemar, all sons of King Magnus Ladulås and thus also grandsons of Earl Birger.

While both Earl Birger and Magnus Ladulås worked to strengthen peace in the country, domestic peace, court peace, church peace and women’s peace, there was no peace between the three brothers.

When Magnus Ladulås died on Visingsö in 1290 at about 50 years old and 15 years on the throne, he left three underage sons behind. Torgils Knutsson oversaw leading the interim government and leading young Birger on his path to eventually taking the throne.

While Birger became king, Erik and Valdemar had to settle for becoming dukes over Södermanland and Finland, respectively, something the two brothers found to be far from enough.

The absence of peace between the heirs of Magnus Ladulå resulted in Erik strengthening his power by forming alliances with powerful men. He was also married to the daughter of Norwegian king Haakon Magnusson, which didn’t hurt his cause. Valdemar, in turn, was married to a daughter of the loathed Torgils Knutsson, a marriage he made sure to have annulled as the conflicts between Erik and Valdemar on the one hand and Birger and the powerful Torgils on the other grew.

As a result of the ”noise” they were making, Erik and Valdemar were summoned by Torgils Knutsson in 1305 to sign a treaty that would end their conflict-seeking and attacks against the king’s regime as well as against Torgils himself. The treaty meant that they would cease all contacts with foreign countries – which were not unlikely aimed at building alliances with other regents and power players, stop their attacks on the king and Torgils Knutsson, obey the king and barred them from coming to court unless they were explicitly summoned.

As they perceived it, the two disadvantaged brothers signed the treaty at Kolsäter’s farm in Dalsland but didn’t intend to abide by it. Why King Birger and Torgils thought they would is somewhat of a mystery.

In the following months, however, some at least temporary peace seems to have settled between the three brothers, something that would affect Torgils Knutsson: before the year was over, the three had joined forces to arrest him, and this ended, as previously mentioned, with a beheading on Pelarbacken.

Life’s not a fairy tale, not today and not in the Middle Ages, and there is no ”happily ever after” ending to this story, no brothers who fell into each other’s arms after removing a man who caused conflict, and no peace.

It would pass only just over six months after Torgil’s execution in February 1306, before Erik and Valdemar yet again attacked their royal brother.

The primary source for these events is the so-called Erikskrönikan – the Erik Chronicle -written in knittel verse in the 1320s or 1330s, relatively close to the events it describes.

Håtuna, as pictured in the work ”Suecia” in 1694

According to the chronicle, King Birger held a banquet in Håtuna and invited his brothers, who arrived with their entourage, as befitted gentlemen at the time.

During the evening, the retinues armed themselves, contrary to both the legislation that the brothers’ father had enacted regarding domestic peace and the treaty they had signed.

Birger Magnusson was arrested and held prisoner for two years, an event that has gone down in history as the ”Håtunaleken”, the Håtuna game. When Briger was imprisoned, Valdemar and Erik carved out large chunks of the kingdom for themselves, giving Erik the largest part. Despite this, Birger was still king when he was finally released due to lengthy negotiations. He was still king and had lands to rule over, but they were significantly reduced.

According to historian Mikael Nordgren, this duchy of Duke Erik is the only attempt at a feudal ”state” made in Sweden.

Despite what had happened, more than ten years of relative peace passed between the brothers, but if Erik and Valdemar thought Birger had an element of ”forgive and forget” in him, that was a monumental mistake.

In the fall of 1317, Valdemar passed through Nyköping while Birger had moved his court to Nyköpingshus. Valdemar was invited to a banquet and asked also to bring their brother Erik.

This would be the beginning of the end for all of them.

Valdemar arrived first, and had it not been for his reassurance that everything seemed fine, it’s possible that Erik probably never joined the celebration, but he did.

One would think, after the so-called Håtunaleken, that it should have raised all kinds of red flags for Erik and Valdemar when Birger announced that their respective armed retinues would not be housed at Nyköpingshus but would have to seek accommodation outside the city.

But without objection, they sent their men away.

What was it about these brothers that made them, despite all their experiences and their agendas, so willing to trust each other?

Was it actual sibling love that got lost in politics and self-interest? Because the willingness to trust is, in hindsight, completely incomprehensible.

Like Birger a little over ten years earlier, Erik and Valdemar would have reason to regret that trust.

According to the Chronicle of Erik, Valdemar and Erik were surprised by men with crossbows during the night between 10 and 11 December 1217. King Birger is said to have commented on this with, ”Do you remember Håtunaleken? I remember it all too well. This one isn’t going to get any better.”

It would get a lot worse.

Erik and Valdemar were kept prisoners in Nyköpinghus core house, which, as it happens, is one of the buildings of the weathered royal house that still exists today.

The preserved will of dukes Erik and Valdemar

They never get out of here alive. Five weeks into their captivity, they write a joint will. We know that for sure because it still exists.

There, among other things, they instituted a canonicate – an office for a canon, which in turn was a member of a cathedral chapter – in Uppsala, Linköping and Skara cathedrals.

They also give money to a wide range of churches and monasteries, including Strängnäs, Västerås and Turku, as well as to the monks in Varnhem, Alvastra and Skänninge, alongside the nuns in Sko, Riseberga and Askeberga, among others. This, alongside gifts to a long list of other church institutions, was undoubtedly in a desperate ambition to save their souls. The gifts were to be secured by pledging their estates in Svartsjö, Algö and Hammarö.

And then they die. It’s unknown how, but according to legend, Birger let them starve to death.

We may never know if this was true.

But the fate of the two royal brothers has been said to be quite worthy of a drama by Shakespeare. Such a thing could also have existed if Sweden had a Shakespeare.

So, how did King Birger fare? Did he conquer both the land and the fortune without his brothers?

The answer can be summed up in a short ”No”.

Lime painting depicting King Birger in Ringsted church.

Birger was not quite as popular a king as he had probably hoped. About six months after he imprisoned his brothers, the lawman (from the Swedish ”lagman”; someone who led the Thing and oversaw dealings within his juristiction) Birger Persson, who had been one of the witnesses to the brother’s will, led a rebellion against the king.

He chose to flee with his queen, first to Stegeborg castle in Östergötland, and when this fell into the hands of the rebels, on to Visby. They went to Zealand (Denmark), where King Birger lived for another four years. He and his queen are buried in Ringsted church.

Birger’s son was apprehended while trying to defend Nyköpinghus and executed in Stockholm in 1320. Instead, Duke Erik’s son Magnus was crowned king at the Mora stones outside Uppsala at just three years old. Magnus Eriksson would have a complicated reign, during which he was regularly vilified by none other than St Bridgid of Sweden.

Sources:

Sveriges Medeltid (Medieval Sweden) – Dick Harrison

Chronicle of Erik – author unknown

Swedish Diplomatarium – The National Archive

Images:

Swedish Diplomatarium – The National Archive

Creative Commons

12th Century, In English, Kings, Sverige/Sweden

Erik the Holy

25 december, 2022 Scandinavian History

Sweden has a national saint who is not really a saint. This because the Pope did not want to canonize him. Why is a little unclear, but a letter somewhere in the now thousand-year-old records mentioning a king who fought, drank, and in the end was murdered, and therefore did not deserve this exaltation.

Whether this concerns Erik Jedvardsson – Erik the Holy – is unclear. The Swedish Middle Ages, especially the early Middle Ages, had no shortage of violent kings, who drank and, in the end, were murdered by their opponents.

Erik Jedvardsson was born sometime between 1120 and 1125, the son of the magnate Jedvard – who is sometimes assumed to be an Englishman on uncertain grounds, mainly because how rare the name was in 12th-century Sweden – and his wife Cecilia.

It is difficult to say anything about Erik with certainty, as there is a complete lack of sources about his life that are contemporary with him.

We know, however, that Erik was married to Kristina Björnsdotter, daughter of the Danish prince Björn Haraldsson Ironside and the Swedish princess Katarina Ingesdotter, something that made Kristina a granddaughter of King Inge the Elder.

Together Erik and Kristina had four children: Knut Eriksson, Filip Eriksson, Katarina Eriksdotter and Margareta Eriksdotter.

According to a Danish chronicle from 1158, Erik became king of the western Geats in 1156. According to a letter written during the reign of his son Knut, he was also king of the Svealand region.

He owned Ängsö castle in Västmanland, which still stands where it stands today.

As king, he succeeded Sverker the Elder, who allegedly was murdered by the pretender to the Danish throne, Magnus Henriksson, on December 25, 1156.

According to the Erik legend, King Erik is said to have led a crusade against Finland in the 1150s. This started the colonization of the neighboring country to the east. However, the legend of Erik was written down just over 100 years later, and cannot be taken as absolute fact, not least since it, as a hagiographical text, aims to glorify Erik.

As it happened, Magnus Henriksson also murdered King Erik.

This must have happened on May 18, 1160, in connection with Erik being at a fair in Östra Aros, now Uppsala. The church was surrounded by men led by Magnus Henriksson. Erik, who chose to remain in church and hear the mass to the end despite his men asking him to flee to safety, was cut down as he left the church.

He is said to have been stabbed in the leg so that he could not fight or flee, and then decapitated while lying on the ground.

Where he died, a spring is said to have sprung up, at which miracles then occurred. Thus, the saint legend was born, and Sweden got a national saint Rome did not want.

His remains ended up in a saint’s casket kept in Uppsala Cathedral since 1273.

Magnus Henriksson, who also murdered Erik’s representative Sverker the Elder, later met his death at the Battle of Örebro, where Sverker’s son Knut Sverkersson killed him in 1161, according to “Västgötska kungalängden”, royal documents connected to the region of Västergötland.

During 2014–2015 osteological examinations of the remains were performed.

With the help of carbon-14, it was possible to establish that the man in front of the scientists lived during the same period as Erik. The osteological examinations revealed he most likely died in the way contemporary sources say; from decapitation after being injuried in his legs. The location of the injuries also suggests that he was wearing chain mail.

The scientists could establish that the man lying in the casket had been around 35 years old when he died, that he had been of strong build, that he had lived an active and healthy life and was 171 centimetres tall. The examination also showed that he ate a lot of fish, which is in line with the fact that he must have been a devout Catholic. Along with the remains, there was also a royal crown, the oldest in Sweden.

Sources:

Äldre Västgötalagen (The older Västgöta law)

Svensk Medeltid/The Swedish Middle Ages – Dick Harrison

Erikslegenden/The Erik Legend

National Archives

Images:

Ängsö Slott – Tor Svensson

Other photos – the blog owner

17th Century

The Witch Trials of Dalarna

20 juni, 202123 mars, 2024 Scandinavian History

The connection between the witch trials in Salem, USA – those that have been the subject of at least one horror film – and Sweden may not be obvious, but they are there. It started in Mora in Dalarna.

The process, which also included the region of Älvdalen, also in Dalarna, was part of the mass hysteria that spread in Sweden between 1668 and 1673 during the reign of Charles XI. It has gone down in history as the Great Noise.

German engraving of the Mora Trials from 1670. Artist unknown.

The mass hysteria, which would end with 300 lives lost, began with the 11-year-old Gertrud Svensdotter from Älvdalen, who was alleged by a boy to have walked on water when they herded goats.

In what one can assume was pure self-preservation, Gertrud herself, when interrogated by the priest, accused the maid Märet Jonsdotter, whom she most likely had gotten to know when she, Gertrud, lived with her parents in the county of Härjedalen which shares a border with Dalarna.

Gertrud claimed that Märet had taken her to a crossroads when she was eight years old. Once there, she called on Satan, who appeared in the form of a priest. This would only have been the beginning of a period of travels to Blåkulla, where witches according to Swedish lore celebrate sabbath together with the devil, when they, with the help of magical ointments, used both cows and Gertrud’s father as a means of transport to get to the witch sabbath.

Gertrud’s accusations were like pulling the cork out of a bottle. Suddenly, child witnesses – because those who accused neighbors, siblings, and often parents of witchcraft in the coming years were, in most cases, children – appeared from all directions. While children usually had little say in 17th-century Sweden, these testimonies were seen as the absolute truth.

As a consequence of these first accusations, seven people died in Älvdalen on May 19 1669. They were Knopar Elin Knutsdotter, 70 years old, Bland-Anna, 70 years old, Lasse Persson, 20 years old, Bond Elin, 40 years old, a woman whose name did not survive history, as well as Gålich’s Anna Olsdotter, 17 years old and Brita Andersdotter, also 17 years old. Out of them, four had been convicted based entirely on children’s testimonies about how they had been taken to Blåkulla. The other three confessed after various forms of torture.

The hysteria spread to Mora, and on August 12, 1669, the newly formed Dalarna Witchcraft Commission arrived, marking the start of the witch trials. Both children and adults were questioned, and it was clear that whether this Commission believed in the accusations levelled against individuals depended on the individual’s previous reputation. In other words, according to the Commission, it was more believable that an old woman, maybe knowledgeable in herbs and the art of healing, was a witch than a similarly accused sergeant.

In Mora, 23 out of 60 people accused of witchcraft died. They were mainly women, except one man who was also executed. In age, they ranged from 25 to 79 years. But even if the witch hysteria raged on through the villages, it could have been much worse if it had not been for the justice Anders Stiernhök. In time, he became director of the Witchcraft Commission, and it is clear that he did not give much credence to the children’s testimony. Preserved documents show that he questioned claims, saw through contradictory stories, and asked both control questions and counter-questions. It can be stated that while people were accused of witchcraft also in Rättvik, no one died there as a result of the children’s claims. Perhaps it was the influence of Anders Stiernhöök and his father, who was also deeply sceptical of the idea that there were witches who took children to Blåkulla, that made the witch trials of Mora a lesser tragedy than it might have been.

But what about the connection between Mora and Salem in the USA? Well, in Germany an engraver whose name has been lost to history heard the news from Mora. He illustrated the events as he thought they happened and then made a copper engraving of people burning at the stake. This provocative image is widely believed to have inspired the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. It should be pointed out, however, that neither in Sweden nor the United States was anyone alive burned at the stake. However, it was common in the unknown illustrator’s homeland, Germany.

Sources:

Lagerlöf-Génetay, Birgitta. De svenska häxprocessernas utbrottsskede 1668-1671. Stockholm: Akademitryck AB, 1990

Guillou, Jan, Häxornas försvarare, Piratförlaget 2002

Åberg, Alf, Häxorna: de stora trolldomsprocesserna i Sverige 1668-1676, Esselte studium/Akademiförl., Göteborg, 1989

Östborn, Andreas (red.), Dalarnas häxprocesser, Stift. Bonäs bygdegård, Mora, 2000

Etikett: sweden

Albertus Pictor, master of light and shadow

The Princess and the Vadstena Rumble

Feuding brothers and death

Erik the Holy

The Witch Trials of Dalarna