Historical Women: Märta Eriksdotter Leijonhufvud

I have not been able to find any
portray of Märta and I'm not sure
there are any known ones of her.
This is her family crest however.

“Beside every good man is a good woman, and she must always be ready to step in front"

~ Phryne Fisher, 

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: 

Deadweight

Today is the 497th birthday of one of my absolute favourite historical women: Märta Eriksdotter Leijonhuvud. She was born 24 December 1520 at the family estate Ekeby in Lillkyrka parish in the Swedish province Närke.

She's the daughter-in-law of Kristina Nilsdotter Gyllenstierna and the aunt of Cecilia Vasa who have featured before in my Historical Women series and the youngest child of Erik Abrahamsson Leijonhufvud and his wife Ebba Eriksdotter Vasa. Märta never got to meet her father though. He was executed in Stockholm's bloodbath about 1½ month before she was born. She also had five (Or six if you count the first sister called Anna who died at the age of one or two falling down the stairs at Örebro castle.) older siblings: Abraham (1512/1513-1556), Birgitta (Brita) (1514-1572), Margareta (1516-1551), Anna (1517-1540) and Sten (1518-1568). To protect his family, Erik sent them to the convent in Västerås, which probably saved them from going to prison in Denmark. After the bloodbath, Ebba returned to the family estate where she probably also gave birth to Märta.

Svante Sture

At the age of 18, Märta married Kristina Gyllenstierna's son Svante Sture who was three years older than herself and from what you can get out of the available sources, it seems like they were quite happy.

I do not agree with the Swedish historians claiming Svante to be a boring character. On the contrary, I find him appealing and interesting. He did not have such an easy childhood. He lost his father, the Swedish regent Sten Sture the younger and was imprisoned by king Krisian II at the age of three. Even though it is said that Kristian's wife, queen Elisabeth, had him and his brother fostered out to a noble family in Kalundborg, Denmark where the Swedish noble women and children who had been captured at the bloodbath were imprisoned.

In 1534 he went to the Hanseatic town Lübeck (according to himself, he was tricked to come there) where he was offered the Swedish crown. The town had helped Gustav Vasa break free from the Kalmar union a few years earlier and Gustav refused to pay them. They had also got involved in the Danish civil war called The Count's Feud (1534-1536). Svante however refused the offer and was therefore held prisoner for some time afterwards. It was not the last time, people tried to use him in their rebelling against Gustav. During the so called Dacke War, he and Märta were offered to become king and queen of Sweden by the rebels from the province Småland, but they refused.

Historians (mainly male ones!) often says this is a survival strategy Svante stuck to. The Stures and Kristina Gyllenstierna were popular among the Swedish people who had not yet forgot their time ruling Sweden. Svante's older brother Nils was most likely also the young rebel who Gustav Vasa labelled as "Dalajunkern" who was executed in Rostock in 1527. I, however, see him in a slightly different light. Of course his background matter. However, I also think he had more or less the opposite personality as his older brother. While the difficult circumstances of their childhood made Nils Sture into a unruly teenager, I think it made Svante turn inwards into himself. I see him as a man who was not really interested in power. I think he had the societal position he had mostly because of his DNA and I also think he would be labelled as a geek if he had lived today. Historians, who are interested in power structures, often describes him as "boring" and Märta is said to be the more feisty character out of the two and I do not think it is really fair. Based on their letter exchange, Märta was also very close to her sister, queen Margareta, which probably did not make her too keen to take over the throne.

There is a story that Svante was first betrothed to Märta's older sister Margareta and that he rushed to see her when he learned that she had married Gustav Vasa and that Gustav had found him on his knees in front of her and Margareta had told her husband that Svante had come to ask for Märta's hand in marriage. I have not really decided what I think about this. It certainly is an interesting story, but it might just be that too: a story. Before he married, Svante spent a lot of time outside of Sweden and he did not return until 1536 when Margareta and Gustav married. However, they did not marry until 1 October and depending on when Svante got back to Sweden it might be true. What is true is that he married Märta and it seems like it was both a beneficial and a happy match.

The Sture burial choir in the
Uppsala cathedral

Svante was made one of the first counts in Sweden in 1561 so technically Märta became a countess. She did not however use the title until she after had been made widow.

ÅÅren effter Christi födilsse mdxxxviij emillen mondagen och tisdagen tå xi slog , wartt jomfrv Sigriidtt, Swantis och frv Märtis dotter, födh, i i j:e daga för nysdag, Gudi tiill loff, heder och ære. Amen.
(The years after Christ's birth 1538 between Monday and Tuesday when the clock hit 11, maid Sigrid, Svante's and Märta's daughter [unclear]. To God's honour.)

~ Märta's mother-in-law, Kristina's note when Märta's 

and Svante's first child was born in 1538.

(Quoted in Flemberg 2017.)

Märta and Svante got fifteen children in twenty-two years. Ten of them lived into adulthood. Among other's they had three sons named Nils, Sten and Erik. Sten died in the Action of 7 July 1565. Nils, Erik and also Svante were killed by king Erik XIV on 24 May 1567 in the event that is known in history as the Sture Murders.

For Märta, the murders was a great tragedy. The letters she writes during her sons's and husband's get more and more angst-filled and desperate as time progressed and she gets less and less answer. Four letters have survived, but there might have been many more.

The Sture costumes

16th century letters from the royal and noble families are filled with rhetoric and titles but in those letter, Märta puts more and more of that aside and bares her true feelings and pours her angst and desperation into the letters the more precarious her situation gets. What is so tragic about the last one of them is that, her husband and sons were most likely already dead inside Uppsala castle without her knowing it.

Days later the queen dowager and Märta's niece (Margareta died already in 1551 and Gustav Vasa then married her and Märta's niece.) Katarina Stenbock is said to have broken the news to her. Katarina then rushed to Stockholm to meet Erik XIV who had run away from the castle in Uppsala in the middle of the event. He was found a couple of days later in Odensala. He sends her to Märta and the other relations of the other victims (Abraham Stenbock and Ivar Liljeörn) her as compensation for the lives of her husband and sons.

The arranged the funerals of the victims. Svante, Nils and Erik were laid to rest in the Sture family grave inside Uppsala cathedral. Märta was also given silver bricks which she called: "Ett olyckligt förbannat silver, som mig ett så dyrt värde kostat" ("An unfortunate cursed silver, that has cost me so dearly").

Märta had always held a prominent position in the Swedish nobility and because her husband was often away, she was the one to handle the family estates and fiefs. For this she gained the nickname Kung Märta (King Märta). In a way, this was the beginning of a new life for Märta. As widow she gained authority and she used it very well. When Erik gained back his health after his mental collapse in connection to the Sture murders, he wanted the silver back, but Märta refused. Instead she used "the blood bricks" which she called them to support Erik's brothers rebellion. When Johan got the throne, he repaid her by giving her back her husband's county which was also expanded. Together with her sister Brita and sister-in-law Ebba Lilliehöök she was one of the greatest fief-holders in Sweden at the time. However, she did no longer have direct access to the Council of the Realm, but to get her opinion known she used her two remaining sons Mauritz and Karl (15 and 12 at the time of the murders) and her son-in-laws.

Märta's chest

To make sure people did not forgot what had happend, Märta put her husband and sons's clothes that they had worn during their murders in a chest and placed it on their grave. This clothes have survived and are, together with the chest, on display in the Uppsala cathedral museum. They are known as The Sture Costumes today.

The lock of Märta's chest, I find it totally mesmerizing

Märta herself died in 1584 and was buried alongside her husband and children in the Sture grave in Uppsala cathedral.




References

• Ericson, Lars 2004. Johan III. En biografi, Riga
• Eriksson, Bo 2017. Sturarna. Makten, morden, missdåden, Latvia
• Flemberg, Marie-Louise 2017. Kristina Gyllenstierna. Kvinnan som stod upp mot Kristian Tyrann, Falun
• von Konow, Jan 2003. Sturemorden 1567. Ett drama i kampen mellan kungamakt och högadel, Karlskrona
• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2002. Gustav Vasa - landsfader eller tyrann?, Falun
• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2005. Arvet efter Gustav Vasa. En berättelse om fyra kungar och ett rike, Falun
• Petersson, Erik 2008. Den skoningslöse. En biografi över Karl IX, Falun
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2010. Vasadöttrarna, falun
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2015. Vasadrottningen. En biografi över Katarina Stenbock 1535-1621, Lithuania
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2016. Margareta Regina - vid kung Gustav Vasas sida. En biografi över Margareta Leijonhufvud (1516-1551), Lithuania
• https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=34643
• https://sok.riksarkivet.se/Sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=11172

The portrait of Svante Sture was borrowed from his Wikipedia page and the one of the Leijonhufvud family crest was borrowed from Märta's own.

Happy Birthday Phryne Fisher!

According to Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, today (21 December) is Phryne Fisher's birthday. Last year, I wrote an entry about her similarities to the Norse goddess Freja who also seems to have been connected to the winter (or for the Australians, summer) solstice.

I have written so much about Phryne on this blog over the past 1½ years and I am sorry if you think I repeat myself, but I love her too much not to write another post about her.

A couple of days ago I celebrated my second Essiversary. 15 December 2015 was the date when I watched The Babadook for the first time. That film became deeply personal to me and Essie is so wonderful in it, that I straight away became a big fan of her.

I found Phryne sort of more as a secondary person to Essie, but I love her just as much. She is such a wild, beautiful, wonderful character that you cannot help loving her. There is a big reason why an entry about her was the first one I published on this blog.

For such a happy person as Phryne it fits very well that she was born on the, to Australians, brightest day of the year (Here in Sweden it's the darkest.). The series is set in 1928 and in a way, Phryne is a personification of the decade, not least of the popular image of the time period.

In Swedish we even call it Det glada 20-talet (the Happy 20's). Despite the image that this provokes, the 1920's was not totally happy, a fact that both the TV show and Kerry Greenwood's books deal with very well. There is an ever-present, sort of collective, PTSD sense to pretty much all the characters and the world that they inhabit. The First World War lingers despite having been over for ten years.

Phryne also has a very dark past and there certainly are dark sides to her, which I explored in my latest two blog entries about her (They can be found here and here if someone is interested.). However, she never lets them affect her very much. She is very much her happy self most of the time and I love her for it.

Another aspect that ties Phryne to the solstices is the fact that she works as a light in other people's lives. She takes in Dot and Jane and also makes Jack far more happy than he seems to have been in quite some time. She also sheds light in her crime investigations.

This summer, I created Phryne and her "family" out of Legos (They have their own Instagram account that can be found here.). Last week I made her Lucia when I let the Lego gang have a Lucia celebration. You can see her here to the left. Lucia is a light festival that is tied to the winter solstice in Sweden, therefore it fits for Phryne to be Lucia.

Happy Birthday Phryne! You are the female superhero we all need in our lives!

Peter Jöback - I ❤️ Musicals

I seriously have no idea, why this post has remained a draft since I went to the concert in June, but better late than never: Here is my thoughts about the  I ❤️ Musicals concert I went to in Göteborg 17 June.

Swedish singer and musical artist Peter Jöback has a couple of times before invited stars from West End and Broadway to a tour across Sweden singing songs from different musicals. This year, he decided to go all in and invited famous Swedish artists Helen Sjöholm and Tommy Körberg to a much bigger concert at Ullevi in Göteborg. The international stars were Ma-Anne Dionisio (who was in the shows back in 2012 and 2013), Scarlett Strallen (who was in the  I ❤️ Musicals tour of 2013) and Tam Mutu (who is a new-comer in this context). For the Phantom of the Opera duet, Peter Jöback also brought in Emmi Christensson who played opposite him in the Stockholm production of Phantom of the Opera over the past year.

Emmi was also a bigger part of the I ❤️ Musicals-tour of 2015. I had really hoped they would do the duet in Swedish. Not that they were not good in English, but I think they do it better in Swedish.

Det finns nog miljarder stjärnehopar 

Bortom sol och måne 

Röster ur den svarta rymden ropar

Bortom sol och måne 

Sökare ska hon heta 

Allting vill hon veta 

Ja, människan kan aldrig sluta leta 

Bortom sol och måne

(There probably are billions of star clusters, Beyond the sun and the moon. Voices out of black space call, Beyond the sun and the moon. She will be named searcher, She wants to know everything. Yes, homo sapiens can never stop looking beyond the sun and the moon.)

~ Bortom sol och måne, Hjälp sökes, Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus

I thought I had a farily good knowledge about what Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson have made when it comes to musicals, but in the show was a song called Bortom sol och måne (Beyond the sun and the moon) from a musical named Hjälp sökes (Help wanted) that I had not heared of. (A link to the song, sung by Sofia Pekkari can be found here.) Since I thought the title sounded more like a farce and I had a hard time getting the lyrics of the song to fit with the title, I had to look it up. It did not exactly clear my mind because the plot is described as two brothers on a farm putting an add in the paper for help with their farm and a woman and her daughter show up.



Musical pictures was borrowed from:
http://www.syntolkning.nu/blad/130427.html#.WVv831FLfIU

The Nyköping Banquet

Portrait of Birger Magnusson

Nyköpings gästabud (The Nyköping Banquet) happened on this day 700 years ago (10 December 1317) and is one of the more well-known incidents in Swedish history. But it did not really start there. One can say that the prelude started already in 1290 when Swedish king Magnus Ladulås died.

Magnus had three sons and two daughters. The oldest son was Birger who had been elected king at the age of four, was only ten years old at the time of his father's death wherefore the Lord High Constable of Sweden, Torgils (or Torkel) Knutsson, became protector until 1298. Birger married the Danish princess Margarete who in Sweden was known as queen Märta.

Birger's two brothers Erik and Valdemar became dukes, but Erik wanted more power. With the support of Valdemar, he captured Birger at his kongsgård Håtuna by the lake Mälaren in what is known in Swedish history as Håtunaleken (The Håtuna game) on 29 September 1306. Erik and Valdemar then took their brother to the castle Nyköpingshus where they kept him imprisoned for two years.

The seal of Erik

Erik then got to power and through his marriage to the Norwegian princess Ingeborg, he hoped he would inherit the Norwegian throne as well. They got the son Magnus and the daughter Eufemia.

The relationship between the three brothers continued to be strained and the Danish and Norwegian kings felt a need to interfere. A peace treaty was sign in Helsingborg in 1310 which divided the country into three parts: Birger got eastern Sweden, Erik got western Sweden and Valdemar got Stockholm and Finland (Finland was a part of Sweden at the time.).

Some years past and the brothers relations seemed to be fine. On 10 December 1317, Birger invited his brothers to a banquet at Nyköping castle. At first everything seemed fine and queen Märta is said to have been happier than usual. When time came to go to bed however, Birger claimed that there was no room for Erik and Valdemar's soldiers in the castle, so they left to find sleeping arrangements in town instead.

In the middle of the night, the dukes were woken up and captured by Birger and his men saying: "Minns ni något av Håtunaleken? Jag minns den mycket väl. Denna är inte bättre än den." ("Do you remember the Håtuna game? I remember it very well. This one is not better.")

It is said that Erik and Valdemar were thrown barefoot into the prison in one of the towers were they starved to death.

The seal of Valdemar

The only real historical source we have is Erikskrönikan (The Erik Chronicles) which is the oldest (surviving) Swedish chronicle. The author is not known,but it is thought to have been written down some time between 1320 and 1335 (i.e. not long after the events described in this post. It is written in the old German verse meter called Knittlevers. The protagonist and hero of the chronicle is actually duke Erik Magnusson wherefore you cannot say that the chronicle is particularly reliable. It is a good source if you want to study the self-image of the aristocracy at the time though.

On 18 January 1318, the dukes wrote their wills in which it says that they are still healthy even though they are imprisoned. This information, even if they were forced to write it, goes against Erikskrönikan's description of them dying within days of the banquet and also about the terrible condition it describes they had inside the prison.

Birger thought this would make him king over all of Sweden (and Finland) again, but Erik's wife Ingeborg took up the fight for the sake of her and Erik's three year old son Magnus. That, however, is a different story worth a post in my Historical Women series wherefore I leave it for now. The Nyköping Banquet (together with Håtunaleken) is one of the most well-known events of the Swedish Middle Ages and something Swedes often remember from history lessons in school.

References

• Harrison, Dick 2002. Sveriges historia. Medeltiden, Falköping
• Harrison, Dick 2009. Norstedts Sveriges historia 600-1350, Värnamo
• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2006. Kalmarunionens tid, Falun
• Lindkvist, Thomas & Sjöberg, Maria 2016. Det svenska samhället 800-1720. Klerkernas och adelns tid, Lund
• Vetenskapsradion Historia - Nyköpings gästabud 700 år. 

Photos were borrowed here.