Historical Women: Margareta Eriksdotter Leijonhufvud

"Vi eder till känne att vi aktar i den helige trefaldighets namn giva oss i rätt äktenskap med ärlig, välbördig jungfru Margareta Eriksdotter, på söndagen efter Mikaelis näst kommande uti vår stad Uppsala." ("We want to inform you that we will, in the name of the holy trinity, give ourself into marriage with the honest, well-born virgin Margareta Eriksdotter on Sunday after Mikaelis next in our town Uppsala.")

- Invitation from Gustav Vasa about his wedding to Margareta.

(Quoted in Tegenborg Falkdalen 2016)

I am starting this year similar to how I ended the former, with an entry about one of the Vasa women. The one in the portrait to the right is Margareta Eriksdotter Leijonhufvud and she is the older sister of Märta and the mother of Cecilia.

Like with the entry about Märta, this is an entry made in the celebration of Margareta's birthday which is said to be 1 January 1516. She is the daughter of nobleman Erik Abrahamsson (Leijonhufvud) and his wife Ebba Eriksdotter (Vasa) who was second cousin of Margareta's husband Gustav Vasa. She also had six siblings. Märta is the youngest out of them, born about 1½ month after their father was executed in the Stockholm bloodbath in 1520. The others were the sisters: Birgitta (Brita) born in 1514; Anna born in 1515 (She fell down the stairs at Örebro castle and died when she was just about a year or so old.) and a second Anna born in 1517. Margareta also had two brothers: Abraham born either in 1512 or 1513 and Sten born in 1518.

Very little about her childhood is known, but on contrary to many of the other wives and children of the men executed in the bloodbath Ebba and her children was not imprisoned by Kristian II. Erik had put them in the convent in Västerås and after the bloodbath, they could return to their family estates like before. She was most likely raised like any of the other noblewomen at the time.

Gustav Vasa

Her husband, Gustav Eriksson (Vasa) first married the daughter of duke Magnus I of Saxe-Lauenburg, Katarina in 1531 and she gave birth to Erik (XIV) in 1533. It is possible that the 15 year old Margareta was part of her court, but nothing is certain. Katarina died already in 1535 after having fallen while dancing at one of the balls at the castle. Rumours had it that Gustav had hit her with a hammer, but there are no evidences for the modern opening of the Vasa grave in Uppsala cathedral and her brother-in-law, the Danish king Kristian III writes that he saw her fall. the rumours however were hard to lay to rest and Gustav became a persona non grata in the other European courts and he decided to strengthen his relation to the Swedish higher nobility and chose Margareta as his wife.

There is a story about Margareta first being betrothed to Svante Sture and that Gustav had come into her chambers finding him on his knees in front of her. Margareta is said to have then told her new husband that Svante was there because he wanted to marry Märta.

To be honest I have some serious doubts about this particular story. Mostly because it does not really fit into Svante's background. It happened that parents decided on the marriage of their children early, but Svante was only three and Margareta was four at the time he was imprisoned together with his mother Kristina Gyllenstierna and siblings in 1520. The family was also removed to Denmark the next year and while his mother and older brother Nils came back to Sweden in 1524, Svante remained in Denmark to be schooled by the bishop of Århus, Ove Bille at least until 1532. After that, he also spent a couple of years at the court of Gustav's father-in-law duke Magnus I before he was (according to himself) lured to Lübeck where he was offered the Swedish crown. When he refused the offer, he was held prisoner before returning to Sweden in 1536. This would be the same year Margareta and Gustav married and even if there had been an agreement about an engagement between Svante and Margareta before 1520, I doubt they would have been big enough to have developed any real feelings towards one another that is supposed to have prompted Svante to go to Margareta and proclaim his love for her. I also wonder how much the story was made up just to strengthen the antagonization between the Vasa and the Sture family.

Margareta was 20 years old and Gustav 40 at the time of the wedding at Uppsala cathedral on 1 October 1536. The age difference might seem strange to us, but was not really unusual at the time. The couple actually seems to have been very happy together and even though Margareta could not be involved in the meetings of Riksrådet, she seems to often have followed him on his travels through the country either with or without children. Their marriage also connected her siblings and brother-in-laws (including Svante Sture) to the king's inner circle.

There are 16 letters left of the correspondence between Margareta and Märta from the years 1544 to 1551. According to Karin Tegenborg Falkdalen (2016) this is to be considered a substantial amount of letters from the earlier half of the 16th century. The letters give an insight into the women's every day lives. The sisters Leijonhufvud discussed economics and domestic affairs mixed with discussions of illnesses and remedies. They also seem to have missed each other when they were apart, so they must have been close. Based on the contents Svante also seems to have used his wife's correspondence with her sister to give messages to the king. That people went through Margareta to give messages to her husband was actually pretty common and is a practice you can see in regards to Kristina Gyllenstierna and Sten Sture the younger too.

Cecilia Vasa

Margareta gave birth to ten children: Johan (III) in 1537, Katarina in 1539, Cecilia in 1540, Magnus in 1542, Anna in 1545, Sofia in 1547, Elisabet in 1549 and Karl (IX) in 1550. She and Gustav also had two sons Karl (born in 1544) and Sten (born in 1546) who died before they turned one. All the children were very well cared for and Gustav seems to have been a very caring father with lots of opinions about how the two (later three) nannies would raise them. Kristina Gyllenstierna (who was Gustav's aunt), Margareta's mother Ebba and her sisters Märta and Brita seem to have been there when the royal couple needed an extra hand too. The letters to Märta also tell us that Margareta sent her nannies to her younger sister whenever she needed an extra caretaker.

The royals traveled throughout Sweden and Finland a lot and the parliament met at different cities. From the 1540's however, the royal family mostly spent time in the castle in Stockholm and at Gripsholm's castle. Both of which were renovated and modernized. The family also visited the castles and estates in Kungsör, Västerås, Tynnelsö, Uppsala and Svartsjö. As their economy stablised, their lifestyle got more and more exclusive as seen in the bookkeepings.

Margareta on the sarcophagus
in the Vasa choir in cathedral
in Uppsala.

In the late 1540's Margareta seems to have been sick a lot and according to their letters so was Märta. The sisters discussed their illnesses and remedies in the correspondence. It is unclear what illnesses they suffered from, but Karin Tegenborg Falkdalen (2016) thinks it is their many pregnancies that preyed on them and I think it is totally reasonable to think so as well. Both women got better, but in August 1551 she became ill again and Gustav wrote to Kristina Gyllenstierna and Märta and Svante to hurry to Tynnelsö where the family was. This time, her life could not be saved and she died on 26 August 1551 between 2 and 3 PM. Gustav's nephew, Per Brahe wrote that "the sun lost its shine" at that time. She was first burried at Storkyrkan in Stockholm were her predecessor Katarina had also been laid to rest. In 1560, when Gustav died, they were both removed to the cathedral in Uppsala were all three of them were put to a final rest in the Vasa choir.

Burial crowns of Margareta and Katarina of Saxe-Lauenburg
at the Cathedral Museum in Uppsala

References

• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2002. Gustav Vasa - landsfader eller tyrann?, Falun
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2010. Vasadöttrarna, Falun
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2016. Margareta Regina - vid kung Gustav Vasas sida. En biografi över Margareta Leijonhufvud (1516-1551), Lithuania

The portrait of Margareta was borrowed from her Wikipedia page and the ones of Gustav and Cecilia were borrowed from here and here.