The Sture costumes

The Sture costumes

I showed you this photo already in my entry about the Sture murders, but they are just so awsome that they deserve to be talked about on their own.

What is the Sture costumes? They are the clothes that were worn by Svante Sture and his two sons Nils and Erik on 24 May 1567. They are said to be the only completely preserved male costumes from the renaissance. I am not sure if this is true, but it is certainly rare to have clothes in general left from that time and even more rare to have them come complete with stabbing wounds and blood stains.

The chest Märta put the clothes in
Photo: Lennart Engström, Upplandsmuseet

After the murder Svante's widow and Nils and Erik's mother Märta Leijonhufvud took care of their clothes and put them in a chest that was placed on top of their grave in the Sture choir in Uppsala cathedral. The chest and some of the clothes can be seen at the exhibition in the Uppsala cathedral's museum in Uppsala. It once contained, among other things the clothes of Svante, Nils and Erik that is now in the museum and a hat that belonged to Svante's and Märta's son Sten who died in a sea battle two years prior to the murders. Two years after the murder, Märta also put down the release protocol for Svante, Nils and Erik.

Svante Sture

The clothes are influenced by Spanish as well as German contemporary fashion.

Svante's costume (the one to the left in the photo above) is of a little older model than the ones belonging to his sons. Based on the form of the clothes, he also seems to have been shorter and a bit more robust than both of his sons who, based on their clothes must have been quite tall and slender.

Svante's jacket is made of black velvet with greyish green decorations and the pluderhosen is of taffeta. Mainly on the right side of the jacket, you can see blood stains.

Nils Sture

Nils Sture's costume (in the middle in the photo above) is a  typical travelling outfit for noble men of the time. The jacket is made in chamois leather and traces show it was originally painted black. In a list of inventory from the Uppsala cathedral from 1780 it is noted that the jacket had 19 silver buttons. Of those, only one is still there today. The stab wounds are evident.

The pluderhosen he wore is of black woollen. The fact that Nils wears a travel costume is not really strange. He was emprisoned as soon as he returned from a trip to Alsace-Lorraine where he proposed to a princess on the Erik XIV's behalf. It is said that the king wanted him to fail so he would get a reason to affront him. In the portrait to the right, Nils wears an earring in his left ear. This might be something he picked up on his trip to England where he also was ordered by Erik XIV to propose to queen Elizabeth I.

Erik Sture

Erik Sture's costume (to the right in the photo above) seems to be the one he is wearing in the portrait to the left. The jacket is made of black velvet with thin yellow braids as ornament. The pluderhosen is in taffeta like his father's and they might have once been purple in colour and not brown like today. Purple was a colour only the royals and higher nobility were allowed to wear at the time. (Disney seems to taken this to their heart in Frozen. They let Elsa throw away her purple cloak in the Let it go sequence after all.)

I do love the Sture costumes. They are prof of what I discussed a little in my entry about the exhibition Göteborgs födelse at Göteborg City Museum. Materialities tend to overbridge time gap and make history and historical people get closer. They also evoke thoughts and feelings inside of us. Märta also seems to have understood how they could be used in general memory. She saved the clothes just to have people remember her husband and sons. Unfortunately, most Swedes have today.

The Sture costume is particularly thought provoking since they actually show you real physical evidence on what seem to be quite gruesome murders. Reconstructions have been made comparing the clothes's stab wounds to the account of the murders from the written sources and they seem to match up quite well. What got me to react the most in this case is that the blood stains have actually rusted. I knew very well that there is iron in blood, but I have never thought that blood stains could rust before.

References:
Rangström, Lena (ed) 2002. Modelejon. Manligt mode, 1500-tal, 1600-tal, 1700-tal

The Sture Murders

The Sture costumes in the cathedral museum in Uppsala.
From left: Svante, Nils and Erik

Allow me to introduce to you Swedish earl, Lord High Constable of Sweden (riksmarsk) and member of the Swedish counsil (riksråd) Svante Sture (1517-1567) and two of his sons Nils (1543-1567) and Erik (1546-1567). They were quite brutaly murdered on this day in 1567 by the Swedish king Erik XIV. But lets not get ahead of ourselves and start looking at what actually happened.

Erik XIV was the oldest son of Gustav Vasa and the only child of Gustav's first wife Katarina av Sachsen-Lauenburg. His mother died when he was only two years old and he got lots of half-siblings from Gustav's second marriage with Margareta Leijonhufvud. One of them was Cecilia Vasa another Duke Johan of Finland who Erik had imprisoned at Gripsholms castle. Margareta also died and Gustav remarried her niece (the daughter of Margareta's sister Brita) Katarina Stenbock. She came to play an important role in this particular event. Gustav died in 1560, leaving the throne to Erik.

Margareta also had another sister named Märta. She was married to Svante Sture. He was the son of Kristina Gyllenstierna and former regent of Sweden Sten Sture the Younger who both fought to get Sweden out of the Kalmar Union in the beginning of the 16th century (The latter part of the Kalmar Union era is in Sweden sometimes called The Sture era). In the end Kristina's nephew Gustav Vasa freed Sweden and took the crown for himself. However, the Vasas from time to time considered the Stures as a threat. Not least Erik XIV who had heard rumours about "Sturen på tronen" (The Sture on the throne) and after interrogating the noble man Gustav Ribbing who had served as a page at the Stures's home, he took Svante, Nils and Erik Sture to his special supreme court Höga nämnden together with a couple of other noble men, Abraham Stenbock, Ivar Liljeörn, Sten Leijonhufuvd and Sten Banér charged with conspiracy and treason. Höga nämnden found them guilty on 19 May and they were first imprisoned at Svartsjö castle on Färingsö in Mälaren outside of Stockholm and was later brought to Uppsala castle where Erik XIV had called for the parliament to gather. Nils Sture had been sent to Alsace-Lorraine to propose to a princess on Erik XIV's behalf and was not imprisoned until he returned home on 21 May.

What happened at Uppsala castle on 24 May 1567 is quite grusome. It started with Erik XIV visiting Svante Sture in his prison cell. He fell to his knees begging Svante to forgive him for what he had done to Nils a year prior when he had insulted him after mistakes made during the Northern-seven-years-war Sweden fought against Denmark. Svante seems to have forgiven him and the king leaves.

Erik XIV

What happened next is hard to understand in lights of this. Erik XIV brought his drabants to Nils's prison and stabbed him in the arm. Later on Märta Leijonhufvud claimed that he also pushed the knife into Nils's eye and up through his skull, but that has never been confirmed. Nils, on the other hand, is said to have pulled the knife out of his arm and apologised to the king, but in vane. Erik and his drabants stabbed Nils to death. On the way from Nils's prison, they met Erik's old teacher Dionysios Bureus. In some sources it is said that he tried to calm down the raging king, but this is not sure. What is sure is that he became the next victim of Erik and his mob of soldiers. They stabbed him to death before Erik ordered the soldiers to kill everyone except "Herr Sten" (Mr Sten). The king then ran out of the castle and was not to be found until three days later at Odensala a bit south of Uppsala.

The drabants followed the orders and Svante and Erik Sture as well as Abraham Stenbock and Ivar Liljeörn were all stabbed to death. And pretty nasty too. Lots of stabs and cuts and prolonged beatings until they died. The soldiers did spare Sten Leijonhufvud and Sten Banér though. But only because they did not know who the "Herr Sten" that the king wished to save was. For three days the castle is completely locked and no one gets in or out. The king had disapperad and no one really knew what had happened. Svante's wife Märta Leijonhufuvd worried. She tried to talk to the king's mistress Karin Månsdotter (who he later married and made queen) and his bastard daughter (by one of his other mistresses) Virginia who told her everything would be fine. Märta then sent up food and clean clothes to her husband and sons without knowing they all lay dead in the basement of the castle.

Katarina Stenbock

On the third day, Gustav Vasa's widow (and Erik XIV's stepmother) Katarina Stenbock had had enough. Together with noble man Per Brahe the older, she went to Uppsala castle demanding to be let in. Inside she found her brother (Abraham Stenbock), her uncle (Svante Sture), two of her cousins (Nils and Erik Sture) and Ivar Liljöhök killed. Their bodies had just been left were they had died three days earlier. (Poor old Dionysios was actually left for eight days until someone took care of him.) Despite of what must have been a pretty terrifying sight for the dowager queen, she decided resolutely that she needed to inform her aunt about what happened.

Both Katarina Stenbock and Märta Leijonhufvud deserve blog entries in my Historical Women and my Meet the Vasa Women series. Therefore I will not tell you all about them here. What I must say is that it seems like Katarina was the one who told Märta about the murders of her husband and sons. Märta was heartbroken and like she opens up about her worries in her correspondence with Karin Månsdotter, she does so in letters she sent in the years to come. Personally I do actually love when you get to read letters and other personal notes where historical characters has really opened up. Time differences from time to time can only give us a little insight into personal traits and emotions, but this really is a wife and mother who first worries immensely about her husband and sons and then is struk with grief when told about their murders. This over-bridge the time gap and make them more human and close.

Katarina returned to Stockholm to meet the newly found king. He fell to his knees before her, begging her to forgive him for what he has done. With one foot among the royals and one among the mobility, Katarina was seen as the ultimate mediator by both sides.

It has been speculated a lot about what happened to Erik XIV and why he went berserk that day in May 1567. What is obvious is that he had some form of mental collapse. He was not considered fit to rule for a few months afterwards. On 13 July he married Karin Månsdotter and made her queen. This together with the Sture murders led to his brothers Johan, Magnus and Karl together with the noble families (not least Märta) removed him from the Swedish throne in 1568. He was put in prison where Johan is said to have killed him in 1577, according to the legend by giving him pea soup spiced with arsenic.

Märta took her husband and sons's clothes (The ones you can see in the first photo.) and put them into a chest that was to rest upon their graves in the Sture choir in Uppsala cathedral, where hers and Svante's other son Sten was waiting after having died in a sea battle against the Danish navy two years prior. Two years later, she opened the chest to put down the document from the parliament, saying they were free from all accusations.

References:
Eriksson, Bo 2017. Sturarna. Makten, morden, missdåden
Eriksson, Bo & Harrison, Dick 2010. Sveriges historia 1350-1600
Larsson, Lars-Olof 2005. Arvet efter Gustav Vasa
Rangström, Lena (ed) 2002. Modelejon. Manligt mode, 1500-tal, 1600-tal, 1700-tal
Tegenborg-Falkdalen, Karin 2015. Vasadrottningen. En biografi över Katarina Stenbock 1535-1621

The pictures of Erik XIV and Katarina Stenbock was borrowed from Wikipedia. The photo of the Sture clothes was taken by me during a visit to the cathedral museum in Uppsala.