Stockholm blood bath

Stortorget, Stockholm 7 November 2017

"Tå nw sådana gruffuelighit mord i Stocholm skeedt war" ("A gruesome murder happened in Stockholm")

~ Olaus Petri, En Swensk Cröneka

During the later part of the Middle Ages, all the Nordic countries were united in the Kalmar union. I have talked about it in previous entries on this blog and here comes some more information about it (but also feel free to follow the link above and read all the other entries I have written about it). The most important thing to know for this entry is that all the Nordic countries were united and ruled mostly from Denmark. To say that it's a matter of nationalities fighting is really to simplify it all too much, which will be evident in this entry. It has more to do with "unionists" versus "anti-unionists".

Carl Gustaf Hellqvist's painting of Sten Sture's death

The king during the last few years of the Kalmar union was called Kristian II (1481-1559) but the Swedish Riksråd (Privy Council) was ruled by the Swedish regent Sten Sture the younger (1492-1520). He belonged to the anti-unionist fraction of the Swedish nobility. He was in a power struggle with the union-friendly archbishop Gustav Trolle (1488-1535) and the Riksråd had had him removed from office.

(Gustav Trolle can be said belongs to the category Swedes today normally call "vita, kränkta män"(white, offended men) which will be obvious later on in this entry.)

Kristian II of Michael Sittow

Sten died in early 1520 on his way back to Stockholm after the battle of Bogesund (today Ulricehamn) in the province Västergötland in Sweden.

What did Kristian want then? Well, he saw himself as the rightful king of the entire Kalmar union of course and he had a dream. He wanted to build an economic and political super power in Northern Europe that could challenge the monopoly the "German" Hanseatic League held over the Baltic Sea region. This was well in line with the original plan for the Kalmar union that was made up by Danish king Valdemar Atterdag (1320-1375) and Swedish-Norwegian king Magnus Eriksson (1316-1374) back at the first half of the 14th century even though Margaret Valdemar's daughter (1353-1412), the daughter of Valdemar, was the big political mastermind who implemented the union in 1397.

Statue of Kristina Gyllenstierna, Stockholm

Sweden (which included Finland too!) was important to Kristian's dream, but the Swedes felt overlooked and had been revolting against the Danish rulers since the 1430's and they fought hard against Kristian II. However, when Sten Sture died, the resistance fell apart, even though Sten's widow Kristina Gyllenstierna (1494-1559) (I have written about her in my series about Historical Women.) tried to take up her husband's leadership and also deligate it to others, but barely anyone came to her aid. Kristian promised her and the other people loyal to Sten Sture amnesty and Kristina capitulated in early September 1520.

On 1 November 1520 Kristian marched in triumph into Stockholm and was elected Swedish king as well. He was coronated by Gustav Trolle who had been reinstated as archbishop by Kristian.

Part of the fountain at Stortorget

He invited everyone to a big party that lasted for three days, but on the fourth (7 November 1520) Kristian had the doors locked and started a council where Gustav Trolle accused pretty much everyone present of heresy wherefore the promise of amnesty was not valid anymore

In the next two days (8-9 November 1520) about 100 people were executed at Stortorget (the big square) in Stockholm. It started with the bishops, then the noblemen, then the burgess and then servants working for the men in the former categories (A list of known victims can be found here). The bishops and noblemen were beheaded while the others were hung. The archbishop also had bodies of his dead enemies (among others Sten Sture) dug up from their graves to be burned at the stake on Södermalm together with the executed ones.

No noblewomen were executed even though Kristina came close to being the only one. Instead they were placed in Danish prison where a lot of them died. The rest of them were freed a couple of years later when Gustav Vasa had The houses of the executed stockholmers were plundered and all the riches taken from them. The widows were allowed to stay in the houses however.

On 10 November Kristian's daughter Dorotea (1520-1580) was born and as a last cruel act against the stockholmers, Kristian "invited" (more like forced!) the stockholmers to celebrate her birth only a few days after on the very place where their friends and family had been killed...

The Stockholm blood bath is one of the most famous incidents in Swedish (to not say Scandinavian!) history, but Kristian did not really stop in Stockholm. No, he continued to blood bath himself through pretty much all of Sweden and Finland. At the monastery in Nydala in the province of Småland, he drowned a lot of monks in January/February 1521 when he was heading back to Copenhagen. One of the few surviving monks wrote that "the evil tyrant Kristian" came and killed everyone. After this, Kristian II has been known as "Kristian the tyrant" in Swedish history.

References

• Ericson Wolke, Lars 2006. Stockholms Blodbad, Falun
• Eriksson, Bo 2017. Sturarna. Makten, morden, missdåden, Lettland
• Flemberg, Marie-Louise 2017. Kristina Gyllenstierna. Kvinnan som stod upp mot Kristian Tyrann, Falun
• Harrison, Dick & Eriksson, Bo 2010. Norstedts Sveriges historia 1350-1600, Värnamo
• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2002. Gustav Vasa. Landsfader eller tyrann?, Falun
• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2006. Kalmarunionens tid, Falun
• Petersson, Erik 2017. Furste av Norden. Kristian tyrann, Falun

The photos from Stortorget and of the statue of Kristina Gyllenstierna are my own, but the painting of the dying Sten Sture the younger was borrowed here and the one of Kristian II was borrowed here.

Historical Women: Kristina of Saxony

Kristina was born on christmas eve 1461 and was the daughter (and oldest child) of the Elector of Sachony Ernst and his wife Elisabeth of Bavaria. In 1477, Kristina was bethrothed to Hans, son of Kristian I, the king of the Kalmar union. I have talked about it in previous entries to this blog, but the union was created by queen Margaret (I normally do not use English versions of Scandinavian names, but in this case Margaret is called Margareta in Sweden, Margrét in Iceland, Margareeta in Finland and Margrete in Denmark and Norway so a more neutral name was in order.) in 1397. She had the idea to build a strong, united Scandinavia ruled by one king. This king was mostly Danish and situated in Copenhagen, which did not really suit the Swedish nobiles all the time.

On 6 September of 1478, Kristina and Hans married in Copenhagen. They came to have five (perhaps six) children: Hans and Ernst born in 1479 and 1480 respectively and died as babies. Kristian born in 1481 who came to rule the Kalmar union under the name Kristian II. Elisabeth was Christina and Hans's only daughter, born in 1485 and in 1497, they got the son Frands.

They might also have had a son named Jakob (born between Kristian and Elisabeth), but there are some critical problems with this. He is only known from a Mexican written source from after he died there in 1566. The text says he is the son of a king who gave up everything to became a Christian missionary monk in Mexico. Erik Petersson is very sceptical to this story in his biography over Kristian II, Furste av Norden (2017), especially since there are no Danish or general Scandinavian sources who mentions Jakob.

At first everything seems to have been good between the spouses and the growing family settled in Nyborg on the Danish island of Funen. In 1481, Kristian I died and Hans inherited the throne. After this he was mostly out travelling or in Copenhagen discussing politics.

There is also a discussion about whether Kristian really was Hans's son. An Italian ambassador was present at the court in Copenhagen in 1480 and Kristina seems to have liked him and he was often seen in her company. He left, but when after a few years, Kristian did not really look like any one of his parents the gossip started to spread. One of the things that could be used against Hans being the biological father is the fact that both he and his wife had blue eyes, while Kristian ended up with brown ones. Genes are not simple or straight forward however and the DNA tombola quite often ends up bringing out hidden genes from past generations, so even though it is uncommon, two blue-eyed parents might end up with a brown-eyed son. In this case the biological paternity really does not matter either because Hans treated Kristian as his own son, raising him to take over the throne no matter what.

In 1497, Hans and Kristina were finally elected king and queen of Sweden too, but the peace did not last long because Sten Sture (the older) started collecting nobiles for a new uprising in the spring of 1501. At the end of the autumn that year, Hans left Kristina in charge of 1000 soldiers at the castle Tre kronor in Stockholm and went home to Copenhagen. The winter would be extremely hard on the people captured in the siege at Tre kronor. The food and drinks were sparse and at the end it was only salted meat left and a lot of the soldiers became ill and died in scurvy. More and more of her men also wanted to give up, but was given a cold sholder from Kristina who really seem to have thought her husband would come save them and Stockholm when the ice thawed on the sea in the spring.

Hans on the other hand, seems to have had everything else in mind but save his wife. At first he got into some other troubles with the Western parts of the union. Akershus in Oslo was taken by the nobilies Knut Alvsson Tre rosor at about the same time as Sten Sture's uprising started in Stockholm and from there he also threatened what is now the Swedish west coast. It all sort of solved itself when Knut suddenly died in August 1502, but Hans still did not send ships to aid Kristina and his men in Stockholm. Instead he thought it more important to arrange a suitable marriage for their daughter Elisabeth. She was soon married off to Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg.

In early May, Kristina had no other choice but to capitulate to Sten Sture and even though she was promised freedom, she was taken as his prisoner at first the Black Friars's Monastery and then the Grey Friars's Monastery in Stockholm before being handed over to the nuns at the Birgitta convent in Vadstena. Only a few days after she gave up the castle Hans's ships finally turned up on the sea. He refused to disembark, turning the ships around and went back to Copenhagen where he had a (married) mistress named Edele Mikkelsdatter Jernskjaeg.

Kristina was to be kept hostage for more than one and a half year before Hans finally bothered to negotiate with Sten for her freedom in the autumn of 1503. There is no prof that she suffered particularly during this time, but she was still not a free person. After getting her freedom, Sten escorted her to Halmstad where she met Kristian who brought her back to Copenhagen. When getting home, she had had enough. Without seeking premisons from the German electors whose land she would travel she almost immediately went on a tour to visit Elisabeth in Brandenburg. This could have turned really ugly for her, but she made it to her daughter where she stayed for awile before returning home to Denmark. She settled at her farm outside of Odense where she lived until her death on 8 Octboer 1521.

In cases like Kristina, you really wish that the Medieval sources for Scandinavia would be more informative. Like with so many women, the posternity has not been kind to her. She is mostly portrayed as a religious fanatic bullied for being a passive hypochondriac. The little we know about her character however and from what can be read through her actions show a brave, politically gifted women with a strong will and it is obvious that Kristian did inherit his temperament and stubborness from her.


References

• Erik Petersson 2017, Furste av Norden, Falun
• Lars-Olof Larsson 2006, Kalmarunionens tid, Falun

Picture was borrowed from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_of_Saxony