Ebba L. Lewenhaupt - Kung Märta

In 1960 was a novel called Kung Märta published. It was written by Ebba L. Lewenhaupt and tells the story of Märta Eriksdotter (Leijonhufvud). The title Kung Märta (King Märta) is the nickname she was given by the public for how she handled the Sture family estate businesses.

The book is not at all well-known even though it was mentioned on Märta's Wikipedia page and I borrowed it at the Stockholm Public Library.

The book follows the life of Märta Eriksdotter (Leijonhufvud), but also her husband Svante Sture and to a lesser extent her sister Margareta Eriksdotter (Leijonhufvud). Much of it is devoted to the supposed love triangle between the three of them. I have talked about it both in my entry about Märta and my entry about Margareta before.

Märta's sister Margareta

Like I said then, I seriously doubt that it is true and that it more serves to antagonize the Vasa and the Sture families which is and has been since the 16th century very common. Lewenhaupt also antagonizes Märta and Margareta and also puts Märta against her mother Ebba Eriksdotter (Vasa). Lewenhaupts Märta is described as jealous of her perfect sister and hated by her mother for being "a child of sorrow" though she was born one month after her father was executed in The Stockholm Bloodbath. Based on the historical source material however, it seems like Märta was a beloved daughter and sister and she seems to have been pretty close to both.

About the engagement Svante and Margareta, I think that even if their parents had talked about it (because that sort of things happened), I do not think either of them would remember much of it. Svante was only three and Margareta four at the time of the bloodbath and after that Svante was out of the country pretty much the rest of the time up until Margareta married Gustav Vasa.

Svante is also very different from what I think he was like. He's quite macho, but kind and years after Margareta  all the time wherefore Märta never is totally comfortable in their marriage. She also seems more or less unaffected by the Sture Murders, which really feels odd to me considering the contents of the historical sources both during and after the murders.

Märta's son Nils

Even though the template images is a bit hard to read through 60 years later, especially when you have some knowledge about the historical sources, Kung Märta is very entrancing and it is surprisingly easy to read through. It tells the story of Märta's life chronologically but episodically with lots of small or big jumps in time. This creates a lack of flow in the narrative and affects all the characters's development. It also mainly takes an interest in big events like Dackefejden, the Sture murders or when Margareta dies and it is hard to grasp for example Märta's marriage or her relations to any of her other family members, friends or subordinates.

There is a somewhat proto-feministic tone to Märta's character. She is very active and enterprising in a way that I can see her being myself. At the same time Lewenhaupt also vilifies her. Märta i depicted as being "a child of sorrow" (because her father died before she was born) with flamy red hair (coloured by the blood of the bloodbath), a freckled, oblong face, dark eyes and a lanky body. This is put in sharp contrast with her older sister who is portrayed as blonde with a more or less perfect look and personlity.

Märta's husband Svante

Svante is also depicted as blonde and like you can see on his portrait to the left, I do not really think his hair colour could be considered blonde.

From what I have gathered, no portrait from the time period has been identified as Märta, but if you go by the appearance of her blood relatives's (Margareta and Märta and Svante's three children Nils, Erik and Kristina) portraits she might have been the blonde one. Her dead father-in-law, Sten Sture the younger, seems to have been blonde, but Svante was not.

Märta and Svante's son Nils has a very light hair colour, while Erik is a bit darker. Kristina's hair is covered in both portraits that have been identified as her. All Sture children also seems to have bright, green eyes while Svante's are dark. This has me thinking this is a trait, they inherited from Märta also. Kristina and Erik also have rounder faces than Svante and Nils, which might derive from Märta as well.

Märta's son Erik

Lewenhaupt describes Märta as having a sharp tongue which is something I can totally see. I do not see her as gangly, but very petite. This might be because I want to contrast it to the seemly larger-than-life personality I imagine she had though.

I am very ambivalent about my feelings towards this book. In fact I do not know if I have been this ambivalent towards one since I read Terry Hayes's book I am Pilgrim. I mean it is so filled with clichés, it is not really based in historical facts, but more in storytelling of historical individuals and events which are more or less mythical and  both Märta and the other characters are seriously lacking development and Märta's feelings and reactions are often strange and not based on the historical sources either. It is also evident that it was published almost 60 years ago.

Märta's daughter Kristina

However, there is something about this book that I cannot help liking and I think it has all to do with who it is about. Märta is one of my absolute favourite of any historical women and not only Vasa women. She is totally amazing. She is not at all well-known and it always breaks my heart a little whenever I am met with faces looking like big question marks when I mention her name. I just think she deserves so much more and I am glad that someone besides me has cared enough about her that they wrote a book about her. It warms my heart so very much.






All the paintings were borrowed from wikimedia commons.

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.