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.

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