Salve. En medeltidssaga

About a week ago the twitter account Svensk Historia tweeted about the Nordic king Erik of Pomerania. I retweeted it saying it always makes me think about the Swedish children's show Salve from 1997. This was read by a host at the Swedish radio music show Klassisk morgon and we started talking about the show and its music. Later that day I was contacted by the producer and they wanted me on the show, so this morning I made my radio debute. It can be heard here but since it is in Swedish and since I have much more to say than I had time for on the show, I thought I would make a blog post about it as well. One of the characters, Katarina Örnfot, has her own post in my My Heroine series. It can be found here and I will try not to repeat myself too much.

I was 12 years old when Salve was first broadcasted and already a history nerd with a massive interest in knights. So this was really the perfect show for me and I started recording it on tape every morning already from the start. A year later, the show was cut down to an eleven episode long TV series which was then made into two VCRs and later on also to a DVD. (And of course I have both and yes, I do still watch the DVD from time to time.)

The plot revolves around Nils Svensson who normally is from 1997. He travels to the Swedish town Kalmar to celebrate the 600 jubliee of the union between all the Nordic countries set up by Danish queen Margaret that normally goes by the name The Kalmar Unionen. He tries to call his mother with his mobile phone, but the display just says 1397. He tries it anyway and gets transported to Kalmar 1397. There he befriends Katarina who is the daughter of a knight and works in the bathing house helping the elderly women Rodwy. Later on he becomes a squire to the rather clumsy knight Rosenstråle. The new 15 year old king, Erik (of Pomerania) is bored in the castle and runs away, out into town and becomes a friend of Nils and Katarina as well. At the end he is officially crowned king.

I cannot over-estimate how much this show has meant to me! It really is historical fiction at its best. It has an overarching frame that is the happenings in Kalmar in 1397 and there also seems to be a structure of what and how they wanted to convey facts. This makes the show take the facts seriously, but is not too serious in how they teach the children making it fun to learn. They had question times where children wrote in questions about the Middle Ages to the show, but most of it was told through the fictive plot. The fact was more showed (or played) into the viewers than taught into them.

Nils is the character through whom the viewers learn and just like me during the time I watched Salve, goes from a rather stereotypical image about knights, to learning a great deal about the period itself. What I find to be one of the best aspects about his character is the fact that he is never seen as stupid like is so often the case with characters the viewers are supposed to learn through in TV shows in general and children's shows in particular. Nils just does not know so much about the Middle Ages when he gets to 1397 because he is from 1997 (The scene before he time travels in the beginning of the first episode also has him imagining a rather stereotypical picture about how he, as a knight, saves a princess from a dragon.).

I have already talked about Katarina, but I cannot stress enough how great she is as a female character. She is not reduced to a steretypical medieval woman or a tomboy who gets to play knight. Neither is she overshadowed by the boys. She is independent, complex and colourful and certainly no damsel in distress.

Based on how popular the show was, I was sad to not see it getting more of a follow up than a shortened version in the autumn the year after. I think it would have been so perfect to make a winter holiday show (or a julkalender) so we could see how the people during the Middle Ages celebrated christmas and handled the colder climate of the season.

I rewatch the show from time to time and even though it is a bit childish from time to time and there are some plotholes, I can overlook its flaws because it is aimed at children and it shows how much fun you can have with real facts. It does still hold up extremely well, 20 years and a master's degree in archaeology later. It had me interested in the Middle Ages as a time period and I am still building on that knowledge in my work as an archaeologist today.

My Heroines: Katarina Örnfot

A union of the Nordic countries called the Kalmar union, was established by Queen Margareta in 1397 and in 1997 there was therefore a big jubliee in the Swedish town Kalmar (which gave its name to the union.
Swedish Television (SVT) has usually a special show for children in the mornings during the summer holidays. In 1997 the plot of that show told the story about Nils Svensson who has a great interest in knights and travels to Kalmar in 1997 to take part of the jubilee and through his mobile phone ends up in Kalmar 1397. There he befriends Erik of Pomerania who was crowned king in the last episode and the rather clumsy knight Riddare Rosenstråle. His best friend, however, is Katarina Örnfot (Anna Rydgren).

Katarina is the daughter of the knight Bengt Örnfot and most of her other family died from the plague. She has had a brother named Karl too. He was a squire. Bengt was injured in the war against the, so called, mecklenburgarna* and cannot fulfil his duties as a knight. Because of this Karl is given the task of representing him so the family can keep their position in the nobility. The big problem is that Karl died in battle with mecklenburgarna. This is kept a secret between Katarina and her father to not jeopardise their social position. Also because of this, Katarina takes on the role as squire and becomes the best rider in all of Kalmar. The reason why it has to be kept a secret is because women were not allowed to become knights, something they also clearify many times in the show. However Katarina's story might not have been so fictive as you might have thought.

The general picture of the woman in the Middle Ages have changed a lot in recent years and Katarina seems to reflect this. The portrayal of the woman in the Middle Ages was actually one of the main problems I had with SVT:s julkalender (christmas calender) Tusen år till julafton (1000 years to christmas eve) last year (2015).

Tusen år till julafton depicted the medieval woman as precluded from society, trapped in some castle all the time and boring in general. A picture that has been questioned a lot by researcher of the last decades. Katarina is a strong contrast to this picture. She is actually quite the opposite: colourful and independent. She takes an active role in her society and she is never overshadowed by her male companions in the show.

I like the plotpoint of her being a squire and later dubbed as a knight in her own name. I can also oversee with the anachronism of this because they explained that women were not allowed to become knights so much. It is a perfect example of how you, inside the frame of a fictive historical narrative can problematize an issue from the time period in which the story takes place. It legitimize the liberties taken by the people behind the story. This is one of the biggest issues (besides showing an outdated picture of the medieval woman) that I have with Tusen år till julafton as well. In the episode that portrayed the noble classes of the Middle Ages, they had both a woman being a knight and also a girl training to become one and they never revealed anything about the fact that women could not become knights! (In fact they were often rather hard on real historic girls in that calender, but that is a topic for another entry.)

In recent years a lot of research has shown that Katarina might not have been alone. There are quite a lot of female warriors and not least female defenders throughout the Middle Ages (There is actually a Swedish website called Kvinnliga krigare about them.). In fact Erik of Pomerania was surrounded by them. Margareta's way to all the Nordic thrones did not come easy and Erik's wife Philippa/Filippa (daughter of Henry IV of England) is known to have defended Copenhagen during an attack from the Hanseatic league in 1428. The medieval, European society seems to have required a man even during times when they were not present. A fact that Katarina depicts beautifully.

Unlike, for example, the character Brienne in Game of Thrones, Katarina is not reduced to being "just one other tomboyish female who gets to play knight" either. She also has a side to her that would probably be seen as traditionally female. She is caring and from time to time also quite motherly towards the boys in the show. She is allowed to show a much better and varied picture of a female character and I love characters like that! They are not reduced to stereotypes, which I think makes them seem more real. I also love how much research really seems to have gone into the show. Nils meets people that did really live in Kalmar during the late 14th century! They also seemed to have a plan on what they wanted to tell and how. It was more than just entertainment. Like with Horrible Histories, they wanted to educate children and managed to do so very well. It is a shame that there was not so much follow up to the interest the show got from the audience.

The theme of the show was the 14th century ballad Douce Dame Jolie by Guillaume de Machaut.

The autograph I got from the actress Anna Rydgren who
played Katarina.

I know I kind of bashed Tusen år till julafton a lot in this entry, but I was kind of disappointed even though they managed pretty good we a lot of things (e.g. with explaining the estates of the realm during the 17th century). My measurements for good educational shows about history are Salve and Horrible Histories and Katarina and the medieval women Horrible Histories portrays (for example Jeanne d'Arc and Black Agnes) are really so much better representations of what a woman of that time period was like. This is really why I have so much problem with the calendar's portrayal of them which I felt was prejudiced and also somewhat condescending.


*Mecklenburgare is the term used for the supporter of  Albrekt of Mechlenburg who ruled over Sweden before Margareta seized also the Swedish throne. They are depicted as the antagonists of the show.