Historical Women: Märta Eriksdotter Leijonhufvud

I have not been able to find any
portray of Märta and I'm not sure
there are any known ones of her.
This is her family crest however.

“Beside every good man is a good woman, and she must always be ready to step in front"

~ Phryne Fisher, 

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: 

Deadweight

Today is the 497th birthday of one of my absolute favourite historical women: Märta Eriksdotter Leijonhuvud. She was born 24 December 1520 at the family estate Ekeby in Lillkyrka parish in the Swedish province Närke.

She's the daughter-in-law of Kristina Nilsdotter Gyllenstierna and the aunt of Cecilia Vasa who have featured before in my Historical Women series and the youngest child of Erik Abrahamsson Leijonhufvud and his wife Ebba Eriksdotter Vasa. Märta never got to meet her father though. He was executed in Stockholm's bloodbath about 1½ month before she was born. She also had five (Or six if you count the first sister called Anna who died at the age of one or two falling down the stairs at Örebro castle.) older siblings: Abraham (1512/1513-1556), Birgitta (Brita) (1514-1572), Margareta (1516-1551), Anna (1517-1540) and Sten (1518-1568). To protect his family, Erik sent them to the convent in Västerås, which probably saved them from going to prison in Denmark. After the bloodbath, Ebba returned to the family estate where she probably also gave birth to Märta.

Svante Sture

At the age of 18, Märta married Kristina Gyllenstierna's son Svante Sture who was three years older than herself and from what you can get out of the available sources, it seems like they were quite happy.

I do not agree with the Swedish historians claiming Svante to be a boring character. On the contrary, I find him appealing and interesting. He did not have such an easy childhood. He lost his father, the Swedish regent Sten Sture the younger and was imprisoned by king Krisian II at the age of three. Even though it is said that Kristian's wife, queen Elisabeth, had him and his brother fostered out to a noble family in Kalundborg, Denmark where the Swedish noble women and children who had been captured at the bloodbath were imprisoned.

In 1534 he went to the Hanseatic town Lübeck (according to himself, he was tricked to come there) where he was offered the Swedish crown. The town had helped Gustav Vasa break free from the Kalmar union a few years earlier and Gustav refused to pay them. They had also got involved in the Danish civil war called The Count's Feud (1534-1536). Svante however refused the offer and was therefore held prisoner for some time afterwards. It was not the last time, people tried to use him in their rebelling against Gustav. During the so called Dacke War, he and Märta were offered to become king and queen of Sweden by the rebels from the province Småland, but they refused.

Historians (mainly male ones!) often says this is a survival strategy Svante stuck to. The Stures and Kristina Gyllenstierna were popular among the Swedish people who had not yet forgot their time ruling Sweden. Svante's older brother Nils was most likely also the young rebel who Gustav Vasa labelled as "Dalajunkern" who was executed in Rostock in 1527. I, however, see him in a slightly different light. Of course his background matter. However, I also think he had more or less the opposite personality as his older brother. While the difficult circumstances of their childhood made Nils Sture into a unruly teenager, I think it made Svante turn inwards into himself. I see him as a man who was not really interested in power. I think he had the societal position he had mostly because of his DNA and I also think he would be labelled as a geek if he had lived today. Historians, who are interested in power structures, often describes him as "boring" and Märta is said to be the more feisty character out of the two and I do not think it is really fair. Based on their letter exchange, Märta was also very close to her sister, queen Margareta, which probably did not make her too keen to take over the throne.

There is a story that Svante was first betrothed to Märta's older sister Margareta and that he rushed to see her when he learned that she had married Gustav Vasa and that Gustav had found him on his knees in front of her and Margareta had told her husband that Svante had come to ask for Märta's hand in marriage. I have not really decided what I think about this. It certainly is an interesting story, but it might just be that too: a story. Before he married, Svante spent a lot of time outside of Sweden and he did not return until 1536 when Margareta and Gustav married. However, they did not marry until 1 October and depending on when Svante got back to Sweden it might be true. What is true is that he married Märta and it seems like it was both a beneficial and a happy match.

The Sture burial choir in the
Uppsala cathedral

Svante was made one of the first counts in Sweden in 1561 so technically Märta became a countess. She did not however use the title until she after had been made widow.

ÅÅren effter Christi födilsse mdxxxviij emillen mondagen och tisdagen tå xi slog , wartt jomfrv Sigriidtt, Swantis och frv Märtis dotter, födh, i i j:e daga för nysdag, Gudi tiill loff, heder och ære. Amen.
(The years after Christ's birth 1538 between Monday and Tuesday when the clock hit 11, maid Sigrid, Svante's and Märta's daughter [unclear]. To God's honour.)

~ Märta's mother-in-law, Kristina's note when Märta's 

and Svante's first child was born in 1538.

(Quoted in Flemberg 2017.)

Märta and Svante got fifteen children in twenty-two years. Ten of them lived into adulthood. Among other's they had three sons named Nils, Sten and Erik. Sten died in the Action of 7 July 1565. Nils, Erik and also Svante were killed by king Erik XIV on 24 May 1567 in the event that is known in history as the Sture Murders.

For Märta, the murders was a great tragedy. The letters she writes during her sons's and husband's get more and more angst-filled and desperate as time progressed and she gets less and less answer. Four letters have survived, but there might have been many more.

The Sture costumes

16th century letters from the royal and noble families are filled with rhetoric and titles but in those letter, Märta puts more and more of that aside and bares her true feelings and pours her angst and desperation into the letters the more precarious her situation gets. What is so tragic about the last one of them is that, her husband and sons were most likely already dead inside Uppsala castle without her knowing it.

Days later the queen dowager and Märta's niece (Margareta died already in 1551 and Gustav Vasa then married her and Märta's niece.) Katarina Stenbock is said to have broken the news to her. Katarina then rushed to Stockholm to meet Erik XIV who had run away from the castle in Uppsala in the middle of the event. He was found a couple of days later in Odensala. He sends her to Märta and the other relations of the other victims (Abraham Stenbock and Ivar Liljeörn) her as compensation for the lives of her husband and sons.

The arranged the funerals of the victims. Svante, Nils and Erik were laid to rest in the Sture family grave inside Uppsala cathedral. Märta was also given silver bricks which she called: "Ett olyckligt förbannat silver, som mig ett så dyrt värde kostat" ("An unfortunate cursed silver, that has cost me so dearly").

Märta had always held a prominent position in the Swedish nobility and because her husband was often away, she was the one to handle the family estates and fiefs. For this she gained the nickname Kung Märta (King Märta). In a way, this was the beginning of a new life for Märta. As widow she gained authority and she used it very well. When Erik gained back his health after his mental collapse in connection to the Sture murders, he wanted the silver back, but Märta refused. Instead she used "the blood bricks" which she called them to support Erik's brothers rebellion. When Johan got the throne, he repaid her by giving her back her husband's county which was also expanded. Together with her sister Brita and sister-in-law Ebba Lilliehöök she was one of the greatest fief-holders in Sweden at the time. However, she did no longer have direct access to the Council of the Realm, but to get her opinion known she used her two remaining sons Mauritz and Karl (15 and 12 at the time of the murders) and her son-in-laws.

Märta's chest

To make sure people did not forgot what had happend, Märta put her husband and sons's clothes that they had worn during their murders in a chest and placed it on their grave. This clothes have survived and are, together with the chest, on display in the Uppsala cathedral museum. They are known as The Sture Costumes today.

The lock of Märta's chest, I find it totally mesmerizing

Märta herself died in 1584 and was buried alongside her husband and children in the Sture grave in Uppsala cathedral.




References

• Ericson, Lars 2004. Johan III. En biografi, Riga
• Eriksson, Bo 2017. Sturarna. Makten, morden, missdåden, Latvia
• Flemberg, Marie-Louise 2017. Kristina Gyllenstierna. Kvinnan som stod upp mot Kristian Tyrann, Falun
• von Konow, Jan 2003. Sturemorden 1567. Ett drama i kampen mellan kungamakt och högadel, Karlskrona
• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2002. Gustav Vasa - landsfader eller tyrann?, Falun
• Larsson, Lars-Olof 2005. Arvet efter Gustav Vasa. En berättelse om fyra kungar och ett rike, Falun
• Petersson, Erik 2008. Den skoningslöse. En biografi över Karl IX, Falun
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2010. Vasadöttrarna, falun
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2015. Vasadrottningen. En biografi över Katarina Stenbock 1535-1621, Lithuania
• Tegenborg Falkdalen, Karin 2016. Margareta Regina - vid kung Gustav Vasas sida. En biografi över Margareta Leijonhufvud (1516-1551), Lithuania
• https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=34643
• https://sok.riksarkivet.se/Sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=11172

The portrait of Svante Sture was borrowed from his Wikipedia page and the one of the Leijonhufvud family crest was borrowed from Märta's own.

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.