Warrior Kings of Sweden

by Gary Dean Peterson

  There followed a few years in which Gustav participated in the operation of the family’s extensive farm holdings. He learned management skills and developed a knowledge and interest in agriculture which he maintained the rest of his life. Again his father sent him to the Sture court, this time the court of Sten Sture the Younger who was now chancellor of Sweden. He learned fencing, the soldiering arts, politics, court intrigue and international affairs. From Hemming Gadh, the shrewd old court advisor, he learned the Machiavellian style of statecraft.

  At the time Sture the Younger fought the Danish king in 1515–1517, Gustav experienced his first taste of battle. When Christian II struck again in 1518, Gustav was a flag bearer at the Battle of Braenukyrka conducting himself with conspicuous bravery, it is reported. At negotiations following the battle, Christian demanded hostages. Gustav, Hemming and four other important Swedes were turned over to Christian who promptly imprisoned them and sent them back to Denmark, to Kalø Castle in Jutland. Here, under minimum security conditions, the prisoners were cajoled, enticed, threatened and bribed into changing sides. All succumbed except Gustav. Hemming Gadh would even become an advisor at the Danish court.

  Gustav, however, resisted all persuasions until, in 1519, he got a chance to escape. Seizing the opportunity, he fled Jutland. Disguised as a cattle driver, he made his way to the German city of Lübeck where he renewed some old acquaintances, made new friends and contacts among the German princes and city burghers. In particular, Karl Konig, the Stures’ old benefactor, and the merchants Henrik Möllar, Markus Helmstede and Herman Iserhal would become his close friends.

  These merchants and burghers were much concerned with rising Danish power. Christian’s tightening grip on Sweden would give him an empire stretching from Finland to Iceland with a secure hold on the strategic Danish Sound and associated, unrestricted toll privileges. In addition, his connection to the Hapsburg queen of the Netherlands, his sister, could mean more competition from the Dutch for the North German trading cities (Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Danzig) in particular and the Hanseatic League cities of the Eastern Baltic (Riga, Reval, Narva) especially.

  Lübeck and the other German Hanseatic League cities would have much preferred dealing with an independent Sweden than a united Danish empire. Lübeck, in particular, felt it could influence, if not dominate outright, a weak Sweden, gaining special trade status and access or even a monopoly on her rich resources. With the leading force in the Swedish drive for independence, Sten Sture, dead, the Lübeck city council was looking for a replacement they could support. Gustav, they knew, was untested, but he talked a good fight and was at least worth the price of the passage back to Sweden to see what he might accomplish.

  Thus, Gustav Eriksson stepped off the Hanseatic carrack onto familiar soil determined to reinvigorate the Swedish nationalist movement. The task before him was certainly daunting, but there were the rebel bands and the great castles still resisting. Gustav’s greatest impediment to organizing a unified resistance movement seemed to be Christian II himself, who had landed, earlier in May, with an army of mercenaries in Danish Scania (Skåne, Blekinge and Halland) and was marching north in a mopping up operation. The last strongholds were being taken and the guerrilla bands hunted down. Danish bailiffs and sheriffs were being positioned in the towns and parishes to enforce Danish law and collect taxes for Christian.

  Kalmar Castle was cut off by Christian’s Danes and Gustav’s message of nationalism would not sell well to the mostly German garrison anyway. So Gustav went to work trying to arouse the small landowners who populated the rocky and forested province of Småland. This frontier territory, whose clans were interrelated with the families of Danish Skåne and Blekinge, refused to participate. These farmers had for generations encouraged cross-border marriages and signed numerous local agreements between border clans promising to keep the peace in spite of their central government’s declarations of war. None of this proved very effective of course. So for the last hundred years, armies and raiders had plundered estates and small farms alike on both sides of the border. The wars of the Christians and Stures were just the latest conflicts causing homes to be burned and crops destroyed. The call to arms by Gustav seemed to be just one more invitation to further devastation and these nearly impoverished people had had enough. He would raise no army in this quarter.

  Gustav’s attempts to build a revolution in Småland only served to alert the Danes as to his location and activities. Now instead of being a nameless passenger emerging from a Lübeck merchant ship, he was a hunted fugitive with a price on his head. Worse off than when he arrived, he left Småland and made his way to Södermanland, one of his ancestral homes, where he could find friends and relatives willing to hide him and where, perhaps, the prospects for revolution were better. However, here too he found people exhausted and battered from the long struggle against the Danes. It was in Södermanland he received word of the surrender of Stockholm Castle and the nobility’s agreement to accept Christian as Sweden’s king. The traditional three day coronation celebration was being arranged to be followed by another festival. Gustav was offered amnesty to attend the celebrations.

  He must have pondered the offer and his prospects. His attempts to foment rebellion in southern Sweden had come to nothing. The people, it seemed, didn’t have the stomach for more fighting. The guerrilla movements had been destroyed; Kalmar and now Stockholm castles had capitulated. Christian was in the capital and had won over the nobility and burghers with what appeared to be reasonable terms—Sweden would be ruled under Swedish law, the king to be elected according to Swedish tradition. If he were to attend, he would see again his mother and father and others of his family. Yet Gustav could not bring himself to trust the Danish king; he had had first hand experience at the court of this foreign prince. He rejected the invitation and remained in hiding. His misgivings would soon be substantiated.

  Christian had laid a trap. In one symbolic gesture Swedish law and tradition were swept aside; Christian, Gustav learned, had claimed the crown by heredity, dispensing with the agreed to election. Then the young fugitive received word of the almost incomprehensible Stockholm Bloodbath. As reports filtered in he learned that his father, two uncles and a brother-in-law had been beheaded. His mother, grandmother, three sisters and his aunt, Sten Sture’s widow, were imprisoned. This must have been stunning and devastating news. With one stroke, Christain had wiped out a good share of Gustav’s family and then proceeded to confiscate all of his family’s property and titles. Bereft of much of his family, the young former nobleman was also penniless and now the price on his head was raised and the manhunt intensified.

  Gustav reacted with strengthened resolve. He left Södermanland disguised as a peasant woodcutter, so the story goes, and headed for Dalarna. With ax in hand, he trudged the paths leading north constantly on the lookout for the Danish jacks intent on running him to ground. Here, fact becomes mixed with myth elevating a historical figure to a legend. He has become a combination George Washington and Robin Hood. Like the chopping down of the cherry tree and splitting the arrow at the archery tournament, some tales are folklore only, but others, like the crossing of the Delaware and the collection of money for the ransom of King Richard, are based on fact.

  As the story goes, Gustav arrives in Dalarna in his disguise as a bönder and seeks refuge in the house of an old Uppsala classmate, Anders Persson, but he does not reveal his identity. He is taken in as an indigent traveler, fed and boarded until work can be found for him. But within a day or two a servant girl notices a gold embroidered collar sticking out from under his homespun outer garments. She reports the discovery to her master who confronts his guest. Gustav has to admit his identity whereupon Anders asks him to leave, fearing Danish retribution should the association be discovered by authorities.

  Once again Gustav is on the road, homeless and friendless. He next seeks shelter at the farm of one Arent Persson of Ornäs. The old acquaintance graciously invites
Gustav to stay, dines him and puts him up for the night. When all is quiet, the friend sneaks out of the house and makes for the local Danish bailiff. The mistress of the house, Barbro Stigsdottor, becomes suspicious, however, wakes Gustav and helps him escape through the privy just as twenty Danes rush through the front door. While the king’s men are searching the house, Barbro helps Gustav harness a horse and he escapes with his friend’s horse and sleigh over the frozen Lake Runn.

  Gustav next looks for asylum with a priest and old friend, Jacob Jacobsson of Svärdsjö, where he works as a field hand helping with the grain threshing. One afternoon, Jacob is observed by one of his maid-servants holding a towel for Gustav while the nobleman is washing himself. The girl spreads the story and Jacob advises Gustav he should make his escape before he is discovered. Jacob sends him to a friend, Sven Elfsson in Isola, a royal forest warden. Though never betrayed by Sven, Danish soldiers and informants are searching everywhere and break into the warden’s house while Gustav is warming himself in front of the fireplace. Sven’s quick-thinking wife grabs her bread spade and smacks the nobleman while yelling at him to quit staring at the strangers and get outside to the threshing loft and get to work. As the Danish jacks can’t find anyone hiding around the place, the king’s men eventually leave. But the authorities are getting too close, Sven hides Gustav in a load of hay and heads for Lake Siljan. Danish soldiers patrolling the roads run their spears through the hay wounding Gustav, but do not discover him.

  Another version of the story has Gustav actually being discovered, cornered and partly crippled by Christian’s soldiers at Isola. Though wounded in the knee, he fights his way out and escapes. In both stories Gustav makes his getaway by hiding in Sven’s hay wagon. The Danes, systematically searching all the roads and paths in the area, find blood from Gustav’s wound on the trail the hay wagon has taken. The Danes run down the hay wagon in short order. Meanwhile, Elfsson has also observed the occasional blood spatters on the roadway and when he hears the charging men-at-arms on his trail, he quickly takes his knife and cuts the leg of the horse pulling the wagon. The Danes arrive to find Sven ministering to the bleeding wound on his horse’s leg. After running spears through the hay a few times, barely missing Gustav, the Danes leave and Gustav escapes.

  Sven eventually gets Gustav to trustworthy friends in Rättvik who hide him under a fallen pine tree for three days until the soldiers move their search concentration elsewhere.

  Recovering from his wound, Gustav then takes the risk of coming out in the open and speaks to the bönder of Rättvik. The peasants are friendly but cautious, and spies quickly report Gustav’s presents to Danish bailiffs.

  Gustav moves on to Mora, one of the more populous areas of the province. Again Danish jacks are hot on his trail and Gustav is forced to hide in the cellar of one Matts Larsson of Utmeland. Soldiers enter the house looking for him, but Matts’ wife, who is brewing Christmas ale, rolls a large brewing vat over the cellar trap-door, hiding the entrance. Again the Danes are foiled and Gustav escapes.

  True or not, these exiting stories have lent Gustav’s legend a wild west flavor and were once a staple of Swedish elementary education just as American school children once read the stories of Abraham the rail splitter, and the discouragement and desperate hardships of Washington at Valley Forge. As in America, these charming stories have become a casualty of realism and historical correctness.

  What we do know is that Gustav intended to rekindle the nationalist movement in Dalarna. He knew the farmers and miners of this mining region were a tough lot. It was the workers from the iron bogs, copper mines and smelters that had so often provided the backbone for the struggle against Danish domination. With no large aristocratic estates or major church holdings, it was a region of fiercely independent farmer-miners, who owned their own land and bowed to no one. It was here that the Stures had found their strongest and most dependable supporters in their battles against the Danes. Gustav delivered fiery speeches of nationalism to assemblages of these people. He reminded them of better times past, of Swedish heroes and Swedish pride in past accomplishments. He appealed to their patriotism and sense of nationalism. He pointed out wrongs suffered under Danish oppression, heavy taxation, the interruption of trade so vital to this metal-producing region. He spoke to individuals and to groups throughout the province, but especially the peasants in Rättvik and finally Mora.

  Though he swayed many, he could not quite produce the spark that would ignite the flames of revolution. The Dala people were drained by the years of constant war with the Danish crown, wars in which they had contributed so much, especially to the Stures’ struggle of the last few years. They had pledged fealty to Christian and were not ready to go back on their word. Finally, with the king’s men getting ever closer and even the Dalesmen resisting his best efforts, Gustav left the province. His only option now was flight. So, in the closing days of 1520, Gustav made his way west, away from the Danes and from the Sweden he loved, toward Norway, perhaps to search for support there.

  But now Christian II made two strategic blunders. With all his successes, he must have felt secure in his control of the country. The leader of the nationalist movement, Sten Sture, was dead. Christian had imposed Danish rule and law in all the provinces, taken the last castles, stamped out the last embers of insurrection and literally decapitated the body politic of the country. He was in control.

  His first mistake was to open Swedish trade to the Dutch, breaking the near monopoly the Hanseatic League, particularly Lübeck, had had on Swedish imports and exports. Christian did have ties to the Netherlands, but mainly this was an attempt to reduce the power of the Hansa cities. This act insured German support for whatever rebellion might still be smoldering in Sweden.

  His second blunder was his decision to extract one last pound of flesh from the defeated Swedes. On his way back to Denmark he would make a grand tour of his Swedish domains. This was an old Swedish tradition for a new ruler of the country. But instead of a celebration, as was the tradition, Christian made it a march of brutal oppression. Heavy taxes were collected en route, fines levied against all families suspected of having a hand in the resistance. All weapons were to be turned in on pain of losing a hand or foot if found in noncompliance. Individuals and whole families who were known to have fought the Danes were summarily executed. Scaffolds were erected in the towns and cities Christian passed through so he could witness the hangings firsthand. Even monks and children were not exempt from the hangman’s noose and the headsman’s ax.

  This final act of retribution was too much for the people of Mora. They had had enough of this cruel, foreign tyrant. They were ready to rise up and rid themselves of the vicious despot, but who would lead the fight? The one Swede preaching revolution and ready to head such a struggle had been turned out by these same people. It was decided they would appeal to Gustav to lead them. Two of the fastest cross-country skiers of the area, Engelberkt and Lars of Kettilbo, were selected to track Gustav down and try to convince him to return and lead a war of liberation. Legend tells how these two swift skiers raced from town to town inquiring after Gustav. Finally, they overtook him in the desolate wastes of the Norwegian frontier near the town of Salen [*Each year, in Sweden, this event is commemorated with a ski race from Mora to Salen, some 57 miles. It is the longest public cross-country ski competition in the world and everyone is welcome to participate, not just elite athletes, making it an event of the people, altogether fitting as a memorial of this turning point in Swedish history].

  Gustav returned to Mora to find a corps of determined men ready to follow him. In a month he had a small army of 400 Dalesmen. From their ranks would come the leaders of his peasant army, men who would stay with him through the bitter struggle ahead. Anders Persson, Mans Nilsson, Ingel Hansson and Peder Svensson would prove loyal comrades through the coming triumphs and setbacks.

  By February 1521 they were ready and they struck the mining headquarters of Stora at Kopparberg. The raid netted them money
taken from the fines and taxes collected by the royal bailiff, and supplies from the German merchants including cloth which they used to make banners giving the little army a sense of pride and esprit de corps. The show of force resonated with the tough miners, and men of the copper district joined Gustav’s revolt.

  Next they raided the Dalarnian capital of Falun, capturing the provincial seal, an ax and bow. Now they could issue official proclamations that would carry the weight of the province giving the revolutionary group at least a particle of legitimacy. More men of the province flocked to Gustav’s banner. With an army of over 1,500 men, Gustav moved into the southern part of the province.

  Meanwhile Christian II had left Sweden. After his heavy handed and bloody royal tour, he had returned to Denmark, handing over control of Sweden to Archbishop Gustav Trolle, the German Didrik Slagheck (appointed bishop of Skara), and Jöns Andersson Beldenak (now bishop of Strängnäs) as administrators of the country. Christian left only a small force of soldiers to garrison the castles, disbanding his army of mostly German mercenaries to save money. Supervision of the fortresses he placed in the hands of trustworthy Danish and German commanders: Stockholm to Henrick Slagheck (brother of Didrik), Kalmar to Soren Norrby (also captain of Viborg on Gotland), Stegeborg to Berent von Melen and Vesterås to Henrik von Melhen.

  From Denmark he went on to the Netherlands for three months to promote his dream of a Scandinavian trading company that would break the Hanseatic League’s power once and for all. Unfortunately for him, Christian was not very careful about keeping his activities secret and soon the Hansa was well aware of his plans. Now the league cities, particularly Lübeck, resolved to do what ever was necessary to stop Christian. It was beginning to look like Sweden might provide the means to that end.