In the first post about Katarina Jagellonica, we got to know her as a Polish princess. In 1562 she married duke Johan of Finland, brother to the Swedish king Erik XIV. They had a dangerous…
After Erik XIV and Karin Månsdotter had been driven from the throne, Erik’s brother Johan was proclaimed king in January 1569. In July of the same year, he and his wife Katarina were crowned king…
Even though there had been cases with people being convicted of witchcraft in Scandinavia throughout the Middle Ages, the hysteria didn’t reach the north until the 16th century. It started in Denmark, probably due to…
In the early Christendom, the consensus among the clergy was that witchcraft and sorcery didn’t exist in the sense that later became dominant – that meaning the connecting to Satan and devils. In the early…
In the first post about Karin Månsdotter, we learned how the bar maid was secretly married to the king, Erik XIV while pregnant with their second child. Let’s continue: As Karins stomach grew, so did…
When Gustav Vasa died on september 29 1560, the crown passed to his eldest son, Erik. To inherit the throne was something new in Sweden, where the king traditionally had been elected. To cement his…
In my last post I wrote about the archaeological evidence of women Viking warriors, so called shield maidens. Around 30 graves containing women buried as warriors have been found in Scandinavia, so – even though…
“There were once women in Denmark who dressed themselves to look like men and spent almost every minute cultivating soldier’s skills; They put toughness before allure, aimed at conflicts instead of kisses, tasted blood, not…
Two of the most important military means of power for chieftains and kings during the Viking Age were the hird and the leidang. The hird consisted of a group of warriors very loyal to their…
Although I’ve been trying to make a point that the Viking Age people were not the bloody berserks they have been portrayed as – there is no denying that they DID do a lot of…