The men of Dalarna, he said, had long been noted for their courage when their land was in danger. They were renowned for this in history, and all Sweden looked upon them as the firmest defenders of its liberties.
"I will willingly join with you for our land's deliverance," he concluded, "and spare neither my blood nor my sword, for these are all the tyrant has left me to use in your cause."
Many of the Dalmen heard him with cries of vengeance, but the most of them stood in doubt. They did not know Gustavus personally and had heard that Christian was cruel only to the great, but was kind and generous to the peasantry. They could not yet make up their minds what to do, and begged him to seek safer quarters for himself, since he was being everywhere diligently sought by his pursuers.
In fact, his peril continued extreme and for some days he was forced to lie hidden under Morkarlely Bridge, near Mora Church, though it was in the dead of a Swedish winter. He was able at length to resume his journey, but it was with an almost despairing heart, for he could see no hope either for himself or for his country. His led way over mountains and through desolate valleys, his nights being spent in wayside sheds which had been built for the shelter of travellers. On he went, through forests filled with snow and along the side of mountain torrents, and finally came within view of the lofty mountains beyond which lay the sister kingdom of Norway.
Never had patriot more reason to be disheartened than the unhappy and hunted fugitive, never had the hope of liberating an oppressed country seemed darker, and the fugitive would have been justified in abandoning his native land and seeking a refuge in the bleak hills of Norway. Yet the adage has often held good that it is the darkest hour before the dawn of day, and so it was to prove in his case. While he waited in that desolate quarter to which he had been driven, events were shaping themselves in his favor and the first rising took place against the Danes.
The stirring speech of the young noble at Mora Church had not been made in vain. Many of those who heard it had been strongly taken by his manliness and his powerful language, and, strangely, the most deeply impressed of all was Rasmas Jute, a Dane who had served the Stures and was now settled in Dalarna.
Hearing that a Danish steward had come to that quarter to seek the fugitive and was now at the house of the sergeant of Mora parish, he armed himself and his servants and fell on the steward unawares, the first to take arms for Gustavus being thus a man of Danish birth. Soon afterwards a troop of Danish horsemen, a full hundred in number, was seen marching over the frozen surface of Lake Silja. So numerous a body of soldiers was unusual in those parts, and suspecting that they were in search of Gustavus, and might do something to their own injury, the peasants began ringing the church bells, the usual summons to arms.
The wind carried the sound far to the northward, and on hearing the warning peal the peasantry seized their arms and bodies of them were soon visible hasting down the hills towards Mora. The Danish troopers, on seeing this multitude of armed men, shut themselves in the priest's house. Here they were attacked by the furious Dalmen, who broke open the doors and rushed in. The terrified Danes now fled to the church and took refuge in its steeple, whither they were quickly followed. Only by dejected appeals and a promise not to injure Gustavus Vasa did they succeed in escaping from the tower, and the Dalmen, thinking that some of them might remain concealed in the narrow spire, shot their arrows at it from every side. For more than a hundred years after some of these arrows remained sticking in the old wooden spire.
Dalarna being looked upon as a centre of Swedish patriotism, a number of the persecuted noblemen took refuge there, and those confirmed all that Gustavus had told the people. And when Lars Olssen, an old warrior well known to them, arrived and told them of the gallows which Christian had erected, of the new taxes he had laid on the peasantry, and of the report that he had threatened to cut a hand and a foot off each peasant, with other tales true and false, they were deeply stirred. When Lars learned that Gustavus had been there and what had passed, he reproached them for their folly in not supporting him.
"Good men," he said, "I know that gentleman well, and tell you that if yourselves and all the people of the country are not to be oppressed and even exterminated Gustavus Vasa is the only one who has sense and knowledge enough to lead us and lay hand to so great a work."