Every one was forbidden to assault another in the church or the churchyard or on the way to or from church. Whoever did so was declared outlawed, and if the assailed man killed his assailant he was held free from blame or revenge. This was the Peace of the Church.

Another ancient custom was to carry away a desired bride by force, without her consent or that of her parents, a fight often arising in which the bride's father and brothers were killed. Or on the way of an affianced pair to church the same outrage might take place, the bridegroom being often killed. This, too, was forbidden under penalty of outlawry, the new law being that of Peace for Women.

To promote general security he forbade, under the same penalty, the attacking of any man, his wife, children, or servants, within his house or on his property. This was the Law of Home-peace or House-peace. All violence was in like manner forbidden to any one going to or attending an assembly of the people, this being the Peace of Assize.

Birger Jarl improved the laws in many other ways and made Sweden a far more civilized country than it had been before his time. Another of his useful acts was the founding of the city of Stockholm, which before his day was a mere village on an island, but which he made a stronghold and city, inviting that commerce to which its situation so excellently adapted it. This was one of the most important acts of Birger Jarl, who died soon afterwards, not living to see the rapid growth in importance of his new city.

THE FIRST WAR BETWEEN
SWEDEN AND RUSSIA.

In the last tale it was told how Birger Jarl subdued the Finns and brought then to give up their heathen practices and accept Christianity. But this refers only to the section of Finland bordering on the Baltic Sea. Farther east the Finns were pagans still, worshipping idols and living a savage life in their vast forests, and bitterly hating the Christians. At times they would come in hordes out of their wild woodlands and attack the settled people, killing them in the most cruel way their distorted fancies could contrive.

They had two chief deities, Jumal, the great good one, and Perkel, the great evil one, and these were supposed to meet in fierce encounters in which they would throw each other over high mountains. The people kept wooden images of these deities in their huts, and had also open places in the forest, with a stone on the centre of each, on which they made sacrifices to their divinities. When a Karelian, as these people were called, came to within a fixed distance of the sacrificial stone, he took off his cap and crawled up to it silently, making sacrifices there of the bones and horns of elk and reindeer. In case of danger they would sacrifice goats, cats and cocks, sprinkling their idols with the blood of these animals.

At that time, shortly before the year 1300, Birger, heir to the throne of Sweden, was very young, and the country was under the rule of Torkel Knutson, regent of the kingdom and a wise and energetic man. Exasperated by the cruelties committed by the Karelians on the Christians, he determined to put a stop to them and sailed to Finland with a strong army. Against this force the pagan foresters could not make head and they were soon obliged to submit. A fort with a strong garrison was built at Wiborg to keep them in order, and the churchmen who went with the expedition strove to convert them.

It is not with these savage woodsmen, however, that we are concerned, but with the Russians, with which people the Swedes now first came into warlike contact. The forest Russians of that day were as savage as the Finns and as hard to deal with. They came to the help of the Karelians in this war, and to punish them the regent took Castle Kexholm, their chief stronghold, and left in it a garrison under Sigge Lake. It was this that brought on the first war between the Swedes and the Russians, some of the events of which are so interesting that it is worth telling about.