Hero Tales of the Far North

by Jacob A. Riis

When he came, it was as if a mighty storm swept through the mountains. The people rose in a body. Every day whole parishes threw off their allegiance to King Christian. Sunday after Sunday Gustav spoke to the people at their meeting-houses, and they raised their spears and swore to follow him to death. Two months after the murder in Stockholm an army of thousands that swelled like an avalanche was marching south, and province after province joined in the rebellion. King Christian’s host met them at Brunbäck in April. One of its leaders asked the country folk what kind of men the Dalecarlians were, and when he was told that they drank water and ate bread made of bark, he cried out, “Such a people the devil himself couldn’t whip; let us get out.” But his advice was not taken and the Danish army was wiped out. Gustav halted long enough to drill his men and give them time to temper their arrows and spears, then he fell upon Westerås and beat the Danes there. The peasant mob scattered too soon to loot the town, and the King’s men came back with a sudden rush. Only Gustav’s valor and presence of mind saved the day that had been won once from being lost again.

When it was seen that the Danes were not invincible, the whole country rose, took the scattered castles, and put their defenders to the sword. Gustav bore the rising on his shoulders from first to last. He was everywhere, ordering and leading. His fiery eloquence won over the timorous; his irresistible advance swept every obstacle aside. In May he took Upsala; by midsummer he was besieging Stockholm itself. Most of the other cities were in his hands. The Hanse towns had found out what this Gustav could do at home. They sang his praise, but as for backing him with their purse, that was another matter. They refused to lend Gustav two siege-guns when he lay before Stockholm, though he offered to pledge a castle for each. He had no money. Happily his enemy, Christian, was even worse off. Neither pledges nor promises could get him the money he needed. His chief men were fighting among themselves and made peace only to turn upon him. Within a year after the Swedish people had chosen Gustav Vasa to be Regent at the Diet of Vadstena, Christian went into exile and, when he tried to get his kingdom back, into prison, where he languished the rest of his life. He fully deserved his fate. Yet he meant well and had done some good things in his day. Had he been able to rule himself, he might have ruled others with better success. Schoolboys remember with gratitude that he forbade teachers to “spank their pupils overmuch and without judgment, as was their wont.”

At the Diet of Vadstena the people had offered Gustav the crown, but he put it from him. Scarce eight months had passed since he hid under the bridge, hunted and starving. When Stockholm had fallen after a siege of two years and all Sweden was free, the people met (1523) and made him King, whether or no. He still objected, but gave in at last and was crowned.

Popular favor is fickle. Hard times came that were not made easier by Gustav’s determination to fill the royal coffers, and the very Dalecarlians who had put him in the high seat rose against him and served notice that if things did not mend they would have none of him. Gustav made sure that they had no backing elsewhere, then went up and persuaded them to be good by cutting off the heads of their leaders, who both happened to be priests: one was even a bishop. He had been taught in a school that always found an axe ready to hand. Let those who lament the savagery of modern warfare consider what happened then to a Danish fleet that tried to bring relief to hard-pressed Stockholm. It was beaten in a fight in which six hundred men were taken prisoners. They were all, say the accounts, “tied hand and foot and flung overboard amid the beating of drums and blowing of trumpets to drown their cries.” The clergy fared little better than the laymen in that age, but then it was their own fault. In plotting and scrapping they were abreast of the worst and took the consequences.

They were the days of the Reformation, and Gustav would not have been human had he failed to see a way out of his money troubles by confiscating church property. He had pawned the country’s trade to the merchants of Lübeck and there was nothing else left. Naturally the church opposed him. The King took the bull by the horns. He called a meeting and told the people that he was sick of it all. He had encouraged the Reformation for their good; now, if they did not stand by him, they might choose between him and his enemies. The oldest priest arose at that and said that the church’s property was sacred. The King asked if the rest of them thought the same way. Only one voice was raised, and to say yes.

“Then,” said Gustav, “I don’t want to be your King any more. If it does not rain, you blame me; if the sun does not shine, you do the same. It is always so. All of you want to be masters. After all my trouble and labor for you, you would as lief see my head split with an axe, though none of you dare lay hold of the handle. Give me back what I have spent in your service and I will go away and never come back.” And go he did, to his castle, with half a dozen of his nearest friends.

They sat and looked at one another when he was gone, and then priests and nobles fell to arguing among themselves, all talking at once. The plain people, the burghers and the peasants, listened awhile, but when they got no farther, let them know that if they couldn’t settle it, they, the people, would, and in a way that would give them little joy. The upshot of it all was that messengers were sent to bring the King back. He made them go three times, and when he came at last, it was as absolute master. In the ordering of the kingdom that was made there, he became the head of the church as well as of the state. Gustav’s pen was as sharp as his tongue. When Hans Brask, the oldest prelate in the land, who had stood stoutly by the old régime, left the country and refused to come back, he wrote to him: “As long as you might milk and shear your sheep, you staid by them. When God spake and said you were to feed them, not to shear and slaughter them, you ran away. Every honest man can judge if you have done well.” Hard words to a good old man; but there were plenty of others who deserved them. That was the end of the hierarchy in Sweden.

But not of the unruly peasants who had tasted the joys of king-making. How kindly they took to the Reformation at the outset one can judge from the demand of some of them that the King should “burn or otherwise kill such as ate meat on Friday.” They rose again and again, and would listen only to the argument of force. When the Lübeckers pressed hard for the payment of old debts, and the treasury was empty as usual, King Gustav hit upon a new kind of revenue. He demanded of every church in the land that it give up its biggest bell to the funds. It was the last straw. The Dalecarlians rose against what they deemed sacrilege, under the leadership of Måns Nilsson and Anders Persson of Rankhyttan, the very men who had befriended Gustav in his need, and the insurrection spread. The “War of the Bells” was settled with the sword, and the peasants gave in. But Gustav came of a stock that “never forgot.” Two years later, when his hands were free at home, he suddenly invaded Dalecarlia with a powerful army, determined to “pull those weeds up by the roots.” He summoned the peasants to Thing, made a ring around them of armed men, and gave them their choice:

“Submit now for good and all,” he said, “or I will spoil the land so that cock shall not crow nor hound bark in it again forever!”

The frightened peasants fell on their knees and begged for mercy. He made them give up their leaders, including his former friends, and they were all put to the sword. After that there was peace in Dalecarlia.