Hero Tales of the Far North

But not yet for many weary months did the people hear its summons. Swedish manhood was at its lowest ebb. Stockholm was held by the widow of Sten Sture with a half-famished garrison. In Kalmar another woman, Anna Bjelke, commanded, but her men murmured, and the fall of the fortress was imminent. When Gustav Vasa, who had slipped in unseen, exhorted them to stand fast, they would have mobbed him. He left as he had come, the day before the surrender. Travelling by night, he made his way inland, finding everywhere fear and distrust. The King had promised that if they would obey him "they should never want for herring and salt," so they told Gustav, and when he tried to put heart into them and rouse their patriotism, they took up bows and arrows and bade him be gone. Indeed, there were not wanting those who shot at him. Like a hunted deer he fled from hamlet to hamlet. Such friends as he had left advised him to throw himself upon the King's mercy; told him of the amnesty proclaimed. But Gustav's thoughts dwelt grimly among the Northern mountaineers whom as a boy he had bragged he would set against the tyrant. Insensibly he shaped his course toward their country.

He was with his brother-in-law, Joachim Brahe, when the King's message bidding him to the coronation came. Gustav begged him not to go, but Brahe's wife and children were within Christian's reach, and he did not dare stay away. When he left, the fugitive hid in his ancestral home at Räfsnäs on lake Mälar. There one of Brahe's men brought him news of the massacre in which his master and Gustav's father had perished. His mother, grandmother, and sisters were dragged away to perish in Danish dungeons. On Gustav's head the King had set a price, and spies were even then on his track.

Gustav's mind was made up. What was there now to wait for? Clad as a peasant, he started for Dalecarlia with a single servant to keep him company, but before he reached the mines the man stole all his money and ran away. He had to work now to live, and hired out to Anders Persson, the farmer of Rankhyttan. He had not been there many days when one of the women saw an embroidered sleeve stick out under his coat and told her master that the new hand was not what he pretended to be. The farmer called him aside, and Gustav told him frankly who he was. Anders Persson kept his secret, but advised him not to stay long in any one place lest his enemies get wind of him. He slipped away as soon as it was dark, nearly lost his life by breaking through the ice, but reached Ornäs on the other side of Lake Runn, half dead with cold and exposure. He knew that another Persson who had been with him in the war lived there, and found his house. Arendt Persson was a rascal. He received him kindly, but when he slept harnessed his horse and went to Måns Nilsson, a neighbor, with the news: the King's reward would make them both rich, if he would help him seize the outlawed man.

Måns Nilsson held with the Danes, but he was no traitor, and he showed the fellow the door. He went next to the King's sheriff; he would be bound to help. To be sure, he would claim the lion's share of the blood-money, but something was better than nothing. The sheriff came soon enough with a score of armed men. But Arendt Persson had not reckoned with his honest wife. She guessed his errand and let Gustav down from the window to the rear gate, where she had a sleigh and team in waiting. When the sheriff's posse surrounded the house, Gustav was well on his way to Master Jon, the parson of Svärdsjö, who was his friend. Tradition has it that while Christian was King, the brave little woman never dared show her face in the house again.

Master Jon was all right, but news of the man-hunt had run through the country, and when the parson's housekeeper one day saw him hold the wash-bowl for his guest she wanted to know why he was so polite to a common clod. Master Jon told her that it was none of her business, but that night he piloted his friend across the lake to Isala, where Sven Elfsson lived, a gamekeeper who knew the country and could be trusted. The good parson was hardly out of sight on his way back when the sheriff's men came looking for Gustav. It did not occur to them that the yokel who stood warming himself by the stove might be the man they were after. But the gamekeeper's wife was quick to see his peril. She was baking bread and had just put the loaves into the oven with a long-handled spade. "Here, you lummox!" she cried, and whacked him soundly over the back with it, "what are ye standing there gaping at? Did ye never see folks afore? Get back to your work in the barn." And Gustav, taking the hint, slunk out of the room.

For three days after that he lay hidden under a fallen tree in the snow and bitter cold; but even there he was not safe, and the gamekeeper took him deeper into the forest, where a big spruce grew on a hill in the middle of a frozen swamp. There no one would seek him till he could make a shift to get him out of the country. The hill is still there; the people call it the King's Hill, and not after King Christian, either. But in those long nights when Gustav Vasa listened to the hungry wolves howling in the woods and nosing about his retreat, it was hardly kingly conceits his mind brooded over. His father and kinsmen were murdered; his mother and sister in the pitiless grasp of the tyrant who was hunting him to his death; he, the last of his race, alone and forsaken by his own. Bitter sorrow filled his soul at the plight of his country that had fallen so low. But the hope of the young years came to the rescue: all was not lost yet. And in the morning came Sven, the gamekeeper, with a load of straw, at the bottom of which he hid him. So no one would be the wiser.

It was well he did it, for half-way to the next town some prowling soldiers overtook them, and just to make sure that there was nothing in the straw, prodded the load with their spears. Nothing stirred, and they went on their way. But a spear had gashed Gustav's leg, and presently blood began to drip in the snow. Sven had his wits about him. He got down, and cut the fetlock of one of the beasts with his jack-knife so that it bled and no one need ask questions. When they got to Marnäs, Gustav was weak from the loss of blood, but a friendly surgeon was found to bind up his wounds.

Farther and farther north he fled, keeping to the deep woods in the day, until he reached Rättwik. Feeling safer there, he spoke to the people coming from church one Sunday and implored them to shake off the Danish yoke. But they only shook their heads. He was a stranger among them, and they would talk it over with their neighbors. Not yet were his wanderings over. To Mora he went next, where Parson Jakob hid him in a lonely farm-house. Evil chance led the spies direct to his hiding-place, and once more it was the housewife whose quick wit saved him. Dame Margit was brewing the Yule beer when she saw them coming. In a trice she had Gustav in the cellar and rolled the brewing vat over the trap-door. Then they might search as they saw fit; there was nothing there. The first blood was spilled for Gustav Vasa while he was at Mora, and it was a Dane who did it. He was the kind that liked to see fair play; when an under-sheriff came looking for the hunted man there, the Dane waylaid and killed him.

Christmas morning, when Master Jakob had preached his sermon in the church, Gustav spoke to the congregation out in the snow-covered churchyard. A gravestone was his pulpit. Eloquent always, his sorrows and wrongs and the memory of the hard months lent wings to his words. His speech lives yet in Dalecarlia, for now he was among its mountains.

"It is good to see this great meeting," he said, "but when I think of our fatherland I am filled with grief. At what peril I am here with you, you know who see me hounded as a wild beast day by day, hour by hour. But our beloved country is more to me than life. How long must we be thralls, we who were born to freedom? Those of you who are old remember what persecution Swedish men and women have suffered from the Danish kings. The young have heard the story of it and have learned from they were little children to hate and resist such rule. These tyrants have laid waste our land and sucked its marrow, until nothing remains for us but empty houses and lean fields. Our very lives are not safe." He called upon them to rise and drive the invaders out. If they wanted a leader, he was ready.

His words stirred the mountaineers deeply. Cries of anger were heard in the crowd; it was not the first time they had taken up arms in the cause of freedom. But when they talked it over, the older heads prevailed; there had not been time enough to hear both sides. They told him that they would not desert the King; he must expect nothing of them.

Broken-hearted and desperate, Gustav Vasa turned toward the Norwegian frontier. He would leave the country for which there was no hope. While the table in the poorest home groaned with Yuletide cheer, Sweden's coming king hid under an old bridge, outcast and starving, till it was safe to leave. Then he took up his weary journey alone. The winter cold had grown harder as the days grew shorter. Famished wolves dogged his steps, but he outran them on his snow-shoes. By night he slept in some wayside shelter, such as they build for travellers in that desolate country, or in the brush. The snow grew deeper, and the landscape wilder, as he went. For days he had gone without food, when he saw the sun set behind the lofty range that was to bar him out of home and hope forever. Even there was no abiding place for him. What thoughts of his vanished dream, perchance of the distant lands across the seas where the tyrant's hand could not reach him, were in his mind, who knows, as he bent his strength to the last and hardest stage of his journey? He was almost there, when he heard shouts behind him and turned to sell his life dear. Two men on skis were calling to him. They were unarmed, and he waited to let them come up.

Their story was soon told. They had come to call him back. After he left, an old soldier whom they knew in Mora had come from the south and told them worse things than even Gustav knew. It was all true about the Stockholm murder; worse, the King was having gallows set up in every county to hang all those on who said him nay; a heavy tax was laid upon the peasants, and whoever did not pay was to have a hand or foot cut off; they could still follow the plow. And now they had sent away the one man who could lead against the Danes, with the forests full of outlawed men who would have enlisted under him as soon as ever the cry was raised! While the men of Dalecarlia were debating the news among themselves orders came from the bailiff at Westerås that the tax was to be paid forthwith. That night runners were sent on the trail of Gustav to tell him to come back; they were ready.

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.

Gustav Vasa's long reign ended in 1560. Like his enemy, Christian II, he was a strange mixture of contradictions. He was brave in battle, wise in council, pious, if not a saint, clean, and merciful when mercy fitted into his plans. His enemies called him a greedy, suspicious despot. Greedy he was. More than eleven thousand farms were confiscated by the crown during his reign, and he left four thousand farms and a great fortune to his children as his personal share. But historians have called him "the great housekeeper" who found waste and loss and left an ordered household. He gave all for Sweden, and all he had was at her call. It was share and share alike, in his view. Despotic he could be, too. L'état c'est moi might have been said by him. But he did not exploit the state; he built it. He fashioned Sweden out of a bunch of quarrelsome provincial governments into a hereditary monarchy, as the best way—indeed, the only way then—of giving it strength and stability. He was suspicious because everybody had betrayed him, or had tried to. With all that, his steady purpose was to raise and enlighten his people and make them keep the peace, if he had to adopt the Irishman's plan of keeping it himself with an axe. He was the father of a line of great warriors. Gustav Adolf was his grandson.

Bent under the burden of years, he bade his people good-by at the Diet of Stockholm, a few weeks before his death. His old eloquence rings unimpaired in the farewell. He thanked God, who had chosen him as His tool to set Sweden free from thralldom. Almost might he liken himself to King David, whom God from a shepherd had made the leader of his people. No such hope was in his heart when, forty years before, he hid in the woods from a bloodthirsty enemy. For what he had done wrong as king, he asked the people's pardon; it was not done on purpose. He knew well that many thought him a hard ruler, but the time would come when they would gladly dig him up from his grave if they only could. And with that he went out, bowing deeply to the Diet, the tears streaming down his face.

They saw him no more; but on his tomb the Swedish people, forgetting all else, have written that he was the "Father of his Country."

ABSALON, WARRIOR BISHOP OF THE NORTH

A welcome change awaits the traveller who, having shaken off the chill of the German Dreadnaughts at Kiel, crosses the Baltic to the Danish Islands—a change from the dread portents of war to smiling peace. There can be nothing more pastoral and restful than the Seeland landscape as framed in a car window; yet he misses its chief charm whom its folk-lore escapes—the countless legends that cling to field and forest from days long gone. The guide-book gives scarce a hint of them; but turn from its page and they meet you at every step, hail you from every homestead, every copse. Nor is their story always of peace. Here was Knud Lavard slain by his envious kinsman for the crown, and a miraculous spring gushed forth where he fell. Of the church they built for the pilgrims who sought it from afar they will show you the site, but the spring dried up with the simple old faith. Yonder, under the roof of Ringsted church, lie Denmark's greatest dead. Not half an hour from the ferry landing at Korsör, your train labors past a hill crowned by a venerable cross, Holy Anders' Hill. So saintly was that masterful priest that he was wont, when he prayed, to hang his hat and gloves on a sunbeam as on a hook. And woe to the land if his cross be disturbed, for then, the peasant will tell you, the cattle die of plague and the crops fail. A little further on, just beyond Sorö, a village church rears twin towers above the wheat-field where the skylark soars and sings to its nesting mate. For seven hundred years the story of that church and its builder has been told at Danish firesides, and the time will never come when it is forgotten.

Fjenneslev is the name of the village, and Asker Ryg[3 - Pronounce Reeg.] ruled there in the Twelfth Century, when the king summoned his men to the war. Bidding good-by to his wife, Sir Asker tells her to build a new church while he is away, for the old, "with wall of clay, straw-thatched and grim," is in ruins. And let it be worthy of the Master:

"The roof let make of tiling red;
Of stone thou build the wall;"

and then he whispers in her ear:

"Hear thou, my Lady Inge,
Of women thou art the flower;
An' thou bearest to me a son so bold,
Set on the church a tower."

Should the child be a girl, he tells her to build only a spire, for "modesty beseemeth a woman." Well for Sir Asker that he did not live in our day of clamoring suffragists. He would have "views" without doubt. But no such things troubled him while he battled in foreign lands all summer. It was autumn when he returned and saw from afar the swell behind which lay Fjenneslev and home. Impatiently he spurred his horse to the brow of the hill, for no news had come of Lady Inge those many months. The bard tells us what he saw there:

"It was the good Sir Asker Ryg;
Right merrily laughed he,
When from that green and swelling hill
Two towers did he see."

Two sons lay at the Lady Inge's breast, and all was well.

"The first one of the brothers two
They called him Esbern Snare.[4 - Pronounce Snaré, with a as in are. In the Danish hare rhymes with snare, so pronounced.]
He grew as strong as a savage bear
And fleeter than any hare.

"The second him called they Absalon,
A bishop he at home.
He used his trusty Danish sword
As the Pope his staff at Rome."

Absalon and Esbern were not twins, as tradition has it. They were better than that. They became the great heroes of their day, and the years have not dimmed their renown. And Absalon reached far beyond the boundaries of little Denmark to every people that speaks the English tongue. For it was he who, as archbishop of the North, "strictly and earnestly" charged his friend and clerk Saxo to gather the Danish chronicles while yet it was time, because, says Saxo, in the preface of his monumental work, "he could no longer abide that his fatherland, which he always honored and magnified with especial zeal, should be without a record of the great deeds of the fathers." And from the record Saxo wrote we have our Hamlet.

It was when they had grown great and famous that Sir Asker and his wife built the church in thanksgiving for their boys, not when they were born, and the way that came to light was good and wholesome. They were about to rebuild the church, on which there had been no towers at all since they crumbled in the middle ages, and had decided to put on only one; for the sour critics, who are never content in writing a people's history unless they can divest it of all its flesh and make it sit in its bones, as it were, sneered at the tradition and called it an old woman's tale. But they did not shout quite so loud when, in peeling off the whitewash of the Reformation, the mason's hammer brought forth mural paintings that grew and grew until there stood the whole story to read on the wall, with Sir Asker himself and the Lady Inge, clad in garments of the Twelfth Century, bringing to the Virgin the church with the twin towers. So the folk-lore was not so far out after all, and the church was rebuilt with two towers, as it should be.

Under its eaves, whether of straw or tile, the two boys played their childish games, and before long there came to join in them another of their own age, young Valdemar, whose father, the very Knud Lavard mentioned above, had been foully murdered a while before. It was a time, says Saxo, in which "he must be of stout heart and strong head who dared aspire to Denmark's crown. For in less than a hundred years more than sixteen of her kings and their kin were either slain without cause by their own subjects, or otherwise met a sudden death." Sir Asker and the murdered Knud had been foster brothers, and throughout the bloody years that followed, he and his brothers, sons of the powerful Skjalm Hvide,[5 - Pronounced Veethé.] espoused his cause in good and evil days, while they saw to it that no harm came to the young prince under their roof.

The three boys, as they grew up, were bred to the stern duties of fighting men, as was the custom of their class. Absalon, indeed, was destined for the church; but in a country so recently won from the old war gods, it was the church militant yet, and he wielded spear and sword with the best of them. When, at eighteen, they sent him to France to be taught, he did not for his theological studies neglect the instruction of his boyhood. There he became the disciple and friend of the Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, more powerful then than prince or Pope, and when the abbot preached the second great crusade, promising eternal salvation to those who took up arms against the unbelievers, whether to wrest from them the Holy Sepulchre or to plant the cross among the wild heathen on the Baltic, his heart burned hot within him. It was a long way to the Holy Land, but with the Baltic robbers his people had a grievous score to settle. Their yells had sounded in his boyish ears as they ravished the shores of his fatherland, penetrating with murder and pillage almost to his peaceful home. And so, while he lent a diligent ear to the teachings of the church, earning the name of the "most learned clerk" in the cloister of Ste. Geneviève in Paris, daily he laid the breviary aside and took up sword and lance, learning the arts of modern warfare with the graces of chivalry. In the old way of fighting, man to man, the men of the North had been the equals of any, if not their betters; but against the new methods of warfare their prowess availed little. Absalon, the monk, kept his body strong while soul and mind matured. When nothing more adventurous befell, he chopped down trees for the cloister hearths. But oftener the clash of arms echoed in the quiet halls, or the peaceful brethren crossed themselves as they watched him break an unruly horse in the cloister fen. Saxo tells us that he swam easily in full armor, and in more than one campaign in later years saved drowning comrades who were not so well taught.

The while he watched rising all about some of the finest churches in Christendom. It was the era of cathedral building in Europe. The Romanesque style of architecture had reached its highest development in the very France where he spent his young manhood's years, and the Gothic, with its stamp of massive strength, was beginning to displace its gentler curve. Ten years of such an environment, in a land teeming with historic traditions, rounded out the man who set his face toward home, bent on redeeming his people from the unjust reproach of being mere "barbarians of the North."

It was a stricken Denmark to which he came back. Three claimants were fighting for the crown. The land was laid waste by sea-rovers, who saw their chance to raid defenceless homes while the men able to bear arms were following the rival kings. The people had lost hope. Just when Absalon returned, peace was made between the claimants. Knud, Svend, and Valdemar, his foster brother of old, divided up the country between them. They swore a dear oath to keep the pact, but for all that "the three kingdoms did not last three days." The treacherous Svend waited only for a chance to murder both his rivals, and it came quickly, when he and Valdemar were the guests of Knud at Roskilde. They had eaten and drunk together and were gathered in the "Storstue," the big room of the house, when Knud saw Svend whispering aside with his men. With a sudden foreboding of evil, he threw his arms about Valdemar's shoulders and kissed him. The young King, who was playing chess with one of his men, looked up in surprise and asked what it meant. Just then Svend left the hall, and his henchmen fell upon the two with drawn swords. Knud was cut down at once, his head cleft in twain. Valdemar upset the table with the candles and, wrapping his cloak about his arm to ward off the blows that showered upon him, knocked his assailants right and left and escaped, badly wounded.