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i 4. ST. BIRGITTA: HER LIFE IN SWEDEN. 125
the tendency also to oppose the crown in politics, and to
take the side of the nobility, and, lastly, the love of pilgrim
age and of pious foundations all these seem traceable to
him. From her mother she inherited both the hardness
and the chivalry of the Folkunga character the hardness
shown often towards herself, the chivalry in many of her
conceptions of religious life, in which she likens Christ to
a noble warrior, and holds up the crusading knight to
greater honour than the monk. It may be traced also in
her favouritism towards her son Karl, and her joy when her
son Birger was knighted at Jerusalem. The images of the
whole family, including Birgitta, are still to be seen in the
brass which is the oldest monument in Upsala Cathedral.14
Birgitta was naturally proud and ambitious, with a very
strong will, and a powerful imagination, and (as I have
said) a certain hardness, which she learnt to use towards
herself quite as much as to others. Probably her character
was fixed in the years of childhood, passed first in her
father s dark and rather dull country house of Finstad, in
Eastern Upland, and, after her mother s death (1314),
under her maternal aunt at Aspnas in East Gothland, some
thirty miles from Vadstena. She became used to the
society and conversation of religious men, and, happily,
she seems to have fallen in with remarkably good ones,
who, in succession, were devoted to her. She was accus
tomed to hear legends and religious books read, and to
discuss religious questions. Quite as a child she began to
have visions. The two which impressed her most were the
gift of a crown pressed upon her head, which she felt
exactly fitted it, and some words spoken to her by the
Saviour from His cross. When she was thirteen years old
both she and her younger sister Katharine wr
ere married to
sons of Gudmar, lagman of Nerike, who belonged to the
same party as her father. Birgitta s husband, Ulf, was
only eighteen, and her strong will largely moulded and
controlled his. He joined her in her religious exercises
14
It is figured in S. H 2
, fig. 179.
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