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and exclaimed, “Now have I Sweden in my
hand!”
From the middle of December (a. d. 1317), when
this came to pass, the dukes remained about four
months in prison [1], until Birger, yet more
exasperated by the revolt which was spreading on all
sides, caused the dungeon tower to be locked, and
the keys to be thrown into the stream, and taking
to flight, left his brothers to die of hunger. It is
related that Eric, who had been beaten and wounded
beforehand, lived but three days longer, and
Waldemar eleven. The former was upwards of thirty
years old, the latter younger. The cruel fate of
these princes awakened the profoundest horror
throughout the north. The ballad upon their
death, so well known throughout Sweden, Denmark,
and Iceland, imputes it to the treachery of
the steward John Brunke. Contemporary accounts
are full of their praises, and extol, especially, the
beauty and knightly grace of the “gentle duke
Eric.” Posterity has not had the heart to blame
those who were the victims of so fell a disaster;
they have had this compensation, that their faults
have died with them, and only their virtues have
survived in the memory of men.
At the first rumour of the imprisonment of the
dukes, their partisans took up arms. The inhabitants
of several provinces revolted, to set them at
liberty, and Norway prepared to afford them
succour. Stockholm closed its gates against the king,
and he was obliged to flee from Nyköping, which
was besieged. The royal garrison of the castle
exposed the dead bodies of the dukes, covered with
cloth of gold, on biers outside the castle gate, in
order to convince the besiegers that those for whom
they fought were no longer alive. This had no
other effect than that of still further incensing
them; the castle was taken, and razed to the
ground. In vain Birger endeavoured to win the
clergy by the privileges he confered upon them,
and to defend the crown by the troops brought by
his son from Denmark. After a short war, marked
on his side by new acts of perfidy, he saw himself
compelled, with his wife and two daughters [2], to
seek refuge, first in Gottland, and afterwards in
Denmark. The crown prince Magnus was obliged,
after a valiant resistance in the castle of Stegeborg,
to surrender to the enemy. The steward, John
Brunke, was made prisoner, in a desperate attempt
to relieve the prince, and shortly thereafter, with
two of his accomplices in the murder of the dukes,
beheaded and broken on the wheel at Norrmalm
by Stockholm, on the sandhill, which from the
circumstance is to this day called Brunkeberg.
Two years subsequently (Oct. 28, 1320), prince
Magnus Birgerson, the designated successor to the
throne, was executed by the sword at Stockholm,
in his twentieth year, although he was innocent of
his father’s misdeeds, and had received assurance
of his life by compact. Grief for this calamity
brought the fugitive king Birger to his grave in the
following year. Thus the revenge exacted was not
less fearful than the crime itself. Justly do the
old writers observe, that since the settlement of
Sweden a more miserable time had hardly been
known than during the fraternal war which desolated
the house of king Magnus Ladulas.
The survivor of these scenes of mutual destruction
was a child of three years old, who was now
acknowledged as the sovereign of two kingdoms.
On Midsummer-day of the year 1319, the magnates
of the realm, the bishops, the nobility, and
burgesses of the towns, who are now first
mentioned as participating in the management of public
affairs [3], together with four peasants from every
hundred, met at Upsala, to proceed to the election
of a new king. Matthew Ketilmundson, a knight
who, having signalized himself in the wars of the
foregoing years by the most chivalrous valour,
had eventually risen to be the leader of the ducal
party, presented himself before the people
assembled on the meadow by the Mora stone. The voices
of the magnates [4] had raised him in the past year
to the office of Administrator [5], and he now carried
in his arms Magnus, the orphan son of duke Eric,
who was proposed and elected king, receiving at
the same time the Norwegian crown, as his inheritance
from his maternal grandfather king Haco,
not long before deceased without male issue.
Several lords of the council [6] were despatched to
Norway, in order to express assent to the elevation
of Magnus to the throne of that country, “in the
name of all Swedish men.” Administrations were
arranged in both kingdoms to conduct affairs during
the minority. The Swedish government lasted till
the year 1333, and is highly lauded by the chronicles;
it restored peace to the people [7], extended its
bounds by the redemption of Scania, and at first
even watched over the rights of the commonalty.
In effect, however, it strengthened the power of
the magnates, and for a hundred years to come
Sweden was governed chiefly by aristocratic
associations.
On the very day of the new king’s election, the
principal spiritual and temporal lords, together
with the justiciaries, entered into a bond to support
with rede and deed the High Steward Matthew
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