The Middle Ages are a period marked by the Catholic Church for better or worse. It was this denomination that developed in this country until the end of the Middle Ages, after which Denmark became Lutheran in connection with the Reformation in 1536.

During this period, the monarchy gained more and more influence over all aspects of society, and the king became the support of the church and the emerging nobility of the country's actual head of state. The king was given powers externally and internally, he was to secure the country's borders and influence in Catholic Europe, but also ensure peace and justice within the country.

But this did not go without problems, as independent peasants did not want to be subject to the king's tax evasion and power, the same was true with the church and the nobility, who did not want too strong a central power. Therefore, during the period there were often major disagreements between the monarchy, the nobility and the church.

The Catholic Church, led by the Pope, gained great importance for the development of Denmark in the 1100s and 1200s. An important area for them was the building of an administration and structure that functioned rationally. 

The land was divided into 8 dioceses and each diocese was divided into parishes, after which in each parish was attached a priest and a parish church. This led to an impressive church building during the 13th century, and later an equally impressive construction of monasteries often with monks, nuns from other parts of Europe.

The monasteries initially functioned as self-sufficient units with much time to focus on the faith, but also as a social institution with care for the sick and poor. In order to spread the faith and strengthen trust in the church, an effective organization of teaching was developed through literacy experts who could spread the Old Christian message to all parts of the Nordic countries.

It also provided an opportunity for knowledge of non-religious literature from ancient Greece and Rome. Economically, it was a period of growth, with great trade across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. 

The population in Denmark increased, new towns and villages were built, the infrastructure was expanded for the benefit of trade. The average population got better, also financially and it was forced by the royal power to pay taxes for the king's maintenance and administration, as well as not least a tax to the church.

But in the 14th century, the strong growth ended. This is due to many conditions, including the major epidemics that killed many people, the climate changed markedly with cold and rainy weather. Trade with the Middle East and Asia was destroyed when the new religion Islam conquered the ancient cultural areas of North Africa and prevented contact.

At the same time, the recurring attacks from the Caliphate in North Africa and from the Mongols in Asia on Europe posed a threat that came to mean a lot economically and culturally for the whole of Europe.

It was not until the middle of the 15th century that the population began to increase again, but not until the end of the 18th century did it reach a level as in the early Middle Ages.

Agriculture was deeply influenced by the feudal structure with large differences in property size and land area. The political and economic power of the nobility grew at the expense of the small farms that had to bear the burdens without any possibility of improvement. The agricultural structure that emerged in the 14th century remained unchanged for 500 years, ie until the agrarian reforms around the 19th century. 

The king, the church and the nobility owned large areas of land, while the rest of the areas were cultivated by small family farms, where the families had to pay attachment, tax and rent of the land to the landowners, as well as work for free on the estates.

The peasants lived in villages and cultivated the land together on a so-called three-farm. That is, the land of the village was divided into 3 parts called meadows, which were alternately cultivated with different crops. Outside was the village a common pasture where the animals were allowed to graze during the summer period. Decisions about conditions in the village were made in the town convention, where the individual farmer could help determine local conditions.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, there were about 50 cities in Denmark, many of them built around the king's castles, churches or monasteries, but often with a central location in relation to trade. The cities had their own rules of law and were demarcated from the hinterland. They had their own city council elected by the wealthy citizens. 

The rights of the city depended entirely on the king, who could guarantee the privileges of the city, but in return the city had to pay taxes to the king. Merchants organized themselves into guilds and artisans in low, who were to protect their professional and social interests.

The city's only stone houses were churches, monasteries and the good houses' winter houses later also the town halls. Markets were held on certain days in certain places in the cities. The trade in the towns meant that the peasants often entered the town square with their modest goods, but had to pay a tax to both the town and the king. On market days you could also meet the wealthy merchants from the Hanseatic cities, who were far better organized and had large financial resources available. They sailed far and wide and expanded trade in the Nordic countries, built large warehouses and port facilities. Trade with Asia was coming to a standstill due to the conflict between the Arab conquerors and the still existing Christian countries, therefore the Hanseatic cities found opportunities for trade in the Nordic countries.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Danish kings feared the political and economic power of the Hanseatic cities, and therefore made many attempts to build a wealthy merchant class that could also constitute a counterweight to the nobility.

Christian the 2nd (1513-1523) was probably the king of Denmark who did most to strengthen the interests of the peasants and the bourgeoisie at the expense of the landowners and the Catholic Church. 

At the beginning of his reign he was very much held by the most disadvantaged groups in the country, but the protracted wars with Sweden, the taxes and not least the execution of parts of the Swedish nobility made him unpopular. In 1523 he was deposed as king. Instead, Christian's uncle Frederik I was chosen as king, who again strengthened the power of the nobility.

The deposed king fled to Holland, where he tried to gather an army to regain power in Denmark. Christian the 2nd, however, was tricked back to Denmark and then imprisoned. However, many peasants and merchants would have liked to have seen Christian II regain power. In connection with these conflicts a civil war broke out, the Count's feud 1534-1536, in which the citizens and peasants rebelled against the coercion of the Catholic Church, the privileges of the nobility and wanted Christian back to the monarchy.

In the German states, there had been great dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church for a number of years. The church was criticized for its riches and worldly power. In Wittenberg, the pastor Martin Luther had started a showdown with the Catholic Church, and demanded a completely new interpretation of Christianity. 

A view that was not harmless, and some of the critical voices were judged as heretics. But Luther continued his work, and his interpretation gradually spread to the northern part of Europe. 

When Frederik I died, the nobility did not choose his son as the new king for fear that he was too positive towards Luther's teacher. This aroused the anger and bitterness of the citizens and peasants, who in alliance with the Hanseatic cities revolted to liberate the old king Christian the 2nd The revolt was violent, and it developed into a regular war. The nobility now realized that the solution was to install Christian III as king anyway. Shortly after taking power, the king crushed the revolt and his army commander Johan Rantzau showed great cruelty to the rebellious peasants.

Christian the 3rd was still inspired by Luther's new understanding of Christianity and forced a reformation of the church in Denmark through. The church now became a national, Lutheran church with no connection to the Pope in Rome, and with the king as the supreme authority. 

The king also had economic and political benefits from the Reformation, in the short term, because the king took over the values ​​and properties of the Catholic Church and in the long term, the new teacher led to major changes in the power relations in Denmark.

Read more about this period. Links to articles will be available later :

Knowledge of the Middle Ages. Saga 

Snurri Sturluson. A saga 

Comment by Professor Emeritus Brian Patrick McGuires  

A counterfactual story about Absalom and a royal assassination or two 

The king Valdemar Sejr  

Queen Dagmar

Medieval famine periods, crusades and children's crusades 

Wny crusades 

The Hanseatic cities 

The Black Death. Denmark from 1349 

Everything you want to know about the Middle Age: Women and their world

Denmarks' Trade in the Baltic 

Sexuality in the Middle Ages - before the Reformation 

Danish Invasion of the island Gotland in 1361 

Queen Margrthe the 1. and the Kalmar Union 

Queen Margrethe the 1. and her son Oluf 

Christian the 2. and his henchmen 

The battle at Øksnebjerg 

Anecdotes from the MIddle Ages 

The preaching of the priest in the Middle Ages. 

Jens Christian Boje Nørgaard .

Knowledge of and knowledge of the Nordic countries in the later Viking Age and early Middle Ages we have primarily from the Icelandic sagas. The Icelandic sagas are dramatic tales of revenge and power struggles between the Vikings who settled in Iceland from the mid-ninth century. A saga is thus an old tale about the genealogies and deeds of important people. These are often dramatic and bloody stories, and they have been told over and over again, and at one point they were written down by often by unknown writers. The Icelandic sagas tell primarily about the internal power struggles among the people from the other Nordic countries who moved to Iceland.

The Vikings come Before people from the other Nordic countries started moving to Iceland in the middle of the ninth century, a limited number of Irish monks probably lived on the island. Apart from them, Iceland was a large desert island in the North Atlantic, which was difficult to navigate. The first Icelandic sagas tell of the time of immigration, ie the time between 860 and 950 which is called the time of settlement. It means "the time when land was taken".

A country without a king The sagas show that Norwegian Vikings discovered Iceland by chance around the year 860. They were on their way home to Norway possibly from Scotland, and got off course. When they returned to Norway, they told about the land they had found. They could also tell that there was enough land and space for everyone, and not least that there was no central power that ruled the island.

Farewell to Harald Hårfager In Norway at the beginning of the Viking Age, there were a lot of chiefs and smaller kings who ruled their own territories. But one Norwegian chief, Harald Hårfager (King from 871 to 933), would be king over all of Norway. The other chiefs were forced to submit to Harald Hårfager, and they thus gained less power. Therefore, many chiefs and other wealthy men left Norway and traveled to Iceland to settle. They brought women, children, slaves, livestock and everything they owned to the island.

Blood Revenge The society in Iceland at the time of the saga was very harsh and bloody. An important theme in many sagas is blood revenge. Blood revenge must be understood in the sense that if a person had committed a murder, then the family of the person who had been killed had to kill the killer or someone from the killer's family. So real battles often developed between the large families on the island and such battles between families could last a long time and take a heavy toll on the number of family members.

The Althing To avoid lawlessness in Iceland, the people decided to make a common law. A kind of parliament was also established for the wealthy families, namely the Althing approx. year 930. At the Althing, decisions were made that affected the entire island. Disputes over the law were also settled here. At a general meeting of the Althing in the year 1000, it was decided that Iceland should be Christian.

At Tingsletten, the Icelandic Parliament held meetings for two weeks every summer.

The sagas as sources The Icelandic sagas are some of the oldest writings that tell the story of Nordic history. Historians believe that one should read the sagas with an understanding of their origins and their goals, and consider them as close to fiction and not just as historical sources. The problem is related to the fact that the sagas have been told orally and only written down in the 11th and 13th centuries, and that they have the form of a fictional text.

But it is quite correct that the sagas can give us a unique insight into Icelandic society in the Viking Age.

December 2021, Ole Jørgen Nørgaard wrote a counterfactual article about Bishop Absalon 1128-1201 and one or two possible unnoticed regicides in Denmark. (See article below)

We have asked Professor Emeritus of History Brian Patrick McGuire to comment on the article. He accepted the challenge and here we bring his comments. Thanks to Brian McGuire.

Comment.
I have read Ole Jørgen Nørgaard's counterfactual history of Absalon a few times, and I can only comment on it superficially. A lot of work has been invested in making it, while I only have time and opportunity for a superficial reaction.

I admire your medical knowledge--where you go through the various possible causes of King Valdemar's death, but in my opinion you are wrong in your assessment of Absalon. He was, of course, a man of power, but his life was linked to Valdemar's - after all, they had played together as boys in Fjenneslev, and they followed each other throughout their lives. 

Their relationship can well be called a spiritual and political friendship, and therefore I see no reason why Absalon could derive benefit and pleasure from clearing Valdemar out of the way. My view is not due to Saxo alone--he is of course very partial to Absalon, but we can see how Absalon functioned as a skilled clerical figure, for example when founding monasteries, as in Sorø. Your portrayal of Absalon owes a lot to the usual materialistic view of history that has characterized the profession since Arup a hundred years ago.

What is interesting and convincing in your presentation are the questions you ask about Valdemar's last illness--what could it have consisted of and was there "foul play"? If you want to publish the article online, I suggest you focus on Valdemar's illness and not make Absalon the villain. Your medical knowledge can become very relevant, and you can suggest that there was possibly something suspicious in Valdemar's death. But that Absalon should be the king's court man--that must be free imagination.

I hope you can use the above, at least for consideration. History is built on circumstantial evidence and conjecture, but I believe that you have abandoned what we know about Valdemar-Absalon and made a questionable construction.

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

Dendrochronology and annual rings in trees tell.
In 1998, the American researcher, Michael E. Mann, (2) and his colleagues published an article with a reconstruction of the past climate based on measurements of the annual rings of various trees. Mann and co-workers predominantly used Brush pine, a special American wood. There are three different species. Of these three species, the longest living, Pinus Longaeva, can live to be over 5000 years old! A single tree could therefore cover an entire period of history that you want to investigate, e.g. the Middle Ages.. There has always been knowledge that tree rings have a connection with climate and environment, and that data on living conditions for both humans, animals and plants could be read from them. But Michael E. Mann tried to translate this knowledge into concrete research, with the goal of preparing a kind of barcode that indicates conditions about the environment, weather and climate during the period the trees grew.

By counting the rings in a tree several thousand years old, Mann could thus get a fairly reliable estimate of the tree's age, and by simultaneously measuring and recording the different widths of the rings in the same tree, Mann could get an estimate of how hot the climate is in North America and probably also in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, had been several thousand years ago. Mann assumed that the wide rings in a tree came during years of good growing conditions, i.e. warm, and thin annual rings indicated colder years. It later turned out not to be entirely true. The rings were widest when it was both warmest and raining the most,

The measurements of the width of the annual rings were enormously difficult and required the handling of large amounts of data. With his method, Mann thought he could show when there had been periods of heat and periods of cold over at least a thousand years in most of the northern hemisphere.

However, the method showed a weakness. When the dating was carried up to today's tree rings from Mann's favorite tree, pine cone pine, Pinus Longaeva, the dating for the present showed a different and warmer climate temperature than that which could currently be measured.

Mann's measurements had documented a warm period for the Northern Hemisphere in the years 900-1300. Now the researchers are more uncertain about the generality of the method and thus the result.

Past climate read in Greenland's inland ice. After the year 2020, there were many other and new measurements of past climate temperatures. (2) In particular, by measuring the content of the oxygen isotope O18 in different layers of the Greenland ice sheet, one could get an idea of how warm the climate had been when the layer was formed. The climate in the northern hemisphere could thus be outlined over 11,000 years. A pronounced "Minoan Warm period" was found approx. 3500 years before the present and a "Roman Warm period" approx. 2000 before the present. Approx. year 1000 years before the present there was a "Medieval warm period", all of 300-400 years. For the present, the samples from the Greenland Ice Sheet also showed a contemporary beginning warming period. Between the last two warm periods, i.e. between the warm period of the Middle Ages and the present, the measurements showed a cold period, the so-called "Little Ice Age" or "The Cold Period of the Dark Ages"

The climate of the past and famine periods from the yearbooks of the Middle Ages: Others (5) have then tried to assess Europe's climate by reviewing the records of the European Middle Ages in yearbooks and the like from monasteries, cathedrals and secular princes' records - from all over Europe. It is rare that the weather was recorded in the Middle Ages, but it did happen (Floods, too much rain, drought). In contrast, periods of famine were more often recorded. The reason could be a failed harvest of one or more years' duration.

In the Middle Ages, you could cope with a bad harvest one year by buying grain from other countries. The grain trade between the countries was lively already in the early Middle Ages. Bad harvests for two years were problematic, bad harvests for 3 years or longer triggered famine. Malnutrition, every few years, has occurred regularly, especially through the early Middle Ages.

The yield of the sown grain was low. In the medieval fields of the Winchester Cathedral, 2-2 1/3 folds were usually harvested, at most 4 folds when the harvest was at its best. If you only got back what you had sown, the problems began. (Fold, measured nowadays, is yield per area, e.g. in barrels of grain per barrel of sown land). 

For the Middle Ages, reference is made to the "fold", which was used here in Denmark up to the 1800s, that is, how many times you reaped what you had sown. Nowadays, the yield without artificial means, measured in old folds, will be around 6 folds.

With today's artificial fertilizers and chemical aids, the yield can now reach 25-35 fold!

Medieval annals also showed that the Medieval Warm Period was not a particularly fertile period, but was more characterized by poor growth, probably due to simultaneous drought.

army period and crusades. The Warm Period of the Middle Ages (1000-1370) almost coincides with the period of the Crusades. (7) The first, major crusade began in 1097. The last crusade, Prince Edward's Crusade, also called the 9th, ended in 1272. If you count the somewhat smaller ones, so-called map train initiatives with,(7) the Crusade period ended in 1444 with the 3rd defeat of the Polish king Vladislav in the Balkans. The short train period, therefore, either 1097-1272 or 1097 – 1444. The heating period was, as stated above, from 1000-1370.

There was stunted growth for most of the Crusade period. Can one conclude from this that the crusades were nourished by maldevelopment? The suspicion is there. The stunted growth came from God's anger and the crusades were supposed to mitigate the anger. It's possible. It is not proven! The coincidence may be coincidental!

Hunger like the wrath of God! The Middle Ages did not see the periods of famine as a result of climatic variations, but were fully convinced that the periods of famine were due to God's anger. God's anger had to be appeased in some way, e.g. at masses, prayer and fasting. As this clearly did not help, more drastic measures had to be taken.

1095 The Pope calls for a crusade. At a church meeting in Clermont on November 27, 1095, the Pope, Urban II, proposed something new in a very committed sermon. (6 & 7) He wanted everyone to take up Christ's cross and make Christ's sufferings his own and vice versa and do everything to lighten Christ's burdens, so to speak share and exchange sufferings with Christ, this was most intense in a crusade against the infidels who controlled and perhaps even desecrated the tomb of Christ. 

Perhaps the Pope, Urban II, was influenced or inspired by the well-known and charismatic, self-taught preacher, Peter the Hermit. Peter the Hermit had been in the Holy Land in 1093. Church people all over Europe immediately began to pass it on. It was an idea that caught on like a wildfire in a hot, dry steppe with everyone, scholars as common people, perhaps most violently with the people who were already living on the verge of starvation with all the trials that such a thing might entail - it was almost as if carry the cross of Christ.

In general, Christianity does not originally contain a doctrine of holy war. Rather, it contains an acceptance and understanding for all by virtue of the idea of forgiveness. The notion that war could be a Christian duty as a defense gradually develops as Christianity becomes institutionalized in states that feel threatened by the advancing Muslim expansion. 

The idea of the liberation of the former Christian countries in the Middle East, and thus again opening opportunities for cultural and commercial contact with the occupied areas, was a real political goal. 

In addition, the idea of a recapture of Jerusalem with thus unimpeded access to the Holy Sepulcher was a huge wish of the Christians in Europe. In this context, the Crusades must be seen as a European and Christian backlash against more than 400 years of Muslim expansion and conquest of Christian core areas in the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe. Areas that had great symbolic significance due to older Christianity and the development of structure in church life.

The Muslim conquest of these areas was carried out at great cost to the established Christian communities. There were massacres of entire cities and communities, church destruction, special taxes had to be paid for Christians, many people in the conquered areas were sold as slaves. Non-Muslims were defined with a particularly low status that did not give them any rights in relation to the new societies that arose.

In the 11th century, the Egyptian Caliph Al-Hakim destroys the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and starts a violent persecution of non-Muslims. The destruction contributed to a European reaction long before Pope Urban II's crusade speech in 1095.

The conflict between Islam and Christianity was seriously intensified during the 1000s due to attacks on the Byzantine Empire, as well as the attacks on Spain and Italy. Europe felt threatened, and fierce wars were fought, especially in the border areas. 

Byzantium approached the Pope in Rome several times and asked for military assistance to keep Islamic forces away from the border area, but also to protect the Christian Armenians, who in reality were subjected to brutal abuses and massacres in present-day Turkey. So, in that perspective, the crusades must also be seen as an opportunity to gather the Christian world in a defense of Christianity against an external enemy.

The question is why the European response to the Muslim expansion did not come until the 12th century. The explanation is that only in the High Middle Ages did Western Europe reach an economic, military and population level that made organization and cooperation between states and larger military units possible.

There were some serious persecutions of Jews during the Crusades. The Jews had killed Christ. However, the persecution of the Jews was religiously wrong, because Christ had said that the Jews should witness his return. The church, i.e. bishops, intervened when possible and stopped the abuse of the Jews and the persecution of them.

The Crusades begin.

Already in 1096, Peter the Hermit had organized a crusade, consisting partly of a group of poorly armed and poorly equipped warriors, partly of a group of civilians without subsistence.(1) They started to go (from France?) to the east. In Christian Hungary, the Crusaders sacked the town of Zemun and were soon driven away by an army of knights. In Constantinople, Peter the Hermit preached to the emperor's teenage daughter, Anna Komnena, (who later wrote about him) and perhaps for that reason alone, the emperor, Alexios I. Komnenos, piloted the entire unruly menagerie across the Bosporus as quickly as possible. In Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the Crusaders were massacred by the Seljuk Sultan Kiliq Arslan's battle-trained troops at Civetot on October 21, 1096. Peter the Hermit escaped the massacre. He had gone away to get help and supplies - or maybe he had just run away from it all! He made it home alive. At home began to preach to especially the poor. He was a fanatical advocate of new crusades. He wandered again, this time alone, to Jerusalem and back again. He continued with his sermons, especially to common people, until his death in the year 1115. He was also called Cucu Peter, Little Peter and Peter of Aimens.

1095 Famine period under the Danish king Oluf Hunger. Heat period or not. From the Middle Ages there are accounts of periods of poor harvest due to drought or too much rain, due to diseases such as rinderpest or real plague or even war. All this could lead to periods of starvation. Here in the Nordic countries, we know that there was a famine in Denmark and surrounding countries under (or after!) Oluf Hunger: Oluf Hunger (1086 - 95) was the king who in 1086 succeeded the slain king, Canute the Holy. In the end, Oluf Hunger's royal court didn't even have food at Christmas! The famine was perceived, i.e. the church, then as God's punishment - here for the murder of Canute the Saint, in which the famine-stricken Oluf Hunger had no part, however.

1096 – 1099 The first. great crusades. Jerusalem is conquered, the population is massacred and crusader states are established. (The major crusades are listed below in italics and bold letters, the smaller ones in italics) (7) The major crusades will henceforth only be mentioned sporadically as a background for more Nordic activities.)

1097 Danish prince on the 1st Crusade. The Danish prince Svend, son of Svend Estridsen, (6) must also have been one of the Danes who participated in the First Crusade in 1097 together with his girlfriend, Florina. En route to Jerusalem, the pair's force was ambushed in Anatolia by the Turks, who completely annihilated it. Prince Svend should have been the last to fall, hit by an arrow in the throat. Florina fled up a mountainside, but was caught up by the Turks and had her throat cut. Since a Muslim is not allowed to kill a virgin, the poor girl must have had another traumatic experience recently. Svend was the brother of Canute the Holy and Erik Ejegod. The episode was the subject of considerable attention in contemporary literature.

1103 Was there hunger under Oluf Hunger or Erik Ejegod? A somewhat special finding from the review of the European yearbooks also suggests that God's revenge for the murder of Canute the Saint in 1086, i.e. the famine period, which in contemporary church yearbooks in the Nordics is eagerly referred to as Oluf Hunger, had only really begun in Oluf's very last reign and unfolded under his successor, Erik Ejegod, (5) who moreover (after lit. 6, Danske Korstog pages 26-28,, 34,43-44, 46, 102 ) went on a combined pilgrimage and crusade, partly paid for by the French king. Erik Ejegod died in the middle of it all (from an infection with brucellosis, called calf-casting fever) on Crete in 1103. Was it to avert the famine at home, i.e. to avert God's Wrath, that he left? Does the known rationale sound credible? It goes on to say that Erik Ejegod went on a pilgrimage because he, excited by song and music, killed four of his courtiers. Is it really just a cover story to hide the fact that he traveled to fight the famine?

1123 Danish-Norwegian Crusade in Småland with Danish King Niels and Norwegian Sigurd Jorsalsfarer. They went to the pagan Småland (now Sweden, the Swedes were a little late to become Christians.). (6) King Niels (1104-1134) waited a long time in Øresund for Sigurd and finally he gave up waiting and went home. Then Sigurd came and thought Niels had cheated him. He, Sigurd, then alone went on a crusade and plundered Kalmar and its surroundings, where the inhabitants promised to remain Christians! Sigurd had previously been on a crusade to Jerusalem - and had procured the necessary supplies on the way down there and back to Norway again by plundering the coasts. 1136 Danish Crusade. King Erik Emune (1134-1137) attacked Rügen (9) with 300 ships, including horses on board. The residents promise to become Christians and not to plunder Denmark anymore. They were allowed to keep their statue of Svantevit (who was actually a misunderstood Old Christian saint, St. Vitus)

1147 I At the papal court, the curia, one also liked to see Christianity spread in the pagan Slavic lands there. (6) On April 11, 1147, a new papal bull "Divini dispensatione" was therefore issued, which officially proclaimed the Pope's blessing of the crusade against the Vends. A bull is a papal public letter announcing the pope's wish. The bulls are named after the first words in the bull. The bull can be a band bull, but does not have to be.

1147-1149 The 2nd Great Crusade. German-French. The goal of liberating Edessa and capturing Damascus was not achieved (7)

1147 Danish Crusade. The Danish kings Canute and Svend (1146-1157) are embroiled in a bloody civil war for power in Denmark. Nevertheless, Canute and Svend make a short-term peace with each other, exchange hostages and go on a crusade together to Mecklenburg against the Wendish tribe, (6,7) the Abodrites, who are a little misunderstanding, because they are more or less Christians already. They attack and destroy the Danes' fleet and a witness says that "the bodies of the Danes cover the fields" after battles for the city. The two kings go home even more unfriended than they were before.

1168 Danish Crusade. Valdemar the Great (1157-82) Crusade against Rügen (6) The capital Arkona is captured. The god Svantevit's temple is plundered, the god himself with the 4 faces is knocked down in his god's court, dragged out to the Danes' camp, chopped into pieces and burned under the meat pots that same night. The converts are Christianized or at least baptized. Pastoral positions are created and money is earmarked to build churches. Rügen is included under Denmark and Roskilde Diocese.

1185 Danish Crusade King Canute (1182-1202) secures Rügen and conquers more of Pomerania and the land of the Abodrites and places it under Denmark. The respective dukes recognize Knud as their sheriff. (6)

1192 1189 The 3rd Great Crusade. The city of Akko conquered and peace is agreed for 3 years (7) 1202.1204. The 4th Great Crusade. Attempt to capture Jerusalem. Constantinople is sacked in 1204 (7)

1212 Children's Crusades (4).
There were also crusades that differed from the military ones. Eg. the two crusades in the year 1212, which, according to the information of the time, consisted mainly of unarmed children and young people and perhaps destitute people.

Two such crusades must be briefly mentioned because they provide a special insight into the life and lifestyle of the Middle Ages. (4)

The one children's crusade started in the days around 13 May 1212 from a mass of people gathered around Chartres Cathedral southwest of Paris. In the cathedral of Chartres, the pregnancy clothes worn by the Virgin Mary when she was pregnant with Jesus were exhibited at Pentecost! Immediately afterwards, a joint prayer was organized, also at the cathedral, for the approximately 30,000 people present, who with this joint prayer were to invoke God's help to get the Muslims out of Spain.

A 12-year-old shepherd boy begins to preach, probably without prior schooling and certainly without theological training, but familiar with the religious slogans. He went around calling for a crusade to the assembled masses. It was Stephen (Ethienne) of Cloyes. He gathered a following of allegedly approx. 30,000 people. (Some sources say 300,000). These people would do like the now deceased Peter the Hermit and go to the Holy Land. First, Etienenne had to deliver a letter he had received from Jesus to the French king, Philip II. The letter was supposed to send the king on Crusade, but Philip was not interested and sent the boy home. Yet the whole procession went east, either to Marseilles on the Mediterranean or to the Cathedral of Cologne, where a similar movement had arisen, also with a boy, Nicholas of Cologne, at its head. The near-contemporary chronicler is confused about what happened. Some of the children, who are said (probably somewhat exaggeratedly) to number 300,000 in all, at least crossed the Alps to Italy. They lacked food, water and knowledgeable leadership. The contemporaries reckoned that 2 out of 3 of the children died on the trip! Some were caught stealing food - and were hanged!

As both teams had now arrived at sea - wherever it was, Genoa or Marseille, the captains had to present the highlight of the trip! They had told the children that when they came to the sea, God would part the waters as he had parted the waters for Moses at the Red Sea. One must imagine perhaps 30,000 people standing and impatiently waiting for the Mediterranean to split in two so that one could walk dry between two walls of water to the Holy Land.

It didn't happen!
They waited: God might have to prepare first! Still nothing happened. The children began to trickle away.

A couple of merchants offered to sail them to the Holy Land on their 7 ships. The children boarded, the ships sailed. Two of the ships were wrecked on the way. The last 5 sailed to slave markets in North Africa and sold the children there. An Egyptian governor bought 700 children! Some of the children could read and write. The German authorities were dissatisfied with the fact that Nicholas had not prevented his minor son from taking the many children away, so the father was hanged for the son's transgressions. Some of the children were taken to the Pope, who freed the very young and the old from their short train vow and sent them home, others just came home without being freed from the vow and thus outside the church. One returned home after 18 years as a slave. Others stayed out there.

The Children's Crusades arose from the large crowds that existed around the large German and French cities. In Denmark, the cities were all small compared to e.g. the German cities such as Lybæk and Cologne. A medieval expert has said that during periods of famine, parents only gave food to the oldest child or children, especially those who could help the parents. The oldest children were already the ones who had the greatest chance of surviving a period of hunger. The smaller children were often left to find their own food. They may have been the youngest children who accompanied the Crusaders. Recent research indicates that the church, especially the monasteries, did not use the Latin word for poor for the poor, but called them children! It has become common knowledge that the further away the narrator comes from the Children's Crusades, the younger he describes the participants. Perhaps most of them were in reality without subsistence! In Denmark, the term poverty was not used either, but the poor in monasteries, and later in poorhouses, were called "Lemmer".

1219 Large, Danish crusade, Valdemar Sejr (1202-1241) conquers Estonia. Dannebrog falls from the sky, (not at Lyndanis, but at Dellin 1208)

1217-1221 The 5th Great Crusade. Attempt to recapture Jerusalem (7)
In 1223 Valdemar Sejr is captured by Duke Heinrich of Schwerin. The kidnapping is part of an inheritance dispute! It was undoubtedly a son of Valdemar's son with Esbern Snare's widow who caused the accidents. Valdemar's grandson inherits half of the duchy of Schwerin, while the duke is away and Valdemar had included this half for his grandson when the duke came home! It is not known whether Valdemar during the duke's pilgrimage also had too close contact with the duchess! A contemporary yearbook tells it.

1228-29. The 6th Crusade By diplomacy control of Jerusalem (7)
1231 Famine in Denmark. It is known that there was also a famine in Denmark after Valdemar Sejr had been ransomed from his captivity in Northern Germany. In a letter to the pope in 1231, the archbishop of Lund, Uffe Thurgotsøn, a man from one of the country's most powerful families, asks the pope for help to get the rest of "Our high king's (Valdemar Sejers) ransom forgiven, because "- we suffer greatly poverty, partly because we have to pay a ransom for our high king----partly because of a pestilence, which last year killed almost all the cattle of the kingdom, and this year has been followed by a still more severe plague, namely, a severe famine "

The following in italics is an overview of later, smaller crusades.

1248-1254 7th Crusade by Louis 9. The king, Louis 9. Pio, captured in Egypt and ransomed. New 8.. crusade 1270. The Crusader army affected by disease, from which King Ludvig Pio also died in 1270

1271-72 9, English minor crusade against the Mamluks at Antioch. Ceasefire

1390 Crusade France and Genoa in Tunisia

1444 Last Crusade: Polish-Hungarian crusade under Vadislav III fails in attempt to stop Ottoman advance in the Balkans. (7)

Thus ended the time of the Crusades!
About the Crusades The noble magnates needed battle and honor to secure reputation and possessions. The central powers, i.e. both the church and the king, saw too much being wasted in local disputes. Both preferred to see the conflicts played out outside Europe.

Last but not least: the idea caught on wildly among the masses of more or less subsistence and therefore often hungry people who lived from hand to mouth in the slums of the big cities. The idea of taking up the cross of Christ did not seem far from the way they lived before. The masses of people at the bottom of society in the really big cities could, by taking up the cross and making God happy, see something better coming. They followed a calling that promised change for the better. In short, salvation all over. Denmark had many small towns, none as large as Lybæk, Cologne or Chartres and therefore not the very large, subsistenceless masses of people. There were no children's crusades from Denmark, but perhaps a few people from the Nordic countries participated in these crusades.

The periods of famine also raise the question of whether the purpose of the crusades was not also to divert the anger and frustration of the starving crowds. For the Christians in Northern Europe, the Holy Land and the pagans there were very far away, but the Danes, as it appears, were also happy in the Holy Land, even though there were many pagans around the Baltic Sea, who would actually be much easier to reach, both with missions and warlike forays. The Northerners, especially the Danes, preferred to hold their crusades there. For them, it was also more about realpolitik about controlling the Baltic Sea and getting income from trade there. For the Germans, the Crusades were also a precursor to a German expansion with settlement in the conquered areas.

The Age After the Crusades.
Islam and Europe. The Muslims lost their dominant position in Spain at the end of the 15th century. In 1492, the Queen of Castile, Isabelle I, celebrated the event by sending an expedition led by the Italian, Christopher Columbus, to explore the west. Columbus found new land. He thought he had found the back of India. It may seem strange today, but at the time Greenland was also assumed to be the backside of India. It later turned out to be wrong.

After Islam lost power in Spain, the Sultans of the Orient started a Muslim push into Eastern Europe in the next century. In 1529, the Turks besieged Vienna, but were driven away by Austria and the neighboring countries. In 1683, a large Muslim force, perhaps numbering around 200,000 men, again advanced on Vienna. The whole of Christian Europe hastily settled its many internecine wars, disputes, yes; all disagreement. All joined together in a joint military effort to expel the Ottomans. The warring parties, Christian Europe and the Sultans of the Orient, met outside Vienna.

A bloody battle raged for two whole days; from 11 to 12 September 1683. Ottoman losses were at least 15,000 dead and wounded and at least 5,000 captured. They lost all the guns. Alliance losses were around 4,500 dead and wounded.

Despite the victory of the Christian army and the huge spoils of war from the defeated Ottoman army, tensions arose between the various leaders and their armies. Among other things, Poland demanded that the Polish forces should first have access to the spoils of war from the Turkish camp, as they believed that it was solely their efforts that had saved Vienna. The booty included weapons, tents, animals, wagons, jewelry, furniture. The German and Austrian forces therefore received a much smaller share of the booty. At the same time, the Protestant forces, especially from Germany, who had also come to the city's rescue, were subjected to verbal abuse by Vienna's Catholic population. Therefore, Protestant German forces left the battlefield immediately after the battle without participating in the distribution of the spoils of war. The battle marked the historic end of the Ottoman Empire's expansion into Europe.

Sources:
https//da.wikipedia.org/Peter_Eremit2
https://klimarealisn´me.dk/2020/08/22/fortidens-temperatur/
https:da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korstog
http//www1.com/spirituallife/they-sent-children-to-war!:-the-childrens´s-crusade
https://docplayer.dk/5054790-Klima-hungersnoed-i-middelakderen.html

Litteratur:
DANSKE KORSTOG KRIG OG MISSION I ØSTERSØEN. 2006 Lind.John H. Jensen, Carsten Selch , Jensen, Kurt Villads, Bysted, Ane L. ISBN-10-87-638-0393-3 og ISBN-13:978-87-638-0393-9
Korstogene : Pihl, Michael & Rosenløv, Jesper M. 2016 . ISBN 978,87-7118579- 2
McGuire, Brian Patrick: DEN LEVENDE MIDDELALDER Gyldendal 2005. ISBN 87-02—03278-3
Kai A. Petersen: DANMARKSHISTORIENS HVORNÅR SKETE DET FRA OLDTID TILNUTID 1985 Politikkens Forlag ISBN 87-567-4017-4

Brian Patrick McGuire got his B.A. in history and Latin from the University of Berkeley in California in 1968, and in 1971 he became Doctor l at the University of Oxford.

Pope Urban II's speech at Clermont in 1095 opened the way for what we call the First Crusade, the only one of many that succeeded in capturing Jerusalem. But in Urban's own time the word crusade was not used. They spoke of a peregrinatio armata, an armed pilgrimage. The idea of pilgrimage had existed in the Christian world since late antiquity, but Urban believed that the pilgrims now had to arm themselves to protect the Christian sites in and around Jerusalem. It is a much debated question today among historians to what extent the holy places had been threatened by Muslims, but it is obvious that there had been long periods of peace and short skirmishes. Urban felt that the holy places of Christianity were under threat, and in his speech he passed on the rumors of abuse. To this day, it is difficult to get to the bottom of these rumours, and the whole perception of the Crusades is drowned in a contemporary discussion of Islam as a violent religion.

Rather than engage in a useless polemic, I choose to look at the beginning of the Crusades as a result of what I call in my books the first reformation of the medieval church. During this time, which extended from about 1050-1150, the church freed itself from the power of worldliness. Priesthoods and bishoprics were no longer to be bought, and the princes were no longer to interfere in papal elections and appoint their favourites.

Since Charlemagne in the 8th century, it had been customary for the emperor, who was crowned by the pope, to ensure that the pope took care of the emperor's wishes. The church was bought by the secular authorities. The advantage was that the prince had to protect the church, but the price was high: the dependence on the prince's policy and considerations.

  The reform party that formed in and around Rome after 1050 swore that it would not indulge in what they called simony, the buying and selling of clerical offices. Popes such as Gregory VII (1073-85) had experienced as young priests that the German king came from the north to Italy, deposed the pope, and selected his own man as pope.

Then the new pope crowned the German king as Roman emperor. The reform party would no longer accept this, and its members under Gregory came to claim that the pope could directly depose an emperor who abused the power and authority of the church.

The first reformation of the medieval church, known in history books as the Gregorian Reform, unleashed a tremendous energy in which the men of the church felt that they were freeing themselves from an oppressive power. But the reformed priests knew at the same time that it was necessary to use the powers they found in the secular authorities. What could be better than sending its members to protect the holy places in the East? Certainly, the leaders of the Byzantine Empire asked for help against the Muslim threat. But Byzantium and the West had very little to do with each other, especially after 1054, when the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome excommunicated each other. They did not go to the East to assist Byzantium.

For the reformed church at the end of the 11th century and the secular authorities in Western Europe, it was important that the church did not cut itself off from the world that was to be reformed. The men of the church could use the idea of pilgrimage and preach armed pilgrimage to the magnates. Thus began the wave of conquests that continued through the Middle Ages and into modern times. Christian Europe, which had been subjected to abuses and invasions, now became the power that showed strength and expanded. It did not succeed very well in the East, while in Northern Europe there were several waves of crusades that only ended in the 14th century when the last pagan power, Lithuania, surrendered to Christianity.

Christ's message is peace and forbearance, but in the Middle Ages this message was transformed into a call to make the whole world Christian. Thanks to the reformed clergy from the First Reformation of the Middle Ages, the time of the Crusades was to begin.

In the 14th century, Europe was haunted by repeated plague epidemics with a severe effect on population numbers and socio-economic conditions. In short, the plague spread through Europe in the Middle Ages and it had fatal consequences for the entire continent.

The start of the disaster. In the beginning, when the Plague spread so incredibly fast and violently, many believed that it was God's punishment for man's sins.

But many searched for a more natural explanation, and for a period inhabitants of the affected countries believed that the plague must have arisen through pests and poisonous creeps. It was not incorrect, as people slowly began to understand that it was pests such as rodents, especially rats, that created fertile ground for the outbreak of plague. This, together with a lack of hygiene and treatments, led to the great loss of human life. The black rats have gradually been identified as the major carriers of the plague. They spread from Central Asia to Europe with merchant ships and spread with the speed of lightning and with them came the fleas. The fleas were to blame for people getting the disease when, after contact with rodents, they settled on the people with dangerous bacteria. Once the bacterium had caused an infection in a human, it could easily spread via coughing, sneezing or physical contact.

Types of plague. The plague appeared both as a blood, lung and bubonic plague, in that way it was difficult to fight the disease, as there were different kinds of viruses.

The bubonic plague was a poisoning. You got dark spots on the skin, due to bleeding under the skin. It was the type of plague that gave its name to "The Black Death". The bubonic plague was, as I said, contracted by flea bites. The symptoms were a rise in temperature, headache, vomiting and feeling thirsty, etc. and pain arose in lymph nodes on the body. Then it spread to the tissue surrounding the nodules in the body and the plague boils form.

The pneumonic plague could also form through the blood, but it was most often formed via the respiratory tract. Once you had pneumonic plague, it would start as a pneumonia, but soon there would be so much fluid in the lungs that you could not breathe, and this led to a kind of suffocation death.

Historians consider it probable that the plague came on 31 December 1347 to Messina in Italy. The disease was on a ship that came from the eastern part of the Mediterranean, possibly the Crimea, where the black rats were on board. At first it only spread along the coasts, via the ships that sailed from Messina and out to other port cities, but soon the whole of Europe was infected, including Denmark.

The black Death. Denmark from 1349. Continuation.

Spread of the plague.
As mentioned, the plague developed in different forms, which is why it spread rapidly. It was worst in the cities, where people lived close together.

The close trade links to and from Italy meant that the plague quickly reached Western Europe, from its homelands in Asia, China and India via the central caravan routes. After the plague had ravaged Europe for approx. 5-6 years, it triggered a long-term demographic change in Europe, where the population was significantly reduced. The consequences were that the grain was not harvested and that the crops rotted on trees and bushes. There simply wasn't the necessary manpower to do the work. Several villages were laid waste, and desolation arose as there were not enough farmers to live on the farms and cultivate the fields.

The plague in Denmark. According to the sources, the disease came to Denmark in 1349 with a Norwegian ship, sailing from England, which ran aground in northern Jutland when the entire crew had died of the disease. In the following year, it raged in all its ferocity, and it is assumed that approximately half the population in and around Skagen died

Throughout Denmark, it is estimated that the plague killed around 30-50% of the population here as well. This corresponds to between 150,000 and 250,000 people. The population thus fell from around 500,000 to around 250,000.

The consequences of the plague for Denmark were extensive. The demographic decline in the population meant that there was a shortage of labor as in the rest of Europe, and this led to an economic recession. The plague also had an impact on Denmark's political development. It led to a weakening of the royal power, and the local nobility gained more power.

Many villages were closed down or merged with others to create completely new villages. The same thing happened with the churches and also with the church's income, called newspapers, which fell drastically.

All in all, the decommissioned farms also led to a falling tax income for the lords. To minimize the loss, the lords developed various initiatives to secure their income from the peasants.

In many places, the peasants thus had to attach their farms, often the waste farms, that is, rent their farms from the lords and accept that a so-called guardianship was introduced, where the young people of the productive age could not move from an area without permission from the lords.

During this period, when labor shortages really became a problem, it was a goal of the lords to ensure that there would always be enough peasants to occupy farms when they became vacant, therefore Vornedskab was introduced. Warnedskab was a duty that was imposed on farmers in Zealand, Lolland and Falster as well as Møn and Bogø in order for them to stay on their food estates and take over waste estates for attachment.

Up until now, it had been the case that the lords could not deny the farming population the right to leave their territory, if they had given notice of this and if they paid a tax of sorts when they moved.

A part of the so-called lava nobility in Europe, also in Denmark, was also affected by the crisis and had to leave their relatively large squire farms and move to smaller freehold farms, this also in itself changed the villages and thus the large manors centralized their power. The lords kept grain as a crop, but eventually also shifted production to the breeding of bullocks, which became a major export product and which did not require as many people involved.

It was thus characteristic of Northern Europe that the large landowners took over the deserted villages and forced the farmers to consolidate the farms and stay in the area, as well as to convert to the production of bullocks, but grain fields were still cultivated.

In Europe, there were other solutions to the crisis. In Britain, the lords centralized their lands and drove the peasants away from the villages where there were only a few people left, partly so that they could have some large hunting grounds for themselves, but also to have large pastures for sheep to graze.

This created wealth and later fertile ground for industrialism, therefore you can still see today that the English landowners really created great wealth and political influence for themselves. The nobility in Denmark saw a solution model by attaching the farmers to the farms and securing taxes through the operation of the farms, so that agriculture could begin to be profitable again and create growth. Possession and cultivation of land possibly gave the aristocracy status in the Nordic countries. But it also gave the surviving farmers slightly better living conditions. They were given a milder tax system than in other parts of Europe, and the poor agricultural workers and squatters were given the opportunity to take over abandoned farms.

While the landowners' income was limited due to deaths, farmers and householders themselves had to be responsible for the operation of the allocated properties and at the same time be labor for the estates. The landowners had to regulate their taxes from the peasants in order to maintain the labor force.

The plague and the church.
Faith in the Middle Ages was very strong, and the church had a great influence on daily life. The word of the church meant a lot to the peasants, since the church and its head the pope were God's representative on earth. The growing wealth of the Church in the early Middle Ages was manifested in clerical new constructions of monasteries, cathedrals, churches. Most of Europe was subject to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, and large taxes were paid to the church. During the plague, the churches lost some of their income as they did not receive as many taxes from the peasants. As more cities lay deserted, several churches and monasteries also had to be closed down. In the end, the church thereby lost influence on the small local communities.

However, there were also situations where the church and their representatives benefited from the crisis after the plague, as they often inherited farms and other property in the villages that had been bequeathed to them from free peasants, the merchant bourgeoisie, etc.

According to the church, the plague was God's punishment to people, for the sins they have committed against his laws. There were many places where the church believed people were sinning. One place where people committed some of these sins, according to the church, was in the public bathhouses, where both sexes were allowed to come to bathe. The places also offered alcohol and food for the bathers. They were a much sought after social meeting place for many people, especially in Southern Europe. In Northern Europe, it was more drinking places, such as inns, that were considered by the church, areas where man could be tempted to sin.

But the churches forbade these fellowships because the church leaders believed that the baths and tavern visits led to unbridled drinking and fornication. To convey God, the churches called for a life without drinking and fornication and to pray the daily peasants. In addition, approx. tens of thousands on pilgrimage to famous monasteries or cathedrals to win back God's favor.

Although people tried to avoid the contagious disease, on these pilgrimages, it actually became a huge source of infection. Unknowingly, the pilgrims carried the plague from town to town. And not only that, the churches also closed the baths, so hygiene only got worse, and the consequences were that it was easier for the plague to spread.

When the outbreak of the plague came, it triggered violent reactions from the Christians. The Europeans had a lot of fanciful and malicious explanations for the plague, so rumors were created that it was the Jews who had made a conspiracy to exterminate the Christians. There were several massacres of Jewish communities, with many being burned at the stake. In some places, the cities were divided into areas, and in the so-called ghettos, only members of the Mosaic community were allowed to live. They simply built a wall around the area and within this area, the Jews had to stay. The name Ghettos comes from Italian and relates to an area where there is iron-filled ash. In some places, the Jews had to wear a clear distinguishing mark on their clothes, so that their religious affiliation could be quickly determined.

After observing the consequences of the plague, many began to doubt that it had been God's intention to punish man in this way, and many were critical of the church's interpretation of God's word. One could not understand that God stood in a mismatch with man and spread such a disease to the people on earth. Why should they experience plague when they had been a strong, believing person all their lives and lived according to the Christian rules? Should one ask God for forgiveness for one's sins, since he sent the plague. People thought there must be a reason for that.

In response to this criticism, the Church created a system for all these human questions about one's sins, where one could then pay the clergy to pray for one's soul, often as part of one's will. But there were many who had doubts about how far one should still believe in what the church preached about, or whether one should understand life in a different way.

Many people chose to turn their backs on the church and live a reasonable life outside the church community, at least as much as was possible in the society of the time. Some renounced the faith and did not accept the thesis of piety and faith in order to have a good life after death. While others formed new religious factions. One of them was the so-called flagellants, which means "whip or skin braid". It was an act one could perform to repent of one's sins before death came.

The Reformation entailed a break with the powerful Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope, and thus the unity that the Catholic Church had set in Europe in the Middle Ages is over. In the end, the plague helped create fertile ground for a showdown with the Catholic Church and where the Reformed Church gained ground.

Prevent and cure plague.
People's knowledge of the risk of infection was not great in the Middle Ages, and people did not know the concepts of bacteria or hygiene at all. Most of the medical arts were in the hands of the monks, men and women skilled in medicine who used the herbal medicine they grew in the monasteries or found in the fields. They said prayers or tried to clean the air of diseases and poisons, which they believed were in the rooms the sick were in. In the Middle Ages, however, the monasteries actually had a great deal of experience regarding plants, herbs, which had a healing effect as medicine.

Many believed that herbs, spices and flowers protected against the plague because they removed bad smells. When bubonic plague hit Europe, flowers were spread over the sick. It was not believed that it could be transmitted by touch or spit. Many are familiar with the drawing of a monk wearing a bird's beak, where fragrant herbs had been placed in the beak to avoid inhaling the sick smell of the plague.

In the general population, treatment for illness was usually old household advice, which could have survived in the family for several generations.As another alternative, you could get a vein charge against the plague. Many doctors believed that the disease was caused by an imbalance in the body's four so-called cardinal fluids, which were - blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Therefore, a patient could be drained of "useless" blood, so that the body could form new, better and plague-free blood.

Since the plague was often seen as a punishment from God, the authorities initially did nothing to control the large numbers of infected people who carried the contagion from town to town. It was also one of the main reasons why the plague was so devastating. Doctors and clergy in particular were very vulnerable as they came into contact with many infected people, because their tasks were to give the dying the sacrament and those left behind Christian encouragement and teaching. But society was powerless. The disease spread so quickly that you did not manage to bury the victims before you became infected yourself. The scholars simply could not explain how one became infected.

However, many monasteries eventually established the so-called Sankt Jørgensgårde. It is a Nordic name for the special institution that was built during the period for the isolation of patients often affected by life-threatening and contagious diseases. The establishment of these isolation centers was controlled by the clergy, but later the cities took the lead and began to set up centers themselves for the isolation of citizens. In Southern Europe, these institutions began early on to house citizens who suffered from certain diseases, and only them. It gave a kind of specialty for the individual monasteries, e.g. plague, tuberculosis, leprosy.

The leprosy and the plague have the same value in social terms, since it was assumed at the time that the disease could be transmitted from one person to another, they were considered incurable and the suffering it could cause was known. Therefore, local decision-makers denied the lepers access to the cities and set up the institutions outside the city walls, where they were to live, after a commission with representatives of the clergy and the citizenry had inspected the sick and issued a ruling on the condition of the sick and the nature of the disease.

In some cases, these farms seem to have been intended only for overnight stays, as the sick were provided with a stamp from the authorities, which gave them permission to beg by the roadside, situations that are painted on medieval Danish frescoes.

When a stay for a sick person should end in death at a St. Jørgensgård, then the city held a service in an associated church for the sick person and the family, after which the sick person was taken to St. Jørgensgåden, never to see his family or his home again.

The farms were also associated with the names of saints other than Saint Jørgen, eg Saint Nicholas, Saint Jacob, Saint Valentin, Saint Leonhard, Saint Lazarus, Saint Olav and several others.

During the epidemic, new legislation was introduced to combat the plague. There came e.g. a ban on traveling into the country if you came from an area where the plague had broken out. In order to contain the infection, as well as to stop a possible export of infection to other parts of the country, all sailing to and from the plague-infested area had to be stopped, and the borders to the area closed. Furthermore, central functions in the area in question stopped, with which the village or town space was also directly affected by the plague.

If a family was affected by plague, then their residence or the area where the outbreak was detected had to be isolated. When it was believed that the plague was transmitted through the air, a plague expert as part of his treatment had to smoke the infected house so that the bad air could disappear. If a house was quarantined, its residents were not allowed to leave it. The doors of the house were painted with a white cross, so that it was clear to everyone that you were not allowed to come near the house or residents.

On 1 July 1354, Valdemar the 4th held a royal assembly in Nyborg, where he issued an order to all the lords of the country. The edict was a general pardon to all those sentenced to death or to corporal punishment, who instead had to pay fines. Valdemar issued a pardon because of the low population, and thus a lack of manpower, which was a consequence of the high mortality rate of the plague.

Both before and after the great plague epidemic in the 14th century, there were smaller epidemics that affected limited parts of countries. During the 16th century alone, there were 13 epidemics around Denmark. Locally, they could be violent and have major consequences for the living conditions of farmers, citizens and gentlemen alike.

The last plague epidemic ravaged Denmark in 1710-1711. It is believed that a ship from Germany brought the plague to Helsingør. With a tough military blockade, it succeeded in limiting its spread to Helsingør itself and some nearby villages. Copenhagen was also hit by bubonic plague in 1711, which meant that approx. 25,000 people lost their lives, i.e. approx. 1/3 of the city's population.

From the late 1890s to the 1930s, bubonic plague ravaged India. It is estimated that many millions of people lost their lives. Great efforts were made with isolation, quarantine to avoid it spreading to Europe.

The plague is still not completely eradicated in the world. In Asia, South America and Africa, up to 3,000 people are infected each year by plague. Today, the plague can be treated with antibiotics - if the disease is detected in time.

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

In the early Middle Ages, as now, there were a large number of rules, laws and norms around sex and sexuality. In general, the church in the Middle Ages, in cooperation with the central government, had developed laws for what was permitted and prohibited when it came to sex. In the Middle Ages, it was religion that administered and legislated what was permitted and prohibited when it came to sex.

 Before you could have a sexual relationship, there were the following requirements:
First, it had to be ensured that the persons in question were not related within the last seven lines of the family.
Then it was absolutely necessary that you were married.
So finally the married couple had to have sex - of course only to have children.

Sex for fun was forbidden.Sex was also forbidden with a woman who no longer had her period, i.e. was in menopause, pregnant, breast-feeding - or had not yet had a period.
Sex was also forbidden while a woman was menstruating - i.e. current during intercourse.
Sex was forbidden the night before a major holiday.
Sex was forbidden during Lent, i.e. every Friday and Wednesday. Back then, the day began at sunset!
Sex was forbidden during Lent, i.e. the 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday - and on Easter Sunday
Sex was forbidden on Sundays and on at least 29 Catholic holidays! Many of these holidays were called Marie days.
Sex was therefore forbidden on holidays such as Maria's Purification Day, Maria's Annunciation Day, Maria's Visitation Day, Maria's Assumption Day, Maria's Birthday and a number of other Marian events. There was a special cult about the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church.
Interrupted intercourse was forbidden!
Sex had to be ordinary sex, i.e. not oral or anal sex.
Only one sex position was allowed.
Contraception was also prohibited.

Brothels were prohibited, but existed.
When one of the popes, Gregory XI, left his exile in Avignon in southern France in 1377, the holy man said: "When we came to this city, there were 40 brothels here! Now there is only one. It, in turn, stretches from one end of the city to the other!” 

In the market towns of Europe, so-called saunas arose in the Middle Ages. Saunas were popular because it was here that citizens could bathe. In medieval Denmark, the inhabitants did not have bathrooms in the houses, so it was difficult to get washed and this was reflected in general hygiene. The rich citizens of the cities had private saunas built where only they and their family could bathe. There were also public saunas that everyone could use for a fee.

The saunas thus became incredibly popular and people met here to enjoy themselves or do business. But many saunas developed into places where people could have sex, a kind of accepted prostitution.
Provoked abortion was strictly prohibited.

In 1591, Pope Gregory XIV ruled that abortion, provoked later than 40 days after conception for male fetuses and after 80 days for female fetuses, was to be punished as manslaughter. When the dividing line was at 80 days for girls, it was because girls got souls much later than boys! 

Of course, there were many who could not comply with all these restrictions around sex and sexuality. Here, however, the church proved somewhat flexible by agreeing to grant absolution for the transgressions – for a modest payment, of course.So even though it was forbidden to have sex outside of marriage, there were many who still broke the rules, and the church could pay for that.

In the churches in Denmark in the Middle Ages, people were reminded of what was good behavior and what was forbidden and sinful according to the church. In the Middle Ages, there were many frescoes in the Danish churches. At that time, the majority of the population could not read and few understood the sermons, where most of them were in Latin.

That is why it was good to have paintings with motifs that medieval people could understand. This also applied to sex, where the frescoes in the churches warn against dangerous sexuality.

Sex after the Reformation.
Martin Luther, who was the driving force behind the Reformation, viewed sex more liberally than the Catholics. He married a former nun. Luther believed that sex in marriage 2-3 times a week would be reasonable. He considered the woman's sex drive far greater than the man's.

For Luther, it was a woman's duty to satisfy her husband sexually. If married women did not want to have sex with their husbands, the maid could possibly take over the duties. However, the wife first had to be warned by her husband 2 or 3 times. Bigamy was also an option for Luther if one of the parties did not function sexually. Nor was it accepted by the reformed communities. 

After the Reformation, the law in Denmark regarding sex was still so strict that the first couple who were convicted of adultery under a new law were actually beheaded. The law had been made based on the Law of Moses. But it was still too drastic for the central government, and thus the legislators, so the law was quickly changed
PS:
According to reports, it should have been Pope No. 3, i.e. either Antakletus, years 76-91 or St. Clemens 88-99, who had a treasurer appointed to solve the church's financial problems. He found a solution that proved effective. Sex was supposed to be sinful and the believers had to somehow pay for it.
As a Catholic, you had to pay so much, also for, despite all your sins, to go to Heaven when you died.
Then came the Reformation and destroyed this economic thinking and strategy.

On that day, the third after Saint Jacob's Year 1361,
the blood flowed in through Visby's gates and ran down the slope
all the way to the sea.

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

At a medieval festival on Bornholm a few years ago, the author of this article met a medieval representative from Gotland. He was sitting in his lodge with his wife, dressed in the handsome and somewhat ostentatious medieval folk costumes of the Gotland farmers. We spoke to the couple. That is to say: We were of course talking about Valdemar Atterdag's attack on Visby in the summer of 1361.

The Gute residents had certainly not forgotten that, the couple said. People still held a grudge against the Danes because of the invasion some 800 years ago. After all, we could only regret: I also thought Valdemar's attack on Gotland was reprehensible, especially because the acts of war went against the wrong people, namely the Gotland farmers who defended the country and not the rich merchants whose riches the raid concerned. I would like to apologize on behalf of myself and my compatriots. After all, I hadn't been implicated. 

The elderly man looked at me in astonishment and said: "I never expected to meet a Dane who would apologize for this and here, at my last performance as a medieval representative, here I am! Here I meet one! It really means something to me!” He seemed downright moved, the gute man. The appearance of the Danes on the island 800 years ago was certainly not forgotten on the island – not even here 800 years later! 

Gotland in the Viking Age and early Middle Ages
Gotland was independent in the early Middle Ages, but somewhere between the years 600 and 900 the Guts had sought contact with Sweden and had obtained an agreement on mutual military aid, in return for paying 100 marks of silver to the Swedes annually, i.e. 80 marks to the king and 20 to the earl.

The rise of Visby
Visby appears for the first time in history in connection with events in 1203 and it is mentioned in 1210, where it is mentioned in the written Gotland Act. The town is a town in 1225. It flourished after the collapse of the trading center Birka on Lake Mälaren. 

The land that rose after the ice age and was now raised so much that you could no longer sail to Birka. In the 1280s, the city wall around Visby was largely finished. It was mainly German merchants, protected by German princes, who were the driving force. The purpose of the wall was to shield the city from the Gotland farmers and merchants who were Visby's competitors.

Swedish invasion attempt on Gotland
The Swedish king Birger Magnusson (1290-1318), died 1321, tried to conquer the kingdom of Gotland anyway, but the invasion force, probably a group of Swedish farmers, was repulsed by the Guts, i.e. Gotland's farmers. Gotland's farmers were rich and from ancient times operated a very extensive trade across the Baltic Sea between Russia, Denmark and Sweden.

When Scania was in Denmark and Sweden was to the north
In the early Middle Ages, Scania, Halland and Blekinge belonged to Denmark, not to Sweden, which was then the northern part of present-day Sweden.

In the 14th century, the internal political conditions in Sweden were characterized by unrest and battles between Swedish royal subjects. King Birger later fled via Gotland to Denmark, where he died.

The Danish kings lacked money and pawned Denmark.
It was the kings Erik Menved (1286-1319) and Christoffer II (1320-25 and 1330-32) who had lent money for war and court life in return for security in parts of Denmark - and in the end virtually the entire country was mortgaged. The king, Christopher II, had a royal crown, but no land.

The main mortgagees were two Holstein counts, Gerhardt and Johan. The king, Christoffer II, lived in his last period as king, for rent with a merchant in Saxkøbing. His son Otto tried to raise an army against the counts, but at Tap Heath he was beaten, captured and taken to Germany. Only recently has it become clear that Otto ended up as a burgomaster of the Teutonic Knights in Estonia.

Valdemar gathers the kingdom again
Otto's younger brother, Valdemar Atterdag (1340-75), began in 1340 to reunify the country!
It is rumored that the Swedish king, Magnus Eriksson, had redeemed the pledge of the counts in Scania for 34,000 marks of silver. (6kg and 432g). Valdemar accepted this as a permanent Swedish takeover of Scania - forever! Then the Swedish king, Magnus Eriksson, called Magnus Smek, got into trouble with his rebellious son, Erik. 

Magnus asked Valdemar for help, Valdemar sent a large army to Scania, drove Erik away - and, when the opportunity was now there, Valdemar, despite his previous promises, took Scania back to himself and Denmark by force. Later he also took Halland and Blekinge and finally Øland. At that time, taking over by force was considered the finest way to acquire land.

Thus Scania was again Danish and the Swedes were at odds with each other and had no means to change this.
Valdemar aimed high! Presumably he would try to take the rest of Sweden later. Sweden then was not what it became later and not at all like it is now. Norway, which Valdemar was also after, was then Swedish. He therefore wanted his youngest daughter, Margrete, married to the future Norwegian king, Håkon, son of the same Magnus Smek. 

The Swedes hurriedly found another bride from Holstein for the future Norwegian king Håkon. On her way to her wedding in Norway, the bride ran aground with her ship in Danish territory, perhaps on Bornholm, perhaps in Skåne, so the local archbishop interned her just in case guilt, formally to save her from a marriage that might have to be dissolved, if the spouses were related within the last 7 links! Even then a weak justification!

Since Valdemar was now at work in Sweden anyway, in addition to the former Danish provinces, in 1360 he also took the poor Øland and plundered it. Boat refugees from there started coming to Gotland.

Visby is warned against Valdemar
In a letter. Dated 1 May 1361, Magnus Smek warned Visby that Valdemar would probably attack Visby or Gotland. Letters, especially royal ones, were then sent with at least one mounted messenger and perhaps an armed escort.

The town of Visby received the letter and sent emissaries to the large association of German trading towns, the Hansa, in Lybæk to ask what to do. The individual Hanseatic cities were not allowed to start a war with foreign powers without the consent of the entire Hanseatic League. 

Visby's walls were built to protect the city's rich merchants from the island's native population, the rich, merchant farmers. These were also from old times merchants and were now competitors to the town of Visby's merchants, who were mostly German but also Gotland, Danish and Russian.

Did Visby let the letter's warning go to the gute farmers? We do not know. An archaeologist and medieval historian (1) has assumed that the city instead started negotiations with Valdemar Atterdag and agreed what the city should do in the future. However, guards were posted by the Gotland farmers at railways on the west coast of Gotland, which had the conquered Øland to the south-southwest.

Then something happened!An armada in the Baltic Sea
"At dawn on Mary Magdalene's Day, the 22nd of July, the watchman on the cairn on the mountain above Klinte Kirke caught sight of a black dot out in the sea just to the west, where he knew that the northernmost tip of Øland lay. - - - The guard climbed up onto the small lookout at the top of the cairn. ---. There was a whole forest of sails. This was no Convoy of Merchant Ships, it was an Armada, the likes of which had hardly been seen on the Baltic Sea - - . The hour of trial had come. With a trembling hand he set fire to the pine fire at the bottom of the cairn -Soon the black smoke rose towards the clear summer sky. It would not be many minutes before it was seen from the cairns - - and the other cairns were also lit -." (1. page 168)

The invasion fleet reached the coast within the next 8-10 hours. A small detachment was landed at Kronvall and the ships sailed north towards Västergarn, where people were also landed.

Guterne's defense at Fjäle Myr
The king, Valdemer Atterdag, knew (from his spies) that the Gute farmers' public assembly from the southern part of the island was to gather at Ejmunds Bro through Fjäle Myr (bog). Here was a difficult passable place on the road from the southern half of the island to its northern part with Visby. Through Fjäle Myr a stream ran east-west and over the stream Ejmunds Bro went south-north and thus with the road from south to north to Visby. One side of the bridge was protected by a forest, the other side by the bog (Myren).

At the bridge, the Gute peasants' command had taken up a position and, furthermore, they had broken down the bridge. The Danes attacked several times, but were repulsed. As the summer had been unusually hot and dry this year, Valdemar decided that the bog should be probed to see if it was dry enough for the soil to support the horses. It could. The next day before the boys' breakfast, the Danes struck with a cavalry charge across the moor and completely cleared the way of the peasants' bid. Valdemar's forces could now continue north along the main road.

Visby and the activities in and around the city.
The fleet could continue to Visby, where the landed force could secure further landings. When the Danes approached the city, they found another peasant assembly of about 2000 men gathered at Söder Port. At first the Danes thought it was an escape through the gate, but gradually realized that it was the opposite of an invitation that had come with the expectation of being let in through the gate. The city government in Visby, however, refused the Gut farmers access to the city!

Valdemar's attack concerned Visby and Visby's city council had promised to stay out of the fighting: Promised who? Either the Hansa or King Valdemar or both.

The battles at Solberga Kloster and Visby's Södra Port
The Gute farmers were now left to fend for themselves, enclosed outside the city walls. To the north they had the wall around Visby, to the west they had the Solberga Nunnery, which was currently abandoned, to the east the Guts had built barricades, to the south they stood behind a wagon castle they had built themselves.

The Danes attacked from the south towards the wagon castle with crossbowmen who advanced and fired at the Gute farmers. The Danes' crossbow arrows, then called bolts, from their modern crossbows, shot right through the Gute farmers' iron hats and old, outdated armour. When the shooters were approx. 40 m from the wagon castle, they rushed forward halfway to the wagon castle and then surprisingly sat down on the ground in small groups. This confused the peasants, who kept a sharp eye on them and did not look to the side. From the monastery to the west, the boys were suddenly also fired upon, which came completely unexpectedly for them. The Danes had gained access to the otherwise barricaded and locked monastery and now also stood on the western flank of the ditches and fired at them. It created confusion and disorder in the ranks of the Guts.

Then the Guts were attacked by cavalry, who elegantly, in safely pre-rehearsed leaps, charged over the seated crossbowmen, stormed the Guts' wagon castle and barricades, and cut down the Guts, virtually all of them.

The battles at Solberga Kloster and Visby's Södra Port
The Gute farmers were now left to fend for themselves, enclosed outside the city walls. To the north they had the wall around Visby, to the west they had the Solberga Nunnery, which was currently abandoned, to the east the Guts had built barricades, to the south they stood behind a wagon castle they had built themselves.

The Danes attacked from the south towards the wagon castle with crossbowmen who advanced and fired at the Gute farmers. The Danes' crossbow arrows, then called bolts, from their modern crossbows, shot right through the Gute farmers' iron hats and old, outdated armour. When the shooters were approx. 40 m from the wagon castle, they rushed forward halfway to the wagon castle and then surprisingly sat down on the ground in small groups. This confused the peasants, who kept a sharp eye on them and did not look to the side. From the monastery to the west, the boys were suddenly also fired upon, which came completely unexpectedly for them. The Danes had gained access to the otherwise barricaded and locked monastery and now also stood on the western flank of the ditches and fired at them. It created confusion and disorder in the ranks of the Guts.

Then the Guts were attacked by cavalry, who elegantly, in safely pre-rehearsed leaps, charged over the seated crossbowmen, stormed the Guts' wagon castle and barricades, and cut down the Guts, virtually all of them.

The mass graves are constructed.
The day, July 27, 1361 was an incredibly hot summer day. The dead quickly began to bloat in the heat and smell. War experience already said then that the dead could become a source of disease, especially when many men lived together under primitive sanitary conditions, as the Danish soldiers currently did.

The Danes therefore began to dig mass graves, at least 5 pieces, and threw the dead and dying into them pile by pile. Presumably the wounded who were still lying on the ground were killed and thrown into the graves. The primitive armors were often the clothes of the dead at the same time. The equipment was outdated and no longer of interest. In addition, the corpses were often so bloated that you could not easily pull the clothes and/or the armor off the dead. Handguns and any valuables such as jewelery and money have probably been collected.

King's claim to Visby and the gutters
On Visby's walls, despite the city council's ban, the city's merchants had stood and watched, without trying to help the farmers in the slightest. There have probably also been farmers at the city's 6 other gates who have been defeated. In any case, matches are mentioned at several other gates. The city's passivity during this episode has led the Swedish archaeologist and former national archivist, Bengt Thordeman, to assume that the city already had an agreement with King Valdemar about what should happen after the arrival of the Danes.
The next day, negotiations began between the city and King Valdemar, who was also, partly via spies, well informed about what was going on in the town, and partly an incredibly driven negotiator. He had been an apprentice i.a. with the German Emperor.

Valdemar's demands to the city was:
1. Should recognize him and his successors on the throne of Denmark as the rightful rulers of Gotland and Visby. 2. The city had to provide 6 respected citizens as hostages. These had to be dressed alone, had to be bare-legged and bare-headed, have a rope around their necks and carry the keys of the city.

3. The city had to tear down a piece of the city wall.

4. A fire tax had to be printed, which had to be delivered to the town hall within 3 days

5. In return, the city was to retain all its old privileges, especially the right to strike its own coins.

Acceptance and taxes.
On July 29, people gathered in the island's churches to invoke the island's saint, St. Olaf. The king had to have the city's acceptance of his demands before noon the same day, otherwise Valdemar would take the city by force and plunder it. Then the sign of acceptance was heard throughout the city. The king's terms had been accepted by the city after the king had waived the disgraceful and humiliating demand for hostages and the fire tax had been reduced. It was now set for the citizens of the city to fill 3 large vessels for brewing beer with valuables within the three days! City scribes had to record the amount of the donations and who brought them. No one was to sneak around.

The king's knights were lodged with the city's richest merchants, so that these had to prefer side-companies with their families. The Guts were allowed to search for their fallen on the battlefields and in the graves and give them a Christian burial. However, it was not easy to find relatives in the piles of corpses. It probably also required a robust psyche to rummage through the dead, which lay in several layers. Apparently it took several days to complete the mass graves, although crews from the city now helped dig.

The king's reward and Unghanse?
King Valdemar himself took up residence at Unghansa farm or kastrada all the way down south on Gotland. The magistrate there had long done the king great favors. Folklore says that the king had previously acted as a spy and lived at Unghanse. That is hardly true. However, the king was said to have been particularly interested in the Court Judge's beautiful, young and cheerful daughter and regarded her almost as war booty. The king was at that time without a spouse. In any case, he no longer lived with his queen, who was probably ill and interned in a monastery, so the girl may not have been without interest at the prospect of a vacant job as queen of Denmark either. In any case, Unghanse was exempted from all taxes and duties.

The Guts took revenge. When the Magistrate died, he was buried on the north side of the church - together with suicides, unbaptised children, executed, destitute and the like.

The excavations begin
Several times in the 19th century, e.g. in 1811 and 1826 skeletons were found during excavations at Visby, but no systematic investigations were carried out and a large part of the medieval graves were disturbed or destroyed. In 1905, a non-commissioned officer was building a gazebo 10 m north of the old "Krudthus" (the first tower in the wall). At shallow depth he encountered human skulls, partially surrounded by chainmail armor. It was thrown away, but the local archaeologist, Oscar Wilhelm Wennersten, heard about it. He wrote to the National Antiquarian, had the construction stopped and an excavation started. The excavation initially uncovered a mass grave with around 300 skeletons, laid down pile by pile between each other. Within a few square meters. (tomb 1 was 12 square meters).

It became clear that there were additional mass graves in the area. In 1911, construction of a new road, Södra Hansgatan, began, when two new mass graves appeared, called graves II and III. In 1912, 4 days were set aside to examine the graves. Grave II was 6 x 12m. The investigations were to last 8 months.  In 1926, the Swedish government passed a grant to further investigate the graves. This investigation began in 1926 or 27. A grave V was also found. The excavations ended in 1930. 

The Swedish archaeologists could now begin to closely study and analyze the material found. Skeletons from approximately 1,800 people had then been exposed. The excavations were carried out with modern technology, but without modern aids. Even photographing the skeletons in the excavations was a challenge. You had to use large, photographic plates to get details, so you could read e.g. the text of the notes affixed to objects in the tomb. The use of electronic aids for recording and collecting the large amounts of data belonged to the future and was still completely unknown.

The people in the mass graves.
Already during the excavations, the findings had aroused emotions among the otherwise rather indifferent archaeologists:
The human remains that were found were analysed. Tables were made of the biological ages of those found and found relatively many under 21 years of age, even those who fell under 16 years of age. In Grave III, for example, 6% of the dead were under 16, 16% were under 20. In grave III, 37% were under 20. Old people, here people over 55, were also well represented. There were also people with defects in the skeleton such as tubercular joint changes, hunchbacks, stiff knee joints, i.e. walking difficulties. In one of the graves, three basins were found, which could be female (without the gender being determined with 100% certainty).
It was concluded that the Guts must have scraped together thickets and thickets to meet the Danes at Visby.
It was also assumed that this was again due to the fact that most of the Guts' main force from the south had already been lost in the battles on Fjäle Myr.

The injuries
Most often, the men here were thrown into the grave with both clothes and armor. The armor they had been using was outdated. Mostly they were armored shirts, studded with riveted metal plates on the inside of fabric or leather, both on the front and on the back. The crossbow arrows of the Danes went right through these armours.Typical injuries to the men in the graves were stab wounds to the legs, possibly stab wound to the doctor or even one or two severed feet, apparently followed by a stab to the neck. There were also many holes left by crossbow arrows, especially in the skulls. However, the holes could also have been inflicted by blows with a spiked club. For convenience, all these holes were called arrow holes. Some cuts were made from the bottom up, so some of the Gute farmers must have been on horseback. It was different how much clothing and armor the buried were wearing in the different graves. Dead Danes must have been among those buried, but there have been very few. Perhaps the armor-clad skull, which is often seen in photos from the site, was a Dane..
Then, among the personal armour, a breastplate with a noble mark was found, which was later identified as belonging to one of two brothers from a Frisian noble family, i.e. probably a soldier in Valdemar's army.
The development of personal armor then went towards larger and larger plates and later ended with the very large plates, almost like a vest with one front and one back and tubes for arms and legs, all of thin steel that covered the upper body, arms and legs . Small arms, on the other hand, were not found in the graves and were probably picked up on the battlefield.

Injuries from firearms, i.e. gunpowder-powered firearms, were not detected, although this type of weapon was gaining ground at the time.

The folklore
In posterity, a whole circle of legends has grown up about Valdemar's visit to Gotland. There was a feeling among the Guts that Valdemar's knowledge of the island was obtained through extensive espionage before the invasion. Rumors arose that King Valdemar himself had spent a year spying on the island to prepare for the expedition and that during that time and - also in the time after - the king had had many exotic experiences on the island with the island's beautiful women. It will be obvious here to see the women as a symbol of the island. Folk songs with the same subject were composed. In one of the shows, a man tries to break through a chain of dancers, but is constantly rejected and pushed back. In another, a Valdemar stands on a chair in the center of the chain and chooses from there one of the beautiful girls in the ring who dances around him: the girl is led to him and he disappears with her. After this, the Valdemar figure is replaced by another young man, who again chooses a girl and disappears out of the ring with her, etc. until all the girls are gone.

Another sage tells of King Valdemar, who rides to one of his supporters on the island, the district judge in Unghanses - the farm, and plays gold dice with the farm's beautiful, young daughter. First the maiden wins Lindeberg Castle, then the king's horse. The third time the king puts "his white neck" on the line and demands, "But you must pledge yourself" This time the king wins. The girl is reluctant, but must surrender - won in fair play!. The ending is nevertheless happy: "The king of Denmark took her in his arms - Young Hanse rides with honor - gave her a gold crown and queen's name".

Didn't Valdemar have a queen at home? Yes: his queen, Helvig, had given birth to a total of 6 children, here including the son Christoffer, who followed Valdemar to Visby. Finally, Valdemar Atterdag's queen Helvig gives birth to a daughter, Margrete, in 1353. Since then Valdemar's queen Hedvig is neither seen nor heard of until she dies in 1374 in Esrum Kloster. She probably entered a convent in Esrum right after her last birth in 1553.

Folklore would also know that those of Valdemar's ships, which were loaded with the valuables from the Fire Tax of Visby and other valuables, stolen from the island's churches, sank on the way home – and even where the ships sank! - and how to get hold of the valuables again. It was wishful thinking! Valdemar came home with all the valuables! 

Valdemar and Gotland also appear in Danish literature; eg. in H.F. Ewald's two-volume novel "Valdemarstogttet" from 1928. Here the author boldly lets the folkloric Ebbe Skammelsøn tread as many wild paths as Valdemar Atterdag's spy on Gotland and in Ung-Hanse's own farm.

Postscript: The time that followed
After Valdemar Atterdag had left Gotland, the Gute farmers rebelled and killed his bailiffs. Visby seems to have retained its connection to Danmak. In 1439, in any case, Queen Margretes1 fled. somewhat unsuccessful adopted son and successor, Erik of Pomerania, to Visby when he had been deposed. Erik started here as a pirate in a big way there. He built a small fortress on the city wall to support his activity. In 1444, a Swedish army landed on Gotland and defeated a group of Gute farmers, while Visby held its own. In 1449, a larger Danish fleet also appeared at Visby and Erik of Pomerania was forced away by the Swedish and Danish kings.He left piracy, went home to Pomerania, took his original name, Bugislav, and lived there quietly until his death in 1459.
In 1487, the Danish king Hans Visby secures for Denmark, i.a. with the help of pirates, King Hans' sheriff on Gotland, Ivar Akselsen Thot, later got an idea to make Gotland independent with himself as regent, but he was also forced off the island.
Then we have reached Søren Norby, who settled on Gotland and ruled, more or less independently, as a pirate in King Chr.2. favor. In 1524, the Swedes conquer Gotland and chase Søren Norby away. Visby shuts down again and defends itself.
In 1525, Lybæk conquers Gotland – from the Swedes?
By agreement with the Danish king, now Frederik 1., in October 1525 Lybæk exchanged Gotland for Bornholm for 50 years. Frederik 1. owed Lybæk money for helping to depose Chr. 2. and the taxes from Bornholm had to pay the debt.After the Torstenson War, one of Chr. 4. unfortunate wars, Denmark cedes Gotland, Öland and Jämtland to Sweden in June/August 1645.
The Gute farmers finally get peace! At least for the Danes!

A short, summary overview of Gotland's fate since Valdemar Atterdag.

1361-1339 belongs, somewhat uncertainly, to Denmark
1439 – 1449 Erik of Pomerania, the deposed Swedish, Danish and Norwegian king, settles in Visby and conducts piracy from there.
Erik is forced away by the Danish king, Chr.1.
1467 Christian 1's sheriff, Ivar Akselsen Thot, is forced away after an attempt to make himself ruler of Gotland
1467- 1487 without Danish rule
1487 (-1645) Danish rule is reintroduced by the Danish king Hans (1482-1513)
1645 Gotland is ceded by Denmark to Sweden after the Torstensson War
1676-79 The Scanian War. Occupied by Denmark. Visborg castle/fortress is blown up
1700-1721 Occupied by Russian troops (Great Nordic War 1700-1721)
1808 22.4. If Gotland is occupied by Russian soldiers during the Finnish War, the commander appoints himself governor-general.
1808 16.5. Three Swedish liners land Swedish troops. The Russians surrender.
1808 17.5. The Russians leave Gotland.
In 1939-40 bunkers are built in several places on the island to prevent a Nazi-German invasion. After the Soviet Union's attack on Finland, the east coast is fortified, i.a. with bunkers that could withstand shelling from ship's artillery.

Injuries from swords in the Viking Age and the Middle Ages

The following to put the damage in the mass graves on Gotland into relief:
The famous Danish state anthropologist and archaeologist, Pia Bennike, said in 2011 or 2013 that she had been called by a TV company that wanted to make a film about the Viking Age and now lacked images with lesions from swords from the Viking Age. Pia Bennike did not know of any such injuries from Denmark at all. She therefore called her Swedish colleague, who also had no known Viking Age sword injuries, so two Nordic kingdoms in a very violent period had no known sword injuries from approx. years 800 to 1100. However, the Swedes wanted to try to help and, in order not to sound dismissive, said:  "On Gotland we have hundreds of injuries from swords, but they are from the Middle Ages!"
Literature:
1. Bengt Thordeman; "The Invasion of Gotland 1361. Poem and Reality." Foreword by Museum Director, Dr. Poul Nørlund, Ph.D. C. A. Reitzels Forlag. Axel Sandal - - - - The Hoffmann Establishment, Copenhagen MCMXLVI ( 1946)

Jens Christian Boje Nørgaard 

Margaret the 1st was born in the year 1353. She was the daughter of King Valdemar IV Atterdag and Queen Helvig.

In the year 1363, she was married to the 22-year-old Norwegian heir to the throne, Håkon, only 10 years old. But it wasn't until Margrete was 15-16 years old that the couple lived as husband and wife. In 1370, Margrete and Håkon had a son, Oluf. When Valdemar Atterdag died 5 years later, he had no male heirs. The closest to becoming king in Denmark was Albrecht IV of Mecklenburg. He was the son of Margrete's older sister, Ingeborg. 

But a Mecklenburger was already Swedish king (Albrekt), so the Danish council thought that it would give too much power to the Mecklenburgers if they also had a Danish king. Margrete now saw the possibility that her son could become king of Denmark.The Danish captain, Henning Podebusk, liked the idea, especially when Margrete promised him some estates in Zealand. 

In the spring of 1375, the only 5-year-old boy was elected king of Denmark, with Margrete as guardian regent. In 1380 King Håkon died so Oluf also became king of Norway, still with Margrete as guardian. Oluf was now king of Norway and Denmark, but in reality it was Margrete who was in charge of the government. Margrete had big plans, because Oluf's grandfather had been king in Sweden. Margrete made sure that Oluf used the title "Heir to Sweden"

She knew that many Swedish magnates were dissatisfied with the Swedish king.They believed that the king appointed German bigwigs as sheriffs rather than them.

Margrete promised to help them if they wanted to depose the king. The German confederation of city-states "Hansa" had supported Margrete and Drost Henning Podebusk in the election of a king. But the Duke and Margrete would in reality weaken the power of the Hanseatic States at the same time.

When Valdemar Atterdag made peace with the Hanseatic League, he had had to leave castles along Scania's coast to the Hanseatic cities. Margrete wanted these castles back. In this period of the Middle Ages, pirates ravaged the Nordic waters.

Despite disagreements, the kings of the Nordic and Hanseatic States had an agreement to combat piracy. But Margrete did absolutely nothing to prevent the pirates from plundering the Hanseatic merchant ships. She even encouraged them to do so to increase their power.

The Hanseatic cities complained through diplomacy.

Margrete informed them that she could make a greater effort to fight the pirates if she got the Scanian castles back. The Hanseatic states accepted this out of necessity. 

In 1387, Oluf dies at the age of 17. Already a week after Oluf's death, a group of big men gathered at the county council in Lund in Scania, which was again Danish. Here they chose Margrete as "representative wife, husband and guardian of all of Denmark". The background for her being chosen must be seen from the fact that she was King Valdemar's daughter and King Oluf's mother, and that she had shown goodwill towards all sections of the population and demonstrated power towards the Hanseatic States.

According to the agreement, her position was to last until she and the nobles had found a suitable royal subject. In reality, she was regent for Norway and Denmark, but she did not give up the hope of uniting the 3 Nordic countries with herself as ruler.

The possible seemed ridiculously closer than ever before. In Sweden, it led to the final showdown with the Mecklenburg King Albrecht and his followers. The Swedish nobility asked Margrete for help. She promised that and was elected "Sweden's plenipotentiary wife and husband" 

King Albrecht feared a war and traveled to Mecklenburg to recruit reinforcements. Before he left, the king gave Margrete a number of nicknames, e.g. called her "King Burgloose", "King Pantsless" and should have sent her a whetstone for sewing needles to mock her.

Margrete equipped an army of Danish and Norwegian men. The army was under the leadership of Ivar Lykke. They moved into Vestgötland, where they united with a Swedish army under the leadership of Erik Ketilsen. It came to a big battle at Falköbing between the 3 armies from the Nordic countries and Albrekt's enlisted army from Germany. Albrekt was overcome and taken prisoner, put in a prison at Lindholm castle in Skåne, where he sat for 7 years.

To ensure the union of the 3 Nordic countries in the future, Margrete summoned the nobility plus bishops from the 3 kingdoms to a meeting in the city of Kalmar in Sweden on June 17, 1397. 

Here the magnates agreed that the 3 kingdoms should always be united under a common king plus stick together in war and peace. However, each country had to retain its sovereignty and still be governed according to its own local laws, as well as maintain its administrative structure. Each country also kept its own council, but the king could call a joint council meeting.

This agreement was called the Kalmar Union. The starting point was the so-called Union Letter, which was a legally binding agreement which laid down the more detailed rules for the governance of the Kalmar Union and regulated the future relations between the three kingdoms. Found in original at the National Archives. It was written on paper, with 10 sails printed on it. 

Margrete had long known that it was of crucial importance to preserve the union between the countries that continuity was brought to the power structure.Therefore, Margrete had previously contacted her sister's daughter's husband, Vartislav of Pomerania, to investigate whether she could take in his son, Bugislav, as a foster son. Vartislav accepted, and in 1388 he handed over his 6-year-old son to Margrete. 

She gave him the Nordic royal name, Erik. The following year, Norwegian magnates hailed him as hereditary king. Norway was a hereditary monarchy, so here Erik's descendants were secure on the throne. But in Denmark and Sweden, the magnates could choose someone else to be king.

Therefore, Margrete wanted to link the countries closer together in a confederation or a union. At the meeting in Kalmar, the 15-year-old Erik was crowned king of the union.

Although Erik was now king in the Nordic countries, there were still three completely independent kingdoms.

The three countries did not become one state, which was probably Margrete's real political goal. Many believe that when the Union Agreement was not finally drawn up on parchment, it was because Margrete put it aside in order to later introduce political changes.

In 1399, Finland joined the Union.The Kalmar Union was formed and politically it was a dazzlingly skilled mockery.

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

Valdemar Atterdag's children
Valdemar 4th Atterdag was married to Helvig, sister of Valdemar 3rd, so Valdemar Atterdag was distantly related to Valdemar Sejr. They had 6 children together, namely as No. 1 Christoffer, born in 1341, (died 1363), as No. 2 Margrete, died aged 5, No. 3 Ingeborg, later married to Duke Heinrich of Mecklenburg, No. 4 Kathrine and no. 5 Valdemar, who both died young and as no. 6 and finally, another Margrete, born in 1353 (died 1412).

This last Margrethe was married as a 10-year-old in 1363 to the Norwegian king, Håkon VI (king 1343-80). in 1370 she gives birth to her son Oluf (1370-87).

Oluf becomes king of Denmark and Norway with Margrete as guardian
In 1375, the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag dies. His last son, Christoffer, died already in 1363, so there are now no male descendants of Valdemar Atterdag. Margrete hurries with her little son, Oluf aged 5, to Denmark and proposes to the councilors to elect little Oluf as king - with her as guardian. The councilors accept: Better Margrete than one of the German Mecklenburgers, whom Valdemar Atterdag has otherwise already halfway promised the throne.

The 5-year-old Oluf who is elected and crowned as king of Denmark in 1376. In 1380, King Håkon also dies in Norway. As king, he has been very weak, frankly inept, especially against the Norwegian magnates, and he had waged an unfortunate war in Sweden for his father, the Swedish king, Magnus Eriksson Smek. In contrast to Denmark and Sweden, where the king must be elected, the royal power in Norway is hereditary, so the little, now 10-year-old Oluf, almost automatically also becomes king in Norway - with Margrete as guardian.The young Oluf is really the reason why Margrete, as his guardian, can rule the two kingdoms, Denmark and Norway. Oluf dies. Margrete becomes the Lady of the Realms and Plenipotentiary Husband.
Then comes the accident! On 3 August 1387, aged 17, Oluf also dies.

He dies in Falsterbro in present-day Sweden. Margrete is in Ystad. In record time - within a week - she gets the county council in Skåne, i.e. the bigwigs there, gathered in Lund. Here she is locally elected as Mrs. and Plenipotentiary Husband. Since then, she has also been elected to the other county councils. 

Fortunately, Oluf had the foresight to write a careful will before he died. He bequeaths all his property to Margrete, so that side of the matter is in order. He was buried shortly afterwards in Sorø. However, his heart and liver are sent for storage in the Cathedral in Lund.

In the long run, Margrete needs a male heir to the throne, whom she can rule as guardian. She searches for someone with the blood of the Valdemars in her veins and chooses her sister's daughter's son, Bugislav in Pomerania and already in 1387 gets him to Denmark. He is 5 years old at the time and is not expected for the first several years to settle down as a king with an adult guardian.

A new Oluf appeared .
Then comes another trial for Margrete!  In 1402, a young man has started holding a small court in Danzig, Germany. He introduces himself as Oluf, king of Norway and Denmark, and says he is the dead King Oluf, whom his mother, Margrete, got out of the way 15 years ago. Some Norwegians visit him and find a certain resemblance to the late Oluf. 

Although in that case he should have lived his first 17 years in Denmark and Norway, he does not speak or understand either Danish or Norwegian. He writes to Margrete and demands his two kingdoms back. If Margrete had really gotten him out of the way, it was hardly a wise disposition. Margrete contacts the Grand Master of the German Order of Knights. It doesn't happen in secret! She sends messengers with 7 knights and 6 squires to the Grand Master and asks to have the man handed over. She gets that.

Prince Otto, who disappeared.
It is somewhat thought-provoking that it was the Grand Master of the Order of Knights that Margrete addresses and not the Emperor. Valdemar Atterdag's older brother, Otto, had tried to forcibly take the pledged Danish land from the German counts, who had the land as a completely legal pledge. Otto had lost the battle and had been captured by the counts. 

He was given the choice of spending the rest of his life in prison - it didn't have to be that long - or swearing allegiance to the Teutonic Knights. In the end he chose the latter and disappeared. It was only a few years ago that it was discovered that he had managed a castle in Estonia for the order of knights. Surely Margrete hadn't used the German Order to get Oluf out of the way in the same way?
Hardly, but at the time the suspicion was there.

The fake Oluf
The new Oluf version came to Denmark and here he was interrogated. He was born in the countryside of Eger in Bohemia and was possibly the son of the real Oluf's wet nurse and possibly got his knowledge of Oluf and Margrete from her. At that time, there was no special nutrition for infants, so the children were breastfed much longer than now. His name was Wulf, German for wolf, as Oluf or in Norwegian Olav, which also means wolf.

It is not known if there were also Norwegians at his court who could tell about the Norwegian royal family. Seen today, a century later, it seems that there must have been some organization behind the new Oluf version since he was able to hold court. The man himself, on the other hand, seems hardly to have been so shrewd as to have been able to understand how dangerous a game he was playing.

Who was behind the new Oluf?
Margrete had just 3 years previously forcibly deposed Duke Albrecht III of Mecklenburg as king of Sweden and still kept him imprisoned as a prisoner of war. In any case, Duke Albrecht's powerful family in Mecklenburg had a strong motive for trying to harm Margrete. Margrete lets the man burn alive along with his letters and documents!

Thus he becomes one of the very few, perhaps just 2-3 people, who were burned alive in the Danish Middle Ages - from Ansgar who came to Denmark in 826 to the Reformation in 1536. In the century that followed the Reformation, over 1000 people were burned in Denmark. So it wasn't the dark ages that burned witches!.

It was time after!
In Charlotte Sieling's film About Margrete1. from 2021, Margrete will have Oluf burning for him to appear cleansed and guilt-free before the heavenly judges.

It's a misunderstanding in the movie. For medieval people, the burnt would be ashes and in the funeral formula it says "---- from earth you shall rise again", i.e. not from ashes. The burned therefore did not go to heaven after death! When witches were later burned, it was, among other things, so that after death they would not be able to go to Heaven together with Christian good people. Margrete, on the contrary, could be sure not to meet Oluf in Heaven when he was burned.

There is one more afterword.
"Norwegian historians know of a grave in the Franciscan church in Perugia (in Italy). Here lies, local clerics must have said, a Franciscan friar who in his youth was king over three kingdoms in the North, but his mother took the kingdoms from him and sent him to a monastery. He lived here, highly honored and loved, and grew very old.”
From Palle Lauring; "Valdemar's Sons and the Union" 2nd edition 1974, (page 201) ISBN 870098862 

So was Margrete's son, Oluf version 1 identical to version 2 (as in the movie) or version 3 (in Perugia) neither, only one, or both.? In the latter case, who was buried in Sorø in 1387 and who was burned in 1402?.

Margaret's death?
Margrete herself died suddenly on board a ship in Flensburg Fjord. The city of Flensburg had tried to join the Holsteins, Margaret's enemies! It was not popular with Margrete! This time she used raw, military force and severe punishment of the defectors. Even priests who came under canon law and thus could only be judged by ecclesiastical courts, had Margrete sentenced and hanged.

Maybe it was the plague. Apparently there was a plague in the city. You don't know. She was provisionally buried (because of the risk of infection?) on the smaller of two islands in Flensburg Fjord, Lille Okseø. Appropriate transport was quickly organized and Margrete was moved to the monastery church in Sorø. From here, her good friend, Bishop Peder Jensen Lodehat, fetched her with armed force to Roskilde Cathedral. Here she now lies in her closed sarcophagus.

Margaret's coffin.
Historians and other scientists want to know what is in the coffin. Did Margrete die of the plague or something else? Did she get married? Could her somewhat unsuccessful adopted son. Eric of Pomerania, don't wait any longer to come to rule the kingdoms yourself and decide everything? You want to open the coffin and examine it, if nothing else, just a small hole, but you can thread a mini-TV probe through and maybe with a probe take any samples.However, Margrete 1. has a very distant, living relative and colleague, this relative says categorically "No" to all attempts in that direction. Yes! The relative is Queen Margrete 2.

PS:
Erik of Pomerania was deposed in all three kingdoms and then settled as a pirate on Gotland. The next King of the Union, Christoffer of Bavaria, who was also King of Sweden (1441-48), tried to drive Erik out with Swedish troops, but failed. Only when the next Danish king, Christian I., sent a larger Danish fleet in 1449, did Erik have to give up and move home to Pomerania. He died here in 1459.

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

Christian II (1513-23) must have had a special ability to surround himself with strange existences. Here we think of men like the Funen bishop, Jens Andersen Beldenak, who was the only non-noble bishop in the kingdom, appointed by Chr.2.'s father, the squire Diderik Slagheck, his brother, Heinrich, the Dutch girl Dyveke Willums and her mother Sigbrit Willums. 

These obscure existences became powerful through their connection with the king. Søren Norby did not really belong in the king's vicinity, but was nevertheless very close to the king. He was also straight-laced and usually out to fight for the king and was very loyal to him – and he was not involved in the Stockholm bloodbath, on the contrary!

Overview: Christian II's fate.
The Kalmar Union must be restored! Chr. 2. saw it as his main goal to restore the Kalmar Union, i.e. to conquer Sweden. Norway was then Danish. Chr. 2. waged a war with Sweden with varying degrees of success, with great expenditure on hired armies, and ended up defeating the Swedes in 1520.

At the end of peace party, the Swedish nobility was invited to celebrate the new king, Chr.2. coronation and installation as Swedish king. The guests had been given free rent, but Chr. 2. used the opportunity to "tophugge" the Swedish nobility. 

After a Sumerian canonical, i.e. ecclesiastical, trial, 80 nobles were sentenced to death and beheaded on Store Torv in Stockholm. Legally, the trial and the verdict - or the lack of a trial - were probably in order, (obviously heresy should not be judged, only punished!) but the sentence could only be executed by the active intervention of the king, Chr.2.

The conspiracy before the carnage.
Swedish historians have recently concluded that the massacre in Stockholm was planned at home in Copenhagen by King Christian II himself, Sigbrit Willums and Diderik Slagheck. Here it would be reasonable to believe that they questioned Beldenak, who was an expert in church laws, and the Swedish archbishop, Gustav Trolle, who had the role of religiously aggrieved church prince, because his (secular) opponents had taken his castle and razed it to the ground. . 

The very young, Danish-minded archbishop, Gustav Trolle, had probably been given extraordinary powers and rights by the Pope, i.a. he had been given the right to surround himself with 400 armed men and legally he was made a part of the church itself. Peripheral in the conspiracy was also a German councilor and a mayor of Stockholm.

Machiavelli's "Prince" in the Nordics?
One can consider whether the contemporary Italian, Niccolo Machiavelli's book "The Prince" has played any role in the events here in the Nordics. The book was finished in 1513 and circulated in learned circles. It was first published and printed in 1532. Beldenak may have met Machiavelli at the Curie within that time. The contents of the book were a series of instructions for the princes of the time. The work has been known and talked about at princely courts in Europe, certainly at Chr.2.'s court.

After the Bloodbath After the bloodbath
Chr.2 set. his henchmen to rule in Sweden and hastened to the Netherlands, why is not known. The Swedes rebelled again and had to be put down, which cost more money, a lot of money.

New laws aimed at the nobility and the church.
Christian II then also made a lot of new laws that were supposed to limit the power of the nobility and the church and in addition he issued a lot of taxes, where the common man also had to pay for the war with Sweden. He also borrowed a lot of money for the war - and his finance minister, mother Sigbrit, increased the Sundtolden and confiscated ships that would not pay the higher duty. Chr.2 did that. unpopular all over the place. His new laws ended up being burned at the stake as early as 1523.

Princely notice of dismissal.
1523 sent the nobility Chr.2. a notice of dismissal, here in the form of a letter with the termination of allegiance, loyalty and manhood. According to reports, the letter was hidden in a riding glove that had been "forgotten" by the king after a courtesy visit, since the king was now in Jutland anyway. The forgetful one was a high-ranking nobleman, namely member of the Diet Mogens Munk. The king later denied having received the letter. He probably burned it shortly after receiving and reading it.

At least something did, the king was completely out of it! It is said that on his way home from Jutland to Copenhagen, he sailed back and forth across the Little Belt 20 times before he decided to leave Jutland and go to Copenhagen. 

The story of the voyages was probably a myth. Arriving in Copenhagen, the king packed all his belongings, including mother Sigbrit, onto the warships that lay at Copenhagen. And yes: Mother Sigbrit was really packed! She was brought from the castle to the ship's harbor in a coffin because it was feared that the people of Copenhagen would lynch her if she was brought openly through the city!

Chr. 2. sailed to Holland, where his queen came from. Here he established himself in the city of Lier with "het hof van Denemarken". He finally succeeded in 1524 in pressuring the emperor to lukewarmly support a plan to reconquer Denmark. A hired army had Chr.2. paid with money, 24,000 guilders, which had been obtained from the sale of Chr. 2.'s sister's jewellery. She was married to the Elector of Brandenburg. In addition, the emperor owed him 150,000 guilders, which should have been a dowry for his queen, Elisabeth.

Chr. 2. gathered the hired army South of the border, but had obviously overlooked that the hired servants in the army had to be paid on an ongoing basis. Otherwise they wouldn't fight! No more money could be raised for the jewellery. There was thus no more money for the mercenaries and the army was disbanded. 

It was a trick that mother Sigbritt would not have let pass, as she was active for Chr.2. Chr. 2. gathered a new army in 1531, perhaps because the emperor paid part of the dowry of Chr.2.'s queen, Elisabeth. The emperor probably wanted to get rid of Chr. 2. and procured him ships for the transport of the army by pressing the Dutch to supply the ships.

The back door to Denmark:
Christian II invades Norway! Chr. 2. sailed to Norway and arrived, battered by the weather, Some ships were wrecked on the way, but they were still able to beat down the local Danish forces. In the long run, Chr.2 would. couldn't cope. A larger Danish force arrived in Norway under the command of the Catholic bishop, Knud Gyldenstjerne. Chr. 2. let Gyldenstjerne persuade or entice him to sail along to Copenhagen for negotiations with the new king, Chr.2.'s uncle, Frederik 1

Christian II in Sønderborg!
However, the ship did not sail to Copenhagen, but to Sønderborg Castle, where the king was held prisoner until 1549. It is a myth that he made the time pass by, with his thumb, making a groove in a round table top, he walked restlessly around. He had fairly free conditions during his captivity. He could move around freely on Als and e.g. hunting on the island.

 Politically, at the time he was, as it is called in modern Danish, "Dead man walking". He had no friends with influence, but plenty of enemies. He had nowhere else to go!

Only once did he not come home on time and they searched for him for several hours. He was found on the beach telling a silly story about where he had been.

Why Sønderborg?
Yes; during the upcoming Count's Feud (1534-36), Copenhagen and Malmö were after all the only cities in Denmark that wanted to support Lybæk, who again, at least in their propaganda, stated that they wanted Chr. 2. back – at least partially. (Aalborg is not mentioned here: It was half Ljubsk and had 2 mayors, one Danish and one German)

Noble republic or new king? It was Chr.2's uncle, Frederik 1, who replaced Chr.2. as the king of Denmark. When he died in 1533, the nobility decided to continue with the country as a noble republic. It didn't work! Without a central power, the country would become prey to other powers, especially Lybæk, which was at the head of the German trading superpower, the Hanseatic League.The Count's Feud
Lybæk's efforts to take power in Denmark again led to a war for power in Denmark. The war was called "The Count's Feud". The Danish-friendly Swedish archbishop, Gustav Trolle, died in this war. He fought on Lybæk's side and was badly wounded in the battle of Øksnebjerg on 11 June 1535 and died shortly afterwards in Danish (i.e. Holstein) captivity!

Christian III becomes king. When the feud was over, the Holstein duke Christian became king as Chr. 3rd and Chr. 2. got freer relationships again. It was not until 1549 that he was moved to Kalundborg, where he almost had the city as his livelihood, i.e. an area that supplied him with the maintenance of life. Chr. 3. visited him there and they went hunting together. Chr.3 died in 1559 and it is said that Chr.2. grieved him so much that it contributed to the deposed king's death soon after.

Wrong eye color!
And a final notch in the eye of Chr.2.. He had brown eyes, both of his supposed parents had blue! It was long before Mendel in 1865 came up with his laws of inheritance about how, among other things, eye color is inherited. Brown color is inherited dominantly, so if you have a blue and a brown predisposition, you get brown eyes. The mother had a blue one, the father must have had a brown one. It is not known who the father was, but the Pope had been kind enough to send King Hans' queen, Christine of Saxony, an envoy who could maintain her Christian learning and fondness for the Franciscan Order while King Hans was at war in Sweden. King Hans also had to flee from Stockholm one winter, and according to the Swedes' very short account "- the king fled from Stockholm "with (his friend) Edele Ironskæg in Kanen". No. The girl did not have a stiff beard. Ironbeard was her family name and Kanan here was a horse-drawn sleigh, but can also mean a slide.

Those interested in Chr.2.´s, time, i.e. Denmark in the 16th century, are referred to the historian, dr. file. Mikael Venge's extensive production on the subject. The books are still available online.

Beldenak Beldenak was actually called Jens Andersen and about which there is the most information. He was a bishop on Funen and lived in Odense, but as bishop also managed a few estates on Funen and Tåsinge. He was generally sought to be kept out of influence because he was not noble. Nobles harassed him.Once he and his company were ambushed on the road between Odense and Svendborg by a group of young nobles. Beldenak pulled a book out of his saddlebag and began to read it loudly while he looked around the terrain and made strange movements. The assailants bounced and also looked around and thought soon after seeing many armed men coming forward secretly so they fled. Beldenak put the book back in his bag and continued on his way. From then on, he was considered someone who knew more than his father and had secret powers. In addition to being a theologian, he was also an expert in canonical, i.e. ecclesiastical, law.

  He had a certain authority and could rule even the rough country boys! He was present at the Stockholm massacre, which was after all justified by ecclesiastical law, not by secular law. Beldenak proposed to the king to burn the corpses that filled the streets and squares of Stockholm after the carnage. They should really have been burned. Beldenak later sold his bishopric of Funen to Frederik 1st and in return received a small pension from the king and lived the rest of his life in Lybæk.

Beldenak's story did not have a "happy ending". Beldenak had traded in bulls, which he sold to the big cities in Germany, and in the Rantzau family it was believed that he had made a fortune by trading bulls. In 1533, Christoffer Rantzau attacked Beldenak's estate at Tåsinge at night. The guards were killed and Beldenak dragged out of bed, sailed to Holstein and for a long time taken from one prison to another so that no one would discover where he was. He was subjected to torture to get out of him where the money was. He was laid out naked and smeared with honey for days by a kidney stand, he had his teeth broken or pulled out with the executioner's tools, he had his testicles crushed by the executioner, he had one limb after another abused - one at a time, so he didn't should die under ill-treatment etc. . He must have been plagued by pain for the rest of his life after the torture. Beldenak's sister was married to a wealthy man, and he bought Beldenak free from the Rantzau cellars and the rest of his life he lived very quietly in Lybæk, protected by the city government. He wrote a lament about his captivity in the international language of the time, Latin.

Paludan Müller writes in his monograph on Beldanak: "If he had sinned, Nemesis would not have set up the punishment for him in another world."

See also C. Paludan M-Müller's "Jens Andersen Beldanak, a life description" for the Information Festival in 1836 at Odense Cathedral School. The work exists in 2 almost identical versions with different titles.

Short version of Mor Sigbrit's fate.
When a bourgeois woman like Mother Sigbrit gained the influence she really had, it is mainly because she was the mother of Dyveke, Chr.2.'s mistress, but also because Sigbrit as a merchant had learned an art that was foreign to many of the fine and otherwise well-educated nobles who could speak Latin. She could rain! Calculating in Latin is very difficult, but ordinary merchants knew the art from everyday life and could calculate in their own way.

What happened to Sigbrit after she came out of the coffin in Holland? She was unpopular with Holland's regent, Margretha, and was expelled from Holland. The first years, i.e. until 1531 she stayed there anyway, hidden in the Black Sisters' (Dominikanerordnen's?) convent in Utrerecht. Since Chr.2. lacking ships to get to Norway, she ventured forward and tried to help him by threatening the Dutch authorities that he would unleash his hired troops on Dutch cities if he was not helped.

This in turn led to her being recognised, imprisoned and put on trial in Mechelen). Here she was convicted for these threats and for, as finance minister in Denmark, having increased the sound duty for Dutch ships and also having seized ships that could not/would not pay the increased duty. She was sentenced to death by hanging! (unusual, because women were otherwise not hanged, but buried alive.) The account of her last days is known from Ary Den Hertog's historical novel "Mor Sigbrit" from 1946. The book also includes the transcript, which is probably a copy of the original document – probably! It is likely, but not absolutely certain.

The author lets Mor Sigbrit greet the sentence with relief. She had feared being burned as a witch. It was obviously close, because her body had to be burned after the execution. She was hanged and not buried because her crime was "male".

Historian Michael Venge has argued early on that there were also Danish interests involved in having mother Sigbrit sentenced to life, so that you could not risk her appearing as an adviser in Denmark again.

Very brief about Søren Nordby.
Søren Nordby was from the Funen lava nobility and was the most faithful of Chr.2.'s people. He fought for the king even when all seemed lost. He fought effectively and often unconventionally. In the battle of Lund on 28 April 1525, he attacked e.g. with his tanks. Johan Rantzau's orderly rows. The idea was right, but the material was completely unsuitable. Chariots were here horse-drawn vehicles that were fitted with a cannon. The idea was that the wagons should, in front of their own footmen, drive forward towards Rantzau's lines and fire on Rantzau's men with the wagons' cannons - over the heads of the horses. The gunners fired far too high so as not to hit or frighten the horses. They therefore also shot at Rantzau's people. Rantzau's guns stood firmly on the ground and had no trouble hitting the advancing wagons. At a distance of 150 m, Rantzau's guns opened fire on the wagons and caused great chaos with wagons. After the battle, Rantzau's people collected 100 usable cannons from the wrecked "tanks".

Søren Nordby went to Lithuania in 1526, from there to Russia, where he was imprisoned, but at the intercession of the German Emperor released in 1528. Out of the prison in Russia, he saddled his horse and rode directly to Holland to support Chr.2., but the diminutive "het hof van Denemarken" in the city of Liar was in a dead period, so the old warrior went into the service of the German emperor and took part in his war in Italy. Finally, he took part in the siege of Florence.

There are several accounts of Søren Norby's death here. One of them was that he fell in a battle, another that he was killed by a bullet from the ramparts of the besieged city of Florence. This last explanation could possibly be elaborated. It is alleged that Norby got into the bad habit of starting the day by meeting at a certain place in front of the city walls and at a suitable distance mocking the Italians with probably obscene shouts, signs and gestures. When they didn't want to listen to him anymore, they responded again by fetching a cannon and when Søren the next morning, it was 12.3. 1530, resumed his favorite pastime of standing and sticking out tongues at opponents, they just shot him! He died soon after. Presumably, the cannon was loaded with a cartridge box, a sack of rifle bullets that, fired from the cannon, turns into a shower of bullets. He was buried in a monastery nearby. He was an able soldier and general, held by his people, brave, not cruel. He did not hide behind his men. He obviously had a weakness; He took chances.

Norby has recently had a smaller warship named after him.

Didrik Didrik was the illegitimate son of a German Catholic priest who possibly lived with a woman, as celibacy was not taken seriously everywhere despite the attempts of various popes to have it observed. Didrik probably got a job in the Pope's office through his church connections. From there he came into the service of Chr.2.. He was an acquaintance of mother Sigbrit, who referred to him as her cousin. He was secretary to the Pope's envoy, Arimboldi, who came to the North to sell indulgences, i.e. tickets to a luxurious existence in Paradise after death. They were expensive. Chr. 2. looked for a pretext to confiscate the papal income for his warfare. Rumors were started, probably by Didrik, that Acimboldi had received a bribe from the Swedes. In return, he got a job as a bishop over there.

As written, Chr.2 came. with the hired army in 1520 to reconquer Sweden. In the peace agreements, the king promised the Swedish Adeel free reign, but instead came the Stockholm massacre, the massacre was justified by a clerical trial against the Swedes, who had conspired to defeat the too young, Danish-friendly archbishop, Gustav Trolle, captured his castle and level it with the ground. It was interpreted as an attack, aimed at the Catholic Church and not a worldly enemy. If the act could be regarded as obvious heresy, the case would not even have to go to court. The defendants just had to be punished! - here in life. Actually, they should have been burned. Beldenak did that after the bloodbath Chr.2. noticed and then suggested that they begin to burn the corpses that had now piled up in the streets.

With the Pope's blessing, Didrik was appointed bishop in a quiet place in Sweden. When the archbishop in Lund died, the country boy Didrik became archbishop!! He entered the cathedral for his episcopal consecration at the head of a group of peasants - with pipes and drums!

Diderik had not only helped to plan the massacre in Stockholm. He also staged it, and also directed the executions of the nobles and a number of merchants from Stockholm. During the carnage, he let a bystander hang because he stood and wept over the executions.

In 1521 another papal envoy, Frans de Pontentia, came to Denmark. Two of the bishops who had been executed among the Swedish nobility had not participated in the conspiracy against Archbishop Gustav Trolle and were therefore innocent. The legate Frans de Pontentia demanded blood on behalf of the Pope. It probably couldn't be the king's, but someone had to pay. Beldenak was considered, who may have been aware of the atrocities but did not participate in them. The king had also just pressured Beldenak to give him 2/3 of his annual income as bishop on Funen. It was about ½ barrel of gold per year, and you don't slaughter a man who lays golden eggs.

Didrik evidently participated in the carnage, even very visibly as one who personally directed the executions in the square.He was arrested and put on the torture bench and confessed to anything, including the executions in Stockholm.

Didrik was evidently arrested in nightclothes and was later, wearing silk-lined velvet slippers, led by the executioner and his henchmen through the streets of Copenhagen, while the executioner loudly announced that he was here with master Didrik, who was responsible for the violent murders in Sweden and now had to pay for them! It was January 24, 1522. The procession also passed Mother Sigbrit's house, where Scottish and German squires had just had a fight and the Germans had killed the few Scots.

Up at the gallows, a bystander noticed that Didrik put his velvet slippers on the ground as the executioner pulled him up the ladder to the gallows and the gallows. Here he got the rubber band around his neck and the executioner tightened it tightly so that the delinquent could not breathe. A moment later the executioner loosened the elastic again and said to Didrik and/or the spectators: "No, we're not going here, we're going somewhere else". They went down the ladder, Didrik put on his velvet slippers and they walked to a blazing fire, where the spectator again noticed that Didrik placed his velvet slippers on the ground before being tied to a ladder and pushed into the fire. The spectator also believed that he had told the executioner's henchmen to hurry so that this did not last too long.

While Didrik was burned alive in Copenhagen, his brother, Heinrich, desperately defended a castle in Sweden for the king, Chr.2. Didrik got a taste of his own medicine. He was also convicted by an ecclesiastical court and executed soon after. He arranged the carnage, but he had been unable to either start it or stop it. The responsibility lay with the king!

Literature:

1. Lars Bisgaard" Christian the 2nd. A biography". Gads Forlag. Published with the support of the Statens Kunstfond and others.
2. Bramming, Torben "Rantzau the Holy Warrior" from 2016, page 153
3. Ary Den Hertog: "Mor Sigbrit" Hirschsprungs Forlag MCMXLVI (1946, historical novel)
4. John Lind et al "Danish Crusade. War and mission in the Baltic Sea”. 2nd edition Autumn & Son. 2006 ISBN-10:87-638-0393-3
5. M-Müller, C. Paludan "Jens Andersen Beldenak, a life description" for the Reformation Festival in 1836 at Odense Cathedral School.
6. Erik Petersson, "Prince of the Nordics". A Bibliography on Christian 2. In Danish by Hans Larsen. Politikkens Forlag.

Brian Patrick McGuire received his B.A. in history and Latin from the University of Berkeley in California in 1968, and in 1971 he became Doctor Phil at the University of Oxford.

One of the most stubborn myths about the Middle Ages is about the priests' sermons during the service. It is claimed that it was only with the Protestant Reformation that the sermon became in the vernacular. It is really a lie and a spin of the Reformation, because throughout the whole of the middle valley people were preached in the vernacular. The service was otherwise in Latin, but after the reading of the text from the Gospel, the priest was supposed to turn around and explain the content to the congregation. That is, he delivered a sermon in a language that everyone should be able to understand. I myself have worked with several sermons that the chancellor of the University of Paris around 1400 gave in parish churches around Paris. These are in French, while the sermons he preached to university students and teachers were in Latin. In 1969, the medieval expert Anne Riising defended a disputation on the sermon in medieval Denmark, in which she demonstrated that many of the Latin sermons were made by priests to impress each other, but the original sermons were given in Danish. Riising pointed to several collections from Ribe, most of which are in Danish.

Unfortunately, Riising's findings have not received the publicity they deserve, and the myth of the sermon in Latin to poor parishioners exists to this day. Between us and the Middle Ages lies the propaganda and spin of the Protestant Reformation, and it is important to penetrate to the reality of the Middle Ages, where the idea of preaching in Latin to people without Latin education is absurd. It is my impression that it would have caused an uproar in the congregation if the priest started using Latin glosses to explain his meaning. It is therefore important to distinguish between the service itself, which was in Latin, and the priest's sermon, which outside university circles was always in the language of the people.