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In Sweden, he is the tyrant behind the brutal Stockholm massacre. Christian II is also described as a popular and sensitive king who was before his time, and who after his great mistake was expelled from Denmark and got a leading role in Gustav Vasa’s propaganda.
The bishops are beheaded on the left. On the right, the remains of Sten Sture the youngest are unearthed to be burned along with those executed. The image shows part of Gustav Vasa’s bloodbath poster, from a copper engraving image made in the 17th century.
500 years ago, in November 1520, Christian II was crowned King of Sweden after defeating the Swedes who opposed him and the Kalmar Union. A multi-day wet party ended with a mass execution at Stortorget, where more than 80 people were beheaded and hanged.
But here and there people didn’t necessarily think it was “Kristian Tyrann,” according to historian Erik Petersson, who wrote a biography of the King of the Union. He points out that not much difference was made between Swedish and Danish within the union.
– If you look at it from a popular perspective, Kristian was very popular in wide layers. He had great popular support, especially in the areas of the Union where he has been a lot. Partly in Skåne, but also towards Dalarna and in more parts of the country, Petersson says.
At the coronation in Stockholm, most things turned out well for Kristian: he united the Kalmar Union under his rule, controlled trade in the Baltic Sea, and married the sister of the German-Roman emperor, from the powerful Habsburg family. .
– The bloodbath was crucial. On the one hand, he sparked an uprising in Sweden when he had no money left for the troops. On the one hand, the Danish nobility feared they would face the same fate as the Swedes and lose their minds. Kristian has many opponents in a short time in 1520, says Lars Bisgaard, a senior professor of history at the University of Southern Denmark in Denmark, who also wrote a biography of Kristian II.
In Denmark, the Renaissance-inspired king modernized many laws, limited the power of the nobility over the peasants, and strengthened their royal power in a princely way.
When Sweden began to separate from the union, the patience of the powerful Danish nobility ran out. Kristian was ousted from the throne, driven into exile, and replaced by his uncle.
– He lost everything and maybe you can see it as a Swedish founding myth. This is when you start to get big and strong in Europe, says Lars Bisgaard.
Christian II is first described as a tyrant in notes from Nydala Monastery in Småland, where the royal entourage stopped on the way home from Stockholm and executed the abbot and several monks. And the next king of Sweden notices it.
– It is something that Gustav Vasa picks up and reinforces very actively, says Erik Petersson.
Vaasa had the poster for the so-called carnage produced, illustrating the Stockholm carnage and other atrocities with beheaded bishops and children, barrels full of heads, hellfire and a partying Danish king.
After 500 years, the image remains of a ruthless usurper from abroad who committed a bloodbath just to consolidate his power.
– It is interesting how the highly biased historiography of Gustav Vasa has become part of the Swedish historiography, says Petersson.
Historians still argue today about how the massacre occurred and at whose initiative. Some judge that everything was planned by Christian II, or that at least he was very responsible. Others point out that he had many influential advisers who moved on. In Sweden, there was also an opposition elite who wanted to exact revenge for previous injustices, with the help of Denmark. The king himself is not said to have been present.
– There are also findings that say that if he was able to do something like that, he must have been mentally weak or unstable, says Lars Bisgaard.
The history teacher adds that Kristian later in life was treated for what was then called melancholy, probably some form of depression. There are many indications that the king’s mood changed when his great love Dyveke, whom he considered his mistress, died in an alleged poisonous murder in 1517.
There has been much speculation about whether Kristian was what we would today call bipolar, according to Christina Lysbjerg Mogensen, a Danish historian who has a Ph.D. in research on the Danish king.
– Because he has periods in which he starts many things and other periods in which he is passive and everything seems to fall apart for him, she says.
– You also have to be careful to judge him more harshly than other kings at this time. It was a brutal time.
During his exile in the Netherlands, Kristian’s wife also died. When he later converted to Lutheran doctrine, the emperor took his children from him. He made an attempt to regain power in Denmark through an invasion of Norway, but it went wrong. On the one hand, much of his fleet sank on the road and on the other hand, it is said that he could not decide when and where he would attack.
Instead, Kristian was tricked into returning to Copenhagen, where he was put under a kind of house arrest. There he died at the age of 77, after renouncing his right to the throne.
Historians describe Christian II as an ambitious king with a view to Europe, which was too modern for the era of the princes and Machiavelli.
– A king would show strength and action, but hesitated at crucial moments, says Lars Bisgaard.
The king’s interest in humanistic and ethical issues has been overshadowed, according to Christina Lysbjerg Mogensen. During his travels across the continent, he forged friendships with both Martin Luther and the learned Erasmus of Rotterdam.
– In many ways, it was a catalyst for spiritual development in Scandinavia, she says.
Kristian let the lower states take their place in the state administration, became interested in new religious ideas, and was able to hand over power to the women around him as he traveled. And the nobles got more and more angry.
– He was a social person who was quite easy to like. On the other hand, he was not that smart or politically interested, but probably more of a member of high society who was friends with many of the great men of the time, says Erik Petersson.
– Events have shown that he was early in many ways, too early for his time. But he himself does not seem to have realized or understood where he would draw the limits.
The myth of the confusing boat trip
A myth that has taken root in Danish folklore tells how Christian II during a fiery Danish uprising finds himself on a ship in the Little Belt without being able to decide: should he sail to Jutland and try to defeat the nobility or should he flee with his tail between the legs? ? He orders a course to Jutland, but quickly regrets it. He regrets over and over again. And so the ship comes and goes all night until it is forced to flee.
The story reinforces Kristian’s image as an insecure guy, but it comes from the historical novel “The Fall of the King,” which was written in the early 20th century and is part of the Danish cultural canon.
The myth of “good Christian”
In Sweden, it has been claimed, even in textbooks, that the “tyrant” Kristian is called “Kristian the Good” in Denmark. But the king is never judged to have had any particular epithet in his native land.
When Kristian was deposed, the Danish nobility also wanted to cultivate the image of him as a tyrant. In his exile, the former king tried to present himself as the protector of the people – “Kristian Bondekär” – among other things by having popular songs written. The so-called Örnvisan metaphorically tells how the small birds of the forest choose an old eagle as king because he is the only one who can save them from the hawks (the nobility).
Kristian’s exploits for quasi-enslaved peasants received more attention from historians during the rise of the labor movement in the 19th century.
The myth of the notch in the table
In Denmark, the image of a melancholic and repentant Christian II has been transmitted through a painting painted in the late 19th century.
It shows an elderly and troubled king in his cell at Sønderborg Castle, where he stands and presses his thumb against a wooden table. The myth says that Kristian walked around the table, thumb on the edge, so that a notch formed that only got deeper and deeper, says Lars Bisgaard.
– And it is said that he asks himself: What went wrong? Why don’t they like me? Why did I do what I did in Stockholm?
1520: The battles, the coronation, the massacre
January: Kristian II’s troops march into Sweden in a series of attempts to overthrow the Swedish government that does not recognize him as king. In the Ice Battle of Åsunden in Västergötland, the Swedish forces are defeated and the Danish-led troops can continue on to Stockholm.
February 3: Sweden’s separatist head of state, Sten Sture the Younger, dies from wounds sustained in battle.
March 6: In the Uppsala Day Parliament, the Danes and representatives of the Swedish National Council agree that Christian II will be hailed as king, against promises of amnesty, among other things. But Sten Sture’s widow, Kristina Nilsdotter Gyllenstierna, does not give up and continues to stand in Stockholm.
April 6: Swedish Sture supporters, especially farmers, go on the offensive in Uppsala. The Danish king’s troops win again.
5-7 September: Kristina Nilsdotter Gyllenstierna reaches an agreement with Denmark: the captured Swedes will receive an amnesty, she herself will receive various grants and Stockholm will capitulate. Christian II enters the city.
October: Former pro-union archbishop Gustav Trolle is reappointed archbishop. He had been deposed by the Sture government, which, among other things, also demolished his castle.
November 1-4: Christian II is elected and crowned King of Sweden.
November 7-9: A big, wet coronation party with most of the Swedish power elite in attendance suddenly turns into legal process. Archbishop Trolle accuses the men who were present and deposed him of heresy and are sentenced to death. Kristian’s promised amnesty was not enforced because church law did not recognize that kind of deal with heretics.
More than 80 people are executed at Stortorget in Stockholm, including two bishops, the Riksråd, the mayor, citizens and servants who sympathize with Stures. According to the executioner, there were a total of 82. When the remains were burned, the body of Sten Sture the youngest was also unearthed and burned with them.
Kristian II
He was born in 1481 as the eldest son of the Danish Union King Hans (who in Sweden was Johan II), of the princely family of Oldenburg.
He was crowned King of Denmark (where the name is written Christian) and Norway in 1513 and after several attempts he also managed to temporarily subdue Sweden and be crowned King of Sweden in Stockholm in 1520.
He married Elizabeth of Austria, settled in Habsburg (1501-1526) when she was 14 years old and he was 34. Two of his brothers became emperors of the German-Roman Empire, Carlos V and Fernando I.
He was next to a Dutch mistress, Dyveke, who is suspected of having been killed by poisoned cherries.
He was a Catholic, but he converted and became a Lutheran for a few years in the 1520s and then became a Catholic again.
Deposed in an uprising by the Danish nobility in 1522, exiled to the Netherlands, and replaced by his uncle, Fredrik I.
He had five children. Crown Prince Hans died at the age of 14 and out of five, only two daughters survived to adulthood.
He died in a kind of captivity in Denmark in 1559, at the age of 77, and is buried in Odense.
