by SEAN COOGAN
Is this why there are so many pubs called The Bishop’s Head? Bishop Vincens Henningsson (kneeling on the left) would probably agree, as would Bishop Mattias Gregersson (bottom left and bottom centre). And in the top right, the dastardly Danes are exhuming the corpse of Sten Sture
What is it about Danes and celebrations? We’ve all seen ‘Festen’, and there was the Roskilde massacre ordered by Svend in 1157. But they all pale in comparison to King Christian II’s ambush in 1520 – an atrocity that today we remember as the Stockholm bloodbath
During the afternoon of November 8, the executions started with the decapitation of two bishops in the main square in Stockholm. Martial law had been imposed and the streets were therefore deserted, but a witness has described how the blood flowed down the gutter from the main square. That afternoon 82 heads were separated from their bodies, and the bodies were piled up as the blood swam down the streets.
The bodies were then transported to a different part of the city and piled in three heaps: one for the clergy, one for the noblemen and one for the bourgeois. For the grand finale, Sture’s body was dug up and thrown on the noblemen’s pile after which the many bodies were torched. Following that, King Christian hosted another party – this time in the main square where the executions had taken place.
When a Swede by the name of Gustav Eriksson heard the news, he immediately packed his bags, vowing not to return home until he had got rid of the Danes once and for all. Not only had his father been killed and his mother and sisters jailed, he was also one of the six Swedish hostages who had been set up by Christian II two years earlier. He had managed to escape Danish incarceration and now the time had come to rise against the Danish tyrant.
Soon Eriksson – or Gustav Vasa as he would be known in the centuries to come – gathered 400 men, primarily peasants, who had been pushed too far by the Danish king. The militia made their way through Sweden killing Danish bailiffs and grew in strength and numbers until they reached Stockholm in the autumn of 1521. A siege ensued and was bolstered by a reinforcement of 900 mercenaries, who arrived in May 1522 from Lübeck in Germany. Nevertheless, the Danes held their position in Stockholm for more than another year before finally surrendering in June 1523.
The Copenhagen Post for more