 This post was supposed to go up months ago, but the last half of 2024 was nuts and I haven't had as much time to devote to the blog as I would like. Posts may be slower for a while, but I hope to still get some research done.
But without further ado, let's get into the subject of Duke Magnus Vasa - a historical figure whose story has become entwined with folktales of fairy brides. Thank you to Jeanette Wu, who suggested this topic and a wealth of sources along with giving feedback on an earlier version, and Toovski for help with some of the translations! In folklore, there are four main things that could happen to someone who encountered the otherworld: death, remaining in the otherworld forever, escape to safety, and escape but with permanent effects, such as madness. This plays out in a family of related Scandinavian ballads. Death and "Elveskud" “Elveskud” (“Elf-Shot”) is one of the most popular old Scandinavian ballads, with about seventy known variants and many different names. It tells the story of a knight - usually named Olaf or something similar - who encounters a group of dancing elf maidens. One of them urges him to join her; in many versions, she offers him rich gifts if he’ll do so. He refuses, for he is to be married the next day. In some versions, Olaf continues to hold firm with loyalty to his fiancée; in others he is enticed or forced to dance, accepts a gift, or consents to a kiss. But no matter what he does, all the ballads lead to the same outcome: the Elf-queen kills him. She curses, strikes, or stabs him, and he returns home to die. In turn, his mother and/or fiancee die of grief. Themes vary by location. Danish versions are more likely to focus on dancing, which Lynda Taylor compares to the danse macabre, the dance of death (Taylor, 2014). Swedish versions are more likely to have Olaf stand firm against the elf maiden’s wooing. In Icelandic versions, the themes of marriage and fidelity may be replaced with Christian faith, with Olaf rejecting the elves as pagan. The first known written version appears in Karne Brahe’s Folio, c. 1583, and Danish historian Svend Grundtvig places it around 1550. Grundtvig theorized that the ballad family originated in Brittany; in a Breton ballad, "Seigneur Nann,” the supernatural being is a korrigan (here, the spirit of a stream). The closest English equivalent is “Clerk Colvill,” about a young man entranced by a mermaid (although for some variety, this song’s mermaid is apparently a maiden with the ability to shapeshift into a fish, closer to the selkie side of the mermaid family). Francis James Child compares the story of Peter von Stauffenberg (English and Scottish Ballads, Volume 1, p. 298; The English and Scottish popular ballads, 377). In this medieval legend, Peter is convinced to give up his fairy lover in order to take a human wife, and is promptly executed by the jilted fairy. Child argues that, like Peter of Stauffenberg, Clerk Colvill was originally romantically involved with the mermaid, and that her actions are not just caprice but the revenge of a betrayed lover. I don’t entirely buy this, but the parallels are intriguing. The fairy laying a curse of impending death on Peter at his wedding is the main parallel to the Elveskud narrative; there’s the same choice between living with the fae or dying among humans. Oblivion and "Sir Bosmer" The Danish “Herr Bosmer i elvehjem” (Sir Bosmer in Elfland) is an example of a different but similar ballad type. Here, a young knight dreams of a mermaid who asks him to come beneath the river/sea, or an elf who tries to bring him beneath the mountain. In most versions, she offers him a drink that causes him to forget everything about his old life and loved ones, so that he stays with her forever. (If you subscribe to the theory that elves are inspired by the dead, then this is essentially the same ending as Sir Olaf.) A couple of Swedish versions are “Ungersven och Havsfrun” (Young Sven and the Mermaid) and "Herr Olof" (Sir Olof). Escape, "Elvehøj," and "Herr Mannelig" These are the neighboring ballads with (usually) triumphant, happy endings. In “Elvehøj” (Elf-hill), a young man falls asleep by an elf-mound, where some elf-maidens try to enthrall him. He has a narrow escape when he’s awoken by a rooster’s crow (or, sometimes, by his sister who was previously enchanted and is now an elf-maiden - so again, shades of the dead and the underworld). Versions of this ballad date to at least the 17th century. One example with the crowing rooster is “Hertig Magnus och elfvorna” (Duke Magnus and the Elves), collected by Geiger and Afzelius. There is more of an equal dialogue in the Swedish ballad “Herr Mannelig,” where a mountain troll tries to woo a young man with descriptions of the extravagant gifts she’ll give him. Herr Mannelig refuses, saying that he would say yes except that she is a troll and/or a heathen. The song ends with the fleeing troll's sobs that “Had I got the handsome young man / I would have avoided my torment.” This version of the song approaches Type 5050, "Fairies' Hope for Christian Salvation" - a close relative of the soulless mermaids found in such stories as “Undine” and “The Little Mermaid” (which are descended from the murderous-fairy-bride motif in Peter of Stauffenberg!). In a more violent and less triumphant variant, “Hr. Magnus og Bjærgtrolden” (“Sir Magnus and the Elf-Maid"), Magnus responds to the elf-maiden’s courtship and offer of gifts by reviling her as ugly and chopping her up with his sword; she then transforms into a raging fire (Prior, pp. 343-346). Names and endings are traded between variants of all these ballads. (For one overlapping example, there’s a version of Herr Mannelig where the troll gives him a drink that causes his heart to burst - (Grundtvig, p. 420). One recurrent name is Magnus, bringing us to the case of Duke Magnus Vasa of Östergötland. Born in 1542, Magnus was the third son of King Gustav Vasa of Sweden. While his brothers would eventually take the throne (with lots of rebellions and murders and scandals involved), Magnus was affected by mental illness which became apparent in the years following his father’s death in 1560. One of the royal family’s residences was Vadstena Castle on the shores of Lake Vättern, an area already famous for the religious community founded there by Saint Bridget of Sweden. Construction on the castle began in 1545, and in 1552, it hosted Gustav’s wedding to his third wife, Katarina Stenbock. In creating duchies for his sons around 1560, Gustav named Magnus the Duke of Östergötland. Magnus had taken up residence in Vadstena Castle by 1561. There was a certain point where Magnus’s brothers considered him the next in line for the throne; marriage alliances were considered, including the prospect of Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots!!) as a bride. But Magnus’s condition gradually became impossible to ignore. In 1563, his older half-brother, King Erik XIV, mentioned his illness in a letter and sent his own physician to visit Vadstena Castle. 1563 was also the year that another brother, Johan, was imprisoned for treason, and this seems to have taken a heavy toll on Magnus (Roberts, p. 227). Better periods allowed him to travel and attend royal family events. But at other points, he had to be under constant care and had violent outbursts. Regardless of their disagreements, his siblings’ letters all indicate their concern for him. In February 1566, while Magnus was staying at Vadstena Abbey, Erik gave instructions that he be well-cared for and not allowed to do himself harm. Erik himself would also show signs of mental illness, beginning with paranoia and escalating to stabbing a political opponent during a mental breakdown. Erik was eventually deposed and died in prison (possibly by poison), while Johan took the throne. Magnus apparently had difficulty understanding that Johan was now king. Magnus never married, but had a couple of children out of wedlock. He died in 1595 and was buried in Vadstena Abbey. So where do mermaids come in? There's a short legend that one day, Magnus dove from his window into the Vadstena Castle moat. He was rescued unharmed, but claimed that he had been trying to reach a beautiful mermaid who was calling him from the water. This story has become a classic tourism bit, circulated in many travel books and collections of folklore - Hans Christian Andersen heard it when he visited Sweden (although that was after he wrote “The Little Mermaid”). I wrote in to Vadstena Castle’s website, and heard back that there is no clear source for the mermaid anecdote. We don’t know where exactly this story stemmed from, only that people have been telling it for quite a while. It’s also gotten garbled along the way; in Hans Christian Andersen’s recollection of the anecdote, the mermaid resembles Mary Stuart, and it ends with the fall into the moat and no mention of survival. There would have been more confusion for people unfamiliar with the tradition; one American author wrote that the mermaid-hallucinating Magnus “threw himself into the moat below, forever making the princely castle a dreary tomb," evidently missing the memo that Magnus didn't drown (Stone, p. 179). The earliest printed references I know of are from the early 19th century. In 1816, Afzelius and Geijer collected the song "Hertig Magnus och Hafsfrun," a version of "Herr Mannelig" from Småland: Duke Magnus looked out through the castle window, How the stream ran so rapidly; And there he saw how upon the stream sat A woman most fair and lovelie, "Duke Magnus, Duke Magnus, plight thee to me, I pray you still so freely; Say me not nay, but yes, yes!" She promises him gifts like a ship, a horse, and gold. When he refuses, she threatens him with a curse of madness: "O gladly would I plight me to thee, If thou wert of Christian kind; But now thou art a vile sea-troll, My love thou canst never win." "Duke Magnus, Duke Magnus, bethink thee well, And answer not so haughtily; For if thou wilt not plight thee to me, Thou shalt ever crazy be." (Keightley's translation) This is clearly influenced by Magnus Vasa, and the collectors described the moat anecdote in connection to it. This connection also shows up in the writings of Clas Livijn, a Swedish poet who in 1806 wrote a romantic libretto titled Hafsfrun. This three-act, Goethe-influenced opera was directly inspired by the story of Duke Magnus and a folk song that Livijn remembered hearing in Östergötland (as a child?). "It has slipped my memory; only the mermaid's invitation: "Duke Magnus! Duke Magnus! be betrothed to me, For I would have you so gladly," his subsequent answer: "Would you be a Christian woman," and the refrain: "Cold, cold weather is blowing from the lake," have indelibly attached themselves and floated vividly before me" (Arwidson, p. 125). Livijn describes the song as less well-known, and mentions mysteriously that there are "other strange legends" about the Lake Vättern mermaid. The opera plays out as an extended variant on the song. In the first act, the mermaid Hulda lures Magnus to Lake Vättern and tries to entice him under the water to her father’s castle. However, his servants rescue him. In the second act, Magnus returns to the lake in search of the mermaid, and she rises from the water on a golden ship with her maids. Livijn pulls lines from the folk song here as the mermaid invites him to her realm. Although knowing that he is damning himself, the smitten Magnus agrees to go with her and drinks from the horn she offers (oh, hi, Sir Bosmer!). Just as he is entering her realm of trolls and other magical creatures, a knight saves him. The third act features a nightmarish midnight ballet, where Hulda and her maids invade Magnus's castle and compete against his courtiers for him. Magnus flings himself from the balcony with Hulda, is caught by an angel, and dies in its arms, while Hulda and her maids vanish into a storm (Mortensen, pp. 120-124). Hafsfrun was the first major romantic poem in Swedish; however, it was only published posthumously in 1850 (Livijn, p. 27). (Livijn's choice of name for the mermaid is interesting; not only is there the Germanic goddess-like figure Hulda or Holda, but there's also the water nymph Hulda in the 1798 Viennese play Das Donauweibchen, which probably influenced the novella Undine.) From these two sources, we can guess that by the early 1800s, the Duke Magnus version of the ballad was pretty well-known. There may also be less fantastical versions of the moat story. I’ve found a couple of websites making vague reference to an incident where Magnus accidentally fell into the castle moat while inspecting a new drawbridge, but I’m having trouble tracking down anything more specific or any concrete sources. (Here's a blog post, in Swedish, with a longer comedic version where Magnus becomes stuck on the drawbridge and is repeatedly dunked into the water.) Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck yet with finding more on potential moat incidents. Duke Magnus in Folk Songs As mentioned, quite a few versions of “Herr Mannelig” and "Elvehøj" name the hero Magnus. Magnus’s legend also inspired fictional works: besides Livihn's Hafsfrun, there was Ivar Hallstrom and Frans Hedberg’s irreverent comic opera Hertig Magnus och sjöjungfrun (1867). Unlike Livijn’s supernatural, atmospheric libretto, this is a farce where a fisherman disguises his daughter as a mermaid to trick a delusional duke into falling in love with her. And in 1909, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius produced a "Hertig Magnus" song more closely inspired by the legend, pulling in some historical context: Baron Magnus at his window Of the waves of Vettern dreaming, Watches them surround his castle, in the moonlight palely gleaming. Sorrow hath his soul enfoulded, [sic] that his father's life is going, And that blood in brothers' quarrels, in red rivers should be flowing. But these references begin several centuries after Magnus's death. Svend Grundtvig considered the song corrupted and altered, a later combo of the folksong with the Duke's story: “It is, however, in its form even younger than our Danish recipes and has undergone a noticeable distortion, in order to better agree with a folk legend about a mad Duke Magnus, son of Gustav the First, which has obviously been quite foreign to Visen from the beginning." (Grundtvig, p. 420). It’s easy to see how 16th-century Europeans would have attributed mental illness to the influence of fairies (and I include mermaids as a category of fairy). Folk belief blamed fairies for all kinds of illnesses and deaths. Even the title of “Elveskud,” or Elf-shot, is a reference to this. "Elf-shot" or invisible arrows fired by elves were blamed for mysterious pains, paralyses, and strokes. Other references spoke of fairies “blasting” people or livestock. This is the fate that Sir Olaf meets, with the elf-maiden striking him a painful blow. On a less fatal note, many stories described people escaping abduction by fairies, but never being the same afterwards. In a characteristic tale from Småland, a girl is recovered from her troll captors, but "every now and then her mind seemed to wander, and from that time on she was twisted and bent; the cause of this was that she had had to carry so many heavy loads for the trolls" (Lindow, p. 99). There aren't records of the Elveskud or related ballad traditions until well into Magnus’s life, so there's some chicken-or-the-egg here, but I'm inclined to follow Svend Grundtvig in the idea that references to Duke Magnus were added onto the original ballad later. But how did Duke Magnus get wound up in the Elveskud song tradition, exactly? Why would his legendary dive after a mermaid be connected to a song about a man who refuses a mermaid or elf-maid? And why would Duke Magnus be adopted into the version of the ballad family that typically has a happier ending? The fact that he, but not his brother Eric, was adopted into the story - and the fact that his legend isn't that similar to the ballad plot - suggests the theory that it was the name. There were likely already ballads about a man named Magnus meeting an elf-maiden or mermaid, ballads that could end in either escape or a more tragic fate (remember the one where the elf-maiden turns into a raging fire, and the one where his heart bursts). People familiar with stories of fairy-caused madness would have easily connected Duke Magnus. Even with the many questions, this shows an interesting side to the tradition, with a look at how real people can be drawn into folktale. Via "Peter von Stauffenberg," it's even part of the same story family as the Little Mermaid and related tales. Bibliography
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Researching folktales and fairies, with a focus on common tale types. Archives
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