SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

286 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
and quotable lines for historical text-books, and because
both poems are attributed in the manuscript to the same
author, Bishop Thomas of Strangnas who died in 1443,10
"Hec Thomas pie memorie, quondam episcopus strengenensis"
runs the ascription at the end of Frihetsoisan'!
and similarly for TrobetsoisanI" Historians were happy
to accept these attributions and in 1955 they appeared to
be confirmed when Lars Sjodin indicated-" that the scribe
of B 42 was a certain Birger Hammar, dean of Strangnas,
a canon of the cathedral during Bishop Thomas's episcopacy
and, indeed, one of the executors of the bishop's
will. Clearly Birger should have known whether Bishop
Thomas wrote the poems or not and even those who
naturally suspect anonymous scribal attributions now
allowed the poems to the bishop. Gottfrid Carlsson.tthe
Lund historian, and other historians before him were
surely influenced by this common authorship and the
nature of Frihetsvisan when they saw precise historical
reference in Trohetsvisan. They knew the political
environment in which Bishop Thomas moved. It was
a turbulent period in Swedish history, the time of the rise
and fall of Engelbrekt, who first led the "free" miners of
Bergslagen in revolt against the absentee king of all
Scandinavia, Erik of Pomerania. They demanded, as it
says in a contemporary Ietter.P "to have one king in
Sweden and to drive out the King of Denmark from the
three kingdoms", and, either naively or with a cynical eye
to propaganda, "they ... wish Sweden to return to her
state under King Eric (their idealised patron saint) ... in
his time no customs duties or taxes existed ... they will
therefore have back the same rights as in former days".
re See Ny Illustrerad Svensk Litteraturhistoria, ed. E. N. Tigerstedt (1955),
I 269, for a brief biography of Thomas Simonsson.
11 As printed in E. Noreen, Fornsuensk Liisebok (ed. S. Benson, 1957), 133.
li Klemming, op. cit., 397: "Hec Thomas Episcopus Strengenensis."
18 Hildeman, op,cit., 120.
U G. Carlsson, Bishop Tomas av Striingniis (1955), 24, cited by Hildeman,
op, cit., 120.
16 See Ingvar Andersson, A history of Sweden (trans. Carolyn Hannay, 1956),
78-89 on Engelbrekt's bid for power and 79 for the letter.