What happened at the Battle of Brunkeberg?
On 10 October 1471 the Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder attacked the army of Christian I, king of Denmark and Norway and claimant to the Swedish crown under the Kalmar Union, on the Brunkeberg ridge outside Stockholm, in what is now the city center. While Sture stormed the ridge from the west, Nils Sture's Dalecarlians struck it from the east and the Stockholm garrison sallied out from the south. The king's lines broke, and many of his men drowned fleeing to their ships. The victory secured Sture's rule, and he made it the centerpiece of his propaganda.1
The battle was fought on a ridge that no longer quite exists. Over the centuries Brunkeberg was lowered and built over, and today its line runs under the office blocks and streets of Norrmalm. On a single October day in 1471 it decided who would rule Sweden for the next quarter of a century.2
Background: a union and a regent
Sweden was bound to Denmark and Norway in the Kalmar Union, but its nobles were divided between those who wanted a union king and those who wanted to rule themselves. Christian I, of the house of Oldenburg, had been king of Denmark since 1448 and of Norway since 1450. He held the Swedish crown from 1457 until a rising of the Swedish nobles drove him out in 1464; Britannica counts a second short reign in 1465 to 1467.3
When King Charles VIII, Karl Knutsson, died in May 1470, Sten Sture, his half-sister's son and a member of a powerful noble family who had helped Charles regain the throne, took charge of the kingdom and was recognized as regent. The Swedish biographical dictionary describes a young nobleman who owned close to 400 farms and could count on one sure ally above all: his kinsman and brother in arms Nils Sture, whose fief included the warlike province of Dalarna.4
Christian did not accept the Swedish regency. In the summer of 1471, according to SO-rummet, the Swedish history portal, he landed with a large army on Djurgården, then called Valmundsön, just east of Stockholm. The Danish Biographical Lexicon notes that he took part in his Swedish campaigns in person. The Swedish council of the realm, led by a peace-minded archbishop, kept negotiating and in the end gave way before his strength and accepted him as king.5
The castle holds out
One place did not give way. The garrison of Stockholm Castle under Knut Posse refused to surrender, SO-rummet writes, and that bought time. While the king waited before the city, Sture and Arvid Trolle raised a larger army in the country outside.6
Sture also had the miners of Falun on his side. The story told by the Falun Mine, now a museum and a World Heritage Site, explains why: the mine owners wanted to keep selling their copper through the Hanseatic League, they were a political force to be reckoned with, and they could arm great crowds of men from Dalarna. In 1471 they marched with Nils Sture's Dalecarlians, the “dalkarlar och bergsmän” of the biographical dictionary.7
Armies and commanders
Christian's army held the ridge itself. Nordisk familjebok, the great Swedish encyclopedia, puts it at about 5,000 men; its main body had dug in on the hilltop, a smaller detachment stood to the west near the convent of Saint Clare, and a wooden bridge across the marshy ground east of the ridge linked the camp with Käpplingeholmen, today Blasieholmen, where the fleet lay at anchor.8
His army was not simply Danish. SO-rummet names the pro-union noble houses of Oxenstierna and Vasa, with peasants from their home districts in Uppland, among those who fought for him; Britannica adds that Sten Sture contended throughout his rule with a noble faction led by the Oxenstiernas that wanted a union under the Danish king.9
Against it came a composite army: the main force under Sten Sture, a force raised with Arvid Trolle, the levy of Dalarna under Nils Sture, and the men of Stockholm under Knut Posse. Nordisk familjebok calls Sture's army a considerable peasant host. No reliable count of it survives.10
The battle in phases
The plan. On 10 October Sture attacked. His plan was to strike the ridge from three sides at once: he himself from the west, Nils Sture's Dalecarlians from the east after a wide march around the ridge, and the Stockholm garrison from the south.11
Two assaults thrown back. Sture's first storm up the western slope was beaten off, and so was the second. Nordisk familjebok then has him turn against the detachment by the Klara convent. To save it, the king's men came streaming down from the height, and after a murderous fight were forced back up the hill. Meanwhile the sally from the town struck the southern end of the ridge, where the king's entrenchments were set on fire.12
The third storm. The biographical dictionary praises Sture's ability to lead his men up the ridge again and again in a long battle that stayed undecided for hours. The third attack came from the west and, now that the Dalecarlians had completed their flank march, from the east as well. Nils Sture's biographer calls this outflanking movement, which fell on the king's men from behind, unparalleled in Swedish military history before the seventeenth century, and says it decided the battle.13
The Dalecarlians came over the ridge from behind, and the king's army broke.
Turning point: the bridge to the ships
The king's lines broke. SO-rummet describes his men fleeing in disorder toward the ships at Käpplingeholmen, and many of them drowned. Nordisk familjebok explains why: the wooden bridge over the Näckström, already partly destroyed by the burghers of Stockholm, collapsed under the fugitives. It puts the losses of the king's army at about 2,000 killed, wounded and captured.14
Christian had lost his bid for Sweden. Britannica calls Brunkeberg the end of his last full-scale attempt to win sovereignty over the country, and the Danish Biographical Lexicon writes that after the battle the union question was hopelessly deadlocked.15
Aftermath
The victory let Sture secure his rule over Sweden, which lasted until 1497. His biographer in the Swedish biographical dictionary adds that it freed him from the label of being the creature of the powerful Axelsson brothers and gave the office of regent real authority.16
He used it well, Britannica writes, building up a strong central administration, reducing German influence in the town governments, strengthening the courts and in 1477 founding the University of Uppsala, the first in Scandinavia; the biographical dictionary dates the decision to a meeting of the estates at Strängnäs that summer. The Columbia Encyclopedia says the victory gave hope for permanent Swedish independence.17
That hope was not yet fulfilled. When Ivan III of Moscow, allied with the Danish king, invaded Finland in 1495, Sture's position weakened, and in 1497 he was forced to accept the Danish king John, though he overthrew him in 1501 and ruled as regent until his death in 1503. Christian I never regained Sweden; he made a celebrated journey to Rome in 1474 and died in 1481.18 › Battle of Nyborg, 1659
Swedes on both sides
Older Swedish histories told Brunkeberg as a clash between Swedes and Danes. Stockholmskällan, introducing an 1877 account by the historian Alfred Gustaf Ahlqvist, calls his version typical of that tradition and notes that newer research has softened the picture: both armies were made up largely of Swedish fighters.19
The tradition began with the victor. Sture's biographer writes that the part of the Sture Chronicle inspired by the regent, the main source for the battle, stresses his personal role and passes over the many Swedish lords and Uppland peasants who fought for the king; from 1471, the same article says, Sture deliberately stirred up hostility to the union and to the Danes among the lesser nobles, miners, burghers and peasants.20
Legacy and memory
In time the victory became a mainstay of the Sture family's national propaganda, and 10 October was celebrated as a great church feast in Stockholm.21
The greatest monument is Bernt Notke of Lübeck's carving of Saint George and the Dragon in Stockholm's great church, Storkyrkan, which Stockholmskällan says Sture commissioned soon after the battle in its memory. The sources differ on the day it was dedicated: SO-rummet gives the anniversary of the battle, 10 October 1489, the biographical dictionary New Year's Eve 1489. Storkyrkan's own parish history tells the story another way, linking the statue to Sture's wife Ingeborg Tott and to a crusade against Russia urged by the pope.22
The nineteenth century embraced the battle anew. Nordisk familjebok, writing in 1905, calls it one of Sweden's most glorious memories, and Stockholmskällan publishes Ahlqvist's account, an offprint from the journal Nornan of 1877, so readers can see for themselves how that generation told the story. The painting at the top of this page, Georg von Rosen's Entry of Sten Sture the Elder into Stockholm of 1864, belongs to the same mood.23
Visiting the battlefield today
The battlefield lies in the heart of Stockholm. Christian's camp stretched along the ridge where Malmskillnadsgatan runs today, and his ships lay off Blasieholmen. The ridge itself was lowered and built over. The one place where the battle can still be seen is Storkyrkan in the Old Town, where Notke's Saint George still stands.24 › 10 October in military history
