After Olaf Sköt Konning, the "Lap King," had established the Christian faith in about the year 1000, it again began to decline under his eldest son Anund Jacob, and was so neglected under his younger son Edmund Gammal, that before the death of that prince about the year 1056, it seemed to have been nearly driven out of the land.

Upsala, which from the time of Frey Ingve had been the seat of the king and chief priests of the Svea, continued for a long time after those princes had become Christians to be looked upon as the most sacred spot in their dominions. Here Christian as well as pagan kings received the homage of the people, standing on the king's stone of Upsala, within sight of the hill on which the first temple to Odin was built by the old rulers of the Svea. Here too, the people met to discuss public affairs long after they had become Christians, as their forefathers had done when they held their yearly Thing in the plain on which Odin's temple stood. The control of this sacred spot was the chief cause of the respect paid by the people of Southern Sweden or Gautland (Gothland) to the rulers of Svithjod, and when Edmund Gammal, the last of the Ynglingar or Upsala race, died leaving no children, a fierce struggle broke out between the two nations, which ended in the men of West-Gautland proving themselves stronger than the Svea and able to set up a Christian King Stenkil, one of their own people, to rule over all Sweden. During his reign from 1056 to 1066 the pagans and Christians lived together in peace, and there was a short rest from warfare. After the death of Stenkil, who had been Jarl of Vestergötland before he came to the throne, and was descended through his mother from the old Ynglingar race of kings, several of his sons and near kinsmen were in turn made kings. But Sweden was equally disturbed under all the successive rulers who occupied the throne for nearly a century. Religious wars raged with violence for the greater part of that period, and the country was so torn by factions, that at last all the princes of the royal race were slain together with a great number of the chieftains. In this state of disorder no bishops ventured to remain in Sweden, and there would have been no Christian churches left, if a few monks had not come from Skaania and kept alive some

knowledge of their religion among the people. At one time both Svea and Gauta obeyed a pagan king, and after setting aside Christianity joined together in offering sacrifices to Odin, and partaking of horse-flesh, which was looked upon as a kind of solemn sacrament in the worship of the god. At another time there was no king, either among the Svea or the Gauta; and then the chief law-explainers in Svithjod and in Gautland ruled each in his own district.

First dawn of better times.-The first prince under whom these troubles began to lessen was a Christian called Sverker Karlsson. This king, who reigned from about 1135 to 1155, and whose rule fell, therefore, within the same period as that of Stephen in England, built churches and monasteries, and invited monks of the order of St. Bernard, from Clairvaux in France, to come and take charge of these houses. He even sent messengers to the pope, praying that bishops might be settled in Sweden, and a place chosen for the see of a primate, that the Swedes might no longer have to be under the power of a foreign church; for up to that time all Scandinavia was included in the see of the Danish Archbishop of Lund. The pope, in 1152, sent his friend, Cardinal Nicholaus Albinensis, to Sweden to see if King Sverker's wishes could be complied with, but as it was found that the Svea and the Gauta were too jealous of each other to agree upon the choice of a district for the primate's see, the matter was dropped for the time. The cardinal1 was able, however, before he left the country to secure for the Court of Rome the promise of the payment from the Swedish people of the tax known as St. Peter's pence. Thus for the first time in her history Sweden gave public proof of her union with the Church of Rome. Sverker's old age was troubled by civil wars, in which his son Johan took an active part, and was at length slain by a band of peasants, who had been enraged by the vicious and headstrong conduct of the young prince. this moment the Danes attacked the Swedish coasts, but were beaten off by the men of Smaaland, who could obtain no help from their unwarlike old king; and the angry feelings which had been roused by Sverker's want of courage led in 1155 to 1 Nicholas Breakspear, afterwards Adrian IV., the first and only English pope.

L

At

his murder at the hands of his own servants, while he was on his way to church to hear mass on Christmas Eve.

The Bondar, or freemen of Svithjod, met together at Upsala to choose a new king as soon as the death of Sverker was made known, and they were soon joined by the men of WestGautland, but as usual they could not agree. While the Svea declared they would have none other than Erik Jedvardsson to sit upon the king's seat at Upsala, the Gauta refused to have any king but Sverker's son Karl. The former were, however, the stronger of the two, and Erik became king. This prince, who was a first cousin of the late King Sverker, belonged through his father Jedvard to the peasant or bondar class, from which his descendants took the name of the Bondar race, and for more than a hundred years the throne of Sweden was filled by one of this family, or by a prince of the Sverker line. Murder was in general the means by which each party got rid of a king of the opposite race to the one which they upheld, and thus the disputes which began when Erik, instead of Sverker's son Karl, was chosen king, were handed down from one age to another and grew more fierce with time.

Erik the Saint, 1155-1160.-Erik, who after his death gained for himself the title of "Saint," worked hard during his short reign of five years to improve the state of the country. There were three things, the old sagas tell us, which King Erik the Saint laid to heart, and these were :- "To build churches and to improve the services of religion, to rule his people according to law and right, and to overpower the enemies of his faith and realm.' He was known in history not only as the Saint, but also as Erik "Lag-gifware," or the Law-giver, and is said to have won the love and grateful respect of all the women of Sweden by the laws which he passed to secure to them many rights, of which these three were the most important, viz., that every wife should have equal power with her husband over locks, bolts and bars; that she might claim half his bed during his life; and that she might enjoy one-third of his substance after his death.

Erik was the first king who erected a church at Upsala, where up to his time the worship of Odin had been kept up by force, at the cost of Christians as well as of pagans.

Now,

however, a primate's see rose at Gamla (old) Upsala, and a learned and pious man named Henrik was appointed to be the first archbishop. This prelate went with King Erik on a crusade against the pagan Finns, who had long been a scourge to the poor people of the eastern coasts of Sweden, burning and plundering their homesteads with as little mercy as the Northern Vikingar had in bygone ages shown their victims. Archbishop Henrik paid with his life for his zeal in trying to convert these heathen pirates, but his efforts and those of the king had the effect of bringing Finland under the power of Sweden, with which it remained united for many ages. Erik owed his death to the attack of a Danish prince, Magnus Henriksen, who, thinking that the troubled state of Upper Sweden might be favourable to the claims which he pretended to have on the Swedish throne, made a sudden attack on Upsala while Erik was hearing mass in Trinity Church. When the alarm was given and the king was warned of the approach of Magnus, he refused to leave the church till the close of the service, but then rushing forward at the head of his men he met the Danes, and after a fierce fight was cut down and slain by the invaders.

Erik's virtues and piety gained for him the love of his people, who worshipped him as their patron saint, although he was never canonized, on account of the greater favour in which the rival house of the Sverkers had for many years been held by the papal court.'

PART II.

TROUBLED TIMES.

The Bondar.-The century which divided the first and last of the Bondar race was marked by one constant struggle, in which

1 The remains of St. Erik were for many ages preserved in the cathedral of Upsala and honoured as holy relics. His arms were emblazoned on the National Flag of Sweden, and a figure of the sainted king appears also on the banner and seal of the town of Stockholm.

no class except the clergy increased in power, or even kept their old position in the state. Erik, the first of the Bondar, died in 1160, and Erik Eriksson Læspe, the last of the 'race, died in 1250, a period that included nearly all the years of the reigns of the first four of our Plantagenet kings, viz., Henry II., Richard I., John, and Henry III.; for Henry II. came to the throne in 1154, and his grandson Henry III. ended his long reign of fifty-six years in 1272. Yet in all that long period, there is little or nothing to record of affairs in Sweden but the quarrels, wars, and murders of many kings, and the disorder and misery of the whole country. The only class of men who did anything to lessen these evils were the monks, many of whom had come from England. These zealous men first taught the Swedes how to till the ground and plant gardens, to prepare salt, to build and work water-mills, and to make roads and bridges. Besides this they also strove to make them give up some of the many evil pagan practices to which they still clung, as for instance divorcing their wives whenever they grew tired of them and marrying others according to old heathen forms; and thrusting their children out, or exposing infants in desert places to perish from cold and want when they did not care to be burdened with them. The greater number of the monks who came over to Sweden in those early times met their death by violence, but their memory has lingered nearly to the present day in the different districts in which they carried on their labours. Thus the people of Westmanland long honoured the Irish monk David as a saint, while in Sudermanland and Norland the names of the English martyrs, St. Bothurd, St. Askill, and St. Stephen, were for many ages held in great esteem, and their relics guarded with much care. During this troubled period in Sweden, when the country was laid waste by the civil wars between the Bondar and Sverker races of kings, Denmark often took an active share in these disputes, and gave refuge to the defeated princes of both parties in turn. Thus when Sverker Karlsson had murdered all but one of the grandsons of St. Erik, and the Swedish people threatened to take vengeance for these acts of cruelty, he escaped from their fury by fleeing to Denmark, where he was well received and helped by the Danish king, Valdemar II., who sent him back