The Myth of Saint Erik
Oh, those heathen Finns. They were minding their own business, hunting and fishing and worshiping their pagan gods. There had been some progress with metals and agriculture, but even the proudest Finn will admit that they tended to lag behind the more rapidly developing countries of the Medieval period (don’t worry, they catch up in a big way as we get closer to the Modern Age — they even get online slots before many of the rest of us!).
According to much-disputed legend, the good friends King Erik of Sweden and Bishop Henry of Uppsala (an Englishman by birth) decided that the “blind and evil heathen people of Finland” needed a firm hand to guide them out of their pagan ways. This became the so-called “First Crusade”, which was about as successful as most of the other Crusades, although much less historically verifiable.
The Finns, unsurprisingly, greeted this incursion by making a martyr out of Henry. Lalli, either an accused murderer or merely a victim of his wife’s lies, took exception to Henry’s activities and killed the Bishop with either an axe or a sword on the ice of Lake Köyliönjärvi. Henry remains an historical and religious icon of Finland despite never being officially canonized (or even completely verified to have existed).
Well, we don’t even really know that King Eric existed; however, we do know that the Catholic Church also considers him to be a saint — mostly on the basis of this rather tenuous legend. Whatever the case, someone’s bones are in Eric’s casket in Uppsala Cahedral, and those bones may show a neck wound to match the tale that the king was beheaded by an assassin after he returned triumphantly from Finland to Uppsala.
These were some brutal times, huh? Seems like all you had to do to be killed with an axe was invade a foreign country, call everyone who lives there offensive names, and demand that they submit to your rule and religion. Some people are so touchy…if they’d only had an online casino usa to calm their frazzled nerves…
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