King Valdemar and the Slaughter of the Farmers

Gotland is an island that lies just ninety kilometres from the Swedish mainland, and for many centuries it played a dominant role in trade between Europe and Russia. Its walled town of Visby had been a member of the Hanseatic League since 1280.

This league protected the economic interests of all cities within its membership along trade routes and each city had its own legal system and military force. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the town had encroached into rural areas, this fact and its membership in the Hanseatic League had separated the city from the rest of the island and this had caused much antagonism between the town dwellers and those who lived in the countryside.

The walled town of Visby as it is today.

Within this walled town there were over two hundred warehouses and homes of rich merchants, but outside the farming community was also thriving and there had been an increase in wealth too which had resulted in the building of over ninety stone churches and medieval houses. Despite Visby's self-contained importance, its inhabitants felt threatened by those outside its walls, so much so that its massive curtain wall was strengthened and heightened. It is easy to see that this fine curtain wall, built in the middle of the thirteenth century in defence against invaders from the outside, was becoming more than just defence from those who crossed the Baltic Sea.

 By 1356, Visby had become less important within the Hanseatic community and this had not gone unnoticed by King Valdemar of Denmark who had seen the Hanseatic League become increasingly powerful within his own country, angry that he had no control or any say within the trade route it protected, Valdemar made his way to Gotland in the summer of 1361 with an army and landed on the west coast of Gotland on the 27th of July. 

Ajmund's bridge marks the area where farmers tired to stop Valdemar's invading army.

On landing, the Danish forces met with little resistance, but by the second day, a local force arrived at Fjale Myr, an area of marshland to do battle with the invaders. This encounter would later be known as the Battle of Masterby and it is thought that eight hundred local farmers died here. 
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By the 27th the army of Valdemar arrived outside the city walls of Visby and it was here that the main attack on the people of Gotland took place. Even with some support from their Estonian neighbours, the badly armed local men were defeated by Valdemar's elite force of only one hundred men. The question that must be asked here is, and remembering Visby's attitude towards the community outside its walls, did its forces make any attempt to support these men or did they watch from the ramparts as the people of Gotland were slaughtered?
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By the end of the battle, it is thought that nearly two thousand people met their death at the hands of only one hundred men who later went on to kill all those who were injured or dying. 

The dead were buried in five mass graves. This was a dreadful loss of Swedish lives, a tragedy in its own right, but even more so as it came only eleven years after the Black Death struck Sweden. In 1905 the first of these mass graves were excavated and between 1909 and 1928 two more were opened resulting in the finding of over one thousand bodies, it is thought that there are many more still within these graves that are, at present, inaccessible.

A twentieth century tapestry depicting the Battle of Visby.

 It never ceases to shock me when I read about the injuries men who fought in battles inflicted on each other, but the men defending what was theirs were farmers, they were not specially trained armoured knights and their injuries were horrific. This was not a battle, it was a massacre. What the archaeologists found was that these people were not able to defend or attack and there is no evidence of help coming from within the walls of Visby, it seems then that inhabitants of Visby did indeed stand and watch as their own people meet a dreadful death.

Riveted mail coif taken from a mass grave and the skull of either Estonian supporter or a Danish warrior.

 The majority of the wounds found on the remains of the men of Gotland were the result of cutting weapons such as swords and axes, followed closely by the use of piercing weapons such as arrows, lances, and the use of what we know as the Morning Star, a heavy wooden ball studded with metal spikes and attached to a short handle with a chain, these were used against head and shoulders of the farmers from above. Some of the remains had crushing injuries from the mace that was used, as previously mentioned, to finish off the wounded. One poor man, seen below, died from being hit with bodkin arrow points that had penetrated the skull, later two holes were hammered into his head that almost split it in half. Investigations into this battle eventually found that one-third of Gotland's army was made up of children, elderly men, and those who were disabled. 

Skull with bodkin arrow points.

 King Valdemar saw to it that all of Gotland's churches were stripped of their valuables and taken back to Denmark, the king even added the title King of Gotland to his name, but his actions at Visby did not go unpunished by the Hanseatic League.  Eventually, they forced Valdemar and his son-in-law, who was King of Norway, to grant the League over ten percent of the profits from Danish trade enabling them to gain a 'political monopoly' in Scandinavia. And what of Visby itself? By the fifteenth century, the town was continually involved in battles between the Danes and Sweden's one time king, Eric of Pomerania who had made Visby his home and headquarters in his attempts to claim what was rightfully his. By the eighteenth century, Gotland had returned to Swedish rule. 

King Valdemar of Denmark