August Strindberg: Gustav Vasa (1899)

Måns Nilsson and his wife, polishing silver (opening of Act I)

[Image source: https://www.malmostadsteater.se/arkiv/storan-48-49/gustav-vasa . From a 1948-49 production at Malmö Stadsteater.]


A dark, wintry afternoon: four o'clock. The dalesmen gather at Måns Nilsson's house at Kopparberg. The king is coming to Kopparberg, but no-one knows why. The dalesmen supported him in the struggle against Kristian and the Danes; some of them are his personal friends. But they are an independent lot and haven't appreciated the heavy exactions (such as church bells) needed to satisfy the king's Lübeck paymasters. Some say (though this is quickly shushed) that perhaps they picked the wrong side; Kristian certainly made the Swedish nobles suffer, but Gustav makes the Swedish people suffer.

A knock at the door. It isn't the king, but his acting secretary, the reformer Olaus Petri. With him comes Herman Israel the Lübecker, who takes a keen interest in the silver on display. Olaus engages the dalesmen in small talk: How's the mining, how did you cope during the famine? One of the dalesmen is summoned to an interview with the king; then another. The atmosphere becomes increasingly tense. What's happening to our friends? And it becomes ever clearer that Olaus's unruffled chat is leading the dalesmen into making foolish concessions. Then a third summons...

OLAUS (goes to meet the MESSENGER, who whispers to him). Master Stig Larsson [the pastor]  is ordered to go to the King at once!
STIG. Ordered? Who gives orders here?
OLAUS. The King.
MÅNS (springing to his feet). Treachery!
OLAUS. Precisely, treachery and traitors! -- Go, Master, at once, or you'll have to ride bareback!
STIG. Hell!
OLAUS. To Hell! -- Begone!
(MÅNS NILSSON and ANDERS PERSSON rise and make for the door.)
MÅNS. Do you know who I am? that I am a free miner, a friend of the King?
OLAUS. Sit down, then, and be peaceable; if you are the King's friend there's been some mistake! Anders Persson and Måns Nilsson, sit down! No harm shall come to you, nor to anyone else who is innocent! Let the Master go, and don't get excited! What hint has there been of violence here, except from your own bad conscience?
STIG. True! We've done nothing wrong, and no-one has threatened us. -- Calm yourselves, good friends; I shall soon be back! (Goes out.)
MÅNS. You're right!
OLAUS. Throw a stick at the pack and . . .
ANDERS (to MÅNS). We made fools of ourselves! Just keep calm! (Aloud.) You see, Master, one grows suspicious as one gets older, especially when one has seen faith and promises broken one after the other. . . .
OLAUS. I think I see. In times like these, when people change masters as snakes change their skins, a kind of mental unsteadiness may easily arise, pardonable perhaps in the young, but unpardonable in the old and experienced!
MÅNS. One can't talk of old age in connection with the King. He's in the prime of life . . .
OLAUS. And therefore pardonable. . . .
MÅNS (to ANDERS PERSSON). It must be the devil himself!
ANDERS (to MASTER OLAUS). How long have we got to sit here waiting? And what are we waiting for?
OLAUS. For the King's orders, as you know.

A few minutes later, the messenger comes back. He throws three blood-stained coats onto the table.

(text from Gustav Vasa Act I, in C. D. Locock's translation)


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It's a stunning opening scene, an extraordinary way to begin a play about, as Strindberg claimed,  the only Swedish monarch he unreservedly admired (perhaps he was still in his Nietzsche phase). Not the least of its shocks is the presentation of Olaus Petri, transformed -- and yet not entirely transformed -- from the zealous youth of Strindberg's early play Master Olof. This Olaus (in defiance of historical chronology*) is perceptibly older, a hard-bitten servant of government with the cold eyes of a snake. But not without humanity, nor self-disgust at his own compromises. Strindberg's characters are convincingly many-sided, impossible to reduce to a label.

[*Olaus Petri's recantation and pardon (the basis of Act V of Master Olof) took place in 1540. The Bell rebellion in Dalarna (the basis of Act I of Gustav Vasa) took place seven years earlier, in 1533.]


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The next scene is the Lübeckers' office in Stockholm.

JAKOB [Jakob Israel, Herman's son] (coldly and slyly). I -- will -- come.
ERIK [Prince Erik, Gustav Vasa's son]. Thanks, friend! (Getting up.) This place really looks like a pawnbroker's!
JAKOB (sharply). Just what I meant before!
ERIK. Then we're agreed on that point at any rate! -- All right: this evening! Do you know Agda?
JAKOB (shortly). No!
ERIK (superciliously giving him two fingers to shake: JAKOB pretends not to notice it). Good-bye! -- Which way did the little pawnbrokers go? (JAKOB does not answer. Haughtily.) Good-bye, Baruch! -- Have you read the book of Baruch? (Goes towards the background, jingling the church vessels as he passes them.)

(from Act II Scene 1)

Erik is a bit unhinged, unfortunate, alienated: the kind of person who is often offensive and aggressive, yet gets forgiven because he's vulnerable and in a confused way intelligent. His sardonic reference to Baruch is typically overdetermined. It might refer to the Lübeckers' collecting of money and silver vessels (cf. Baruch 1:6-8) or perhaps to his "friend"'s name: "He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved" (Baruch 3:36 (KJV)).

In a later scene outside the office:

ERIK. ... Well, Agda or Magda; where's your pawnbroker to-day? (AGDA does not answer.) Do you know the Hansa people are in the habit of butchering little boys in there, and sending them to the Turkish swine?
AGDA. Is that true?
ERIK. Partly, I expect.

(from Act IV, Scene 1)

In Erik's typical scatter-gun offensive way, he seems to be invoking the "blood libel" stories that were a familiar component of medieval (and later) anti-Semitism. Well, the Lübeckers were unpopular foreigners in the Swedish capital, and their business was lending money. (When Jakob first appears, his head is bandaged, the result of an encounter with a street thug.) But Herman Israel (= Harmen Israhel on Wikipedia) was not a Jew: Lübeck, like other free cities in the Hanseatic League, had banned Jews centuries before.

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The surprising thing is that, after that grisly opening -- and further revelations about, e.g. Gustav's violence to Erik's late mother --, Strindberg does succeed in winning us to some empathy with the king.  One more extract:


(The KING has come in, reading a document. The QUEEN [Gustav's second wife, mother of Johan and Karl] goes towards him with a supplicating gesture.)
KING (hotly).Margareta, if you have any faith in me, cease trying to be a judge in this matter of State. I have investigated it for two years and have not yet come to any conclusion; how then could you understand the matter? -- Go in to the children! I have a word to say to Erik! (The QUEEN goes out.) If you could see yourself now, Erik, you would loathe yourself!
ERIK. I do that, anyhow!
KING. Mere bragging; if you loathed yourself as you are, you would change your ways.
ERIK. I can't remake myself.
KING. Have you tried?
ERIK. I have tried!
KING. Then it's the bad company you keep that works against your good intentions.
ERIK. Göran is no worse than his fellows; but he has the merit of seeing he's no better.
KING. Do you ever consider the fact that you will be King some day?
ERIK. If I do become King all the old bad habits will be forgotten.
KING. There you are wrong again. I have still to go about tidying up what I have spilt. However, if you're unwilling to obey your father as a son, you must do so as a subordinate.
ERIK. The heir to the throne is not a subject!
KING. That is why I said subordinate. All are subordinate to the King.
ERIK. Must one obey blindly?
KING. Yes, so long as you are blind, you mst obey blindly; when your eyes are opened you will obey with open eyes; but obey you shall! -- Wait till it's yours some day to command, and you'll see how much harder that is, and how full of responsibility!
ERIK (mockingly). Aha!
KING (angrily). Idiot! -- Go and wash the dirt off yourself and have your hair combed. Above all, wash that filthy mug of yours and don't go about making my rooms stink. Go! or you shall have a week in the tower to sleep off your debauch; and if that isn't enough you shall lose your ears, so that you can never wear a crown! Is this language you can understand?
ERIK. The law of succession . . .
KING. I arrange my successions as I please! Now you know! -- That's all! Get out!

(from Act III)


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Gustav Vasa is the first of Strindberg's later historical plays.* He began writing them in 1899, after his recovery from the Inferno period. He turned out the new history plays in quick succession, partly with the intention of establishing himself once for all as Sweden's national author.

[*Some sources say Folkungasagan was written before it, in 1898.]

It's taken me a little while to get accustomed to the way these later history plays go about things. Strindberg is as cavalier about accurate dates and details as Shakespeare was.  He isn't concerned with the elegant plotting of a well-made play. He shows us people talking in modern Swedish, he doesn't trouble himself with archaism or period trappings; he's not very interested in bringing us the flavour of a historical place and time, in the way that e.g. Scott is. At the same time, he does want to tell a story; backgrounds are filled in, with relish, when this arises naturally. The scenes are all dramatic, but not naturalistic. Typically there's some kind of conflict between the actors on stage, not necessarily an open or full-blooded one. There are no moral signposts; people who behave well at one time behave badly at another. The ruthless action of Gustav Vasa is just there. It's uncomfortable that characters we would like to sympathize with often have blood on their hands.

Despite this, Strindberg's hopes were realized, at any rate so far as Gustav Vasa was concerned. While his other late history plays are rather neglected, this one was enthusiastically embraced as a national drama suitable for "blue-yellow" (blå-gula)  occasions. The titanic figure of the King, in his very weaknesses, was a suitable symbol of a heroic past, and the play's wide-flung scenes gave glorious opportunities for a celebration of Merrie Sweden.  Only more recently has the play been seen to have the potential for quite other kinds of treatment.

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The images below are sourced from: https://www.malmostadsteater.se/arkiv/storan-70-71/gustav-vasa . They come from a production of Gustav Vasa at Malmö Stadsteater in 1970-1971.]

The king Gustav I (Gustav Vasa)

A drunk Prince Erik (right) quarrels with Jakob Israel; Erik's friend Göran Persson in the background (Act II, Scene 2)

Prince Erik is arrested (Act II, Scene 2)

Herman Israel and his son Jakob, with Gustav Vasa in the background (Act III)

Prince Erik "crowns" the flower-seller Karin (Act IV, Scene 1)

Agda talking to Prince Erik's Secretary Göran Persson (Act IV, Scene 1)

Olaus Petri in his study (right), with his son Reginald and wife Kristina (Act IV, Scene 2)

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"I took as my task, following my master Shakespeare, to depict people both in large and small [i.e. in great matters of state, and in intimate life], not to mince words, to let the history be in the background and to compress historical lengths of time,  in line with the modern theatre's demands to avoid the undramatic form of chronicles and historical narratives .... I've never committed undue violence to historical fidelity, where it concerned things that are common knowledge, because I dislike that way of fabricating historical data and facts. But to compress historical events in a distant period, after the great examples [of Shakespeare, etc], this I have always permitted myself."  (Öppna brev till Intima teatern)


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Strindberg's plays about Swedish history:

Mäster Olof (1872)
Gillets hemlighet (The Secret of the Guild) (1880)

Gustav Vasa (1899)
Erik XIV (1899)
Folkungasagan (The Saga of the Folkungs) (1899  -- written 1898?)
Gustav Adolf  (1900)
Engelbrekt (1901)
Kristina (1901)
Karl XII (1901)
Gustav III (1902)

A century ago it was a commonplace that Gustav Vasa was the best of the later histories, the others in differing degrees inferior. But that view has gradually shifted. Erik XIV, a brilliant play, has proved the most popular on mainland Europe and in Russia. Some claim Folkungasagan as one of the author's masterpieces. And each of the other plays now has its admirers, with perhaps the exception of Engelbrekt (though Edward S. Franchuk wrote about it at length in his hugely useful PhD thesis Symbolism in the works of August Strindberg, University of Glasgow 1989). 

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Joan Bulman, in her 1933 book Strindberg and Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Influence on Strindberg's Historical Drama, said that when it came to history plays Strindberg was Shakespeare's undisputed heir. It's an interesting thought.

Strindberg knew Shakespeare's plays well, and Shakespeare's influence is all over Strindberg's history enterprise: for example, the whole conception of a sequence of plays named after successive kings; the range of characters and settings; the mingling of solemnity and comedy. In the case of Gustav Vasa, Strindberg said that one of his models was the domestic scenes in Julius Caesar; you might also be reminded of Henry IV (e.g. in Gustav's interview with Erik, quoted above), or Henry V (Henry's resolute sentencing of Scroop, Cambridge and Grey, his erstwhile friends). Yet the effect is different too. Shakespeare's plays contain a lot of quiet normative signposts, persuading us in what light to regard the various characters and their actions. Strindberg largely eliminates those. His characters retain the capacity to do both good and evil, in the future as well as in the past. (To be fair, you might claim that this is also Shakespearean, if you think of Hamlet.)

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Vilhelm Moberg wrote:

The Swedish public's view of Gusta Vasa has been deeply influenced by Strindberg's play about this king. The finest of all Strindberg's historical plays, it is my belief that even historians have been swayed by it. The strong man who appears on the stage with a hammer in his hand had a certain basis in reality, and his utterances are cast in the authentic style of the king's own letters. It all sounds thoroughly genuine. Gustav, in his lifetime, may well have spoken just like this. But in one respect this kingly figure is utterly unhistorical. He thanks the All Highest for having punished him; and this is something utterly untypical of the real Gustav. In none of the sources are we told that he ever felt the least remorse for any of his actions, or regarded himself as deserving to be punished for them. None of his broken oaths, none of his sacred promises or solemn assurances, seem ever to have caused him the least twinge of conscience. And indeed on one occasion he expressly defended his actions when he wrote: 'Necessity knows (bryter - lit. 'breaks') no law; not the law of man and at times not even the law of God'. That is to say, he did not even acknowledge God as his judge or as having the right to punish him.

Even on his deathbed there was nothing of the remorseful penitent about Gustav. When his private chaplain and confessor Master Hans came to his death bed and required him to confess his sins, Gustav sent him packing.   ...

A History of the Swedish People, Volume Two translated by Paul Britten Austin (1973; original Swedish publication 1971)

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August Strindberg, guitarist

[Image source: https://www.wannart.com/ruhunu-kalemine-akitan-yazar-august-strindberg/ ]

Barley Bread, Bark Bread

In English, until recently, one of the main uses of the word corn was to talk about cereals without specifying them very distinctly. You still see this usage in "Corn Exchange", "cornfield", "cornflower", etc.

Understandably enough, corn sometimes came to mean the grain-crop that it usually designated. In other words, the commonest crop in the area: wheat in south-east Britain, or oats in the north west.

Because of our dwindling agricultural awareness, these older meanings of corn are now definitely secondary, compared to the primary meaning i.e. maize, as evinced by such everyday consumer terms as sweetcorn, popcorn, corn-on-the-cob, etc. And since maize itself is now a pretty common crop in the UK,  words like "cornfield" are becoming too ambiguous to use.

One thing I only became aware of this summer is that in Sweden the word korn often means barley! It obviously confused the hell out of Paul Britten Austin when he translated Vilhelm Moberg's A History of the Swedish People.  To understand the chapter about bread, you need to substitute "barley" for "corn", most of the time. 



In England "barley-bread" is a matter for historians. It was a common enough food in the Middle Ages, but nobody now remembers anyone eating it, so there is no cult of barley bread. It's a different matter in the north of Sweden, where "korn" (i.e. barley) was, and is, a frequent ingredient in hardbreads.

Moberg explains that barley was the original cereal crop in Sweden. Then oats arrived. Oats and barley were the only crops that reliably  ripened grain in the 90-day growing period of the north.  But further south it was possible to grow rye. Crispbread in the north, and fermented ryebread in the south, remain the regional specialities. (Wheat was a latecomer, because of its dependence on heavy soils that took many centuries of cultivation to build up.

Barley reappears in one of the more alarming local foods of Jämtland, where I was a couple of weeks ago. At any local feast, fete or market you will soon find the local crowd beginning to congregate excitedly around one particular stall, usually designated by a tatty cardboard sign on which appears a single word: KAMS.  Outsiders find it difficult to recognize this as food. A plate of kams consists of thick greyish slabs of what looks like unbaked dough, accompanied by a yellowish cheesy mess. The greyish stuff - the kams proper - are flat dumplings made largely of barley flour, which are cooked in boiling water mixed with whey; the accompaniment, at least when I had it in Pålgård, was two types of "mese", a strong-tasting whey by-product, very salty and a bit sweet (more about whey products here); also a dob of messmör and a bit of butter, which I think you are supposed to spread over the surface of the dumplings so it melts. The traditional accomaniment is a glass of milk. Kams is, or was, a typical subsistence food of Jämtland-Harjedalen-Trøndelag's transhumance dairy culture. It's the kind of thing the girls would live on while minding their herds in the isolated summer pastures. 

(photo by Lena, from her blog)

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My mother, a picky eater, disliked oat porridge (havregrynsgröt) but was fond of both barley porridge (kornmjölsgröt) and rye porridge (rågmjölsgröt).


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When I was 15, my Swedish grandmother gave me, as a birthday present, the first two volumes of Moberg's Min Svenska Historia (1970, 1971), which had been an immediate bestseller in Sweden and was swiftly translated into English (A History of The Swedish People - 1972, 1973).

I knew who Vilhelm Moberg was, of course. His famous novels The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, and The Last Letter Home were on the family bookshelves, though I never got round to reading them. But I did read the History, more than once. Lately I read it again, and a question that had vaguely bothered me for forty years suddenly came into focus: why hadn't my grandmother ever sent me the subsequent volumes? Once focused, it took only a minute to find out. Five days before that birthday present, Moberg had drowned himself in his local lake. He had suffered from depression for years. So far as I know he never drafted any of the projected two later volumes.

"Like all countrymen," Moberg wrote, "I have grown up eating bread as the most important part of my diet; I am accustomed to it and do not really feel I have had enough to eat unless I have had some bread with my meal." Maybe if Moberg had kept away from wheat (which he admits didn't go down as well with him as rye) he wouldn't have suffered such bad depressions. His generation didn't understand about these things.


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Per Anders Rudling has published a useful brief critique of Moberg's History. Its limitations, as history, are indeed fairly obvious. Nevertheless, Moberg's perspective as a radicalized working-class novelist brings some features of the past into stark clarity. 

In our days a local catastrophe to the harvest in one part of the country can be offset by aid from another; but in the Middle Ages, and for centuries to come, any part of the country where the harvest had failed simply starved, abandoned by all the others. The population was sparse, roads were almost non-existent and effective means of transport lacking. To shift any significant quantities of grain from one province to another was simply impossible. Two or three sacks of corn could be loaded onto a crude ox-cart, or a bag of it slung across a horse's back - but what help was that? (Part II, Chapter 3).

The main subject of this chapter is not barley bread, but bark bread.

Harvests failed all too often, winters could be exceptionally severe and prolonged, but even in times of famine there were always trees. So bark bread was a potential fallback (along with husks, straw, reindeer moss and other lichens).  

The part actually used was the cambium, the layer of growth tissue just under the outer bark. It was ground into a flour. The preferred trees were Scots pine (the most widespread), silver birch, aspen, and wych elm. This last was the best of all, both the easiest to prepare and the most nutritious, but it is a local species in Sweden and not found very far north.  

Of course bark bread was only partly edible; cellulose and lignin cannot be digested by humans. But it also contained sugars, a little protein, and plenty of minerals. Mixed, where possible, with other flours, it might keep you alive. The last great famines in Sweden were in the 1860s. Finns were still mixing bark meal with bread flour during World War II.