Vasadrottningen: En biografi över Katarina Stenbock, 1535–1621 by Karin Tegenborg Falkdalen (review)

Falkdalen’s Vasadrottningen (Gustav Vasa’s Queen) is one of a series of recent works that focuses on the lives of female members of the Vasa dynasty. This biography of Katarina Stenbock is clearly connected to the author’s major study Vasadöttrarna (The Daughters of Gustav Vasa; Historiska Media), which was published in 2010. It shares something of the spirit of Anna Carlstedt’s 2014 work Furstinnan och stjärntydaren: Berättelsen om tre renässansregenter och deras astrologer (The Queen and the Reader of the Stars: The Story of Three Renaissance Queens and their Astrologers; Gidlunds). All three works seek to shed light on a much neglected aspect of Swedish history—women. Falkdalen’s book makes a valuable contribution to the growing historiography in this field. The work will be of great interest to historians of early modern Sweden, and to historians of women in the period in particular, because it reveals the richness of primary source material recording the lives of women in the noble classes during this tumultuous period of Swedish history. Furthermore, it demonstrates real creativity in working with documentary sources, and through its creative approach to the material. At the same time, the book clearly illuminates the limits of the documentary evidence and the challenges that confront those who wish to study the lives of historical women. Unfortunately, Falkdalen’s approach largely ignores the lessons that we can learn about the lives of the privileged women of Katarina Stenbock’s century. Vasadrottningen is a book that both inspires and disappoints.

Karin Tegenborg Falkdalen holds a PhD in idéhistoria (intellectual history) and is employed as the chief archivist for the Jämtland County research archive. Her acumen as an archival researcher is evident in her work. She has done a marvelous job of discovering sources, and her book reveals a thorough knowledge of sixteenth-century documentary evidence. In fact, the primary sources provide the substance of Falkdalen’s work. The fourteen-page bibliography holds a preponderance of biographical works and monographs on Swedish history by Swedish authors. There are only about a dozen non-Swedish references, most of which deal with Elizabethan England. In some ways, this is not surprising. Falkdalen’s book is a biography, and she has clearly exploited the best sources available in order to construct a narrative account of Queen Katarina’s life. Yet this is precisely why the book is ultimately a disappointment. The book’s focus is too narrow, and the author misses the opportunity to consider the life and experiences of a Swedish queen relative to those of her female contemporaries throughout Europe.

Falkdalen begins her book with a prologue that is written as a kind of imaginary reconstruction of what Katarina Stenbock might have experienced the day that Gustav Vasa came to ask for her hand in marriage. It is a nice story. But it does not really tell us anything about the reality of that day. What it does reveal is the extent to which contemporary attitudes and expectations have been influenced by Disney and popular culture’s glossy, romanticized idealization of life as a princess.

It is true that the life of Queen Katarina does sound at moments like a fairy tale; as a young maiden, she woke to find a king with a wedding proposal on her doorstep. Falkdalen is clearly captivated by the story and its fairy tale quality. She exploits that quality to draw her readers into the story of a real-life, flesh-and-blood princess and ultimately shreds the fairy tale to depict instead a cold and rather messy reality. So far, so good. However, the author never develops any other thesis, and ends her work with an epilogue that essentially concludes that the life of a princess really was not as great as the fairy tales would have us believe. Falkdalen’s conclusions will surprise no one who has survived puberty, and it is unfortunate that this well-researched and...