Gustav Vasa
Gustav Vasa escaped from a Danish hostage-ship, raised the Dalecarlian miners against the king who had beheaded his father in the square at Stockholm, was elected king of Sweden in 1523 at twenty-seven, and in thirty-seven years took the church's land, made the crown hereditary and built the state that his grandson would take into Germany. He was born in 1496 into a noble family of the party that wanted Sweden out of the union with Denmark, was given as a hostage to Christian II in 1518 and escaped from Denmark disguised as a drover, and was in hiding when Christian, crowned in Stockholm in November 1520, had eighty-two nobles and bishops executed in the great square, his father and brother-in-law among them. The stories of his winter flight through Dalarna on skis are the national epic and mostly later. The miners of Dalarna took him up in January 1521, the towns and provinces followed as Danish rule became intolerable, and with ships hired from Lübeck on credit he took Stockholm in June 1523, the estates at Strängnäs having elected him king on 6 June; the Kalmar Union of the three kingdoms was over after a hundred and twenty-six years. He owed Lübeck money and the church had it. At the diet of Västerås in 1527 he threatened to abdicate unless the estates let him take the bishops' castles and the monasteries' surplus, and they did, which made the Swedish Reformation a matter of property first and of Luther second; the brothers Petri translated the Bible and the mass, and the last Catholic archbishop went to Rome. He crushed four risings, the Dalecarlians' among them, hanged the leaders and read the provinces long letters of reproach. The administration he built with German clerks counted every farm; the fleet and the army he built were his own; and at Västerås in 1544 the estates made the crown hereditary in his sons, which no Swedish king had had. He married three times, had ten children, and died in September 1560 leaving the kingdom to Eric XIV and duchies to the others, which they fought over. The day of his entry into Stockholm is Sweden's national day.
- Lived: 1496 CE – 1560 CE
- Nationality: Swedish
- Roles: king, monarch, founder
