Ingeborg Eriksdottir of Norway

Ingeborg Eriksdottir
Duchess consort of Finland

Seal of Ingeborg.
Born 1297
Died 1357 (aged 59–60)
Spouse Waldemar, Duke of Finland
House House of Sverre
Father Eric II of Norway
Mother Isabel Bruce

Ingeborg Eriksdottir of Norway (Norwegian: Ingebjørg Eiriksdatter; 1297–1357) was a medieval Norwegian princess and by marriage a Swedish princess, Duchess of Uppland, Öland and Finland, with a seat in the regency government of her nephew, Magnus IV of Sweden.

Family

Ingeborg was the daughter of King Eric II of Norway and Isabel Bruce. Maternally, she was a niece of Robert the Bruce and first cousin of Marjorie Bruce. She and Marjorie were the same age, but never met. Ingeborg's half-sister, Margaret I of Scotland, died before Ingeborg was born.

She was probably named after her father's mother, also Ingeborg Eriksdotter, a Danish princess.

Life

Seal of her husband, Valdemar, Duke of Finland.

Her father, Eric II, died on 15 July 1299, when Ingeborg was one or two years old. He is remembered as a weak and inoffensive king who was mostly guided by his councillors, and was succeeded by his younger brother Haakon V of Norway, as he died without sons. Her mother never remarried.

In 1300, Ingeborg's mother arranged her three-year-old daughter's engagement to Jon Magnusson, Earl of Orkney (died 1311). The marriage never took place; it is unclear whether the engagement was called off or if he died before her coming of age.

In a 1312 double wedding in Oslo (another match arranged by her mother), Ingeborg married Prince Valdemar Magnusson of Sweden, Duke of Finland, while her younger cousin Ingeborg of Norway, the only legitimate daughter of King Haakon, married Prince Eric Magnusson of Sweden, Duke of Södermanland. Ingeborg Eriksdottir thus married the third son of King Magnus III of Sweden, while fifteen-year-old Ingeborg Haakonsdatter married Magnus' second son, and King Birger of Sweden became the brother-in-law of the two cousins Ingeborg.

Her dower included the island of Öland, whereby she was occasionally mentioned as Duchess of Öland. In 1316, she had a son who probably died young.

On the night between the tenth and eleventh of December 1317, her husband Valdemar and his brother Eric were arrested and chained during a call on their elder brother King Birger in Nyköping. At the imprisonment of her husband and brother-in-law, she and her cousin and sister-in-law, Ingeborg Håkansdotter, became the leaders of their spouses' followers. On 16 April 1318, "the two duchesses Ingeborg" made a treaty in Kalmar with the Danish duke Christoffer of Halland-Samsö and archbishop Esgar of Lund to free their husbands and not to make peace with the kings of Sweden and Denmark before they agreed to this, and the two duchesses promised to honour the promises they gave in return in the names of their husbands. Later the same year, their husbands were confirmed to have died. No one knows for certain how the two brothers died. They either starved to death or were murdered.

The "two Duchesses Ingeborg" are thus mentioned once in 1318 as acting for the government alongside Mats Kettilmundsson. It appears then as if Ingeborg had a seat at that time in the guardian government of her cousin Ingeborg's underage son, King Magnus, though there is no list of those seat members and no other evidence that she actually was on it. Her sister-in-law did remain a powerful politician for decades. Ingeborg Eriksdotter was styled Duchess of Öland from at least 1340, surviving her late husband long after his death and staying in Sweden until her own death.

Ancestry

References

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