Wrong Margaret

The "false Margarete" (* 1260, † 1301 in Bergen ) was a Norwegian who claimed the deceased as a child Scottish queen Margaret , Maid of Norway ( Virgin of Norway to be).

The Maid of Norway , daughter of the Norwegian King Erik II , was different from her home to Scotland near the Orkneys in 1290 . About ten years later, a woman who had traveled from Lübeck to the Norwegian port city of Bergen, Margarete, claimed to be Erik II's daughter. She was not killed on the voyage to Scotland, but was kidnapped and sold on the Orkneys by a high class woman who traveled with her, Ingeborg, wife of Thore Hakonsson. Eventually she came to Germany and got married there. In Bergen - in contrast to the local bishop and the authorities - many people believed her story, although it was already about 40 years old, while the real Maid of Norway would have been only 17 years old, and although Erik II had identified his daughter's body . Håkon V , who had succeeded his brother Erik II as King of Norway in 1299, had this woman sentenced to death as a cheater in a court case in 1301 and burned her at the stake on Nordnes in Bergen and beheaded her husband .

The gruesome death of the false Margaret aroused pity on many people who had actually taken for Erik's daughter. As a result, she was venerated as a martyr in Bergen for a while , which the bishop tried in vain to stop in 1320. Around 1370, a small church was built for her at her place of execution, which existed until the Reformation .

literature

• William Hunt : Margaret, the Maid of Norway . In: Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Supplementary volume 1901, pp. 139f.

Web links

• Articles on the Church