A tale of three Margarets through song
Three notable Margarets appear in the historical records of Northwestern Europe in the late-thirteen/early-fourteenth century: a mother and daughter caught up in marital diplomacy between Scotland and Norway, plus a curious imposter with links to Germany. All three met untimely deaths with far-reaching consequences. This is the tale of three medieval Margarets and the songs they inspired.
Margaret of Scotland
Our first Margeret was born in 1261, daughter of King Alexander III of Scotland. At the age of 20, she was betrothed to King Eric II of Norway, although the Lanercost Chronicle reports that “the union was very distasteful to the maiden, as also to her relations and friends”.1
Medieval royal marriages, rarely for love, were convenient instruments of political and diplomatic power. Indeed, Margaret’s own mother — confusingly, for our purposes, a fourth Margaret — had been married off in haste to become Queen of Scotland age eleven by her own father, Henry III of England. Her daughter’s marriage was similarly sly; bound up in Eric II and Margaret of Scotland’s marriage treaty was the stipulation that, should Alexander III die without a direct heir, then Margaret and any potential children from the marriage would inherit the Kingdom of Scotland.2
On the 15th August, 1281, Margaret and her retinue sailed into Bergen, where she was married and crowned Queen of Norway. Her husband the King was only thirteen and seven years her junior.3 Thanks to a chance discovery of a lost manuscript in 1930s Sweden, we have the words and music for a hymn specially composed for the Bergen wedding that summer. The first verse (loosely translated from Latin) heralds the safe arrival of Margaret from across the sea:
From thee, O fairest Scotland, springs that light benign,
Which over Norway like a radiant dawn doth shine.
Breathe freely now once more, since God doth safely bring,
Across the perilous seas, the daughter of thy King.4
Rather fantastically, a recording of Margaret and Eric’s wedding hymn was made and released in 1991:5
Although the closing of the hymn wishes the king and his new queen a long marriage and “numerous offspring”, Margaret’s new life in Bergen was tragically short. She died in or shortly after childbirth in 1283, leaving behind Eric (a widower age 15), and a baby daughter and namesake Margaret, the second Margaret of this tale.
Young Margaret
This daughter (we’ll call her young Margaret) was soon to make her own journey across the North Sea, in the reverse direction, age seven. Like her mother’s marriage, young Margaret’s voyage has inspired its own music and song, this time some nine centuries after the actual events. A song which charts the young Margaret’s departure from Norway for Scotland was released by Orkney-based folk outfit Saltfishforty in 2010 — a fittingly local tribute to the young girl as we shall see. The song charts how Margaret leaves Norway and her father for foreign shores:
Farewell tae your father, the king on the shore.
You maiden of Norway, you'll see him no more.
A nation awaiting a queen tae command.
Leaving for Scotland, a ring on your hand.6
The year is 1290, and the “nation awaiting a queen tae command” is Scotland. Four years earlier, the kingdom across the sea from Norway had unexpectedly lost their king — young Margaret’s grandfather, Alexander III — in a freak accident involving a horse and a cliff. In the absence of any direct heirs, young Margaret had become heir presumptive as per her parent’s marriage treaty. In the meantime, six guardians ruled in her place, though the Scots were increasingly impatient to inaugurate their new queen on Scottish soil.
Preparations were made in haste to get young Margaret to Scotland, with Edward I of England himself keenly involved (Margaret was expected to marry his son after arrival from Norway, hence the “ring on her hand” in the song). Finally, in the Autumn of 1290, Margaret was despatched to Orkney — likely a savvy move on her Norwegian father’s part, intending the final negotiations to be conducted on what was then Norwegian soil.7
And yet, those negotiations were never to take place. By early October, rumours of young Margaret’s tragic death upon arrival in Orkney had reached the Bishop of St Andrews, who notified Edward I south of the border that “our lady the queen” was dead, with Scotland “disturbed and the community distracted”.8
Margaret’s death led to a period of disputed succession in the Scottish Kingdom, and ultimately to a series of Anglo-Scottish wars.9 Such promise had ended in calamity all round.
False Margaret
As if two Margarets were not enough, we cannot leave this story behind without mentioning the third. Ten years after young Margaret’s death in Orkney, a woman and her husband arrive in Bergen from Lübeck in Germany. Nothing particularly remarkable here — German visitors were common in this Norwegian port, a key trading post for the Hanseatic League. Except that this woman claimed to be the young Margaret, alive and well, and back in her home city.
Many things didn’t add up. For one, King Erik had personally ensured back in 1290 that young Margaret was buried besides her mother in Bergen’s cathedral and, rather conveniently, had himself passed away only one year before this “False” Margaret’s appearance in his city.10 For another, the women was reported to have been “grey-haired and white in the head,” while young Margaret would only have been seventeen had she survived.11
One year after their arrival, false Margaret was burned on a pyre and her husband beheaded. Nevertheless, a local saint cult developed around the false Margaret, and a small church was constructed on or near the location of her execution in Nordnes. Locals came to worship the impersonator who, like the real young Margaret and her mother before her, came to inspire her own songs in the Norwegian and Faroese ballad traditions.12
History and song
Songs, as we know, do not care so much for the finer details, making for hazardous guides to history. And yet they resound through the decades and centuries, bringing stories to each new generation. A popular Scottish ballad, Sir Patrick Spens, first recorded in writing in 1765 and preserved in multiple versions, tells of a Scottish mariner appointed by an (unnamed) King of Scotland to sail to Norway to bring the king’s daughter home. If this all sounds rather familiar, Sir Walter Scott, no less, related the ballad to Margaret of Scotland’s journey to Norway, and her daughter’s ill-fated trip back across the sea some years later.13 The ballad endures and remains a regular on the contemporary folk scene in Scotland and beyond — here’s a rather cool version from 2017 by Denmark-based band Basco:
The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346. Trans. Sir Herbet Maxwell. Glasgow: James Maclehost and Sons, 1913, p. 22.
Knut Helle, Norwegian foreign policy and the Maid of Norway. The Scottish Historical Review 69(188), 1990, pp. 142-156.
Knut Helle, Norwegian foreign policy and the Maid of Norway. The Scottish Historical Review 69(188), 1990, pp. 142-156.
John Beveridge, Two Scottish thirteenth-century songs with the original melodies, recently discovered in Sweden. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 73, 1939, pp. 276–288.
For the connoisseur, sleeve notes, with the full latin text and a translation, are available on pages 12–13 here.
Michael Prestwich, Edward I and the Maid of Norway. The Scottish Historical Review 69(188), 1990, pp. 157-174.
As cited in: N. Reid, Margaret “Maid of Norway” and Scottish queenship. Reading Medieval Studies 8, 1982, pp. 75-96.
David J. Breeze, Introduction. The Scottish Historical Review 69(188), 1990, pp. 117-119.
Barbara E. Crawford, North Sea kingdoms, North Sea bureaucrat: a royal official who transcended national boundaries. The Scottish Historical Review 69(188), 1990, pp. 175-184.
Stephen A. Mitchell, Margrete of Nordnes in cult, chronicle, and ballad. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 74, 2022, pp. 262-286.
Stephen A. Mitchell, Margrete of Nordnes in cult, chronicle, and ballad. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 74, 2022, pp. 262-286.
As cited in: Donna Heddle, Stormy Crossings? Scots-Scandinavian balladic synergies. Journal of the North Atlantic 4, 2013, pp. 161-169.
Really enjoyed this! The bishop's letter to Edward I about poor Margaret in the Orkneys is one of the exhibits at the British Library's new Medieval Women exhibition.