Mikael Ranelius wrote: | ||
Not many, but some must have made their way to the Holy Land as crusaders. By the 12th century the Catholic Church had been established in most of Sweden (with its own archdiocese founded in Uppsala in 1164), and the Pope's call to the cross was proclaimed in Sweden just like elsewhere in western Christendom. We know that both Danes and Norwegians sent men to join the crusades, and a Swedish medieval historian, Dick Harrison, recently suggested in his book about Nordic crusaders that it's likely that at least some Swedes took part in these campaigns. Jan Guillou, the creator of Arn, was inspired by the anonymous founder of the church at Forshem, in Västergötland, Sweden. The church dates from the 12th century and is built in the honour of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This seems to suggest that the founder of the church had some connections to the Holy Land, perhaps a returning crusader. |
Random sidenote......
Its hardly an historic example, but Antonius Block, the Knight's character in Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) is supposed to be returning from the Crusades only to come home and find that Death (in the form of the Plague) has come before him. There's an existential Swedish crusader for ya. ;)