Dalecarlian rebellions

Mutual reasons for all three rebellions were loss of support of Gustav I among the Dalecarlian peasantry because of the economic crisis, the increased royal power, and the unpopular Swedish Reformation.

The discontent was used by two Catholic priests, former Bishop Peder Jakobsson of Västerås, a follower of Sten Sture the Younger, and Knut Mickelsson, who opposed the inclinations of Lutheranism which the king had displayed as early as 1524, who stirred up the emotions against the king and for the Sture family in the province.

In the spring of 1525, the Dalecarlians held a meeting and wrote a letter in which they complained of the foreign bailiffs and the imprisonment of Sten Sture's widow Christina Gyllenstierna, and stated that they would renounce their fealty unless their demands were met.

In 1527, the continuing discontent over the economic crisis, a new tax on Lübeck, and the Swedish Reformation, which was launched that year, unleashed the second rebellion in Dalarna, centered around the so-called Daljunkern (The Youngster from Dalarna), who had come from Norway claiming to be Nils Stensson Sture, son of Sten Sture the Younger and Christina Gyllenstierna.

He summoned the Dalecarlians to a meeting, where he met them with an army, threatened them, fined them, extradited the bell tax with force, and arrested several of the leaders, Måns Nilsson, Anders Persson, and Ingel Hansson, and took them to the capital, where they were executed in early 1534.