Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark

Biography

Ulrika Eleonora pawned her engagement ring during the war to buy food, medicine and linen for Swedish prisoners in Denmark. The Swedish king Charles XI, to whom she had been promised, was then an enemy of her country.

She was born on 11 September 1656 in Copenhagen, the daughter of King Frederick III of Denmark and Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg. She was brought up strictly, under her mother’s supervision: she learned languages and, it is reported, did well in drawing and painting. After her father’s death her brother Christian V became king.

The betrothal to Charles XI took place in 1675; it was announced on 13 July. On the Swedish side the match was conceived to keep Denmark from allying with Sweden’s enemies. Soon afterwards the Scanian War between Denmark and Sweden began, lasting from 1675 to 1679. In 1676 her brother broke off the engagement on her behalf, but she herself went on regarding herself as engaged. The Prince of Orange and Emperor Leopold I sought her hand, yet she refused any other match. She also took no part in the celebrations of Danish victories over Sweden. After the Peace of Lund the marriage contract was signed on 6 February 1680. Before she left, her brother returned the pawned jewels to her, the ring among them.

She reached Sweden on 4 May 1680, landing at Helsingborg. The wedding followed on 6 May at Skottorp Manor, hasty and modest: the king wanted to avoid the presence of the French ambassador, since relations with France were tense. She was crowned in Stockholm, in Storkyrkan, on 25 November 1680. She sent almost her entire Danish retinue home at once and handed the administration of her dower estates to the king’s officials. In all, seven children were born of the marriage, and three lived to adulthood, among them the future Charles XII.

At court she remained in the shadow of her mother-in-law, Hedvig Eleonora: the king always called his mother “the Queen” and his wife “My Wife”, and ambassadors visited the dowager first. In the summer of 1686 Ulrika Eleonora withdrew with her children and her own court to Uppsala Castle and returned only in the autumn, after persuasion. She once called her mother-in-law “the Devil of my marriage”.

Her calmest days were spent at the summer residence of Karlberg, near Stockholm, far from court. There she painted. She was interested in theatre and dance and was patron of the amateur theatre at court. In the winter of 1683–84, at her request, ladies of the court performed Racine’s “Iphigénie”, regarded as the first play in Sweden with an all-female cast. She had wished to take part herself, but pregnancy prevented it. No work by her hand is named in the sources, and we know little about her painting.

The king kept her out of politics. During the Great Reduction, the return to the crown of lands that had been given away to the nobility, she tried to speak for those deprived of their property, and Charles replied that he had not married her for her advice. She then helped in secret, from her own funds: she bought jewels sold by impoverished nobles and returned them to the owners or their relatives. In 1690 the king named her future regent, in case their son inherited the throne as a minor.

She is best known for her charity. The institutions she founded included the Drottninghuset (“Queen’s House”), a home for poor widows in Stockholm (1686); a school at Karlberg (1688) where orphan girls were taught to weave wall hangings; and a poorhouse on Kungsholmen. She paid for grain for regions struck by crop failure and famine: Finland in 1687, Estonia in 1688, Dalarna in 1691 and Ingria. She paid the medical bills of many people in the capital and supported disabled soldiers and converts to Protestantism from Judaism, Islam and Catholicism, especially women. In 1682 she charged Johan von Hoorn and Urban Hjärne with organising midwifery in Sweden; she did not live to see the work completed, but von Hoorn published the first Swedish book on obstetrics in 1697. By 1693 about 17,000 people were being supported by her. Doctors advised her to go to the German spas, and money was set aside, but she spent it on charity instead.

She died at Karlberg on 26 July 1693, having spent the winter in bed. She asked for a simple funeral and for its cost to be given to the poor; the king held a solemn funeral but gave the poor an equal sum. She was buried in the autumn of 1693 in Riddarholm Church. The king declared two years of mourning and, when it ended, refused to marry again.