Note 1 — ACT I

Peder Jacobsson Sunnanväder, bishop at Vesterås, and his archdeacon, Master Knut, both members of the old Catholic clergy, tried to raise the Dalecarlians against the King in 1524-5, when his hold on the new throne was still very precarious. The False Sture was a young Dalecarlian named John Hansson, who had acquired gentle manners as a servant in noble houses and who posed as the natural son of Sten Sture the Younger, "National Director" of Sweden until 1520. This pretender, who headed another Dalecarlian uprising in 1527, figures also in Ibsen's early historical drama, "Lady Inger." The taking of the church-bells mentioned by Mons Nilsson's wife took place in 1531 and resulted in the killing of several of the King's representatives by the Dalecarlians.