Margrete of Nordnes in Cult, Chronicle, and Ballad

In 1290, Margrete, the 7-year-old daughter of King Eiríkr II Magnússon of Norway and Margaret, the daughter of King Alexander III of Scotland, begins a journey from Norway to Scotland. Unfortunately, Margrete, the heir presumptive to the throne of Scotland, dies en route, sparking a series of international and dynastic calamities. When, a decade later, a woman arrives in Bergen claiming to be the deceased princess, she is condemned to judicial immolation and burned at Nordnes. Surviving evidence strongly suggests that a popular cult developed around this Margrete of Nordnes (also called the ‘False Margrete’). This essay explores the extent to which the West Norse legacy of this so-called “folk saint” can be identified from what Jens Peter Schjødt calls the “jigsaw pieces” that history has bequeathed to us in a variety of narratives and historical documents.