Karine Alvsdatter waives the revenues of Giske to Lady Inger
DN 2/1114 · 1 August 1535 · Hammer
What the letter says
Vincens Lunge, knight and commander over Vardøhus and Jämtland, announces at Hamar on 1 August 1535 that he has mediated between his mother-in-law Lady Inger Ottesdatter and the maiden Karine Alvsdatter of Grefsheim. Inger had collected the revenues of Giske and the Giske estate until the lords' meeting in Bud two years earlier, where the Council of the Realm gave the estate to Karine as her rightful paternal inheritance. Karine now of her own free will waives to Inger and her children all the revenues Inger collected. In return Lunge promises to see to it that Inger hands over the rest of the Giske estate without a lawsuit.
The letter in modern English (excerpt)
I, Vincens Lunge, knight of Lungegården and commander over Vardøhus and Jämtland, acknowledge and make known by this my open letter and my own handwriting: In the year 1535 after God's birth, on the Sunday after St Olaf's Day (1 August), I was here at Hamar together with my dear wife and her sister Anne, Erik Ugerup's wife, to mediate between the honourable and well-born woman Lady Inger Ottesdatter and the honourable and well-born maiden Karine Alvsdatter of Grefsheim. The dispute between them concerned the revenues for some years of Giske and the Giske estate, which lies in the Northern Lands and in Norway's tributary lands. This estate was and is Maiden Karine's rightful paternal inheritance and property, but the said Lady Inger, my dear wife's mother, had nevertheless held it and collected the revenues until the lords' meeting in Bud two years ago. There Giske and the Giske estate, on the advice and mediation of the good lords of the Council of the Realm, were surrendered and delivered from Lady Inger Ottesdatter to Maiden Karine, who alone has right and claim to it, and no one else. Nevertheless the said Maiden Karine Alvsdatter has of her own free will and with a virtuous and loving heart, because Lady Inger is her close kinswoman (second cousin) [uncertain reading], and for the sake of such ties of blood, kinship, birth, goodwill and friendship, given and granted her kinswoman Lady Inger Ottesdatter and her children all the revenues and rents she has to this day collected from the estate of Giske and the Giske estate, without any exception. H
Original text (excerpt)
Jeg Vincencius Lunge ritther til Lungergordtt och høffuitzmand offwer Wordehwss och Jemptheland kendes och gør vitterligt met thette mitt obne breff och eigenn handschrefft at aar effter gudtz byrdtt mdxxxv søndagen nest æffter sanctj Olaui konnings dag war ieg her i Hammer met sampt mind kere hustruff och hyndes suster Aane Erich Wgerups at forhandle schullendes imellom erlig och welbyrdig qwinne ffrue Jngerdtt Ottes dotter och erlig och welbyrdig iomffru iomffru Karine Alfsdotter paa Greffsen
Background
After Knut Alvsson was killed in 1502 and declared an outlaw, the Giske estate was for many years disputed between different branches of the Tre Rosor family and other noble families. Lady Inger Ottesdatter of Austrått was the richest noblewoman in Norway, and Vincens Lunge and Nils Lykke were married to two of her daughters, so Lunge is mediating here in a dispute in which his own mother-in-law is a party. Karine Alvsdatter was an heir in the Tre Rosor family, and the lords' meeting in Bud in Romsdal in 1533 was a meeting of the Norwegian Council of the Realm at which the case was decided in her favour. The letter is a settlement with a promise: Karine gives up a money claim in order to avoid a new lawsuit and have the estate delivered. It was written in a turbulent time just before the Reformation, when the Council of the Realm was split between Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson and pro-Danish noblemen such as Lunge, who was himself killed in January 1536. The endorsement «Lord Niels Lykke's letter» suggests that the letter later lay among Nils Lykke's papers.