A massacre happened at this barn (see photo) at the 5. Sept. 1612.
116 Scottish prisoners was killed here.
In 1612 Denmark-Norway (union; Norway was ruled by the king of Denmark, but had some autonomy) and Sweden was at war, which wasn’t a very uncommon state these times.
Most of the wars were not fought between Norway and Sweden even though they share borders though, but the wars were more often fought other places in Europe, like what is now Germany.
At this time the king of Sweden was a military genius (Gustavus 2 Adolphus) and would lead Sweden to be a true Empire, but he would not ever invade Norway, although some attempts were made he would not afford a long guerrilla war in the Norwegian mountains.
However, in 1612 the Swedish king wanted some mercenaries, he had been promised 3000 Scottish mercenaries by king James of England (and Scotland) some time before. He sent a letter to remind the king of this fact but the ship was boarded by a Norwegian privateer, and the letter thrown overboard.
The officer on Andrew Ramsay was spared and let go in promise of forsaking his quest to collect mercenaries to the Swedish king, but once he was let go, he broke his promise and did this anyway.
When sending the Scottish mercenaries to Sweden, a group of 3-400 mercenaries came ashore in Norway and started the long marsh to Sweden.
Rumors of pillaging and rape done by the mercenaries spread through the land, and two local Sheriffs gathered Norwegian farmers to put up an ambush.
A force of around 500 Norwegian farmers set up and ambush when they knew which way the scots came, and set up roadblocks both ahead and behind them.
It must be stressed that Norwegians weren’t really that loyal to the Danish king, having just been ordered to fight the Swedes, which most of them didn’t even gather to do, and the ones who did, met up at a castle, drank all the beer and then left again without marching on the Swedes.
But now there was foreign troops within Norway’s own borders, and that rallied them.
As a side note here, Norway and Sweden can be argued to be the most militarized states in the whole of Europe, if not the West or perhaps even the world at the time.
Not to say their army was that big,
but unlike other states which hired professional armies, Norway and Sweden had to conscript peasants to be in the army.
That meant that during the 1700s such a high percent of the Norwegian population was in the army that it was thus the most militarized nation in the West.
And that also meant that the peasants that met ambushed these scottish mercenaries did have some training, and many of them had been to war before, and they were well armed with sabers, halberds, pikes and even some muskets and crossbows.
When the ambush happened we don’t really know that much of what happened, as the stories told by the Norwegians obviously are biased.
We do think that the scots had little chance, as the peasants could also throw rocks and spears at them from an elevated position next to the road. And on the other side was a river, so they were trapped and many were said do have drowned in the river when trying to flee, and those that made it ashore were quickly killed by Norwegians waiting for them there.
We know that 130 men were eventually taken prisoner.
And among these were the two officers Alexander Ramsay and George Sinclair.
We also know that the next day, the 5. Sept. 1612; at this barn now called the “scots barn”, 116 scots were killed in captivity.
That concludes this little story of tale i uncovered when researching the Danish-Norwegian Swedish war.
I hope it was enjoyable.
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Originally Posted by bizzarro
