To the Folkung period belongs one of the most remarkable and renowned of Swedish women, herself, on her mother’s side, a Folkung, _St. Birgitta_, the daughter of the legislator and first justice of Upland, Birger Persson. Her parents were both pious and devoted to ascetic practices. As a child she had visions, the holy Mary appearing to her. When thirteen years of age she was married to Ulf Gumundsson, later justice of Nerike, also a pious man, with whom she made a pilgrimage to Spain. Birgitta lost her husband shortly afterward. At the Swedish court, where she was the highest functionary of Queen Blanche, she had seen political life at close range, gathering a deep and strong indignation against the mighty and powerful in the world. Her husband’s death moved her deeply, and the religious mysticism of her youth now burst forth with increased strength, her visions becoming numerous and important. That she believed in them herself there is no doubt, and she made the world believe her. At first she hurled admonitions and curses against King Magnus and his court; but the wretchedness of the whole world attracted her to its spiritual centre, Rome, where she lived for twenty-three years in continual and open protest against the vices of the popes and priests. She died in Rome, in 1373, at the age of seventy, after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, seeing the two great ambitions of her life fulfilled: the pope returning to Rome from Avignon, and her creation, the order of St. Salvator, sanctioned by the pope. Birgitta was canonized by the pope in 1391, through the influence of Queen Margaret. Birgitta was the greatest political-poetic genius of the mediæval North. Her revelations fill eight volumes. She wrote them in Swedish, and had a priest translate them into Latin. Some of her original Swedish work is preserved. Birgitta appears to have thought in artistic images, and these images are of plastic form, often of consummate beauty, sometimes witty, sometimes avowedly comic, always effective. The melancholy charm of Sweden’s nature suffuses all her writings and renders to her peculiar mediæval mysticism a national temperament. From Swedish sceneries and animal life she borrows her most beautiful images.