At midsummer 1434, the peasant-miners of Dalarna burned a royal fortress in the forests of central Sweden. Within months, two dozen castles lay in ashes, a bishop had been dragged by the collar before the council of the realm, and Eric of Pomerania, king of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, found himself besieged in his own capital.

Their leader was Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, a minor nobleman and mine owner who had carried his neighbours' grievances to the royal court in Copenhagen, been dismissed, and gone home to raise an army. Drawing on chronicles, charters, and five centuries of scholarship, this sweeping narrative follows the rebellion from the silent iron quays of Lake Mälaren to the assembly at Arboga, the winter march into Danish Scania, and the lonely island on Lake Hjälmaren where Engelbrekt was cut down with an axe.

It is a story of salt and silver, of Hanseatic blockades and foreign bailiffs, of peasants who broke a king and lords who took the prize. It is also the story of a legend that made Engelbrekt, in turn, a saint, a national hero, and a democratic icon.

What really happened in the rebellion that cracked the Kalmar Union, and who truly won it?