Bridget of Sweden
Swedish nun, mystic, and saint (c.1303–1373)
Bridget of Sweden, OSsS (c. 1304 – 23 July 1373), also known as Birgitta Birgersdotter and Birgitta of Vadstena (Swedish: heliga Birgitta), was a Swedish Catholic mystic and the founder of the Bridgettines. Outside Sweden, she was also known as the Princess of Nericia. She was the mother of Catherine of Vadstena.
Bridget is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Catherine of Siena and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Bridget of Sweden is honoured in the calendar of saints of the Catholic and Evangelical-Lutheran Churches.
Biography
The most celebrated saint of Sweden, Bridget was the daughter of the knight Birger Persson of the family of Finsta, governor and lawspeaker of Uppland, and one of the richest landowners of the country, and his wife Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, a member of the so-called Lawspeaker branch of the Folkunga family. Through her mother, Bridget was related to the Swedish kings of her era.
She was born in 1304. The exact date of her birth is not recorded. In 1316, at the age of 13 she married Ulf Gudmarsson of the family of Ulvåsa, a noble and lawspeaker of Östergötland, to whom she bore eight children, four daughters and four sons.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q204996. VIAF identifies the subject as 51685861. The Library of Congress control number is n50044402. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1304, 1373 and 1316.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bridget of Sweden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.