Jens Tillufssøn Bjelke
Norwegian noble
Jens Tillufssøn Bjelke (died in Copenhagen, 14 October 1559) was a Danish-Norwegian nobleman and a feudal lord of Jemtland, Norway, was originally from Danish Skåne (now Swedish). Jens Tillufssøn Bjelke was one of several notable Danes who acquired land, resided permanently in Norway, became thoroughly Norwegian and founded new Norwegian noble families, which replaced the old nobility of the first rank. He was the grandfather of Chancellor Jens Ågessøn Bjelke and great-grandfather of Governor Jorgen Bjelke.
Up and coming
The first recorded mention of Jens indicates that he was a secretary for the bishop in then-Danish Lund in 1534. He came to Norway in 1537 in Christoffer Huitfeldt’s service, when Lutheran Protestantism was being promoted in the Trondheim region. During the Reformation, Nidarholm Abbey on the island of Munkholmen, was the stronghold of Olav Engelbrektsson, the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Nidaros. Bjelke served in the fleet led by Jens Splid which besieged Archbishop Engelbrektsson’s men at Nidarholm in 1537; they were forced to surrender. Bjelke was awarded the Abbey and its property as compensation for his services. He exchanged Munkholmen for Tautra island; from there he served as the feudal overlord of Jemtland, on the Norwegian-Swedish border beginning in 1542 and continuing until his death.
Personal life
His parents were Thilluf Josefsson of Gyllarp and Gunhild Ovesdatter Bing.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6179855. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1559, 1534, 1537 and 1542.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jens Tillufssøn Bjelke” 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.