Last of the Brakes

Many a Swede mourned last week the passing of Magnus, last of the Counts of Brahe. To honor properly the total extinction of a great name three Swedish dignitaries in funeral frock coats and toppers climbed into a teetering rowboat and rowed out to the middle of a lake.

For half a millennium the Kings of Sweden have been loyally served by the House of Brahe. Per Brahe, third of the Swedish Brahes, married a sister of King Gustaf Vasa, "father of modern Sweden,'' in the early 16th century. His grandson, Per Brahe the Younger was Governor General of Finland. In 1632 Nils Brahe, of the "Blue Brigade," died with King Gustavus Adolphus in the Battle of Luetzen.

Magnus, last of the Counts of Brahe, died at his castle of Skokloster. To his funeral came Sweden's King, Crown Prince, Prime Minister and a delegation of Swedish nobles. With bowed heads nobles and peasants stood in the ancient chapel of Castle Skokloster while Archbishop Soederblom of Stockholm read the funeral service. Came a pause. Then up to the coffin strode Sweden's brawny Master of Heraldry. With a dramatic gesture he seized the ancient black-winged wooden escutcheon of the Brahe family, broke it in two across the coffin as a sign that no Swede will ever bear those arms again. Last to leave the crypt was Archbishop Soederblom. He locked for the last time the ancient iron doors on the last of the Brahes.*

Then came the most important part of the ceremony. Clutching the ancient key in his black-cotton-gloved hand, Archbishop Soederblom walked to the edge of the nearby lake, stepped gingerly in the stern-sheets of the very small rowboat and sat down next to Count Magnus' nephew, Baron Friedrich von Essen (no Brahe, but heir to the Brahe estates). The silk-hatted, saturnine Majordomo of Castle Skokloster took the oars. While Sweden's King watched from the shore, Bishop, Baron and Majordomo rowed to the middle of the lake and plop went the key.

*More ancient Scandinavians would have laid the dead noble, with his arms and funeral trappings, upon a funeral barge which then would have been fired, set adrift.

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