One of the two rival dynasties that fought for the Swedish crown in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
Sverker I, a magnate of Östergötland, took the Swedish throne around 1130 amid the disorder that followed the Stenkil dynasty. He is credited with bringing the Cistercian order to Sweden, founding Alvastra Abbey in 1143, which became the burial church of his family.
His accession opened a century in which the crown passed back and forth between his descendants and those of his rival, the House of Erik.
For four generations the two families fought for the Swedish crown, and it became almost a custom that a king of one house would be succeeded by a king of the other. Sverker I was murdered; his son Charles VII took the throne after the Erik king Eric IX was killed; Charles in turn was killed by Eric IX’s son.
This alternation, unusual in medieval Europe, reflected a Swedish kingship still elective and shared between the great provinces of Götaland and Svealand.
Sverker II fought the Erik dynasty and fell in battle in 1210. His son John I, the last of the Sverkers, ruled peacefully but briefly and died without an heir in 1222.
With John’s death the Sverker line ended; the crown passed for a time to the House of Erik and then, through marriage, toward the rising House of Bjälbo.