King of Sweden (1222–1229, 1234–1250), the last king of the House of Erik, whose reign was dominated by the powerful jarls — above all Birger Jarl — who succeeded him in power.
Eric XI Eriksson, nicknamed "the Lisp and Lame" for his infirmities, was king of Sweden from 1222 to 1250, with an interruption when he was briefly deposed. The son of Erik Knutsson, he was the last king of the House of Erik, and his long but weak reign saw real power pass increasingly into the hands of the great jarls.
Deposed by a rival for a few years in the late 1220s and restored in 1234, Eric ruled thereafter under the growing dominance of his brother-in-law Birger Jarl, who governed the kingdom in all but name. When Eric died childless in 1250, the male lines of both old royal houses were spent, and the crown passed to Birger Jarl's son, founding a new dynasty.
Eric was born in 1216, the posthumous or infant son of King Erik Knutsson, who died that same year. The throne first went to the Sverker king John I, and only on John's death in 1222 did the child Eric succeed, under the guidance of regents and magnates. His bynames, "the Lisp and Lame", record the physical weaknesses that, together with his youth, made him a king easily overshadowed.
Eric XI is remembered as a gentle, pious, and physically weak king, more a figurehead than a ruler, around whom stronger men contended for control. His speech impediment and lameness became his defining nickname, and the sources present him as a mild and ineffective monarch, overshadowed first by rival claimants and then decisively by his formidable brother-in-law Birger Jarl.
It is a measure of his weakness that the great events of his reign — the consolidation of royal government, the crusade into Finland, the crushing of rebellious magnates at Sparrsätra — were the work of Birger Jarl rather than of the king himself. Eric appears as an amiable but powerless ruler, the last of an exhausted dynasty, whose chief historical role was to preside, harmlessly, over the transfer of real power to the house that would replace his own.
Eric's reign was troubled from the start by the old feud and by baronial revolt. In 1229 he was defeated and driven into exile in Denmark by a rebel, Knut Långe, who held the throne until his death, after which Eric was restored in 1234. From then on the dominant figure was Birger Jarl, who married Eric's sister and, as jarl, effectively ruled the kingdom.
Under Birger's direction the crown grew stronger: rebellious magnates were crushed at the Battle of Sparrsätra, royal law was extended, and a crusade carried Swedish power into Finland. But these were the achievements of the jarl, not the king, and Eric remained a shadow at the centre of his own reign.
Eric XI died on 2 February 1250, without children. With him the House of Erik came to an end, as the House of Sverker had before it. By prior arrangement, and by the power of Birger Jarl, the crown passed to Birger's young son Valdemar.
Eric XI is remembered as the last king of the House of Erik and as the weak monarch under whom power passed decisively to the jarls. His reign, dominated by Birger Jarl, ended the century-long alternation of the crown between the houses of Sverker and Erik: on his death the old royal lines were extinct, and the Bjälbo (Folkung) dynasty of Birger Jarl's descendants took the throne, opening a new and more centralised age in Swedish history.