Jarl of Sweden (to 1248), the chief magnate and royal deputy of the realm under Eric XI, and the immediate predecessor in that office of his kinsman Birger Jarl.
Ulf Fase was jarl of Sweden — the highest office in the realm below the king — under Eric XI in the first half of the thirteenth century. A leading member of the powerful Bjälbo family, he served as the chief magnate and effective deputy of a weak king, in the years when the jarls were rising to dominate Swedish government.
He is remembered above all as the immediate predecessor of his far more famous kinsman, Birger Jarl, who succeeded him in the office on his death in 1248 and went on to become the true master of Sweden and founder of a royal dynasty.
Ulf was born around 1195 into the Bjälbo family, one of the greatest noble houses of Sweden, which supplied the realm with its jarls. He rose to that office — the jarl, or earl, being the king's chief officer and commander — during the reign of the weak king Eric XI, at a time when royal authority was faltering and the great magnates were the real powers in the land.
Ulf Fase is a shadowy figure, recorded chiefly as a name in the office of jarl and as a forerunner of Birger. The sources preserve little of his personality, and he is overshadowed almost entirely by the towering reputation of his successor and kinsman.
What his career represents, more than any individual traits, is the growing power of the office he held. As jarl under an ineffective king, Ulf embodied the shift of real authority from the enfeebled royal houses to the great magnate families, above all his own Bjälbo kin. He was, in effect, the immediate forerunner of the arrangement by which Birger Jarl would rule Sweden outright — a capable royal deputy in an age when the deputy was becoming more powerful than the king.
As jarl, Ulf Fase governed and campaigned on behalf of King Eric XI, holding together the administration and defence of a kingdom whose monarch was weak and whose politics were still shadowed by the old dynastic feuds. He led armies and exercised the wide authority that the office of jarl had come to carry.
His tenure prepared the ground for what followed. When Ulf died in 1248, the office — and with it effective control of the kingdom — passed to his kinsman Birger, under whom the jarlship would reach the height of its power before being abolished.
Ulf Fase died in 1248. King Eric XI appointed Birger, of the same Bjälbo family, as the new jarl — a choice that would prove momentous, for Birger Jarl would soon dominate Sweden entirely and place his own son on the throne.
Ulf Fase is remembered as the jarl before Birger Jarl — the last holder of the office in its older form, before his successor transformed it into the effective mastery of the kingdom. His career marks the point at which the jarls of the Bjälbo family were poised to eclipse the ancient royal houses of Sverker and Erik and to found, in Birger's line, a new Swedish dynasty.