Margareta Clausdotter was a nun

Nun

A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...

 and was, from 1473 until her death, abbess

Abbess

An abbess is the female superior, or mother superior, of a community of nuns, often an abbey....

 of the Bridgettine Abbey of Vadstena

Vadstena Abbey

Vadstena Abbey was the motherhouse of the Bridgettine Order, situated on Lake Vättern, in the Diocese of Linköping, Sweden. The abbey started as one of the farms donated by the king, but the town of Vadstena grew up around it...

.

Margareta, who is said to have been from Söderköping

Söderköping

Söderköping is a locality and the seat of Söderköping Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden with 6,951 inhabitants in 2005. Söderköping is, despite its small population, for historical reasons normally still referred to as a city...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, and probably born in a family of German origin, participated in the process to get Saint Bridget's daughter Catherine canonized. She is best known for the chronicle she authored on the family of Saint Bridget (the impulse to write this probably came from the process over Catherine's sainthood), which includes some legends and stories not known from any other sources. Her chronicle influenced later historical and genealogical writers. One story, about "Bengt Lagman", the king's brother who marries a woman of humbler origins, "Sigrid the Beautiful", has been most famously retold in the play Bröllopet på Ulfåsa ("The Wedding at Ulvåsa") by Frans Hedberg and the music written for the play by August Söderman

August Söderman

August Söderman has traditionally been seen as the pre-eminent Swedish composer of the Romantic generation, known especially for his lieder and choral works, based on folk material, and for his theatre music, such as the incidental music to Ludvig Josephson's Marsk Stigs döttrar , 1866, or...

. The lagman (Lawspeaker

Lawspeaker

A lawspeaker is a unique Scandinavian legal office. It has its basis in a common Germanic oral tradition, where wise men were asked to recite the law, but it was only in Scandinavia that the function evolved into an office...

) intended by the story is Bengt Magnusson

Bengt Magnusson

-External links:...

(d. 1294), but the story for the most part disagrees with, or is at least not verified by, contemporary sources.