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The Vasa Earrings

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Thanks to their French imperial heritage, the Bernadottes of Sweden have a jewelry collection that features pieces that date all the way back to the days of Napoleon and Josephine. But today’s jewels, the Vasa Earrings, have an even longer Swedish royal legacy.

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

The diamond earrings feature an elaborate briolette drop pendant within a diamond frame. Their design dates to the eighteenth century, to a time when the Swedish monarchy was in a precarious position. The earrings originally belonged to Queen Louise Ulrika of Sweden, wife of King Adolf Frederik (1710-1771). Adolf Fredrik belonged to the House of Holstein-Gottorp, but his son, King Gustaf III, was keen to exploit a family connection to an earlier Swedish royal dynasty, declaring himself a king of the House of Vasa. The earrings, therefore, are usually called the “Vasa Earrings.”

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The original House of Vasa reigned in Sweden from 1523–1654; Gustaf III’s revived version had an even shorter tenure on Sweden’s throne. His son, King Gustaf IV Adolf, was deposed in the Coup of 1809, following a disastrous war with Russia that resulted in the loss of a third of Sweden’s land. Exiled from Sweden, the Holstein-Gottorp/Vasa family took Louise Ulrika’s diamond earrings with them to their new home in Switzerland. Eventually, Sweden would elect a new king: Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, who was crowned King Carl XIV Johan in 1818.

Grand Ladies Site

But by the end of the nineteenth century, the Vasa Earrings would end up back in Swedish royal hands. In 1881, Gustaf IV Adolf’s granddaughter, Queen Carola of Saxony, was the owner of the earrings. Her cousin, Princess Victoria of Baden (pictured above), was engaged to be married to Crown Prince Gustaf of Sweden — a member of the country’s new ruling dynasty, the House of Bernadotte. Like Queen Carola, Princess Victoria was a member of the Holstein-Gottorp/Vasa family: she was a great-granddaughter of Gustaf IV Adolf through his daughter, Sophie. As a wedding present, Carola decided to bestow the Vasa Earrings on Victoria. It was a generous, symbolic gesture: through her marriage, Victoria would unite the Holstein-Gottorp/Vasa and Bernadotte lines, and she would be able to wear her family’s Swedish royal earrings, too.

One problem, though: Victoria didn’t have pierced ears! You’ll note that no portraits of her feature her wearing earrings. But she brought the earrings with her to Sweden anyway, and after her death, they were worn by her daughter-in-law, Queen Louise of Sweden. Louise shared them with other members of the family, too, including Princess Sibylla, the widow of Prince Gustaf Adolf. Above, Sibylla wears the earrings during the 1963 Nobel Prize Banquet.

SVEN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images

In recent years, the earrings have been worn and shared by several of the most senior ladies of the Swedish royal family. Above, Queen Silvia wears the earrings during a visit from the Emperor and Empress of Japan in 2007. She also shared the earrings with Princess Lilian and Princess Christina.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Crown Princess Victoria, the namesake of Victoria of Baden, has also been pictured wearing her ancestor’s earrings. During a 2008 state visit from Luxembourg, she demonstrated a second setting of the earrings above: the diamond frames can be worn without the central briolette pendants. Princess Madeleine has also worn the diamond frames alone.

Torsten Laursen/Getty Images

In fact, the earrings have become favorite pieces of Princess Madeleine over the past decade. Above, she wears them at her sister’s pre-wedding gala in June 2010, pairing them with her Modern Fringe Tiara, worn as a necklace. She wore the same two jewels — the tiara and the Vasa Earrings — at her own wedding in Stockholm in June 2013.

JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images

And she repeated the jewel combination for a third time in June 2015 at the wedding of her brother, Prince Carl Philip.

The Swedish Aquamarine Kokoshnik

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Princess Madeleine of Sweden wears the Aquamarine Kokoshnik
(Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

March is the month of the aquamarine, and we’ll be celebrating some of the grandest royal aquamarine tiaras each Saturday this month. We’re kicking things off with one of my very favorites: the aquamarine kokoshnik owned by Sweden’s Princess Margaretha.

Princess Madeleine of Sweden wears the tiara at the 2015 Nobel Prize Ceremony
(Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

It’s said that this tiara originally belonged to Margaretha’s grandmother, Margaret of Connaught, who was the first wife of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden. The tiara also has a coordinating aquamarine and diamond brooch. The set was supposedly a later addition to Margaret’s jewelry collection, not one of her wedding gifts. The maker of the tiara is unknown, although I see similarities in the diadem to pieces made by Koch, a German court jeweler. Both the tiara and the brooch feature absolutely enormous aquamarines; the tiara places delicate lattice-like diamond elements in between the large blue stones to form the traditional kokoshnik shape.

Princess Sibylla wears the tiara at her pre-wedding gala in 1932
(Wikimedia Commons)

We’re probably all familiar with the tragic story of Margaret of Connaught’s death, which led to the division of her jewels among her children. If this piece was indeed a part of her collection, it was inherited by her eldest son, Gustaf Adolf, who was expected one day to become king. His wife, Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, debuted the tiara at a ball ahead of their civil wedding in Coburg in 1932. Sibylla wore the aquamarines throughout her lifetime, even after the untimely death of her husband in a 1947 plane crash. She was the de facto first lady of Sweden following the death of Queen Louise, and she was regularly bedecked in jewels.

When Princess Sibylla died in 1972, the aquamarines were inherited by her eldest daughter, Princess Margaretha. She had worn the tiara even before Sibylla’s death; above, you can see her wearing the tiara in 1964. As a young woman, Margaretha wore the tiara on many occasions, including at the wedding of her youngest sister, Princess Christina, in 1974. Margaretha’s daughter, named Sibylla for her grandmother, also wore the heirloom tiara for her own wedding to Baron Cornelius von Dincklage in 1998.

Princess Margaretha wears the tiara at the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria in 2010
(Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

After the 1998 wedding, there was a long stretch of time where the aquamarines were not seen in public. Many feared that they had been sold. And then, in June 2010, Princess Margaretha unexpectedly appeared at the wedding of her niece, Crown Princess Victoria, wearing both the aquamarine tiara and the coordinating brooch.

The tiara was apparently a last-minute choice for Victoria’s wedding; in the press release sent out by the royal court detailing the history of the jewels worn by the king’s sister, Margaretha was noted as wearing the Baden Fringe Tiara. (She did eventually wear the fringe at a Swedish royal wedding — Princess Madeleine’s nuptials in 2013.) There were persistent rumors, however, the the tiara was sold — and that the buyer was Margaretha’s brother, the king. This theory was bolstered in 2014 when her sister, Princess Christina, wore the tiara at the representatives’ dinner in Stockholm.

Princess Margaretha wears the tiara and brooch at the wedding of Prince Carl Philip in 2015
(Ian Gavan/Getty Images)

However, Princess Christina has said publicly that Margaretha does still own the tiara but now keeps it in the vaults in Sweden with the rest of the Bernadotte jewels, where the rest of the members of the family have access to it. As Margaretha lives a quiet life in the English countryside, it certainly makes much more sense for other members of the family to get more use out of the piece. Margaretha only wears gala jewels these days when she visits Sweden, so the tiara is there for her to use when she wants, as she did for Prince Carl Philip’s wedding in June 2015.

Princess Madeleine wears the tiara at the 2015 Nobel Prize Ceremony
(Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

And Princess Madeleine has done just that: since December 2015, she has worn her aunt’s tiara at the Nobel Prize ceremony, at a tea party for sick children, in an official portrait, and for a state banquet.

Note: This is an updated version of an earlier post, with new text and images.

State Visit Jewels: Canadian Visit to Sweden

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FREDRIK SANDBERG/AFP/Getty Images

The Governor-General of Canada called on the King of Sweden for a state visit yesterday, and by evening, there were tiaras-a-plenty on display in Stockholm.

FREDRIK SANDBERG/AFP/Getty Images

For the official ceremony welcoming David and Sharon Johnston to the Royal Palace, Queen Silvia wore multi-colored pearls and a stack of bracelets.

Princess Sofia wore a rather interesting headpiece for the welcome ceremony — looks possibly like a Lynggaard creation?

For the state banquet, Silvia selected Queen Sofia’s Tiara — better known, of course, as the Nine Prong — with other diamonds from the family vaults.

To my utter delight, Princess Madeleine turned up once again in the Aquamarine Kokoshnik, pairing it with a long, dramatic pair of aquamarine drop earrings.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of the night came from Princess Sofia, who wore yet another family tiara for the first time. For the banquet, she wore the Napoleonic Amethyst Tiara, balancing the circlet atop her long hair. She’s also wearing the earrings made from Queen Josefina’s Diamond Stomacher.


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