Legend of Princess Alvilda - a female pirate

Hi everybody and welcome! 

It's Louise here with you today.

This week our theme is "Once upon a time" and that is just a lucky strike isn't it?

I seem to have been telling stories for a while now ;) 

I immediately knew I wanted to make a somewhat cool card because I had already chosen my fairytale.

It's the legend of Princess Alvilda. I doubt that you have heard of her.

As the Pirates of the Caribbean movie was launched I watched it just because Johnny Depp was starring. Okay, so come on - so did you right?! ;) And then I was soooo sold! That movie is like the bestest...ever ;) Johnny isn't the only one doing an awesome job portraying his character, so is Kiera Knightley. I must admit I had no idea there actually were female pirates so I started searching and they weren't many of course. BUT there were some and o boy! All texts about these woman said they were some of our first feminists. Alvilda was a viking princess whom was known to defied every man who crossed her path. She immediately fascinated me as I live in the county she did once here in Sweden. 

Most historians agree that Alvilda did exist once however the stories about her has been proven to be somewhat more of a fairytale. 

I found a text about Alvilda in a book written by Anne Wallace Sharp "Daring female pirates" as I was looking into this and of course I had to share a short version of the legend with you all.  

Alvilda's father was the king of Gotland and she was his only daughter. Once she became of age he locked her up in the tower of their castle! There she was guarded by poisonous snakes and lizards. The first man to get past these animals alive to ask for Alvilda's hand was the only one worthy enough the king thought. However he had also stated Alvilda had to agree to marry. It's not known how many men died trying to get to Alvilda. The only one who was successful in his attempts was a prince called Alf, of Denmark. However Alvilda didn't want to marry and her mother ended up helping Alvilda escape and she also managed to talk some servants into coming along. These servants are also supposed to have been against the marriage. Together they managed to steal a ship and made it to the sea. She eventually was known as the terror of the Baltic sea. She mostly targeted Denmark. Historians believe it was a form of revenge. The Danish king ordered Alf to exterminate the pirates and he was eventually successful. Although the ladies did put up a good fight the were outpowered in the end. As Alf was about to execute the captain, Alvilda's helmet fell off and exposed her long hair. Alf couldn't bear the thought of killing her and again proposed marriage. Alvilda eventually caved and said yes because this time she had no other choice. This was years later after being independent for a long time. 

Alvilda was a pretty cool woman me thinks ;) 

So my choice of image was easy, it was one of the pirate Tilda's that was released a couple of years ago by Magnolia. She is colored with my distress ink pads on 300 g watercoloring paper. The pirate ship card is cut out using my Silhouette Cameo and then I altered it a little adding more sails to it. I hardly don't think Alvilda's ship was this cute though ;) I added some truly cool charms to it. LOVE that skull with the rose! I also added some of the utterly stunning sea shells. And well, what do you know? I couldn't stay away from the flowers this week either ;) I cant tell you how happy i was to find out Sandra now stocks them!   

As always all the products I've used can be found in the Inlinkz gallery at the end of my posting. 

I hope you will like my make :) 

Lots of love