Bagler

(Old Norse baglar, from bagall, bishop’s crosier), opponents of King Sverre and the Birkebeiner (Birchlegs) in the civil wars in Norway at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century. The leaders of the Bagler (representatives of the nobility and the Catholic Church hierarchy), who were proponents of the subjugation of the Norwegian Church to the supremacy of the pope in Rome, used the peasants’ antifeudal actions for their own interests. The struggle of the Bagler with the Birkebeiner continued even after Sverre’s death in 1202 and ended with the reconciliation of their leaders in the late 1220’s.