Anna Throndsen

Anna Tronds (c. 1540–1607), known in English as Anna Throndsen and posthumously as Anna Rustung, was a Dano-Norwegian noblewoman. In English and Scots history, Anna Throndsen is best known for her marriage to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell (which later earned her the nickname Skottefruen ("The Scottish Lady")), a man who later married Mary, Queen of Scots. Anna Throndsen is also known for her possible but much debated and disputed involvement in drafting some of the famous Casket Letters; these letters being the principal evidence against Mary. Background Anna was the eldest daughter of Kristoffer Throndsen, a famous 16th-century Norwegian admiral, nobleman and wartime privateer (pirate). During the final years of independent Norway, 1532–1537, Kristoffer served as admiral of the Norwegian fleet, in the service of his cousin, Olav Engelbrektsson, the last archbishop of Norway. Some years after Norway's political subsumption by Denmark, in 1542-43, Kristoffer was appointed to serve King Christian III as a Naval commander. He served as an admiral in the Danish-Norwegian fleet, then as Danish Royal Consul in Copenhagen. Kristoffer took his Norwegian family, including Anna, to Copenhagen at this time. As a young woman, Anna assisted her father in consular affairs in the Danish-Norwegian capital. Anna had a sister, Else, who married a Shetland man Andrew Mowat of Hugoland in Eshaness. They lived in Norway and had a son Axel Mowat. Else owned a small property in Shetland, mentioned in a 1597 document written in Norn.