Anna Jöransdotter

Anna Jöransdotter (floruit 1714), was a Finnish soldier. She served in the army of Charles XII of Sweden for two years during the Great Northern War, and married a woman. Her case is the perhaps most researched Swedish case of the phenomena of females impersonating males to serve in the military during the modern age. Her actions were the cause of a suggestion to introduce a law regarding homosexuality in Sweden.
Life
Anna Jöransdotter served as a maid to a farmer in the Swedish province of Finland at the age of eighteen. During the time of the Russian invasion, her employer ordered her to join his son stealing from houses that abandoned during the plague. They were discovered by a vicar from Livonia, a refugee from the advancing Russian army, and her employer then ordered her to flee dressed in male clothing. In the village of Haritu in the province of Turku, she was forcibly drafted to the army in accordance with the law that all male vagrants could be forced...