Seventeenth-century Sweden Research Articles

The End of Love in the Seventeenth Century: Certainty and Uncertainty in Courtship

This article examines the emotional landscape of courtship and engagements in seventeenth-century Sweden. By using a framework by Illouz, understanding courtship as a cultural technique aimed at creating certainty in socially risky situations, the courtship of two women by one student is examined. The analysis moves from the intimate interactions of the couple to the family, the community and lastly the ecclesiastical and university authorities. The article shows that the main sources of uncertainty in the courtship process stemmed from procedural and ontological uncertainty—the order of courtship, the rituals of engagements and the significance of exchanged gifts were not clear, causing confusion and disruption in the courtship process.

Creation, management and devaluation – examining the workings of the seventeenth-century meadow economy in southern Sweden

ABSTRACT Meadow land use has been the object of very limited historical research in Sweden, as most studies have focused on ecological or functional aspects. Research on the economy of meadows is rare. This paper addresses this issue by studying the investment in, and management of, meadows in seventeenth-century Sweden considering landesque capital, a concept referring to long-term investments in land through labour. We also examine the local economic institutions developed to handle this type of capital. By analysing seventeenth-century century court records from the districts of Östra, Redväg and Kind, a more complete picture emerges of the processes and contexts in which meadows were created, managed and devalued / revalued over time. Meadow capital was constantly under threat of degeneration due to biophysical processes, and this paper explores the different strategies used to handle this problem. Outlying meadows were often more flexible in terms of ownership and were often used by others when abandoned, either by agreement or surreptitiously, which frequently led to future ownership conflicts. The comparatively limited number of cases relating to meadows nonetheless emphasises the fairly low transaction costs incurred by institutions related to meadow land use at this time. It was often the outlying meadows that appeared in court proceedings, most likely related to these meadows not being contiguous to the rest of the land of the person using them as well as these meadows having a more dynamic owner/usership history compared to infield meadows.

Building on Foreign Expertise. Military and Agricultural Experts and the Eastward Expansion of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Sweden

In the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, the Kingdom of Sweden was almost constantly engaged in armed conflicts with neighbouring kingdoms. Both offensive and defensive wars were characteristic of the Swedish foreign policy from 1550s to 1650s. The same period witnessed the emergence of the Swedish Empire because, due to these conflicts, Sweden was able to acquire new domains in the Baltic region and to expand its territories in both east and south. These geopolitical realities pushed all Vasa kings into multiple projects aiming to rationalise Sweden’s army and its military strategy as well as to develop the acquired areas in various ways. Our article presents two development project examples of this emerging empire (1) Scottish officers (the Swedish Crown acknowledged the military expertise of Scottish troops as well as their officers and tried to harness this experience for Sweden), and (2) the planned modernisation of Ingria through German and Dutch colonisation and agricultural development. The article examines the needs and expertise expectations that the Swedish Crown directed towards these foreign groups. The emergence of Sweden as a European empire did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. International contacts and the influx of European expertise into Sweden were important factors in the building of the Swedish dominion in the Baltic region. By focusing on these foreign expert groups, one operating in the military world and the other in the agricultural sphere, this article illustrates the functions and roles that the Swedish Crown expected foreign experts to have on the eastern frontier of early modern Sweden.

Diplomacy of an Empire. Alternative Agents in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Diplomacy of an Empire. Alternative Agents in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Poikien, äitien ja isien toimijuus

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan, miten perheenjäsenet reagoivat, kun poikaa syytettiin esiaviollisesta suhteesta 1600-luvun Ruotsissa. Tutkitut tapaukset osoittavat, että poikien, äitien ja isien toimijuus määrittyi sukupuolen, iän ja sen suhteen, mikä heidän asemansa oli perheessä. Lisäksi heidän toimijuuteensa vaikutti sääty ja perheen asema säädyn sisällä. Poikien toimijuus ja argumentointi tuomioistuimessa rakentuivat patriarkaaliselle kuuliaisuudelle vanhempia ja Jumalaa kohtaan. Nuoruus elämänvaiheena loi näiden miesten toimijuudelle raamit, jota he hyödynsivät parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla.
 Vanhempien toiminta poikien esiaviollisten suhteiden selvittämisessä oli kytköksissä sekä sukupuoleen että säätyyn. Papistoon ja ylempään porvaristoon kuuluneet naiset toimivat aktiivisesti tuomioistuimen ulkopuolella ja heidän miehensä ottivat asian hoitoonsa, kun se siirtyi oikeuteen. Miehille oli tyypillistä toimia tuomioistuimissa patriarkaalisen hierarkian edellyttämällä tavalla. Samaan aikaan alemman porvariston naiset toimivat aktiivisesti sekä tuomioistuimissa että niiden ulkopuolella. Meidän tulisikin analysoida uuden ajan alun toimijuutta intersektionaalisesti ja ottaa huomioon henkilön ikä, aviosääty, asema kotitaloudessa sekä sääty ja asema säädyn sisällä.

‘Learning to bring dead capital to life’: the Riksens Ständers Bank and the credit market in seventeenth-century Sweden

AbstractSuccessful mortgage lending is often said to require a system of registration, which records the ownership of, and any encumbrances on, a particular piece of real estate. Here we analyse how Sweden's Riksens Ständers Bank handled the uncertainties of the mortgage lending market c. 1680–1700, when there was no coherent system of property registration. The bank tried to make registration compulsory, but when influential groups opposed this move, the bank had to modify its lending practices. The study thus sheds light on the somewhat fraught initial stages of the shifts in the credit system, which from the latter half of the seventeenth century onwards, saw personal trust replaced by system trust, and private credit replaced by institutional credit.

How to transform peasants into seamen: The manning of the Swedish navy and a double-faced maritime culture

During the seventeenth century Sweden rapidly changed from a small insignificant country in Europe’s northern periphery to a great military power. The navy was a crucial part of the expansion, but to maintain a standing navy was a demanding task for a comparatively poor and sparsely populated country. One of many difficulties was to recruit skilled and competent seamen. Sweden had no large merchant fleet that could serve the navy with experienced men, and to hire professional crews would have been too expensive. The solution was to recruit poor men from the lower strata of society in coastal villages and towns through what is known as the allotment system (in Swedish: indelningsverket). Those men normally had very little experience of handling large sailing vessels but were soon trained for the task. Once conscripted in the navy they lived two lives. In the summer during the sailing season they were naval seamen. During winter they became farmhands, workers and craftsmen ashore. Thus they constructed a maritime culture of their own, with ideals and values that sometimes were closely linked to a broader maritime culture in Europe and sometimes had more in common with a Swedish rural community culture. This article investigates how this maritime/rural culture was shaped; to what extent the seamen adjusted themselves to a military order and finally what happened when the seamen’s values and ideas collided with the hierarchy and power relations within the navy.

Female Writing in Manuscript and Print: Two German Examples from the Cultural and Political Context of Late Seventeenth-Century Sweden – Maria Aurora von Königsmarck (1662–1728) and Eva Margaretha Frölich (?–1692)

Aurora von Königsmarck and Eva Margaretha Frölich, two noblewomen of German descent in late seventeenth-century Sweden, were both influenced by currents in contemporary theology and piety. Aurora von Königsmarck, her sister, and two of their female cousins formed a circle around the Swedish queen Ulrica Eleonora (the elder). Together they wrote strongly emotional religious poetry in German, which is preserved in an exquisite volume in the Uppsala University Library.Eva Margaretha Frölich expected the Swedish king Charles XI to play a central role in the imminent apocalyptic drama and become the ruler of the world. After she had been exiled from Sweden, she propagated for these views in a number of tracts published in Amsterdam.The present article explores some important paratextual features in ‘Nordischer weÿrauch’, the manuscript collection of religious poetry written in Aurora von Königsmarck’s hand, and in the works by Eva Margaretha Frölich. The discussion shows the importance of paratextual analysis for the interpretation of texts from the literary and intellectual culture of early modern Europe.

Le registre de population centralisé, source de statistiques démographiques en Europe

Depuis leur origine en Suède au xvii e siècle, les registres de population sont tenus à l’échelle locale, et c’est l’informatisation qui a permis la mise en œuvre d’un registre centralisé de population dans la majorité des 30 pays européens analysés dans cet article. Avec l’introduction de ces registres, la production de statistiques démographiques est entrée dans une ère nouvelle, présentant de nombreux avantages mais provoquant également des débats de nature éthique. De nouvelles questions apparaissent, notamment sur la définition des résidents, les problèmes de double enregistrement et la confidentialité des données. Cette étude décrit et compare les principes de fonctionnement du registre centralisé dans différents pays et la façon dont les données individuelles en sont extraites afin de produire les statistiques démographiques. Il est maintenant possible, de façon régulière, de suivre les trajectoires démographiques individuelles de l’ensemble de la population à l’échelle nationale ou de mettre en évidence certaines interactions entre les comportements démographiques des personnes d’un même ménage. Face aux nombreuses possibilités qu’offre l’analyse longitudinale, le soutien des scientifiques est plus que souhaité pour autant qu’ils puissent avoir accès aux données individuelles.

The King's Tomahawk: On the Display of the Other in Seventeenth-Century Sweden, and After

In a showcase at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm a tomahawk is displayed, made in eastern North America and dated back to the seventeenth century. Besides being a precious and unusually well ...

Urban Order and Street Regulation in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

AbstractThis article examines how, in the early modern towns of Stockholm and Åbo, royal interests, town planning, street building and maintenance, and street behavior related to ideas and ideals of urban order. Town laws and ordinances, royal letters and some town court records are employed to tell a story of royal interest in well-ordered, impressive, successful towns; various street plans for the capital and the smaller provincial towns; and the varying execution of renewal plans. It is evident that the capital was to reflect the royal person and the state and that streets and street behaviour were important in this regard. But in towns outside the capital, especially in concrete street maintenance, the centrality of streets does not clearly emerge. The burghers in towns operated as individuals—there was no bottom-up or top-down plan or supervision.

A Domestic Secret: Marriage, Religion and Legal Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Sweden

A Domestic Secret: Marriage, Religion and Legal Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Sweden

NOMENCLATURA ET SPECIES COLORUM MINIATAE PICTURAE: RESEARCHING SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PIGMENTS IN SWEDEN

This paper aims to present an introduction to the material that forms the background to current research on pigments in seventeenth-century Sweden. The research is based on a 1680 Swedish treatise by Elias Brenner on pigments for miniature painting, including samples. The samples are well preserved in colour and hue, making the document a unique and important source for historical pigment research. The pigment nomenclature in the treatise is related to that of a preceding book on the history and techniques of painting by Johannes Schefferus, and presented along with corresponding findings from contemporary apothecaries' documents (taxae) from Riga and Stockholm. In addition, preliminary results from ongoing chemical analysis of the samples are presented and the findings are discussed. Together, the documents give an insight into the availability and import of pigments for miniature painting in seventeenth-century Sweden.

Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden, by Mary Elizabeth Ailes

<i>Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden</i>, by Mary Elizabeth Ailes

Российская историческая мозаика. Сборник научных статей в честь Джона Кипа ред. по А. Л. Литвин (review)

553 Ab Imperio, 1/2004 Only some of these topics can be confined within the research interests of the scholar to whom they are ostensibly dedicated. For example, Christine Worobec’s excellent essay on East Slavic fertility rituals at the summer solstice is only tangentially related to Keep’s work on the politicization of the peasantry during the Russian revolutions. Similarly, Paul Dukes’ careful study of the diplomatic wrangling surrounding the 1922 Russo-Japanese Conference of Changchun contributes more to the memory of their mutual friend, George B. Tolmakoff, than to the discussion of the larger social and political issues confronted in Keep’s work on the Russian military. And it is surely mostly for reasons of chronology that a collection on Russian history begins with an essay on state-building and land-reform in seventeenth-century Sweden (Antti Kujala), an essay, furthermore, that makes no explicit mention of its undoubted significance to the historiographical issues surrounding the reforms of Peter the Great. That task is left to the editors of the festschrift and although their introduction does a good job of tying all of these varied pieces together and of drawing out their possible implications for scholars of Russia, it appears that the editorial choices that went into this collection reflect the overall goal of international inclusiveness rather than of topical relevance. Ernest A. ZITSER Российская историческая мо- заика. Сборник научных статей в честь Джона Кипа / Отв. ред. А. Л. Литвин. Казань, 2003. 294 с. (на рус. и англ. яз.). Библиография работ Дж. Кипа. ISBN 5-81850023 -3. The “mosaic” in the title of this festschrift honoring John L. H. Keep refers both to the diversity of that scholar’s interests in Russian history and to the eclecticism of the essays solicited by the editors of this collection . Like the multicolored and seemingly haphazard pieces of a mosaic, which can only be appreciated from a proper distance, the variegated individual contributions form a pattern that gives the reader an overall impression of the British historian, his scholarly work, and his professional contacts in the broader academic world. Indeed, under the capable editorship ofAlter Litvin, the book is as much a tribute to growing cooperation within the international community of historians of Russia as it is a monument to Keep’s collegiality and scholarly achievements. The contributors are as diverse as the topics of the essays collected, representing Keep’s colleagues, coworkers , and friends from Canada, the United States, Scotland, Israel, Switzerland, Finland, and Russia. 554 Рецензии/Reviews strength of local and religious solidarities and the relative weakness of ethnic identity should be of particular interest to the readers of this journal. The rest of the essays in this collection deal with the other great theme of Keep’s scholarly work: the rise, evolution, and decline of Russian social democracy. Israel Getzler ’s study of Georgii Plekhanov can very profitably be read together with I. Kh. Urilov’s survey of recent Russian historiography on the origins of Menshevism. Similarly, A. Sal’nikova’s essay on children’s reactions to the Sturm und Drang of 1917 offers a nice antipode to Alter Litvin’s piece on the politics of their grandchildren who are now debating whether or not to re-instate monuments to Feliks Dzerzhinskii toppled in 1991. This section is capped off by Carter Elwood’s re-assessment of newly released archival evidence about Inessa Armand’s illicit love affair with Lenin. Besides its indisputable scholarly interest, the essay by the prize-winning author of a biography of Armand constitutes a model of historical scholarship and careful reading, and is alone worth the trouble of ordering this volume for your local library. But the most interesting piece in this historical and historiographical mosaic is not the essay about Lenin’s sex life, but rather Keep’s autobiographical introduction, entitled “Notes on John.” Although The essays that deal with historical subjects close to Keep’s heart are perhaps the brightest spots of this pastiche. Besides the previously discussed essay on Swedish absolutism, the only piece to pay tribute to Keep’s studies on early modern Muscovy is that of Philip Longworth, whose short article offers a gloss on N. Novombergskii’s monumental study of lese-majeste (slovo i delo) cases in pre-Petrine Russia. Keep’s interest in Soviet historiography is represented by two essays, one of which deals...

Book Review: Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Book Review: Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Reviews of Books:Faith and Disorder: Religious Mentality in Seventeenth-Century Sweden Goran Malmstedt

Reviews of Books:Faith and Disorder: Religious Mentality in Seventeenth-Century Sweden Goran Malmstedt

Försvarets finansiering. Svensk krigsekonomi under skånska kriget 1675–79

Abstract This doctoral thesis is the latest in a lengthening series of works on the problems of war finance in Sweden's period as a great power, all of which have been produced within the framework of the research project ‘Social and budgetary problems in seventeenth-century Sweden’. But whereas the earlier works dealt with the financial problems connected with Sweden's wars on foreign soil, the present thesis analyses the corresponding problems connected with a defensive war in the homeland. The author himself emphasises that the problems of war finance are viewed exclusively from the standpoint of the Crown, and within this framework the analysis concentrates on the financing of the main Swedish army in south Sweden, which was to meet the Danish attack.