Nordic History

This study is among the first works in English to comprehensively address the Scandinavian First World War experience in the larger international context of the war. It surveys the complex relationship between the belligerent great powers and Northern Europe's neutral small states in times of crisis and war.

The book's overreaching rationale draws upon three underlying conceptual fields: neutrality and international law, hegemony and great power politics as well as diplomacy and policy-making of small states in the international arena. From a variety of angles, it examines the question of how neutrality was understood and perceived, negotiated and dealt with both among the Scandinavian states and the belligerent major powers, especially Britain, Germany and Russia.

For a long time, the experience of neutral countries during the First World War was seen as marginal, and was overshadowed by the experiences of occupation and collaboration brought about by the Second World War. In this book, Jonas demonstrates how this perception has changed, with neutrality becoming an integral part of the multiple narratives of the First World War. It is an important contribution to the international history of the First World War, cultural-historically influenced approaches to diplomatic history and the growing area of neutrality studies.

How did early twentieth-century university scholars and museum curators perceive the buildings of peasant society? How did they rebuild them into museum cottages according to contemporary scholarly and museum ideas? In 1913, the philosopher, museum curator and elementary-school inspector Theodor Hellman established the open-air museum Murberget in Härnösand. Prior to his involvement in the open-air museum, he had been very active in the Swedish adult-education movement. For instance, he founded ‘Norrländska studenters folkbildningsförening’ (The Adult Education Society of North Swedish Students) in Uppsala in 1905. He also organised the country’s first local-heritage course for elementary-school teachers in Härnösand in 1907. The same year, 1907, he defended his licentiate dissertation in philosophy at the Uppsala University: ‘Platons kunskapslära’ (Plato’s Theory of Knowledge). ‘Föreningen för norrländsk hembygdsforskning’ (The Society for North Swedish Local Heritage Research), which he founded in 1909, was a development and institutionalisation of the courses in local-heritage education (hembygdsundervisning) and local-heritage research (hembygdsforskning). As to his curatorial work, Hellman divided the open-air museum Murberget into eight culture units, which, according to him, mirrored the people’s character and expressed the North Swedish culture: the Village (Byn), the Chalet (Fäbodvallen), the Fishing Village (Fiskeläget), the Church Site (Kyrkplatsen), the Parsonage (Prästgården), the Iron Works (Järnbruket), the Cityscape (Stadsbilden), and the Lapp Village (Lappbyn). In the present study, I investigate two of the culture units from a history-of-museum point of view: the Chalet and the Church Site. The Chalet was laid out and built with historical houses in 1915–1917, and supplemented in 1930. It represents a typological collection of six types of cooking houses (kokhus) as well as some cattle sheds, all from the province of Ångermanland. The development of the Church Site began in 1913. It comprises the Murberget Church, the Ullånger Bell Tower, two copied medieval lychgates, and a small church town with wooden houses. Built in-situ between 1925 and 1929 as a ‘Protestant medieval’ church for the 1930s North Sweden, the Murberget Church was planned and erected in accordance with contemporary museum ideals, namely the division into study collections (the church attic) and display collections (the nave and chancel).

Pro Finlandia. Suomen tie itsenäisyyteen
1–4 – Finlands väg till självständighet
1–4. Red. Jussi Nuorteva,
Pertti Hakala (1–2), Päivi Happonen
(3–4) & John Strömberg (3–4).
Arkistolaitoksen toimituksia 18:1-4.
Arkivverkets publikationer 18:1-4
Kansallisarkisto/Riksarkivet 2014–
2017. 276 + 543 + 557 + 751 s. (finska
och svenska)
ISBN 978-951-37-6617-7, 978-951-37-
6711-2, 978-951-37-7004-4, 978-951-
37-7306-9
ISSN 1795-9683

The utilization of hydroturbines exerted an appreciable influence on the location of factories during our research period. In Finland industry was not concentrated in the existing coastal towns: instead, it was decentralized all over the Southern half of the country, being built up on the shores of exploitable rapids. Rural factories have given birth to many modern industrial towns in the inland regions. The relative dispersal of industry during its formative stage had some beneficial effects on the surrounding districts. It restrained the movement of population from the inland provinces to large coastal cities and abroad. The use of hydropower promoted the development of several small scattered centres of population closely connected to the surrounding rural areas. This partially contributed to the economic equality of the various regions of Finland, and, owing to it, the social repercussions of industrialization were nowhere near as traumatic as they might have been if the means of power had primarily been steam, with consequent centralization to coal importing coastal cities.


This topic has also been dealt with in the article:

Timo Myllyntaus, “Finland: The Introduction of Hydraulic Turbines, 1840 – 1940,” Innovation technologique et civilisation, Editions du CNRS. Paris: Commission internationale d'histoire des mouvements sociaux et des structures sociales 1989, pp. 113-130 (Résumé en français, pp. 126-127).

I palatstaken på Riddarholmen berättas via symboliska dekorationer historien om gamla tiders familjevärderingar. Statens fastighetsverks kulturarvsspecialist, Alexandru Babos, tar oss med på en resa där vi möter den kyska Dafne, den lojala hustrun och den liderlige Apollo.

This article presents an overview of the long term trends in the trading patterns for salted herring in the area of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and their hinterlands in the period of c. 1600-1850. The market is defined as ‘the interaction between supply and demand to determine the market price and corresponding quantity bought and sold.’  In this period the north European herring market underwent several changes. This is analysed from four different points of view:
The first main section examines the main trading routes for herring in Northern Europe by use of records from the Sound toll registers as well as from accounts of herring imports in the German North Sea and Baltic cities. Then a number of price series for various parts of northern Europe give indications for the long term development of prices of herring. Following this an analysis of the consumption patterns of salted herring is carried out, and finally the influence of mercantilist policies is evaluated.

There are still documents waiting to be discovered which reveal aspects of Lutheran historiography in Australia. Until recently, this letter was one of them. It was pinned (a photocopy of the original) to a board within the mounted display of the Friends of Lutheran Archives (Qld) at the 2007 State Synod held in Kingaroy. Bernie Muller, the Archives Liaison Officer, prepared the display, which was produced on a shoe string budget with simple photocopying of pictures and documents. I suggested that a display about the Scandinavian Lutherans at this Synod, held in Kingaroy, with forward promotion, would be interesting, just to see what material could turn up. With thanks to Dr. Meg Noack (nee Bjelke-Petersen), who has given permission for the letter to be published, it gives a rich insight into the Scandinavian Church in Brisbane and aspects of Scandinavian congregations in south east Queensland in the nineteenth century. It was written in English in 1934 by seventy eight year old Danish missionary and pastor, Jens Christian Pedersen (1856-1940), to Dr. Meg. Noack’s  grandfather, Pastor Carl Georg Bjelke-Petersen (1870-1954) in Queensland

Under okkupasjonen vokste det frem et nytt norsk politi etter tysk modell. Politiaspirantskolen på Kongsvinger var selve grunnsteinen i denne omdannelsen. Under rettsoppgjøret ble bare et mindretall av de som gikk på de såkalte ”kongsvingerkursene” straffet og flere fikk fortsette i politiet. Men hva lærte man egentlig på Kongsvinger? Og hva skulle politiminister Jonas Lie bruke ”det nye norske politi” til? Denne artikkelen tar for seg forholdet mellom okkupasjonstidens ”vanlige” norske ordenspolitifolk og deres beryktede tyske kolleger – Einsatzgruppenes bødler på Østfronten.

.
This is a preface to a special issue on the history of everyday technology. It includes an introduction to the theory 'Social Construction of Technology' (SCOT) as well as a brief description on the following eleven articles, part of which apply SCOT in their case studies.

The volume contains three sections: Gendering Transportation and Communication, Cultivating the Automobile, and Equipping Homes. The list of contents available at: http://lmu-munich.academia.edu/TMyllyntaus/Books

From the beginning of the coming academic year the anthology will be used as a textbook at the University of Turku, Finland.

The Special Issue of ICON can be ordered by joining ICOHTEC, filling the subscription form and paying the membership fee of the year 2010 (€ 15 - 30). Further information at: http://icohtec.org/about-icohtec-join-us.html

The Nordic Model is the 20th-century Scandinavian recipe for combining stable democracies, individual freedom, economic growth and comprehensive systems for social security. But what happens when Sweden and Finland – two countries topping global indexes for competitiveness, productivity, growth, quality of life, prosperity, and equality – start doubting themselves and their future? Is the Nordic Model at a crossroads?

Historically, consensus, continuity, social cohesion, and broad social trust have been hailed as key components for the success and for the self-images of Sweden and Finland. In the contemporary, however, political debates in both countries are increasingly focused on risks, threats, and worry. Social disintegration, political polarization, geopolitical anxieties, and threat of terrorism are often dominant themes. This book focuses on what appears to be a paradox: countries with low income differences, high faith in social institutions, and relatively high cultural homogeneity becoming fixated on the fear of polarization, disintegration, and diminished social trust. Unpacking the presentist discourse of "worry" and a sense of interregnum at the face of geopolitical tensions, digitalization, and globalization, as well as challenges to democracy, the chapters take steps back in time and explore the current conjecture through the eyes of historians and social scientists, addressing key aspects of and challenges to both the contemporary and future Nordic Model. In addition, the functioning and efficacy of the participatory democracy and current protocols of decision-making are debated.

In the eyes of its inhabitants, post-war Sweden was by all accounts a unique country. With its peaceful, evolutionary character, the course of modern Swedish history was certainly very different from the brutal developments on the European continent. Much of this was thanks to the simple fact that Sweden, as one of few major European countries, had been spared the horrors of the Second World War. At the same time, the Swedish narratives of the war underwent a post-1945 transformation that held close to wider European currents, as of the late 1980s in particular. In an international perspective, the northern neutral democracy is therefore particularly interesting.

The Swedish case stands out in various ways also in the Nordic framework. In contrast to the neighbours, the Swedes had not been directly affected by the war through occupation, bombardment or devastation. The year 1945 did not mark an absolute turning point in Swedish history, and Sweden remained neutral in the Cold War.

Moreover, since the early 1990s, the controversies seem to have been more passionate and the assault on the dominating post-war narrative more fundamental than in the other Nordic countries. This text explores this historiographical transformation in Sweden during the last two decades.

This thesis deeply investigates the witch trials of Finnmark, taking a close look at how gender and ethnicity played a major role. Religious extremism, which preached intolerance towards Sámi men and Norwegian women, was used to promote authoritarianism during the trials. This is seen in the first case involving Morten Olsen and Christen the Tailor. King Christian IV’s religious anti-sorcery decrees, influenced by Niels Hemmingsen, promote the persecution of women and Sámi men. District Governor John Cunningham uses these religious decrees to promote misogynistic legislation, which was influenced by the Scottish witch panic of 1597. The last panic in Finnmark was also a result of religious extremism, as Christopher Orning used religion as an excuse to promote authoritarianism and practice gynocide. This argument is supported by the digital mapping of the locations of where the accused lived via Palladio. This reveals patterns which show that Sámi men who lived along the northern fjords were disproportionately affected and that Norwegian women living in villages near Vardøhus, where the District Governor lived, were disproportionately accused. The use of digital tools further solidifies the argument that accusations were motivated by systemic misogyny and racism against the Sámi. Palladio digital maps revealed that areas with high Sámi populations were disproportionately affected during the trials, and women in areas surrounding the District Governor were majorly impacted. From this, a conclusion is made, which shows that these areas were impacted because of religious extremism within the government, which promoted misogyny and intolerance towards the Sámi and their beliefs.

This chapter is one of the few publications, which compare two food crises: the Irish famine of 1845-1851 and the Finnish famine of 1866- 1868. It examines their similarities and differences. Both we attributed to natural shocks, which were, however, quite different – potato blight and summer frost respectively.

"In 1962, designers were branded as fadmongers and named the Plague itself by a Norwegian botany professor who took it upon himself to defend the duped consumer. In 1969, design students under the guidance of Victor Papanek and his Norwegian host were renovating a derelict backyard in a run-down part of Oslo in the name of environmental regeneration. These two rather remarkable, but highly dissimilar events exemplify a significant transformation in critical design discourse in Norway during the 1960s. Whereas the broader streams of design discourse at the time revolved around the disintegration of the traditional applied art movement in the aftermath of the Scandinavian Design frenzy,1 these more radical factions sought to drive design out of its comfort zone established in the prosperous postwar period.

This article explores how the more radical components of design ideology that slowly gained momentum throughout the 1960s now and then came to the fore in the Norwegian design community. In various and not always coherent ways, petitions were made for increased attention to the social and moral responsibility of design. Nevertheless, a discernable shift in focus in the course of the decade can be identified: In the early 1960s, critical design discourse aligned with consumer activism, campaigning for product longevity and against faddishness, whereas ideas associated with ecology, resource management, and environmentalism emerged as the most pressing topics toward the end of the decade."

I denna samlingsvolym anlägger nordiska forskare filologiska och historiska aspekter på äldre tiders rättsprotokoll eller domböcker. Perspektivet är tvärvetenskapligt: författarna fokuserar på de filologiska och historiska dimensioner som är förknippade med domböcker som text och källa. Tidigare har man huvudsakligen fokuserat på domböcker som historisk källa, medan det filologiska perspektivet inte sällan har saknats. Boken vill göra nordiska filologer uppmärksamma på den historiska forskning som bedrivs i dag och nordiska historiker medvetna om vad filologin har att erbjuda. Allt för ofta är man nu för tiden okunnig om det arbete som utförs inom närliggande forskningsområden och därför vill boken bidra till en ökad interdisciplinär diskussion i fråga om modern nordisk domboksforskning. Bokens huvudsakliga målgrupper är filologer och historiker men den vänder sig också till alla andra som är intresserade av domböcker i ett nordiskt perspektiv.

Approximately one thousand sailors and maritime experts from the Nordic countries worked for King Leopold II under the Congo Free State and the groundwork leading up to its establishment (1879–1908). This article discusses the various forms of river vessels that the Nordic mariners served on, how the vessels evolved, and what this might reveal about the phases in the colonization of the region. A sequence of waterfalls and rapids along the Cataracts, close to the Atlantic Ocean, represented a deterrent to steamboat navigation on the Upper Congo River and its tributaries. In the early years of colonization steam launches and barcasses, as well as Congolese canoes and steel barges, were used for the exploration and mapping of the territory. They were followed by relatively small flat-bottomed, shallow-draft steam-driven sternwheelers in order to estab- lish a rudimentary system of administration and occupation. In 1898 a railway circumvented the Cataracts and arrived at Léopoldville (Kinshasa), making it possible to launch larger sternwheelers on a river system that could reach 60% of the colony. The larger vessels would transport troops, ammunition, supplies and trade goods to a growing network of stations, from where the Congo Free State could reap the rich resources and make a profit. The fleet of river vessels was a necessary tool for building a civil and military infrastructure, and for controlling and dominating the Congolese, who repeatedly rebelled against the intruders. The brutal exploitation of people and resources in the Congo Free State has been described as one of the darkest chapters in colonial history.

In the years leading up to the Crash of 2008, Iceland had been triumphed in world business media as an economic miracle. Its new breed of Viking Capitalism had become rock stars of the global finance driven economy, even while it was testing the foundations of Europe's financial system. Eirikur Bergmann applies Postcolonial analysis to explain the paradigmatic case of Iceland's fantastical boom, bust and rapid recovery after the Crash. His critical approach to the claims of the financialization advocates relates the questions of the national economy and globalisation to current trends in Europe and the World.

PhD thesis in History of Science and Ideas at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Published by Gidlunds förlag, 2012 (372 pages).

This PhD thesis (doktorsavhandling) deals with the new view of landscapes, buildings and artefacts as significant, memory-bearing structures that emerged in the nineteenth century. It examines the new memory-bearing visibility, i.e. the human-shaped reality as a bearer of memory, and it also analyses the new notion of the people (folk) and its ways of seeing; in other words, a new subject that creates its own history and society. Finally, it examines the synthesis of a new kind of knowledge that became institutionalised in historical and ethnographical museums and subsequently in folk museums. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the historical memorial was a new object that was to be researched and appraised from both an artistic and a scientific perspective. The people in its incarnation of folk life represented, in its turn, a new, higher phase of human development, in terms of a historical-idealistic concept of stages, one that made possible the new vision of the artist as well as of the museum curator and the scientist and their studies of the historical memorial. The folk museum, finally, was one of the new institutions in the second half of the nineteenth century, where the museum curator synthesised his observations and constructed knowledge of the historical memorial, and also employed this knowledge in folk educational, socio-moral museum activities in order to elevate the fragmented population to this new, harmonious and national-individual folk life.

The thesis consists of three main sections that reflect the above division. The purpose of the first section, ‘Historical memorials’, is to furnish an overarching description of how different nuances of nineteenth-century memory-bearing visibility arose and were transformed in Denmark, Norway and Sweden; more specifically, the aesthetic, scientific, historical, social and national dimensions of the historical memorial. The relationship that is described and analysed is primarily that between knowledge-acquiring subjects and objects of knowledge. The purpose of the second section, ‘Folk life’, is to analyse in detail the contemporary epistemological views with respect to memory-bearing visibility of reality, limited, however, to the closest ideational contexts of the folk museum; the relationship under study is thus the one between the knowledge-acquiring subject and notions of knowledge. The purpose of the third section, ‘Folk museums’, is to describe how the museum curators in actual practice made use of the historical memorial and the new artistic, scientific and economic approaches, in order to synthesise knowledge and apply it in their folk educational activities at the folk museums.

O presente trabalho por meio de uma metodologia comparada entre as fontes literárias e arqueológicas buscou compreender as modificações ocorridas nas praticas cultuais que possibilitaram a forja de ideais, de legitimação e a formação das funções das realezas escandinavas, além de buscar as funções e ânsias que esses homens tinham sobre seus deuses. Evidenciando por fim a importância dos antigos costumes nórdicos e da mitologia nórdica como instrumento de legitimação e de criação de poderes sociais, contribuindo para a compreensão de um período onde rito, mito e os poderes sociais estavam em plena conexão, relações essas que marcariam o período Viking na Escandinávia. Tendo assim sua baliza temporal inserida entre os séculos VIII e X sendo o primeiro o século no qual surgiram as primeiras realezas escandinavas e o segundo o século no qual os povos escandinavos começaram a sofrer um processo de conversão ao cristianismo.

Politics, technologies, wars, and economies were all elements of the 20th century world that affected every aspect of life during this time. Architecture during this time was largely shaped by these drivers more than any other time of world history.  Across the globe, architects started to obtain an International Style that consisted of similar elements despite different countries and regions due to the collision of politics between countries.  Expressionist group emerged in Germany as a result of this phenomenon. Works of architecture in this group were mainly about the true expression of the building as a built form. 2 Meanwhile, the Netherland’s de Stihl was emerging in this part of the world. Also around the same period, Le Corbusier was the main driver in France.  All of these architects somehow produced works that are almost similar in forms and characters. The responds towards the economies, technologies, and politics were all about being economically beneficial, simple, expression of technologies, and drifting away from the previous 19th century architectural styles. Buildings were all acting as an expression of the world condition on the time which were economic, functional, and technologically expressed.  This resulted in extensive use of steel and glass which led to the International Style of being light in weight, colour, and transparency.  However, this paper is not to discuss these similarities of buildings in those regions but to investigate a more interesting modernism impact in the architecture of a particular region yet different than other countries. The Scandinavian countries possessed somehow different forms and characters of buildings during the early 20th century. After that, functional modernism was introduced to this region in 1925  but they are believed to be influenced by Nordic Classicism which blossomed in this region from 1910 to 1930. How is modern architecture in the Scandinavia different and why? Do these differences allow us to say that Scandinavia was not as modern as other regions? In order to investigate this thoroughly, works of Scandinavian architects should be examined such as those of Erik Gunnar Asplund’s which was considered as a modernist and also a Nordic classicist at the same time (Ford) and works of Asplund’s close counterpart, Alvar Aalto.  There are quite a number of comparisons can be made between these two architects - similarities and also differences that altogether have different outcome of modernism than other regions that is believed to be caused by Nordic Classicism influence.

The election of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte as prince regent of Sweden in 1810, then as king of Sweden-Norway in 1818, profoundly marked the history of the Scandinavian Peninsula during the first decades of the 19th century. Much more than a simple change of dynasty, the acces- sion of a French marshal to the throne resulted in a redefinition of Swedish foreign policy and the advent of a new era, that of neutrality, which would be followed by his successors up to the present day.This article shows how this new Swedish foreign policy was created within the context of the Napoleonic wars, then in peacetime after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. It also aims at explaining the major foreign policy decisions which Bernadotte-turned-Charles XIV Jean was confronted with, until the end of his reign in 1844.

SELECTED DOUBLE BLIND PEER REVIEWED PAPERS ON ARCHAEOASTRONOMY OF The European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC), 2013, Athens Greece. Doing scientific research in Cultural Astronomy, the life world and life praxis of the respective culture have to be taken into consideration. People were highly capable of integrating several aspects and multiple levels of meaning in the cultural conceptualizations making up their world view, by making intensive use of symbolic, mythic, and ritual language. Cultural astronomy requires understanding the special mindscape and worldview of cultures, consisting of ideas, procedures, and valuations, with which for the most part we, living in scientific-technical based culture, are unfamiliar today, e.g. divination, astrology, and certain religious concepts. Working in the field of Cultural Astronomy scientists use multifaceted and broadly conceptualized approaches for identifying, substantiating and evaluating traces of astronomical knowledge in the records of prehistoric, protohistoric, and historic cultures.
This book documents the rich variety of research that is going on in our field, which is incredibly global in extent and spans millennia of time. The proceedings of the annual SEAC meetings have become a well-established medium of scientific exchange. They serve as a substitute for an annual journal. During the past 2 decades the proceedings have emerged as one of if not the major venue for publication of world-wide research in Cultural Astronomy.
SEAC 2013 had as its theme “Astronomy, mother of Civilization and Guide to the Future”. Emphasis will be to reveal the crucial role of astronomy in societies, countries, continents, at all eras. Since the dawn of humanity Astronomy is the cardinal socio-anthropological activity that led to the development of Culture, Mathematics, Philosophy and Civilization.
ii Preface
Astronomy, as a set of practices, of methods and observations and theoretical reasoning, has always been a crucial activity of every human society and the human mind, already from the dawn of the civilization. Astronomy has served as a vehicle for the survival of the very early and fragile societies of the Palaeolithic era, and was at the same time an answer to the agonizing quest of the human beings, while seeking for an answer about their identity and position within Nature and Cosmos.
Human, ANTHROPOS [ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΣ] looks up, sees the sky, and admires the harmony of the celestial sphere with the stars and the planets. He tries to understand and explain the Cosmos [ΚΟΣΜΟΣ means ornament in Greek]. That is one reason for developing the Greek approach of philosophy and science. Philosophy is born.
Astronomy, as a practice, was always interconnected with other realms of social discourse, such as mythology, religion, philosophy, and with the emerging cosmological and cosmogonical systems and introduced a strong connection between the celestial phenomena and human activities. Observing and studying the harmony of the orbiting celestial bodies, civilizations learned to stay in tune with the cycle of the seasons and the various variations of the behaviour of their landscapes, thus providing means for their long-standing survival on their fight against the natural forces and the taming of Nature itself that eventually led to the development of science and philosophy.
Astronomy, following the ancient Greek concept of science, is born within the movement of the Ionian Renaissance, from the great Pre-socratic spirits, and is always interconnected with the birth of philosophy, as well, from the very same masters of the human thought. Its first acme, after its birth and as an advanced scientific discipline, appears in the Hellenistic Era. As an autopoetic structure, in its complete form, grounded and established by giants, such as Archimedes, Hipparchus, Posidonius, Claudius Ptolemy appears and flourishes many of the forthcoming great civilizations and empires as a specific way of observing nature, unravelling the secrets of Cosmos, and placing humans within it.
The evolution of astronomy leads to the great scientific revolution and the modern world, through Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, to mention only a few of the giants that set the foundations of the modern world.
In our days, Astronomy strongly refers to the global heritage of all the human civilizations, as a bond and a point of reference between them, while it opens new roads for our globalized society, towards the space exploration, and the gigantic leap of mankind towards leaving its place of birth, our planet Earth, and expanding to new frontiers. Astronomy, as a science, and as the fountain of various technological achievements inspired by the needs of space exploration, opens novel roads towards our common fate, while it always remind us the common bond which exists between cultures and civilizations.

Built in-situ at the Murberget open-air museum in Härnösand between 1925 and 1929, the Murberget Church was designed as a ‘Protestant medieval’ church for the North Sweden of the 1930s. Written and presented in the History of Architecture and the Built Environment, the first chapter of the Bachelor’s thesis (Autumn term of 1994) deals with the local museum history in the city of Härnösand from the year 1880 and onwards: ‘The first 50 years. Persons, museum milieus and organisations – a short introduction’. Then, I have divided the thesis into three main chapters. The first chapter, ‘Symbol’, deals with the museum church as a symbol of the museum founder and director Theodor Hellman’s museum idea as well as of the realised central museum for the whole of North Sweden. The second chapter, ‘Church’, deals with the ecclesiastical function and the original and reconstructed medieval and post-Reformation church art and church architecture in the Murberget Church. The third chapter, ‘Museum’, deals with the history of church-art exhibitions in Sweden and museum churches in Scandinavia, but also with the Murberget Church as a pedagogical teaching tool. Finally, the Bachelor’s thesis comprises site-measurement drawings of the Murberget Church, which I carried out in November 1994.

The Murberget Church was erected at the Murberget open-air museum on the initiative of the museum founder and director Theodor Hellman, with blueprints by the architect Erik Högström. Hellman and Högström modelled the museum church on the plan of the Hackås Church in the province of Jämtland, North Sweden, before its reconstruction in 1770. They also incorporated different details and elements from other churches, for example the shape of the saddle-back roof and the gable truss from the Ramsele Old Church in the province of Ångermanland in North Sweden. The plan of the Murberget Church comprises a nave with a narrow sanctuary/choir and an apse, thus originating from Romanesque churches. This type of plan was very seldom used in North Sweden. The Murberget Church has two stories. On the ground floor is the place of worship, as well as of museum pedagogy for the broad audiences, and the wall and ceiling decorations are modelled principally of medieval and post-Reformation images in the churches in Alnö in the province of Medelpad, Hackås in the province of Jämtland, Njutånger in the province of Hälsingland and Ramsele in the province of Ångermanland. The persons, who in 1929 made these al secco paintings, were the well-known artist Gunnar Torhamn and the well-known conservator Oscar Svensson. The church loft has been turned into a museum exhibition, which contained extensive collections of medieval and post-Reformation wood sculptures as well as chasubles from different centuries.

The Bachelor’s thesis has been quoted regularly in scholarly articles, doctoral theses and most recently in 2018 in a scholarly monograph in art history. It has also been used as teaching material for the museum hosts at the Murberget open-air museum in Härnösand, for example in their daily museum-historical presentations during the summer opening periods.

This chapter deals with the rise of environmental history as a research field and later a discipline in Finland.

Timo Myllyntaus & Mikko Saikku, “Environmental History, A New Dis-cipline with Long Traditions,” Encountering the Past in Nature, Essays in Environmental History, Ed. by Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku, 1st edition, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press 1999, pp. 17-26, 2nd edition, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 2001, pp. 1-28.

Denne masteroppgaven forsøker etter beste evne å presentere alle ombudsmenn i Norge under Kong Erik av Pommern, ca 1397 til 1430, og sette det i kontekst av hva man har hevdet om ulike forvaltningsenheter og diverse ombudsmenn. Begrensningen er gjort av hensyn til tid og bruken av kildesamlingen Regesta Norvegica.

Denne masteroppgaven fikk karakteren "B" ved NTNU, våren 2016. Oppgaven er skrevet som 30 studiepoeng, men har en ganske stor serie med vedlegg. Om man skal gjøre noe om igjen, så er det rekkefølgen på presentasjonen av ombudsmenn og forvaltningsenheter, samt snevret inn tematikken. Jeg gapte litt bredt, og små skrivefeil som dessverre kom med er noe av kostnaden.

Om du har noen spørsmål, så er det bare å ta kontakt: finbraaten@gmail.com