Paper short abstract:

Our paper explores how the nobility’s relationship to environment, nature and space changed in 16th and 17th century Sweden. We analyze how this change was expressed through visual rhetorics in the exteriors and interiors of manor houses, as the nobles began to use history as a new way of legitimizing their power.

Paper long abstract:

When in the 1650s, Count Per Brahe ordered a castle built for his wife as a country retreat, he choose a place with a spectacular view and decorated it with landscape and historical paintings. His view of the world and use of surrounding nature was different than that of nobleman Arvid Tawast who, one hundred years earlier, does not seem to have given any thought to experiencing nature when he built and managed his manor houses. His overriding concern was to run a profitable household and defend it.

Our paper explores how the nobility's relationship to environment, nature and space changed in 16th and 17th century Sweden. We analyze how this change was expressed through visual rhetorics in the exteriors and interiors of manor houses, as the nobles began to use history as a new way of legitimizing their power. We locate this transformation in its historical context by comparing two particularly well-documented manor environments.

We argue that the Swedish nobility's relation to their environment changed radically in the seventeenth century and that this change reflected certain state formation processes. As a consequence, the nobility started to behave as outside observers who could shape their environment in various ways to manifest their identity. Building historical monuments and decorating interiors with portraits of ancient kings and ancestors were new ways of using history to glorify both the power of the state and the power of the state elite.