Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. The Swedish People - 3. National Character and Social Conditions. Introd. by [G. Sundbärg] J. Asproth - Customs and Mode of Life. By [G. Sundbärg and J. P. Velander] Einar J:son Thulin and V. Själander - Dwellings. By [G. Sundbärg] Carl G. Bergsten
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DWELLINGS.
175
Christmas tree, which, however, did not become general before the middle of
the 19th century. Then there is "julottan", the impressive service in the
churches at a very early hour on Christmas morning. — Among minor festivals,
there is Valborgsmässoafton (the night between the 30th April and the 1st May),
which was formerly celebrated in many places by the lighting of big bonfires,
and Midsummer (the 23 and 24 June), a festival peculiar to Sweden; its
external characteristics are the copious decoration of houses, ships and vehicles, and
so forth, with sprays of young birches; the people indulge as much as possible
in out-of-door life.
As to family festivities, weddings were formerly solemnized with an
extraordinary amount of ceremony and multifarious preparations: nowadays, however,
they tend to be celebrated in increasingly plainer fashion. In several parts of
the country the winding up of the harvest is the signal for great rejoicings,
though perhaps not on the vast scale of former times.
Dwellings.
The character of the Swedish climate renders it an imperatively necessary
that dwellings shall be built so as to secure warmth. Hence, houses
have to be of solid construction, and every room must be provided with
some appliance for artificial heating. Double windows during the winter
are also almost universally regarded as an essential. As these requisites
render the expense of construction relatively great, the number of rooms
has generally to be restricted to a minimum, though people have become
rather exacting as to their spaciousness.
Apart from houses in large towns and from occasional better-class
residences elsewhere, dwellings in Sweden are still principally built of wood.
This time-honoured building-material is giving place, though slowly, to
stone. Even among towns, it is only in the larger ones and those that have
had to be rebuilt in recent years, (owing to their partial or total
destruction by fire), that stone buildings predominate. In the others, wooden
houses still exist in much larger numbers, and this in spite of the fact
that legislation exists to restrict their increase; hence all the high houses
of flats erected in recent times are built of stone. In the country districts,
where restrictions of this kind are unknown, wood holds the .day almost
unchallenged, and wooden buildings are more numerous the further
north one proceeds. Stone and wood are used in about equal proportions
in the island of Gottland and some small districts in South Sweden, though
throughout Skåne stone is traditional, being employed not only in towns,
but also in the country.
A peasant’s domicile traditionally consists, in its simplest form, of a cottage,
embracing, besides an entry, the cottage proper (stugan), a good-sized room
combining the functions of kitchen, living-room and bedroom, as well as a small
bedroom (kammaren). In more ambitious cottages the building is enlarged by
the addition of either another room on the same level, or another story, or by
both these adjuncts. A large peasant-farm will often have a cluster of two or
more houses of the kind, especially in Northern Sweden. In Skåne, Gottland,
and some other parts, the farm-houses are often constructed in one long story,
as in the Danish and German mode of building. The farm-buildings, consisting
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