The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a religious faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen i Kulturvård, Trädgårdens hantverk och design 21 hp.

This study deals with the way how people think about life after death from the perspective of individualization. Individualization is something that affects all aspects of society, especially inSweden, which is of the most individualized countries. It also affects how people think about their own death.I have compared what people think about life after death with five theologians who have different views; Per Block, Sallie McFague, Krister Stendahl, Maurice Wiles and Jürgen Moltmann.I have compared the difference between individualism and individualization, andformulated some problems regarding how to think of individualism in terms of good and bad. Finally, I have finally discussed how I think Svenska kyrkan, the Church of Sweden, should meet the individualization, individualism and people´s opinion about life after death.The main question of the essay is partly unanswered because there is very little material and studies made about life after death contra individualization. One conclusion of my study, however, that I have reached is that people are allowed to choose freely nowadays, and that leads to a big difference in the system of beliefs.

In the 10th of April 2010 the Polish Presidential plane crashed outside of Smolensk in today?s Russia. 88 passengers and 6 crewmen died a tragic death, among them the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczy?ski. A national week of sorrow was proclaimed and citizens all over Poland went out on streets and markets to honor the newly deceased President.

My aim was to get a deeper insight about the parish clerk and how this profession has changed over time in Sweden from the Middle Ages up to the eighteenth century. Who was the parish clerk? Is it possible to find out in what way his duties changed over time? The information mainly derives from written historical sources, such aslaws. It seems like the parish clerk in the countryside often was a layman whom had to be approved by the parish, the parish priest or the bishop. His position in the early Middle Ages seems to have taken the form of assistant to the priest, participating in the liturgy.

The Swedish government ratified on May 1 2009 an amendment of marital law, resulting in same-sex marriage becoming legalized. With the rights of the Christian Swedish state church to officiate weddings originating from the same law, the church was thereby faced with two options: Either officially include same-sex couples in the Christian concept of holy matrimony and keep the right to officiate weddings; or give up the right to officiate weddings altogether. An official decision to accept the terms was reached on October 22 2009, but not without being preceded by an agitated medial debate.This research attempts to analyze the arguments of the debate in three stages: In the first stage the arguments are categorized according to their respective ideological standpoint. In the second stage these categories are examined from post-modern, social constructivist and socialization theory perspectives. Based on this, the third stage sees the arguments analyzed from a viewpoint based in the Copenhagen school concept of securization.The research concludes that the debate does not only simply feature two sides with differences of opinion; but rather that the arguments of the two opposing sides are founded in a common view of the other side as a fundamental threat to ones conception of a sound society..

At the turn of the century 18/1900 Swedish law looked upon young people as being adults at about the age of 15. At 15, the young person had left school, had his first employment and provided for himself and also had been confirmed to full membership of the Swedish State Church. Thus he was to be considered an adult and responsible for his actions. Parents, society/school and Church had done what was expected of them and now it was up to the 15-years old to live according to the laws and to be punished if the laws were broken. Over the following hundred years, at the time of the millennium, Swedish society changed a lot.

The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a religious faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

This master thesis summarizes contemporary theories on secularization processes in the Western world, and compares these with the example of Sweden, which by many scholars is considered to be the most secularized country in the Western world.I do this by dividing the most influential theorists in five different groups. In each group I explain how the theorists formulate and motivate their positions. These groups are:1) The secularization paradigm, where secularization always accompanies modernization. (Therorists: Steve Bruce and Peter Berger (in the 1960s)2) The paradigm basically accepted, but revised to depend on existential security, rather than modernisation as such. (Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart)3) Religion returned in the public sphere.

The Swedish government ratified on May 1 2009 an amendment of marital law, resulting in same-sex marriage becoming legalized. With the rights of the Christian Swedish state church to officiate weddings originating from the same law, the church was thereby faced with two options: Either officially include same-sex couples in the Christian concept of holy matrimony and keep the right to officiate weddings; or give up the right to officiate weddings altogether. An official decision to accept the terms was reached on October 22 2009, but not without being preceded by an agitated medial debate.This research attempts to analyze the arguments of the debate in three stages: In the first stage the arguments are categorized according to their respective ideological standpoint. In the second stage these categories are examined from post-modern, social constructivist and socialization theory perspectives. Based on this, the third stage sees the arguments analyzed from a viewpoint based in the Copenhagen school concept of securization.The research concludes that the debate does not only simply feature two sides with differences of opinion; but rather that the arguments of the two opposing sides are founded in a common view of the other side as a fundamental threat to ones conception of a sound society..

Energy efficiency is today more important than ever, mainly due to the high energy prices and the approaching climate changes. Heating of buildings is an essential area within energy efficiency. Many buildings are old and were built at a time when the energy prices were low and the term ?energy efficiency? was unheard of. By applying today?s broad range of energy saving actions on these old, and thereby often, heating ineffective buildings, this area has a large potential in reducing energy consumption and costs.Churches and chapels are generally old buildings with, in many cases, ineffective heating systems and therefore consume much more energy than needed.

This study aims to delineate the discourse of the canonical issue of the defectus natalium, the defect of birth, ascribed to medieval Catholic clergy of illegitimate birth, which prevented ordination to the Holy Orders or advancement to higher monastic offices. Using papal dispensations directed to Swedish clerics, monks and nuns during the period 1255-1372, the essay attempts to outline the official attitude of the papal authority towards illegitimate birth among its servants and how such a defect could be compensated by the individual. The study argues that various circumstances and personal qualities could be addressed to support the case of the supplicant. The main themes include an observance of clerical celibacy, scholarly learning, pilgrimage permeated by hardship, intervention of a third party, loyalty to the Church and overall practical circumstances that demanded a dispensation for the benefit of the ecclesiastical institutions. Drawing some inspiration from Michel Foucault?s conception of discourse, the essay argues that a polarizing discourse had by the 13th century been formed within the Catholic Church, which focused on a dichotomy of the legitimate and illegitimate cleric.

This thesis deals with different methods for measuring moisture-related dimensional changes ofwood. Typically relative humidity is measured to determine if the ambient climate around anobject is harmful to it or not. Values between 40 to 65% RH are recommended for hygroscopicmaterials. To know how a wooden object actually reacts to changes in the surroundingenvironment requires methods that involve the object itself. Because of the wood anisotropy,differences in wood structure, finishes and other restraints, it is not always possible to predict themovements.This paper addresses various measurement methods, primarily methods that have been testedin the field of conservation, with examples of their use.

Religious education in Swedish schools aims to be as objective and non-confessional as possible. This sort of education can lead to that the different religions are presented in a way which is unfamiliar to the followers of the different religions. This problem is what I have focused on in this essay since I myself was a victim of a similar situation. As a syriac-orthodox youth I felt that my Christianity was not the same as the one presented in school. I felt that it had nothing in common with what I learned in my church, therefore I asked myself the question: Whose Christianity is being represented? Therefore I have focused on the syriac-orthodox church in this research.The purpose of my essay was to enlighten the differences between religious education in syriac-orthodox churches and Swedish community schools.

This paper constitutes graduate work at the landscape architecture program at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. The main purpose of this paper is to create a project from an idea to reality. The place for the project is the environment of Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi in the north of Sweden. Icehotel is a unique hotel concept and each winter a hotel, a church and a bar is built at the area of only ice and snow, and each spring it all melts down and returns to the Torne river. During the project a plan for the environment, in ice and snow, will be made and then a part of it will be built in January 2010. The purpose is to improve the outdoor environment with landscape architecture to enhance the experience of Icehotel and create an exciting entrance to the area.