The aim of this master thesis is to study the reliefs of a Romanesque tombstone from 1130 AD, with the intention to form a plausible understanding of their meaning. During the course of the investigation, my main focus will be on collecting materials of an iconographical and historiographical nature, as they appear in previous studies. I will also use performative analysis when examining the tombstone. Consequently this thesis can be seen as a survey of history and place; early Christian iconology as well as the experience of the viewer. As a result, the 900-year-old tombstone will not only be seen as a memorial in this text, but also as a performance of one man?s faith and as representing the core message of the early Christian church.The tombstone is a rarity in Swedish art history and well worth a closer examination.

In this study I compare the donor portraits on wallpaintings in Scanian churches from the 12th and the 15th century and relate them to medieval society.I find that women were equally capable of owning and donating land during the entire period. The image of the ideal woman changed during the 14th century from a married woman to the unreachable mistress of the chivalrous culture and the holy virgin. Women had a natural place beside their husbands in 12th century donor portraits, while single male donors are more frequent in the 15th century. While 12th century donors were supposed to show their position in society by offering plentiful donations directly to God, donors in the 14th century instead strived to present themselves as humble and pious. The individualisation of late medieval society meant that people had to depend on themselves to achieve salvation..

The 17th century was a time of change in Sweden. During the century many of the Swedish laws were altered. In the beginning of the 17th century this alteration resulted in a more severe sentence for most of the committed crimes, but a mitigation of the sentence for some of those crimes was effected in the middle of the 17th century. The aim of this study is to see how two local courts in the judicial system during the mid 17th century in Sweden treated adultery, and those who committed the crime against the background of what the law regarding adultery stipulated. The source material used are court records from Fryksdals hundred and Jösse hundred in western Sweden, and laws regarding adultery during the 17th century.This research shows that the laws regarding adultery were in themselves not gender specific, and their main concern was the marital status of those involved.

This research project is about how the subjects` art and music has been described under the 20th century in the Swedish school until today. The purpose with this research project is to do a text analysis that describes these subjects now and the last century, to illustrate the differences between today and the last century. Hence the size of this subject I have chosen some random samples out of the 20th century until today. I started to take these random samples from the first lyric I found about these subjects, and continued with these random samples in other lyrics from the middle of the 20th century until the year 2006. I just took these random samples from what I had found because I did not found some lyrics from earlier period of the 20th century.

Nordic Summer Evening is a theoretical painting, today an important icon of Nordic art from the turn of the century. The purpose of this essay is to analyse the painting, and to investigate and identify its declaration of program, and in a wider context, the emergence of a program of the nationalistic art at the turn of the last century. The essay also investigates how the painting has become more popular throughout the century, and why Americans tend to see the painting as an exposé over a quarrel, filled with sexual tension, while Swedes tend to make a point out of the harmony and stillness of the painting..

The current planning philosophy is based on a political utopic modernism founded during the first part of the 20th century. The focus is, in planning a defined area, to maximize the internal efficiency and to create a competitivesociety. During the latter part of the former century globalization changed the context, thus creating the need for a new way of approaching physical planning. This paper shows that the historical and philosophicalmetaphor of flow can be applied to meet the demands in the global city. It also shows how the edge, as where interaction takes place, is an important part of the content that has to be defined.

??Masada shall never fall again!? A study about Masada as an Israeli national myth during the 20th century? by Sara Tibblin. This essay is about the Israeli national myth of Masada, a cliff in the Negev desert that was the setting of a collective suicide in 73 AD, at the end of the Jewish uprising against the Romans. This story has later been rediscovered and has during the 20th century become a national myth in Israel. This essay will examine how the national myth of Masada has been used in different contexts in Israel during the 20th century and which part it has played when it comes to the national identity of Israel. My findings have afterwards been explained with help of Eriksens theory regarding national myths from the book Historia, myth och identitet (History, myth and identity) (1996).   .

The subject of religion in Swedish schools is the single most talked about topic in the curriculum. One explanation could be that it is the oldest subject in Swedish schools and the topic has undergone the biggest change through time. This process of change has been anything but undebated. The subject of religion within schools has met debates through almost its entire history, partly from the state and from the church, but also from the teachers and the students. Debates concerning the existence of Christianity in Swedish schools as well as the Swedish traditions constantly reoccur in today?s government debates and various media but in different versions.

This paper deals with the development of scientific geography during Antiquity from its mythical background before the seventh century BC to Claudius Ptolemy during the second century AD. The main focus is on questions concerning the shape of the earth, its place in the universe, size and mapping of the earth. Already before 400 BC, the idea of the earth as a globe was firmly estabished. During classical time, Aristotle used empirical and rational arguments to prove that the earth was a sphere and that it was situated motionless in the center of the universe. In the third century BC, the first reasonably correct measurements of the circumference of the earth was carried out by Eratosthenes.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine what intentions handbooks, laws and regulations have had about children and childrens literature, as we think that they can serve as guiding principles for childrens libraries in Sweden. The questions are: what signals have the childrens libraries got from the documents concerning the view of children and childrens literature during the 20th century? What has the social opinion about children been during the 20th century? How have children been seen during the 20th century? The method we used is a qualitative source analysis of mention above documents seen from a hermeneutical point of view. This analysis is woven together with the social opinion on children during the 20th century. Our results show that the aim of childrens literature before 1945 was a pedagogic and moral one.

With this essay, I want to examine the image of Russians in the Swedish rural press during the second half of the 19th century, how rusophobia appeared in Swedish rural press and how the image of Russians changed during this time. To find this out, I set these questions:  ? How was Russians and Russia portrayed in the Swedish rural press? ? Did the view of Russians change during this time?The essay is written so that I have interpreted my empirical material to do a discourse analysis in which I analyse different articles that have been written about Russia and Russians in a stereotypical way. The source material used in the thesis comes from 41 news articles; the bulk of the source material comes from newspapers that were published during the late 19th century.Rural press reporting on Russia and Russians were in the second half of the 19th century mostly negative. Of the 41 articles that were examined it was found that about half were negative, less than one-sixth were positive, while about a third were neutral.The reason that many of the articles were negative has to do with Sweden's shared history with Russia, with many wars and territorial losses.

The park at Svaneholm is a place, the history of which is very little known today and the needfor better knowledge has been the cause of this investigation. The essay is primarily limited tothe time from late 17th century up to the end of the 18th century and takes stand on profoundinvestigations in accessible map-and archive material. The results presented show a manorhill, which during the course of a hundred years was subject to several changes and in bigparts consisted in other than park/garden.Burman related to the manor hill containing a cowshed, a large dam and a parterre garden isix quarters and it is plausible to think, that this establishment generally was built as producedon the plate.In the 18th century the construction is being changed, they go on building at the cowshed andin 1707 there are totally 268 livestock on the farm. In 1723 the garden is represented in amuch bigger scale than on the plate from the 1680:s, but it is not possible to tell, whether it isnew or not.Parts of the parterre garden is remaining during the whole of the 18th century, for the leastuntil it is being squared, but on two of the squares there was built a riding-groundMoreover the cowshed burnt down and was only partially reconstructed.The image given by the archive material is at the same time variegated. The inventory list ongarden tools from 1726 gives an image of gardening more directed to growing and pathshuffling, while the possibilities of keeping the parterres were fewer (e.g.

Symbols in the hands of politicians can be a powerful tool of manipulation. The usage of symbols in speeches or texts can change a person?s will, without him or her ever knowing it.We have compared the usage of symbols in the articles surrounding the ratification of the constitution in 18th century America with that of today?s European Union, to see if any similarities between these two cases exists, and what implications this could have for the future of the EU. We have divided the symbols in both cases into different categories so as to enable us to compare the cases to each other. With the help of Masters Theory and the writings of Benedict Anderson and Murray Edelman we have concluded that there indeed exist some similarities between 18th century America and the EU.

This essay is an attempt in analysing the establishment of the first Early Middle Ages castles in Scania. There are two types of castles in Scania during the eleventh century, keeps andringworks. This castle was built by three fixed elements of power: the crown, the church and the aristocracy. The result of the survey shows that A majority of the castles during theeleventh century in Scania where initiated by the church.The results also show two building phases of castles under the period. The first building phase begins in middle of the eleventh century and the second building phase begins in theperiod 1180- 1200.

In this essay I compare the description of the Thirty Years? War in a number of German and Swedish encyclopedias published between 1854 and 2005. The essay is a historiographical research with focus on three areas; the description of the war background, the reason of the Swedish intervention in the war and the picture of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf with the consequences of the war and the peace of Westphalia. I want to analyze the differences and similarities in the way the history is being told in the German and Swedish encyclopedias. The research shows a transformation from a narrative, nationalistic, partial description with focus on individuals and specific events to a more analytical and objective description with focus on structures.