This master thesis aims to examine the methods of the conservation field and their visionabout maintenance and change, in terms of liturgical values. This is to be able todetermine if there is a need to develop the methods that the field of conservation has tosafeguard the intangible cultural heritage of the churches.This is mainly a literature review, focusing on different tutorials from the Swedish nationalheritage board, and different texts on liturgy aswell as Unesco's Convention for theSafeguarding of intagible Heritage (2003), ratified in Sweden in January 2011. A casestudy of the practical work has been carried out on three churches that have undergonechange. The application process and the results were important for this study.The conclusion is that the conservation field have ambitions to preserve the liturgicalvalues, but they do not have sufficiently developed methods to do so. Nevertheless, itappears that most cases of change in churches, increases the liturgical values..

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..

AbstractThis thesis examines and discusses a sample of the medieval hypocausts (stone-heating ovens) in the Baltic area. The medieval construction is thoroughly explained as well as the antique hypocaust in order to establish a base for the following discussion. The medieval hypocaust has been almost forgotten for a long period of time. The last time someone dealt with this category of finds were in the 1960?s by Swedish archaeologist Iwar Andersson and in the 1970?s by Danish archaeologist Johannes Hertz.

The purpose of this essay was to try to understand the relationship between the horse and man during the last part of the Iron Age and trough out the Medieval Age. To be able to get a result I investigated the horse's tending, work within agriculture, riding, warfare, breeding, to stable horses, oxen, sports and hunting, eating of the horse and age at slaughter and more. The results showed that the horse's position changed from the later part of the Iron Age throughout the Medieval Ages and in different ways for, respectively, the elite as for the peasant culture..

This is a chronological comparative study about opinions expressed in the Church of Sweden when the parishes want to change the inside of a church building. Certain concepts in the study are church, holy and holiness.Architecture plays an important role in the design of a church building. Some traditionaltheological terms that should be considered essential are Via sacra, Domus Dei, DomusEcclesiae. My focus is churches from the 19th century. Today the buildings change in a lotof ways; theologically, practically, economically etc.During the 20th century the churches have got a lot of new objects to use in the services andin the church building.

This paper deals with three mediaeval churches in the town Visby, Gotland. These churches were located in different areas in Visby. Allegedly the areas where St Hans and Ste Gertrud were located were inhabited by wealthier people, and the more peripheral area where St Mikael was located was where the poor lived. Therefore, the people that were buried at St Mikael should be of lower social status than the people buried at St Hans and Ste Gertrud. Based on the fact that an individuals diet was dependant on his or hers social status, dietary studies on skeletal remains from the three different churches have been conducted to find out dietary patterns among the individuals buried at each church respectively.

This essay discusses the width of the late medieval desertion of farms in Sweden from an archaeological perspective. The object of the essay is to investigate if archaeological investigations and research during the last 10-15 years have changed the view of the late medieval desertion in relation to the Scandinavian research project on deserted farms and villages.The essay also deals with questions on causes to the desertion and when desertion occurred. An ambition of the essay is also to give a general picture of archaeological investigations during the last 10-15 years considering the late medieval desertion. The analyses-material consists mainly of reports from archaeological investigations.Most of the investigations analysed in this essay are investigations of single farms. Because of this it is natural these investigations do not say much about the width of the desertion.

The intent with this paper is to investigate the medieval habitation in central Old Uppsala. This time-period has over the years been neglected. Therefore I wish to summarize and ana-lyze the medieval habitation to see what can be said about its continuity, and also to investi-gate why it is located in certain areas.Due to the amount of source material I have limited my investigation area to the central Old Uppsala. It is possible that this limitation will affect the result of the research but without the limitations the investigation area would have been too large to handle.The source material has been collected from excavation reports and the summarized. My theory is material culture and material agency.

The purpose of this work was to investigate the early medieval view of the Bilical king David through the analysis of ten illuminations found in early medieval manuscripts in which he is depicted playing string instruments. First, a description of medieval manuscripts and king David and string instruments was presented, second, an analysis and a discussion of images as source material and an interpretation of the mythic and symbolic significance that is based on ideas presented by Paul Ricoeurs and Roland Barthes of the ten illuminations followed. The results showed that king David often was portrayed as a musical king, a dancer and a prophet that incarnated wisdom and justice; that king David served as a role-model for the Western regents, and that he was portrayed in an idealised and estethically appealing manner..

The purpose of this study is to investigate the distribution of medieval ballads as semiotics of intertextuality in modern Swedish literature, here represented by August Strindberg, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Kerstin Ekman and Katarina Frostenson. They are famous authors from different epochs, ranging from the period called ?the modern breakthrough? in the 1880s until the postmodernism of the present time. My aim is to expose their attraction to medieval balladry, and their different ways of using form, language and style from this old poetry in poems, prose and plays, explicit as well as implicit..

During the years 2006-2010 Gotland University conducted seminars excavations in Västergarn parish on Gotland. Inside the wall a total of six house foundations have been found and a total of 127 combs have been registered. This thesis is based on a material study of the 127 registered medieval combs. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the combs and with their chronology illuminate in which period the society of Västergarn was active. And also to find out what the material remains can tell us about the place and its people.

This essay investigates, on the basis of the medieval letters, diplomas, how the medieval monasticism contributed to the maintenance of the Danish society's gender structures. The theoretical starting points for the study are gender and class structures and Marcel Mauss presented gift - giving theory. Finally, a continuous comparison is made with Catharina Andersson's results in her dissertation, in which she examines the social structure in the Swedish medieval society. The primary material in the study is the Danish diplomas. 41 diplomas were found relevant for this study.

This Bachelor paper deals with skeletal diseases like osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. 24 medieval individuals from the block Banken 1 in Visby, Gotland were chosen for an osteological analysis. Osteoporosis affects the bone with low bone mineral density and can lead to possible fractures and Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease. A DEXA reading was done at Dr. Roland Alvarssons Doctorial practice in Visby and the results from the DEXA reading showed that none of the individuals suffered from osteoporosis, but one suffered from osteopenia.

This paper is the result of an osteological study of the skeletal remains uncovered during an archaeological excavation of the medieval cemetery in Norra Nöbbelöv. The purpose of the study is to compare the material from the rural site (Norra Nöbbelöv) with materials excavated from the old medieval graveyards in the city of Lund. The aim is to try and shedsome light on the question of whether there is any difference in the occurrence and frequency of fractures and osteoarthritis in the materials compared. The first section of the paper consists of a short historical background of Norra Nöbbelöv and Lund, a chapter on ethics, general results of the analysis and the methods used. Thissection was co-authored by Ulla Zagal-Mach and Åsa Strandh.

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.