Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland (Sweden) No 1282Rev
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The World Heritage Committee adopted the following decision (Decision 33 COM 8B.28): Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland The World Heritage Committee, 1. Having examined Documents WHC-09/33.COM/8B (Sweden) and WHC-09/33.COM/INF.8B1, No 1282rev 2. Defers the examination of the nomination of the Farms and Villages in Hälsingland, Sweden, to the World Heritage List in order to allow the State Party to: a) Reformulate the nomination to select a few exceptional decorated farmhouses that maintain their Official name as proposed by the State Party agricultural setting and could be said to be Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland exemplars of the specific and local tradition of decorated farmhouses of the late 18th and 19th Location centuries in Hälsingland and possibly neighbouring Gävleborg County regions; Hälsingland Province and Dalarna Province b) Provide a more detailed comparative analysis of Sweden the best surviving decorated houses of the genre in order to demonstrate how the nominated ones Brief description compare to these; A selection of seven large timber farmhouses with richly c) Produce an overall management plan or system decorated interiors are part of a concentration of over a for the serial nomination, including emergency thousand surviving timber structures in the Hälsingland response procedures; th th area, dating mainly from the 18 and 19 centuries, that d) Ensure all nominated sites have legal protection reflect a timber building tradition that originated in the for their interiors and that settings are adequately th th Middle Ages (12 -16 centuries AD). The farmhouses, protected; set in long fertile valleys within the Taiga forest 3. Considers that any revised nomination with revised landscape, display the peak of prosperity for this building boundaries would need to be considered by a mission to tradition between 1800 and 1870, and reflect the the site. prosperity of independent farmers who used economic surplus from their exploitation of flax and woodland to On 27 January 2011 the State Party submitted a revised build substantial new houses with entire buildings or nomination. suites of rooms used solely for festivities. The owners commissioned artists from Hälsingland or itinerant Consultations painters from neighbouring Dalarna to provide highly ICOMOS has consulted its International Scientific decorative interiors to reflect their social status. These Committees on Cultural Landscapes, on Vernacular decorated houses combine local building and local folk Architecture and on Wood and several independent art traditions in a highly distinctive way that can be seen experts. as the final flowering of a folk culture with deep roots in north-west Europe. For the first nomination, ICOMOS also consulted IUCN who provided comments on 19 January 2009. Category of property In terms of categories of cultural property set out in Technical Evaluation Missions Article I of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, this is a An ICOMOS technical evaluation mission visited the serial nomination of 7 sites. property from 16 to 19 September 2011. Additional information requested and received from 1 Basic data the State Party For the first nomination, ICOMOS sent a letter to the Included in the Tentative List State Party on 7 October 2008 on the issue of 12 December 2005 comparative analysis, selection of sites and the inclusion of flax mills and the Trogsta Valley. The State Party International Assistance from the World Heritage responded with supplementary information on 17 Fund for preparing the Nomination November 2008 and on 2 December 2008. None For the revised nomination, ICOMOS sent a letter to the Date received by the World Heritage Centre State Party on 26 September 2011 requesting further 24 January 2007 information on the overall management of the serial 27 January 2011 property. The State Party responded on 21 October 2011 with details of the composition and responsibilities Background of a Coordinating Site Council. This information has This is a deferred nomination (33 COM, Seville, 2009). been included in this report. 353 ICOMOS sent a further letter to the State Party on 12 considerable prosperity to the farmers who invested their December 2011 requesting further information on the new wealth in large buildings. composition of the proposed Management Committee, details of its responsibilities towards the Management A particularly distinctive feature of the new or enlarged Plan, and when the Committee will be inaugurated. It farmhouses was the provision of either a separate also requested information on the scope and protection house, a Herrstuga, or rooms in the main house, set of the buffer zone for Bommars, on Emergency Fire aside for festivities, special occasions or assemblies, Response Plans, as requested by the World Heritage and hardly used for the rest of the year. These rooms Committee, and on Monitoring Indicators. were usually the most highly decorated in the farmstead. The State Party responded on 27th February 2012.This In the 18th century, most farms had houses and farm supplementary information has been included in this buildings arranged around a courtyard with a Portlider, report. or access building on one side. During the 19th century, the layout was often changed to a more open Date of ICOMOS approval of this report arrangement of house with side wings. Gradually during 14 March 2012 the hundred years from around 1800 many houses also changed from one storey to either one and a half or two storeys. 2 The property Most buildings were constructed of jointed horizontal Description timbers of pine or spruce from the village’s forests. By th In a comparatively small area of north-eastern Sweden, the 18 century, the face of the timbers was planed th bordering the Gulf of Bothnia and known as Hälsingland, smooth and in the 19 century many buildings were are a concentration of large richly decorated, wooden faced first with broad, hand-sawn, vertical timber boards, farmhouses and associated farm buildings reflecting the and later machine cut ones, often painted, to make the peak of prosperity for the farming landscape in the houses look more similar to those constructed of brick. 19th century and the social status of its farmers. Dark red paint using pigments from the Falun copper mines was also used in Hälsingland (and all over In response to the request of the World Heritage Sweden) and came to be seen a symbolic of Swedish th Committee at its 33rd session, the nomination has been rural life. Later in the 19 century lighter pastel colours re-formulated and the number of sites reduced from 15 were also introduced. The traditional roof covering was (including 20 farmhouses, a flax mill and summer birch bark, held in place by thin split rods. This was th pasture) to 7 farmhouses. The seven sites are, spread supplanted in the 19 century by nailed shingles and in th across an area 100 km from east to west and 50 km the 20 by tiles for dwellings and tin sheets for north to south. Six of these are in Hälsingland Province outbuildings. with a seventh just across the border in Dalarna th Province – although this area was culturally part of A distinctive feature of the 19 century houses is their Hälsingland in the 1800s. elaborate decoration, a fusion of popular art and contemporary landed-gentry styles, such as Baroque, The farmhouses are seen as the best and most Rococo and “le style gustavien”. On the outside, this representative of the decorated farmhouse tradition, and elaboration is commonly found in carved decoration have been selected from some 400 surviving decorated around the main entrance door or porch, the work of rooms. local cabinet makers. Within, the houses were decorated with canvas or textile paintings affixed to the walls, or Hälsingland is mountainous and fairly densely afforested with paintings directly onto the wooden ceilings or walls, th province with the small amount of cultivable land some supplied in the 19 century by itinerant painters (approximately 5% of the total) in long narrow, flat, from neighbouring Dalarna (Dalecarlia), and known as valleys alongside lakes and rivers. Dalecarlian paintings. The subjects were often biblical but with the people depicted in the latest fashions of the The rural landscape of small villages and scattered time. farmsteads has evolved over at least seven centuries. The landscape reflects the comparative independence of Four hundred painted interiors have been recorded, the th the farmers, traditional communal use of pasture, and majority from the 19 century. The names of ten painters mixed farming based on cattle breeding, arable are known, although the majority of the work remains cultivation, forestry, flax growing and hunting. anonymous. In the 19th century, communal use of woodland and The seven sites selected consist of farmhouses with a pasture and traditional sharing of valley fields was number of decorated rooms for festivities (between four replaced by a legal apportionment of land to farmers, and ten), with largely intact ranges of farm buildings, and part of a national land regularisation scheme (see sited within a landscape context that has the capacity to History and development below). This change brought reflect their agrarian function. 354 In detail, the property consists of the following farms. a blue ground that imitates Jasperware pottery produced Only the main decorated rooms are described: by the English firm Wedgwood. Beneath, painted in a free form, is an idealised landscape of a mill next to a 1. Kristofers farm, Stene, Järvsö waterfall, framed by trees and with a boat in the foreground. The ceiling is edged with an acanthus motif Kristofers farm, with two houses and service buildings in grisaille, and a garland of white roses with green arranged around three sides of the courtyard, is on the leaves. outskirts of the village of Stene. It was reconstructed in the early 19th century.