The view of children has changed and evolved significantly throughout history. People in earlier times did not view children and childhood as we do today, during the early modern period the attitudes towards children began to develop. In the present study, the perspectives of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther on children have been examined and analyzed to gain an understanding of how people viewed children and childhood, as well as how their perspectives differed from each other. The results of the study have also explored how the views on children and childhood may have has highlighted the divergent approaches and perspectives of Luther and Erasmus regarding the view of children and childhood, as well as the influence they exerted during the early modern period and the development of curricula.

Den här avhandlingen handlar det underhåll till sårade och gamla soldater som den svenskastatsmakten organiserade under tidigmodern tid. Undersökningen tar sin utgångspunkt i den tid närstatsmakten började organisera mer omfattande hjälp för soldater, vilket var slutet på Gustav Vasasoch under Erik XIV:s regeringstid i mitten av 1500-talet. Motiven till att statsmakten organiseradehjälp för en del soldater var att dessa skulle ha offrat sin hälsa och arbetsförmåga i kronans tjänst, menså länge statsmakten fortsatte att vara relativt löst organiserad var även hjälpen till soldaterna avganska liten omfattning. Det ändrades under Gustav II Adolfs regering då planerna på att skapa ettkrigsmanshus i Vadstena etablerades, vilka senare genomfördes efter hans död och institutionen kundeta emot de första soldaterna senast 1640. I krigsmanshuset fick ett trettiotal soldater med familjeruppehälle, samtidigt som soldater boende i andra delar av landet fick stöd från krigsmanshuskassansom också administrerades från Vadstena. Mot slutet av 1600-talet blev kassan proportionellt merbetydelsefull än krigsmanshuset och runt år 1700 försörjde kassan flera tusen soldater runtom i riket.1700-talet innebar stora förändringar, bland annat genom att krigen blev färre, att krigaryrket intelängre var lika attraktivt som karriärväg för adelsmän och att statsmakten utvecklade andra mer civiladelar. Behovet av ett krigsmanshus fanns till sist inte längre och institutionen i Vadstena stängde förboende våren 1784, men kassan fanns kvar in på 1970-talet. / This dissertation focuses on the maintenance of wounded and old soldiers organized by the Swedishstate in the Early Modern Period. The thesis starts at the time when the government began to organizemore help for soldiers, which was the end of Gustav Vasa’s reign and during that of his son Erik XIVin the mid-16th century. The reasons why the government organized help for some soldiers weremainly that the soldiers would have sacrificed their health and ability to work in their service of theCrown. But as long as the government continued to be relatively loosely organized, the aid to thesoldiers remained on a relatively small scale. This changed under the reign of Gustav II Adolf (ruled1611–1632) when plans for the establishment of the Veteran's Home in Vadstena were established.These plans were later executed after his death and the institution was able to welcome the firstsoldiers by 1640. At the Veteran's Home, some 30 soldiers were kept with families while othersoldiers lived in their home parishes in other parts of the country and were supported by the Veteran’sFund, which was also administered in Vadstena. Towards the end of the 17th century, the fund becameproportionally more important than the Veteran’s Home and around 1700 the fund delivered support toseveral thousand soldiers. The 18th century meant major changes in society, including fewer wars, thatbecoming an officer was no longer as attractive as career path for the nobility, and that the governmentdeveloped other more civilian functions. The need for a Veteran’s Home was no longer the same underthose circumstances and the Veteran’s Home closed for residents in the spring of 1784, but the fundremained until the 1970s.

ABSTRACT Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka Jacob de Wets porträttserie av skotska kungar som återfinns i Palace of Holyroodhouse i Edinburgh, Skottland. Uppsatsen är tematiskt disponerad där de två första kapitlen behandlar porträttserier i det tidigmoderna Europa, historiska texter om nationens mytologiska ursprung och det samhälleliga läget under de skotska restorationsåren mellan 1660 och cirka 1689. Detta diskuteras sedan tillsammans med Jacob de Wets porträtt vad gäller syfte, funktion och sedermera praktisk tillkomst. Bildanalyser med hjälp av Roland Barthes teori om myten som ett metaspråk fördjupar diskussionen om hur serien ska läsas och förstås. Undersökningen finner att serien har flera syften och funktioner sprungna ur diskurser om nationalitet och makt, grundat i kulturella och konstnärliga praktiker samt historiska händelser gällande politik och religion. Nyckelord: Jacob de Wet, restorationen, Stuart, porträtt, porträttserier, tidigmodern tid,Skottland, Palace of Holyroodhouse, semiotik, Roland Barthes.

This is a study of Samuel Pepys diary where the focal point is emotions in his professional life, emotions are understood through Barbara H. Rosenweins theory of Emotional Communities. The main part is made up of two chronological chapters following through the ten years Pepys kept a diary. The point is to illuminate Pepys professional life in the British Royal Navy through the perspective of emotions. We follow Pepys’s professional development, where emotions is discussed in relation to concepts such as personal interest and social status. From the first years of the diary to latter perspectives of him turning into the great naval administrator he became known as. Pepys in his professional sphere strictly controlled his emotions and soared above his competitors. He was a man who was puritan raised, highly emotional, educated and curious - on the fringes of the power epicentre in restoration-era England.

The early modern age was a period of great discoveries, formulation of new ideas and new methods for scientific inquiry. It was also a time of increased travel within Europe among nobility and people of learning. In this essay a number of Swedish learned men are followed in their journeys, through their own diaries and autobiographies, to centers of learning in England, France, Italy and other countries. The essay investigates how the journeys reflect the formation of academic and scientific institutions in Europe, such as scientific societies and journals, and experimental practices. It also studies the nature of personal interactions and the mechanics of international social networks, and the role of travelers in this context. It also looks at how Sweden, as a country in the periphery of Europe, could take advantage of this kind of international travel and become part of the new developments on the continent.

This thesis by the name To create oneself: Carl Peter Thunberg’s persona constructed by means of his travel account draws inspiration from recent studies within the history of science regarding the concept of persona. It seeks to expand the notion of persona to examine how it could be constructed and refined by individuals. In doing so, it offers an alternative approach to persona. Not as intellectual standard types but as a joining together of qualities that through the joining creates unique personae to each individual. Furthermore, the essay looks at change, and how it could function as an aspect of a persona. In order to examine this, I will look at how the persona of Carl Peter Thunberg was constructed in his travel account which was published in four parts and covered his travels in Europe, Africa and Asia in the 1770s. Thunberg was one of Carl von Linné’s students and a natural historian and physician in his own right. His travel account was widely anticipated and offered an opportunity for him to introduce himself to a wider audience. This source is exemplary for this kind of analysis as all four parts of the travel account existed within the same genre and was written for the same public, yet changes occurred in how Thunberg was portrayed. Rather than explaining these changes in how Thunberg was portrayed by changes in his personal circumstances, I will argue that they are best understood by considering the aspect of change as a central strategy in constructing Thunberg’s persona as a evolving scientist and natural historian.

This thesis investigates gossip and rumours through a narrative lens in order to understand what kind of stories emanated from eighteenth-century Stockholm, and what these stories reveal about the moral values and concerns of the urban community. Using records from the consistory court and the lower courts of Stockholm, the thesis sheds some light on the stories which tend to go under the radar, and gives insights into the subtle facets of urban life, wherein gossip nurtured a culture of speculation and suspicion.  By uncovering the narratives which preoccupied the urban population of Stockholm, some thematical patterns have emerged: people gossiped about sexual immorality, marital disorder, financial dishonesty, and perceived threats against the Lutheran faith. Typically, these stories seem to have emanated from the neighbourhood or the household. The study also shows that gossip and rumours told the stories of those who violated core moral values – stories that heavily relied on a repertoire of narrative tropes and figures to portray those who transgressed social and moral boundaries. These stories reveal a deep concern for – even fear of – the hidden threats in the urban fabric: immoral characters disguised as honest members of the community. As inversions of core values, these narrative stereotypes were perceived as dangerous threats to social order and unity, whose actions could have far-reaching implications for society at large. As such, these were symbolically charged and value-laden stories. Through highlighting the coercive aspects of these stories, this thesis also argues that gossip provided urban communities with an opportunity to voice collective concerns and protect community values by unmasking hidden threats, and control or stigmatise transgressors.

There were many ways of bordering manliness during the historical period covered by my research. Borders have been metaphorically understood as those invisible, often non-enunciated limits that have safeguarded manliness. There were borders separating masculinity from femininity and from childishnes, but there is also a more distant border, separating masculinity from the bestial. The term un-manliness is a useful concept for this analysis, for it can be used to illuminate the different ways in which masculinity has been interrogated. The concept can also be used in comparative analyses of how tolerance towards men deviating from ideas of ideal masculinity has differed according to situation and culture. It has been my ambition to elucidate the particular attitudes, values, customs, knowledge and requirements that influenced the view of masculinity at both individual and the group level. The clearest-cut aspects of manliness and un-manliness expressed in court proceedings were those having to do with sexuality, relations within the household, and the subordinate and dominant masculinities displayed by different court-room actors. The latter, in turn, reflected contemporary social structures, including the social gap that divided the Livonian peasantry’s serfs or former serfs from the ruling Baltic-German elite. Records from the court proceedings have shown the subordinate masculinity of the defendants, subordinate not only to that of the officers of the court but to that of the witnesses. This subordination was an inevitable consequence of the nature of the accusations, regardless of whether they were deemed well-founded or false.  The defendants were placed in a situation where they were forced constantly to be on the alert, ready to defend themselves and show their best sides. As a result, they would often give extremely clear expression to their views of proper masculinity. Such actors stressed, consciously or unconsciously, certain manly traits and behaviour patterns that characterised themselves and others. Their arguments provide insights into what they thought of each other and how they conceived a man should generally be, behave and act in different situations. By the same token, they clearly showed what kinds of behaviours were considered undesirable or outright unmanly. The positioning of the borders of manliness was linked both to time and to space. Deviations have helped different societies set the borders for what they considered acceptable behaviour. There was a clear cultural and geographical border between Sweden as such, and the Swedish province Livonia. This emerges clearly when one compares Livonian results with earlier studies on bestiality in Sweden. This shows that the view of manliness and the tolerance towards certain kinds of behaviour changed as one moved East.

En komparativ analys av dödsskildringar i två moderna romaner, Niels Lyhne skriven av J.P. Jacobsen och Stoner av John Williams. Diskuterar den moderna apokalypsen, utvecklingen från tidigmoderna till senmoderna romaner och Karl Jaspers gränsögonblick.

Uppsatsen behandlar konst och visuella kulturer inom den evangeliska brödraförsamlingen, eller herrnhutismen, i Västsverige ca 1740-1810. Porträtt, kyrkomålningar samt dekorationstryck har studerats. Stora delar av den herrnhutiska ideologin och estetiken importerades mellan församlingsgrupperna, och de västsvenska objekten är analyserade med hjälp av framförallt tyska exempel. Ett nyckelord är passager – passager mellan ljus och mörker, ord och kött, död och liv, inre och yttre – vilka gestaltades genom såret, mandorlan, blomman, ögat och stjärnan. En styrka i bildkonsten var just mångtydigheten i dessa religiösa symboler, då de tillät betraktaren att läsa in symboliska betydelser utifrån den egna kontexten.  Syftet är att diskutera och belysa herrnhutismen ur ett helhetsperspektiv gällande estetik, ideologi och social kontext, vilket harmonierar med hur de själva uppfattade livet: Inom ramen för det tidigmoderna allegoriska paradigmet såg man helheter och samband i det stora och i det lilla. Genom att studera objekten utifrån uppfattningen om att helheterna existerar har jag velat öppna upp för och möjliggöra en tolkning av dess visuella kulturer utifrån den kontext i vilken de själva verkade. Synsättet påminner mycket om dagens systemteori och uppsatsen diskuterar också dessa likheter utifrån begreppen grace och integration. / The aim of this study is to examine the symbolism in art objects and visual culture belonging to the Moravian Church in western Sweden during the 18th century. The objects chosen are portraits from Gothenburg, church art from the countryside, as well as printed decorations in books and church service agendas. The Moravian church is one part of a general transition from an early modern society, through Enlightenment, towards romantiscism and secularization. The Moravian church was also to a high degree an international movement. Therefore the objects analyzed here have been related to examples from the international Moravian church, as well as to local examples without any obvious association to the community. One aspect of the determinant ideology of the Moravian church was their view of how practical life, the religious ideology and estetic ideals together formed aspects of a whole. Life was not seen as fragmented in parts. Instead its different forms of expression were all regarded as ways for the Divine to express itself, as well as ways for the people to experience and approach the Divine, an approach that goes within the frame of ”Ordo Salutis”. This ability to experience life as a whole is also a scientific approach used in the present study to interpret their art and symbolism. The study shows how a number of symbols (the eye, the star, the wound, the mandorla and the flower) all are aspects aiming to point towards the one main transition – the one between light and dark, life and death.