Hösten 1753 utlyste drottning Lovisa Ulrikas Witterhetsakademi en tävling där de deltagande skulle skriva om ett (eller flera) av tre ämnen: en historisk uppsats på prosa, en skönlitterär behandling på prosa, och ett ”Poeme öfwer Konung Carl Gustafs Tåg med sin Krigshär öfwer Bälterna år 1658”. Ett av de bidrag som kom in till tävlingen, om än för sent för att delta, var Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflychts bidrag Konung Carl Gustafs tog öfwer Bält 1658.1 Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht var 1700-talets mest kända kvinnliga författare och känd för bland annat Den sörjande Turtur-Duvan, Fruentimrets försvar och Tankar om lovskrifter över de Döde, men allt hon skrev har inte fallit litteraturhistorikerna på läppen. Ett sådant exempel är Konung Carl Gustafs tog öfwer Bält, som sågats ganska grundligt.

<p>Uppsatsen ingår i kursen Skapande svenska C, 30 hp, inom ämnet Litteraturvetenskap vid Umeå universitet</p>

The architecture on Drottningholmsmalmen is protected as it is essential in understanding the function of the castle from the 16th century onwards and must be preserved as much as possible. Most buildings from the 1950s until the 21st century carry high architectural quality and is a time document that provide an understanding of Swedish modernist architecture during the 20th century.A requirement for the maintenance of the high cultural-historical elements is the understanding of the value. In order for the buildings not to decay, there should be an exchange for the residents that is more than restrictions. When the area was built, the idea was to create a city-like structure with accommodations for the people working at the castle and the royal guests. Hedvig’s gallery, named after Queen Hedvig Eleonora, creates a new destination on Lovön and brings attention to the residential area. The building aims to bind the areas adjacent to the castle together and contains a gallery, a restaurant, chambré separée and a small shop. Its main structure consists of horizontal brick walls that are inspired by the grid-structure that the King first laid out for Drottningholmsmalmen.

Menstruation stigmas and a lack of facilities to manage periods have been identified as possible hinders for girls’ equal access to education all over of the world. This paper focuses on investigating how menstruation stigmas generate obstacles for girls’ equal access to, and participation in, education. Its aim is to investigate how girls in an Indian context perceive menstruation stigmas to affect them, particularly when it comes to school attendance and ability to learn in school. This is done by conducting group wise individual respondent interviews with female students from a school deemed to be less likely to subject its students to strong restricting stigmas and norms. An informant interview with the school principal, a text analysis of the school’s biology text book and respondent interviews with teachers were used as additional material for the study. The girls at the analysed school were found to perceive their capabilities to participate in education to be affected by menstruation stigmas and norms. Because these results were found in a less stigmatising environment, the paper suggests that students subjected to even more social pressure might be even more affected by menstruation stigmas. Recommendations are thus for development research and practice to break taboos and lessen the stigmas that surround menstruation.

This dissertation examines political life at the Swedish Gustavian Court through Duchess Charlotte (1759–1818). She was the Swedish monarch’s sister-in-law and well-known for her political memoirs. This study reassesses the Duchess as a political agent in her own right by taking into account earlier neglected sources. Drawing inspiration from previous research, I elaborate my empirical findings in an analytical framework called court politics. My claim is that politics involved both men and women at court since it was a key part of social life. I also structure the political agency of the Duchess into six different spheres. Each sphere is equivalent to a combined set of space, social relations, and activities, each of which supplied her with political capital. There are four spheres corresponding to the essential features of the royal identity: firstly, being at the head of a court; secondly, as part of the Swedish royal family; thirdly, in the performance of social duties at court; and fourthly, being the Duke’s consort. The two other spheres derive from the Duchess’s personal life, such as in her relationship with the Fersen family and her close circle of female friends. My examples reveal the Duchess acting as a leading figure in the social life of the Stockholm elite, hereby influencing the composition of political circles. She acted as a patron for court positions and solicited the Duke and the monarch for political purposes. When she was unsatisfied with their political decisions, she refused to host any social occasions, creating disorder within court society. The major focus in previous investigations of elite women’s political power has been on their marital status as a means of influence. By framing the Duchess’s agency in six spheres, I position her between the aristocracy and royal authority, together with both men and women of her social status. Thus, this case study offers a display of the complex dynamics of power at the Gustavian court.

The thesis concerns the artworks by Johan Sylvius in the staircase, upper vestibule, upper north guard room and upper gallery of the Drottningholm Palace, as painted performances. They are studied as performative cultural encounters with a historically situated beholder but will also be regarded in relation to their spatial and artistic surrounding. From the theoretical framework of performativity and reception aesthetics, the results indicate that the images have the potential to inscribe the beholder within certain postulates on power relations and politics of identity, through working with splendour, naturalism, narrative and the function of the rooms they are located in. The results further point to the images’ manners of effecting the beholder on several levels through an employed pluralism and lastly, that they both build upon and re-produce the relation between monarch/nobility, where the former is the sole figure who both grants status and can remove it in an instance.

This thesis explores the societal implications of Gustav III’s national costume in the context of Swedish court society during the late eighteenth century. With the aims of uncovering King Gustav III’s view of the National Costume and its role in Swedish court society, as well as how we can understand the National Costume’s meaning for the aristocracy in late eighteenth-century Sweden, this thesis presents a post-structural textual analysis of Gustav III’s (1806) REFLEXIONER, angående en ny nationel klädedrägt (Reflections concerning a new national costume) in order to uncover King Gustav III’s perception of and ideology behind the national costume. This is then juxtaposed with a similar analysis of a chapter from Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta’s (1902) journal, representing an aristocratic counter-perspective. This thesis presents a previously unexplored sociological perspective in studying Gustav III’s National Costume. Departing from Norbert Elias’ work around the court society, arguments are made for the interpretation of the National Costume as an instrument in court ceremonial, at the king’s disposal, holding the potential to create a distance in power between the Swedish court nobility and the monarchy. Furthermore, it is argued that the National Costume represents an oppressive force to the Swedish court nobility as a social class.

In 1704 Hedvig Eleonora, the dowager queen of Sweden, commissioned a portrait of herself and her great-grandson, Karl Fredrik, the duke of Holstein-Gottorp, four years of age. The portrait by court portraitist David von Krafft is quite formal in style, and alludes to other royal portraits in a number of dynastic symbols and visual conventions although it is unusual in its composition and subject-matter. There are two very similar copies of this painting, one in the collections of the Swedish National Museum, and one in Schloss Eutin in Germany. The Swedish painting has attracted little interest from art historians and has not been exhibited for many years. The aim of this study is to analyse the paiting in its historical, political and dynastic context. What was the purpose of the painting and what message was it to convey? A comprehensive comparision of royal portraits, commissioned in the late 1600:s and early 1700:s, reveals that many have visual conventions and status-enhancing details in common. However, the double-portrait differs from them in some important aspects. The composition of the portrait was most probably carefully considered. Hedwig Eleonora was an experienced art commissioner after 60 years of shaping the dynastic image-building of her son Charles XI and grandson Charles XII. She was also well versed in the visual use of symbolism and dynastic symbols. When the portrait was painted the unmarried king Charles II had been away in war for several years. The question of succession was pressing and the double-portrait can be read as a visual opinion piece on behalf of one of two possible heirs to the throne, the young Karl Fredrik. The young boy was the current duke of of Holstein Gottorp and the dowager queen herself was born a princess of Holstein-Gottorp. The double-portrait testifies to her life-long efforts to forward the cause of the dukedom. Perhaps it is also a testament to her failure. The king fought a long, wrenching war and when he died, another regent was chosen.

For many centuries, humans have used portraits as a tool to understand our surroundings, a way to anchor what has happened. The portrait acts as a mirror of the changes in society, and the message of the portrait changes according to the conditions of society. But the basic purpose of the portrait remains the same, to tell something about the person portrayed and a way of documenting it for posterity. The purpose of this study is to examine of the symbolic use in four Swedish queen portraits between 1654 and 2020. It examines how Queen Hedvig Eleonora, Queen Lovisa Ulrika, Queen Victoria and Queen Silvia are represented in official portraits to enhance their credibility by using visual symbols in relation to their roles as Swedish queens. Through biographical research and semiotic image analysis, the four portraits of the study are examined in relation to their society. The material is then studied with the support of a theoretical perspective focusing on the social context and visual culture. The study shows that a certain symbolism is timeless, the symbolism that is based on human genetic understandings of social relations. Other symbolism, however, is more time-specific, that which is based on contemporary cultural norms. However, it is not possible to see any real progress in the function of the four portraits. They can rather be seen as snapshots representing the time of their production. What has changed, however, is the medium and semiotics. The way the portraits are produced according to the chosen audience and which visual symbols are used for which message. However, this is not a linear development either, but a constant process of change that today is going faster and faster thanks to today’s society. The study also shows that the selected four portraits reflect their own society and have adapted to their respective target audience, as the portrait loses its point if the viewer does not understand the message. It does not matter how much the queens try to influence their surroundings with their portraits if the viewer does not understand the intention. A portrait does not live its own life, but lives thanks to the viewer.

För många framgångsrika service- och tjänstebolag är Customer RelationshipManagement, eller CRM-system, ett fundamentalt och nödvändigt verktyg som företag brukar för att möjliggöra en förhöjd kundupplevelse och kundnöjdhet för företagetskunder. På senare år har artificiell intelligens genom sin utveckling sett en ökning av potentiella användningsområden och sedermera introducerats inom diverse branscher tack vare dess effektivisering av dessa användningsområden. Men alla branscher har intesett samma implementeringsgrad av olika anledningar. Dels beroende på operationella skillnader, men också på grund av hur kunder ser på användningen av artificiell intelligens som i sin tur påverkat företagens implementering av artificiell intelligens i sina kundrelaterade processer. Med artificiella intelligensens intåg inom den svenska försäkringsbranschen i kombination med de tidigare utförda studier som påpekar problematiken med singulärt fokus på tekniken inom CRM är syftet att undersöka hur svenska försäkringsbolagstrategiskt arbetar med implementering av artificiell intelligens och CRM. Vi har även som förhoppning att skapa en bredare förståelse kring möjligheter och eventuell problematik med artificiell intelligens, CRM och vilka olika mätinstrument som användsför att se om det är en lönsam investering. Baserat på problemdiskussionen kom vi fram till följande frågeställning: Hur arbetar försäkringsbolag i Sverige idag med CRM-system och artificiell intelligensför att skapa kundlojalitet? Den teoretiska referensramen utgörs av sex huvudsakliga teman; Business to Customer,Customer Relationship Management, Artificiell Intelligens, CRM som strategi, Lojalitet och Mätning. Dessa teman sammanfattas sedan med hjälp av en egen syntes inspirerad av Rust &amp; Chungs (2006, s. 562) artikel “Marketing Models of Service and Relationship”. Vi har med en kvalitativ ansats intervjuat sex personer från tre olika försäkringsbolag. Försäkringsbolagen skiljer sig i storlek och har olika syn på både CRM och artificiell intelligens. Vi redogör senare i analysen hur artificiell intelligens och CRM används av försäkringsbolag på den svenska marknaden. I det avseendet ger vi läsare olika exempel på hur artificiell intelligens och CRM kan vara värdeskapande till både företag och kunder. Efter samtliga intervjuer och analys upptäcktes olika gemensamma nämnare hos deundersökta företagen vad gäller både artificiell intelligens och CRM.Implementeringsgraden av artificiell intelligens berodde till stor del på företagensmålkunder, eller mer specifikt på åldern hos målkunderna. Vi identifierade att försäkringsbolagen har arbetat olika länge med både CRM och artificiell intelligens, men är positiva till att båda verktygen kan ge både interna och externa möjligheter. Trots detta skiljer sig användningsgraden av verktygen mellan de undersökta försäkringsbolagen. Ett AI-integrerat CRM-system tillåter nya avenyer att utforskas som tidigare inte varit synonyma med försäkringar och kan således förändra relationen vi har till våra försäkringsbolag.