The collections of the Vasa Museum in Stockholm Sweden not only include the world’s only complete 17th century warship, the famous Vasa who sank on her maiden voyage outside Stockholm in the summer of 1628, but also a unique and extensive collection of dress artifacts, fragments from clothes in textile and leather recovered during the excavation of the ship. This study aims to present historical narratives about the labour, knowledge of craft and everyday life of the ship’s crew by analysing leather mittens and other types of artifacts related to the work on board as material culture, aided by early modern Dutch depictions in art showing work being done on large ships contemporary with Vasa. Two types of leather mittens in the Vasa museum’s collections have been identified as having parallels in similar mittens also from maritime context. These mittens are further investigated regarding the mystery of their making and specific traces of use. The results indicate that some of the mittens could potentially be of a particular Dutch style or origin, perhaps worn as a fashion statement among Dutch sailors. Other mittens of an unusually dark and heavy leather bear the signs of hard labour and work with scolding hot pitch and tar from caulking wooden ships. These mittens are also characterised by an economic model of cutting the leather that may connect them with the making of simple leather shoes found on Vasa, as the left-over material for one is highly suitable for the other. Both types of mittens reveal something about the sailor’s life before they enlisted on Vasa and prove that mittens could have distinct functions within the spectra of labour in a maritime context.Most importantly the results of this study suggest that the crowns attempt to force professional practitioners of craft to move from the countryside into the cities in the early 1600’s are not only connected to the development of guilds for leatherworkers in Stockholm, but also to the navy’s need for sailors and the general lack of leather in Sweden during the ongoing war. The presence of tools and material for leathercraft as a common find category among the crew's personal belongings can be regarded together with knowledge of craft culture in the countryside in the areas where boatmen were drafted can point out skinners and cobblers in the Finish coastal regions and countryside as craftsmen who both have knowledge of leathercraftneeded for making both mittens an simple shoes as found on Vasa. These groups of poor leatherworkers were among those targeted by discharges to the navy. Leather mittens interpreted as material culture are found to be consistent with the idea that individuals with a background as Finnish leatherworkers on the countryside may have ended up as sailors on the Swedish warship Vasa.

Using the account from the royal wardrobe as a source to discover the gift giving practices at the court of Gustav Vasa (Gustav I of Sweden), this thesis studies how material culture was part of the state formation process in 16th century Sweden. By analyzing the king’s gifts the study traces the informal networks that functioned as a base of power for the king’s reign. But it also exposes the material stuff as part of these network and thus part of that power. The thesis argues that to fully understand the political and social transformations that took place during the dynamic 16th century, it is mandatory not only to analyze the individuals who were part of that process, but also the material things they had at their disposals and how the things functioned as part of that process. The conclusion is that the king’s gift giving was due to carefully strategic considerations and part of a highly political strategy, and that the objects given acted as part in a process where – in the century to come – the aristocracy became a more distinguished group, both materially, culturally and socially.

This thesis is an intellectual biography of the Swedish statesman Johan Skytte (1577–1645), focusing on his educational ideals and his contributions to educational reform in the early Swedish Age of Greatness. Although born a commoner, Skytte rose to be one of the most powerful men in Sweden in the first half of the seventeenth century, serving three generations of regents. As a royal preceptor and subsequently a university chancellor, Skytte appears as an early educational politician at a time when the Swedish Vasa dynasty initiated a number of far-reaching reforms, including the revival of Sweden’s only university at the time (in Uppsala). The contextual approach of the thesis shows how Skytte’s educational reform agenda was shaped by nationally motivated arguments as well as by a Late Renaissance humanist heritage, celebrating education as the foundation of all prosperous civilizations. Utilizing a largely unexplored source material written mostly in Latin, the thesis analyzes how Skytte’s educational arguments were formed already at the University of Marburg in the 1590s, where he learned to embrace the utility-orientated ideals of the French humanist Petrus Ramus (1515–1572). Moreover, the analysis shows that the expanding Swedish state administration in the early seventeenth century was in urgent need of educated civil servants, and that this basic demand favored an ideology based on education, skill and merit. It is shown that Skytte skillfully combined a Ramist and patriotic rhetoric with narratives of individual merit and rewards, conveying not least himself as an example. The thesis argues that Skytte’s rhetoric reflects the formation of a new professional category in the Swedish society, one that was distinguished from the royal courtier, the clergyman, the merchant, the warrior, and the scholar. This category is the professional civil servant whose identity was dependent on skills and education.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:06:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5287.pdf: 3924606 bytes, checksum: 935b5a09df26eb1b41df901a189a6e2a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-05-29 / Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos / Geographic information systems with the aid of spatial databases store and manage crisp spatial data (or exact spatial data), whose shapes (boundaries) are well defined and have a precise location in space. However, several spatial data do not have precisely known boundaries or have an uncertain location in space, which are called vague spatial data. The boundaries of a given vague spatial data may shrink or extend, therefore, may have a minimum and maximum extension. Clouds of pollution, deforestation, fire outbreaks, route of an airplane, habitats of plants and animals are examples of vague spatial data. In the literature, there are currently vague spatial data models, such as Egg-Yolk, QMM and VASA. However, according to our knowledge, they focus only on the formal aspect of the model definition. Thus, real or synthetic vague spatial data is not available for use. The main objective of this master thesis is the development of algorithms for the generation of synthetic vague spatial data based on the crisp models of spatial data vague Egg-Yolk, QMM and VASA. It was also implemented a tool, called VagueDataGeneration, to assist in the process of generation such data. For both the algorithms and the tool, the user is able to set the properties related to the data type of model, such as size, shape, volume, complexity, location and spatial distribution. By using the proposed algorithms and the VagueDataGeneration tool, researchers can generate large samples of vague spatial data, enabling new research, such as testing indexes for vague spatial data or evaluating query processing over data warehouses that store vague spatial data. The validation of the vague spatial data generation was conducted using a case study with data from vague rural phenomena. / Sistemas de informação geográfica com o auxílio de bancos de dados espaciais armazenam e gerenciam dados espaciais exatos, cujas formas (fronteiras) são bem definidas e que possuem uma localização exata no espaço. Entretanto, vários dados espaciais reais não possuem os seus limites precisamente conhecidos ou possuem uma localização incerta no espaço, os quais são denominados dados espaciais vagos. Os limites de um dado espacial vago podem encolher ou estender, portanto, podem ter uma extensão mínima e máxima. Nuvens de poluição, desmatamentos, focos de incêndios, rota de um avião, habitats de plantas e de animais são exemplos de dados espaciais vagos. Na literatura, atualmente existem modelos de dados espaciais vagos, tais como Egg-Yolk, QMM e VASA. No entanto, segundo o nosso conhecimento, estes enfocam apenas no aspecto formal da definição do modelo. Com isso, dados espaciais vagos reais ou sintéticos não estão disponíveis para uso. O principal objetivo deste trabalho de mestrado consiste no desenvolvimento de algoritmos para a geração de dados espaciais vagos sintéticos baseados nos modelos exatos de dados espaciais vagos Egg-Yolk, QMM e VASA. Também foi implementada uma ferramenta, chamada VagueDataGeneration, para auxiliar no processo de geração desses dados. Nos algoritmos propostos e na ferramenta desenvolvida, o usuário define as propriedades referentes ao tipo de dado de um modelo, tais como tamanho, formato, volume, complexidade, localização e distribuição espacial dos dados espaciais vagos a serem gerados. Por meio do uso dos algoritmos propostos e da ferramenta VagueDataGeneration, os pesquisadores podem gerar grandes amostras de dados espaciais vagos, possibilitando novas pesquisas, como exemplo, testar índices para dados espaciais vagos ou testar técnicas de processamento de consultas em Data Warehouses que armazenam dados espaciais vagos. A validação da geração de dados espaciais vagos foi efetuada usando um estudo de caso com dados de fenômenos rurais vagos.