World Heritage Site

Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland

Folk architecture has given way to professionally built and mass-produced housing. Recognizing that important cultural heritage is vanishing, in 2012 UNESCO designated seven large farmhouses in northeastern Sweden’s Hälsingland region as the Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland World Heritage Site. Out of more than 1000 possibilities, the committee chose these seven as outstanding examples of a regional folk architecture rooted in the Middle Ages. The timber farmhouses were constructed mostly between 1800 and 1870 C.E. and are richly decorated, inside and out, following a local folk art tradition

Hälsingland, a small region in Sweden bordering the Gulf of Bothnia, contains a concentration of such farmhouses. The seven UNESCO-designated farmhouses are spread over an area stretching 100 by 50 kilometers. Both they and the surrounding landscapes are protected under Swedish cultural heritage and environmental laws, reflecting their importance to that nation’s cultural identity.

The Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland represent the final flourishing of a centuries-old local tradition of timber construction. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, farmers in the region experienced a new period of prosperity based on forestry and flax production. Farmers invested their surplus earnings into building and decorating farmhouses. Most of these structures remain under the private ownership of farmers who continue to manage the surrounding lands for agriculture.

The cultural landscape of Hälsingland has evolved over centuries and bears the imprint of occupation by a population of independent farmers. The decorated farmhouses are located on active farmsteads and within a larger agrarian landscape. The mixed agrarian livelihood practices of cattle breeding, crop cultivation, forestry, and hunting have visibly shaped the land. Historically, farmers used the pastures and woodlands communally and shared cultivated fields. Changes in Swedish law in the nineteenth century led to individual privatization of lands, which brought prosperity to some farmers and a flowering of folk architecture.

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IN THE FARMHOUSES: The seven designated farmhouses are the Kristofers farm in Stene, Järvsö; the Gästgivars farm in Vallstabyn; the Pallars farm in Långhed; the Jon-Lars farm in Långhed; the Bortom åa farm in Gammelgården; the Bommars farm in Letsbo, Ljusdal; and the Erik-Anders farm in Askesta, Söderala. Each contains a number of decorated rooms for festivities and some very prosperous farmsteads have entire houses, a herrstuga, dedicated solely to festive celebrations. The farmsteads feature numerous intact buildings that were built and elaborately painted in a manner meant to display the prosperity and social status of the farmer.

The houses are made entirely of wood, most constructed in a building tradition that may be traced to the Middle Ages, which features jointed horizontal timbers of pine or spruce from nearby forests. Prosperous farmers of the nineteenth century enlarged existing houses from one to two or two and a half stories or built entirely new houses on the farmstead. The emphasis was on creating exceptionally large structures using the most talented local carpenters and craftsmen.

Each farmhouse is elaborately decorated. On the outside, local craftsmen carved decorative elements around the front porch and main entrance. Inside, the houses are decorated with textile paintings hung on the walls or with paintings applied directly to the wooden walls and ceilings. The rooms dedicated solely for festivities and special occasions are typically the most highly decorated.

The paintings fuse local folk art traditions with more universal styles, such as Baroque and Rococo, favored by the landed gentry of nineteenth-century Sweden. Wealthy farmers commissioned itinerant artists to paint their farmhouse interiors with depictions of landscapes and biblical characters in contemporary fashion or with detailed floral patterns. Ten of the painters who worked on the World Heritage farmhouses are known, but most remain anonymous.

TOURISM: The seven UNESCO-designated farmhouses are located in a scenic coastal region of northeastern Sweden, which has long been an attraction for both domestic and foreign tourists.

Regional public and business groups, as well as individual farmers, actively collaborate to keep decorated farmhouses open to visitors. Museums in the region feature displays on the history of this folk tradition.

The maintenance and conservation of Swedish cultural heritage is a popular movement in the country. Many craftsmen and women in Hälsingland carry on folk handicrafts, such as textiles, furniture making, and basketry, which draw many visitors to the region.

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The characteristic folk housing of the Philippines is the nipa hut, still found in the countryside with many variations resulting from the mix of Malaysian, Spanish, Muslim, and American influences. Most commonly, it is constructed primarily of bamboo framing fastened and roofed with nipa leaves (Figure 2.49). Philippine folk architecture conveys a feeling of lightness (through, for example, the placement of large open-air windows) combined with a quality of warmth produced from the use of wood inside. The nipa hut is often raised on stilts, particularly in coastal areas and flood plains. The combination of large windows, wide roof eaves, and its elevated position results in the free flow of cooling breezes even during rainy weather. The nipa hut is widely considered as the Philippine national dwelling and thus is closely associated with cultural and national identity.

In southern Africa, one of the most distinctive house types is found in the Ndebele culture region, which stretches from South Africa north into southern Zimbabwe. In the rural parts of the Ndebele region, people are farmers and livestock keepers and live in traditional compounds. What makes these houses distinctive is the Ndebele custom of painting brightly colored designs on the exterior house walls and sometimes on the walls and gates surrounding the grounds (Figure 2.50). The precise origins of this custom are unclear, but it seems to date to the mid-nineteenth century. Some suggest that it was an assertion of cultural identity in response to local residents’ displacement and domination at the hands of white settlers. Others point to a religious or sacred role.

What is clear is that the custom has always been handled by women, a skill and practice passed down from mother to daughter. Many of the symbols and patterns are associated with particular families or clans. Initially, women used natural pigments from clay, charcoal, and local plants, which restricted their palette to earth tones of brown, red, and black. Today, many women use commercial paints-expensive, but longer lasting-to apply a range of bright colors, limited only by the imagination. Another new development is the types of designs and symbols used. People are incorporating modern machines such as automobiles, televisions, and airplanes into their designs. In many cases, traditional paints and symbols are blended with the modern to produce a synthetic design of old and new. Ndebele house painting is developing and evolving in new directions, all the while continuing to signal a persistent cultural identity to all who pass through the region.