Decorated Farmhouses of Halsingland Heritage

Seven timber houses are listed in this site located in the east of Sweden, representing the zenith of a regional timber building tradition that dates back to the middle Ages. Decorated Farmhouses of Halsingland reflect the prosperity of independent farmers who used their wealth in the 19th century to build substantial new homes with elaborately decorated ancillary houses or suites of rooms reserved for festivities. The paintings represent a fusion of folk art with the styles favoured by the landed gentry of the time, including Baroque and Rococo. Decorated by painters, including known and unknown itinerant artists, the listed properties represent the final flowering of a long cultural tradition.

Decorated farmhouses
Continent: Europe
Country: Sweden
Category: Cultural
Criterion: (V)
Date of Inscription: 2012

Wooden farmhouses

In a comparatively small area of north-eastern Sweden, bordering the Gulf of Bothnia and known as Halsingland, are a concentration of large richly decorated, wooden farmhouses and associated farm buildings reflecting the peak of prosperity for the farming landscape in the 19th century and the social status of its farmers.

Seven large timber farmhouses with richly decorated interiors are part of a concentration of over a thousand surviving timber structures in the Halsingland area, dating mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries that reflect a timber building tradition that originated in the Middle Ages (12th-16th centuries AD).

Decorated farmhouses Heritage
Interior view of highly decorated room

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

Highly decorative interiors

The farmhouses, set in long fertile valleys within the Taiga forest landscape, reflect the prosperity of independent farmers who used economic surplus from their exploitation of flax and woodland to build substantial new houses with entire buildings or suites of rooms used solely for festivities.

The owners commissioned artists from Halsingland or itinerant painters from neighbouring Dalarna to provide highly decorative interiors to reflect their social status. These decorated houses combine local building and local folk art traditions in a highly distinctive way that can be seen as the final flowering of a folk culture with deep roots in north-west Europe.

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