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Abstract
This article deals with the image-making of Swedish monarchs in the decades preceding and succeeding the Swedish Revolutionary Year of 1809, a year witnessing the dethronement of a king and the composition of a new constitution. In this era, the monarchies of Europe faced a great challenge in accommodating conflicting ideals of the Ancien Régime and of emergent bourgeois civic society. In dynastic ceremonies and court culture, the Swedish monarchy made use of various resources in its strive for legitimacy by representing continuity as well as discontinuity, attempting to reconcile the old and the new, the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’. In addition to material culture and spatial practices, practices with an immediate relationship to bodies constituted an available resource. Ceremonial deportment and the regulation of bodies and embodied practices (such as manners of dress) thus became a major concern in the endeavoured reconciliation of contradictory themes surrounding kingship in an age of revolution.
Keywords:
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Notes
1 Burke, ‘State-Making, King-Making and Image-Making from Renaissance to Baroque’.
2 Political culture denoting a culture or system of norms, values, symbols, and practices of political interaction. Political culture thus signifies the conditions and codes of conduct that governed political action and agency. See, for example, Sennefelt, Den politiska sjukan, 17–19; Daybell and Norrhem, Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1; Hoak, Tudor Political Culture, 1. Research projects and scholarly networks of recent years furthermore demonstrate that issues of early-modern political culture in Scandinavia have enjoyed a revived historiographic interest. From 2011 to 2014, the scholarly network Nätverket för studier i förmodern politik was active at Uppsala and Stockholm University, resulting in the publication of Politiska rum: Kontroll, konflikt och rörelse i det förmoderna Sverige 1300–1850 and Förmoderna offentligheter: Arenor och uttryck för politisk debatt 1550–1830.
3 Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen; Alm, ‘Dynasty in the Making’; Alm, ‘Ceremonier och riter kring Karl XIV Johan’; Persson, ‘Min Gud, tocket hov!’; Persson, ‘En bal på slottet’; Tandefelt, Konsten att härska; Tandefelt, ‘The Image of Kingship in Sweden, 1772–1809’; Tandefelt, ‘“Enlightened Monarchy” in Practice, Reforms, Ceremonies, Self-Fashioning and the Entanglement of Ideas and Values in Late Eighteenth-Century Sweden’; Sandin, Ett kungahus i tiden.
4 Olden-Jørgensen, ‘Ceremonial Interaction across the Baltic around 1700’; Olden-Jørgensen, ‘State Ceremonial, Court Culture and Political Power in Early Modern Denmark, 1536–1746’; Bøggild Johannsen, ‘Kongebegravelsernes ideologi og kultur’.
5 Bucholz, ‘Every Inch Not a King’.
6 It was suggestively proposed by Hugh Murray Baillie in his seminal piece on the distribution of space and time in royal households. Baillie, ‘Etiquette and the Planning of State Apartments in Baroque Palaces’.
7 A view echoed by David Starkey’s claim that no ordinance was as decisive in providing a structure for court life as were architectural settings. Roosen, ‘Early Moden Diplomatic Ceremonial’; Starkey, ‘Introduction’.
8 Duindam, Vienna and Versailles, 8–12.
9 See, for example, Newton, L’espace du roi; Derks and Raeymaekers, The Key to Power?.
10 Cooter, ‘The Turn of the Body’, 393–8.
11 Griffey, On Display, 1.
12 Adamson, ‘Introduction’, 27.
13 For example, in encounters between European and Ottoman diplomats, as a consequence of different appraisals of right and left, no conflict over precedence occurred when emissaries and representatives walked together. Roosen, ‘Early Modern Diplomatic Ceremonial’.
14 Tandefelt, Konsten att härska, 100; Alm, ‘Riter och ceremonier kring Karl XIV Johan’, 61–2; Persson, ‘Min Gud, tocket hov!’; Sandin, Ett kungahus i tiden, 90.
15 Melzer and Norberg, From the Royal to the Republican Body.
16 Mauss, ‘Les techniques du corps’.
17 The incident of September 1599, when Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, ‘went so boldly to Her Majesties’ presence, she not being ready and he so full of dirt and mire’, is illustrative in revealing how spatial and corporeal boundaries could be intertwined and transgressions dire. Dickinson, Court Politics and the Earl of Essex, 41.
18 The National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet, henceforth, RA), Ceremonimästaren/Överceremonimästaren. Rikshäroldsämbetet 1697–1825 (henceforth, CÖR), vol. I, no. 2, pp. 2–3; RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 5, pp. 153–4.
19 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 170.
20 Simonsen, ‘Bodies, Sensations, Space and Time’, 6.
21 For a comparison between the Swedish and Danish monarchy, see Bregnsbo’s synthesizing introduction to the section ‘The Crisis and Renewal of Monarchy’ in Scandinavia in the Age of Revolution, 17–28.
22 Persson, Survival and Revival.
23 Mansel, The Court of France, 187–90.
24 Thomas Kohut, referenced in Smith, ‘The Monarchy Versus the Nation’, 258. See also Schaich, ‘Introduction’; Burdiel, ‘The Queen, the Woman and the Middle-Class’, 301–9; Craig, ‘The Crowned Republic?’, 167–85; Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 122, 166; Fichtner, The Habsburgs, 132. See also Jervis, Exploring the Modern, 4–11, for a discussion on the implications of ‘the modern’ and its relation to body management.
25 Duindam, Vienna and Versailles, 181–2.
26 Clason and af Petersens, För hundra år sedan, xii–xiii; Sandin, Ett kungahus i tiden, 88.
27 Hedenborg and Kvarnström, Det svenska samhället 1720–2014, 159–63; Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen; RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 21, p. 34.
28 Inrikestidningar, no. 64, 8 June 1809.
29 Fichtner, The Habsburgs, 129–30, 171.
30 Corteguera, ‘King as Father in Early Modern Spain’, 52–3.
31 Kaiser, ‘Louis le Bien-Aimé and the Rhetoric of the Royal Body’, 133. See also Smith, ‘Our Sovereign’s Gaze’, 396–415.
32 See Woodwark, The Theatre of Death. See also Oberlin, ‘Share with me in my Grief and Affliction’, 99–120; Rangström, Dödens teater.
33 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 2, p. 14.
34 Rangström, Dödens teater, 160–70.
35 Lindstedt Cronberg, Med våldsam hand, 37–8.
36 Hauswolff, Fortsättning af Baron Rosenhanes [förteckning] på de till En af Rikets Herrar kallade sedan 1793, unnumbered pages, Lund University Libraries.
37 Brusewitz, ‘Georg Adlersparre’.
38 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30, unnumbered pages (attached document: Ordning Wid Högstsalig Hans Kongl. Maj:ts Konung Carl XII:s Begrafning i Riddareholms Kyrkan den 20 Martii 1818).
39 See Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac, 1760–1830’.
40 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30, unnumbered pages (attached document: Ordning Wid Högstsalig Hennes Kongl. Maj:t Enke-Drottningens Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas Begrafning den 16 Julii 1818).
41 Busser, Samtal Emellan En Eksjö Borgare och en Bonde ifrån Säby, Om Närwarande Tider.
42 Nordin, Frihetstidens monarki, 198–206.
43 Nordin, Frihetstidens monarki, 198–206; Hellsing, ‘Court and Public in Late Eighteenth-Century Stockholm’, 50.
44 Fichtner, The Habsburgs, 143.
45 Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas dagbok, vol. VIII, 398.
46 Clason and af Petersens, För hundra år sen, 130.
47 Årstadagboken, vol. I, 405.
48 Clason and af Petersens, För hundra år sen, 130.
49 The printed ceremonials detailing the coronation processions in 1772 and 1800 were very specific as to when the king was supposed to mount the coronation horse and how courtiers should place themselves in relation to it. No such paragraphs exist in the ceremonial of 1818 (or 1809 for that matter). Furthermore, it was customary for the Court Stable Master (hovstallmästaren) to toss the horse shoes of silver to the masses when the procession left the church. In 1818, however, this did not occur until much later, when the king and crown prince rode to Kungsträdgården for a military parade. The Orderly Officer, and later aide-de-camp, Berndt von Schinkel wrote in his chronicles that, ‘after the coronation the King mounted one of his former warhorses’ because ‘the coronation horse had not been trained to his liking and was therefore rejected’. Märta Helena Reenstierna, who claimed to have observed both the procession and the military parade, mentioned, in regard to the latter spectacle, ‘a white horse, which was adorned with four aigrette feathers and gold embellishments and purple velvet’. However, she wrote about the horse in indefinite terms, suggesting that it had not been used (or at least seen by her) at the preceding event.
The historian Mikael Alm states, with great confidence, that the procession was performed ‘on foot’, and explicitly stresses that Charles XIV John walked to and from the church. Indeed, most sources support this claim, but an account made by Ulrika Klingenstierna-Wachtmeister makes the picture somewhat equivocal, as she wrote that the king wore ‘the crown of a Crown Prince when he rode to the church’ and, on the following day: ‘in the morning we were at the Royal Stable to see the coronation horse. It was entirely white except for the nose which was pink […] It is said that he is washed everyday with soap’. The source material in this case is less reliable, however. Firstly, because the advised text is not a primary source but a printed translation (the original document being kept in a private collection) and, secondly, because it contains an inherent contradiction, as Klingenstierna-Wachtmeister also wrote that the king was almost completely concealed by those holding the canopy.
To conclude: the evidence suggests that the king was walking but it cannot be asserted without some degree of uncertainty.
Cf. Ceremonial Wid Hans Kongl. Maj:ts Höga Kröning, Tryckt hos Henr. Fought 1772; RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 12, Ceremonial Wid Deras Majestäters Konung Gustaf IV Adolphs och Drottning Fredrica Dorotea Wilhelminas Kröning Wid Riksdagen i Norrköping, 1800; RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 21, Wid Deras Majestäters Konung Carl XIII:s och Drottning Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas Kröning och Konungens Hyllning Wid Riksdgen I Stockholm, 1809; RA CÖR, vol. I, no. 30, Ordning Wid Hans Kongl. Maj:ts Konung Carl XIV Johans Kröning och hyllning wid Riksdagen i Stockholm, 1818; Schinkel, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare hstoria, vol. X, 12; Reenstierna, Årstadagboken, vol. II, 171; Alm, ‘Dynasty in the Making’, 33; Alm, ‘Riter och ceremonier kring Karl XIV Johan’; von Steyern, Herrgårdsliv i Sörmland, 77–8.
50 Schinkel, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia, vol. X, 12.
51 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 12 (attached document: Ceremonial Wid Deras Majestäters Konung Gustaf IV. Adolphs Och Drottning Fredrica Dorotea Wilhelminas Kröning Wid Riksdagen i Norrköping, 1800); Alm and Vahlne,Överkammarherrens journal 1778–1826, 328; Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas dagbok, vol. VII, 20; Schinkel, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia, vol. IV, 86–7.
52 ‘Erik XIV:s krona’ in Nationalencyklopedin, Accessed 11 April 2017. http://www.ne.se.proxy.lnu.se/uppslagsverk/encyklopedi/lång/erik-xivs-krona.
53 Sandin, Ett kungahus i tiden, 51.
54 Ekedahl, ‘En dynasti blir till’, 11.
55 Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen.
56 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30 (attached document: Ordning Wid Hans Kongl. Maj:ts Carl XIV Johans Kröning och hyllning wid Riksdagen i Stockholm år 1818); Alm, ‘Riter och ceremonier kring Karl XIV Johan’, 61.
57 Schinkel, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia, vol. X, 9.
58 Adamson, ‘Introduction’, 28–30; Sandin, Ett kungahus i tiden, p. 90.
59 Occasionally, the monarchs would even dance with members of the bourgeoisie. Persson, ‘En bal på slottet’.
60 Alm, ‘Dynasty in the Making’; Persson, ‘Min Gud, tocket hov!’.
61 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 21 (attached document: Wid Deras Majestäters Konung Carl XIII:s och Drottning Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas Kröning och Konungens Hyllning Wid Riksdagen i Stockholm År 1809); Clason and af Petersens, För hundra år sedan, 132–3. By contrast, Charles XIV John decided to cancel the public feast, arranging instead for a secluded table in the queen dowager’s apartments attended only by the royal family and a few select members of the court. Similarly, the king dined alone with the crown prince following the Norwegian coronation. RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30, p. 103; Bihang till Inrikes-tidningar no. 106, 16 September 1818; von Engeström, vol. II 1876, pp. 282–3.
62 Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac 1760–1830’, 103–32; Mansel, Dressed to Rule.
63 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 21 (attached document: Wid Deras Majestäters Konung Carl XIII:s och Drottning Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas Kröning och Konungens Hyllning Wid Riksdagen i Stockholm År 1809).
64 Alm and Vahlne, Överkammarherrens journal, 324–6.
65 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30 (attached document: Ordning wid Riksdagens slut i Stockholm 1818). This did not mean that Charles XIV John did not appreciate splendour, however. Märta Helena Reenstierna wrote about her experience of the coronation day that ‘My eyes were dazzled by the coronation’s many precious curios […] everything I witnessed would be too comprehensive to put in writing – it is enough to say that I have never on a single day seen so much splendour’. Reenstierna, vol. II, 1993, pp. 171–2.
66 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30, p. 42.
67 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30, pp. 65–8; RA, Ministrar 1600t–1800t, Utländska ministrar i Sverige, vol. 31, 1700-tal.
68 Skjöldebrand, Excellensen grefve A. F. Skjöldebrands memoarer, vol. I, 56–7.
69 Sandin, Ett kungahus i tiden, 89–90.
70 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30 (attached documents: Ordning Wid Hans Kongl. Maj:ts Carl XIV Johans Kröning och Hyllning wid Riksdagen i Stockholm år 1818 and Ceremoniel ved Hans Kongelige Majestæt Carl XIV. Johans Kroning i Trondhjem Aar 1818.
71 See Höjer, Carl XIV Johan: Konungatiden, 18–19.
72 Duindam, ‘Rival Courts in Dynastic Europe’, 84.
73 Hedenborg and Kvarnström, Det svenska samhället, 165; Karlblom, Bakgrunden till 1809 års regeringsform.
74 RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 30 (attached document: Ordning Wid Hans Kongl. Maj:ts Carl XIV Johans Kröning och hyllning wid Riksdagen i Stockholm år 1818).
75 Gladh, ‘Jacob Lindblom’; RA, CÖR, vol. I, no. 21 (attached document: Wid Deras Majestäters Konung Carl XIII:s och Drottning Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas Kröning och Konungens Hyllning Wid Riksdagen i Stockholm År 1809); Malmborg, ‘Ingen har fyllt en bana liknande min’.
76 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 170.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alexander Isacsson
Alexander Isacsson was awarded a Master of Arts with a Major in History by Lund University in June 2017. This article is a shortened and revised version of his master’s degree essay, entitled The Ceremonial Body: The Significance of Bodies in Dynastic Ceremonies of the Swedish Monarchy, 1782–1818. [email: [email protected]]