Painting by Winter Carl Hansson, The queen of Saba, 1801.

On the visit to Hembygdsgården the most memorable thing for me was the interior,

especially the textiles and the artwork. They were very beautiful and carefully made, you

could see how much time and energy they must have spent on decorating their house.

Similar to how we live today, the interior is very important. Given that people in the past

had to spend more time working with animals and doing other tasks, there was not much

time left to create beautiful homes. Even though the rooms got easily dirty from the smoke

in the fireplace and the furniture got worn out they still put time into creating textiles and

colors to paint with.

To me that's proof enough on how important it is to us humans to surround ourselves with

beautiful environments. I mean, why did they even bother decorating? What is it that makes

us humans so concerned about our home? Why are we spending so much time and today

also a lot of money on changing furniture, panting and wallpapering?

Johanna Gyllsén

2011-04-12