Buildings as persons: relationality and the life of buildings in a northern periphery of early modern Sweden

Abstract

The author shows how houses in the northern Baltic were constructed using two realities: the reality of timber and the equally potent reality of spirits supporting and controlling the fate of structures. Excavations in seventeenth-century Tornio (now in modern-day Finland) showed that houses were furnished with special offerings when founded and refurbished, while evidence from living folklore suggested that the houses themselves were originally given spiritual personalities and were treated as members of the family. As more modern thinking took hold, this spirituality was transferred to the more mobile and skittish household sprites.