Mårten Sjöbeck’s fieldwork in cultural history
Mårten Sjöbeck worked for many decades on writing the history of the Swedish cultural landscape, and in the 1930s and 1940s he developed a synthesis of different disciplines which he called “land-use history” (markhistoria). Botany was an auxiliary science in this. The flora within an area was one of many sources which could tell about how the land had been used in the past, and thus what people’s living circumstances had been like.
His work as a scholar of the cultural landscape – or land-use historian, as he preferred to call himself – rendered him, among other things, an honorary doctorate at Lund University and the Linnaeus Medal awarded by the Royal Academy of Science.
In 1922 Mårten Sjöbeck took part in a course on folklife at Tomelilla Folk High School, taught by Carl Wilhelm von Sydow and Åke Campbell. Sjöbeck called his participation in the course a “milestone” in his life. His contact with Åke Campbell in particular was to be significant for Sjöbeck.
For several years in the 1920s, Sjöbeck was engaged as a fieldworker in cultural history at Helsingborg Museum. His task was to investigate and document archaic buildings in the Scanian countryside, with financial support from the Hyltén-Cavallius Foundation attached to the Folklife Archives in Lund. The result of Sjöbeck’s fieldwork in the form of plans and photographs can be found today in the Folklife Archives and in Helsingborg Museum. Sjöbeck published several articles about his investigations, where he considered different explanations for certain characteristic features of the archaic vernacular architecture that he documented.
According to Sjöbeck, the ecological conditions and development of an area were important factors for explaining the design and appearance of buildings. An article published in 1927 was to be decisive both for Sjöbeck’s continued research and for the principles of nature conservation. Sjöbeck argued, very convincingly, that the Scanian wooded meadow, which had hitherto been regarded as a piece of wild nature, was in fact a cultural creation and thus dependent on human maintenance for its survival.
