Paper short abstract:

Building upon interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this paper focuses upon a thatcher, and his role in waking and maintaining a wider public interest in a fading craft. This paper focuses upon homes with thatched roofs, cultural entrepreneurship, and heritage making in museum settings.

Paper long abstract:

Gamlegård, Kulturens Östarp, von Echstedtska Manor Värmland’s Museum, and Oktorpsgården, Skansen. These are three disparate farmhouses scattered across Southern Sweden whose histories have very different trajectories. What unites them are their roofs, a craft, and a man. They are all buildings that are understood to be important expressions of Swedish cultural heritage with thatched roofs that have been laid by the same thatcher. For visitors to these museums, the farmhouses and their thatched roofs constitute a picturesque and somewhat romanticized representation of the Swedish past. For the thatcher, roofs mean a livelihood and a crafting process that has been used for thousands of years, all over the world. For an increasing number of customers outside of the world of museums, the thatched roofs are sought after as a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner of covering a home. The relationship between the individual craftsperson, the material, and the crafting of traditional knowledge is central to the dynamics of culture, implied in studies of humanities and lucid in studies of ethnology and folklore. Building upon interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this paper focuses upon a thatcher, and his role in waking and maintaining a wider public interest in a fading craft.