Wednesday 16 December 2009

Book news: Swedish royal weddings

I have been spending some days in Stockholm and while there I learnt about an upcoming book which seems interesting. Lena Rangström, who works at the Royal Armoury, has written En brud för kung och fosterland - Kungliga svenska bröllop från Gustav Vasa till Carl XVI Gustaf, which will be published by Atlantis in early March and run to 448 pages. The book deals with Swedish royal weddings since the 16th century and will look at both the political significance, the negotiations behind the marriages and the ceremonies in connection with the weddings.
The cover shows a detail of Per Krafft the Younger’s painting of the wedding of Crown Prince Oscar and Princess Joséphine of Leuchtenberg on 19 June 1823.
The book will be closely related to a major exhibiton at the Royal Armoury titled “Bröllop för kung och fosterland” (“Weddings for king and country”), which will include the museum’s unique collection of royal wedding dresses from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibition will be opened on 19 May, a month before the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling, and close on 3 October.

4 comments:

  1. HI.

    Can you do some postings on Desiree Clary
    Bernadotte sometime, I'm really fascinated
    by her since I read the book and had seen the movie Desiree as a young girl, now I'm so old
    (56) Naomi Doudera (my real name_

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  2. Maybe I will write something about her when the 150th anniversary of her death occurs this December. Annemarie Selinko's novel and the film based on it seems to be what most people connect with Queen Désirée, but it must be said that nothing of what happened in the film actually happened in reality.

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  3. I do recommend Lena Rangström´s book. There is two interesting chapters about Désirée and JB - and her daughter in law Joséphine, later Josefina, and Oscar.
    I bought it in Stockholm, booksale this spring.

    AnitaK

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    Replies
    1. Sadly I cannot join you in recommending Lena Rangström's book, which has major weaknesses (please see my review at http://trondni.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-books-five-centuries-of-swedish.html). The chapter on Oscar I and Josephina also misses out on important aspects of the marriage issue.

      Delete

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