PhD defence in Art History
Thesis defence
Date: Friday 11 April 2025
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Location: The Auditorium, Manne Siegbahn Buildings, house A, Frescativägen 24E
Karin Tetteris defends her doctoral thesis Captured Colours: The agency of military flags in Early Modern Swedish heritage production.
External reviewer: Ylva Haidenthaller, PhD of Art History at the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University.
Examination Committee: Mattias Frihammar, Associate Professor of Ethnology at the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, Stockholm University.
Fredrik Svanberg, Associate Professor of Archaeology at Nordiska museet.
Hedvig Mårdh, PhD of Art History at the Department of Political, Historical, Religious and Cultural Studies, Karlstad University.
Anna Bortolozzi, Associate Professor of Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University (substitute).
Chair: Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, Professor of Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University.
Supervisor: Catharina Nolin, Professor of Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University.
Tanja Schult, Associate Professor of Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University.
About the dissertation
In October 1657 the Swedish army conquered the Danish fortress Frederiksodde, forcing its defenders to surrender their colours and guidons. This dramatic event started a process whereby flags, as trophies of war, were musealised and heritagised. In the seventeenth century, captured flags were delivered from the battlefields of Europe to the Great Armoury of the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Here, in one of the earliest museums in Sweden, they were exhibited in a historicised display modelled on European ideals for enacting dynastic memoria. Through time, as more Romantic sensitivities towards history evolved, the collection was reactivated in new displays. Flags captured centuries earlier were now called upon to serve a new national narrative.
Captured Colours investigates the agency of military flags in early modern Swedish heritage production. By following the group of Danish flags captured in 1657 from the time of their production until 1817, this study brings to light an assemblage of people, objects and practices that constituted military flags as important agents in early modern displays of power, honour, and reputation. Drawing on military treatises, archival sources, visual representations, and the preserved flags, it explores how flags became the “sacred objects” of the army that soldiers died to protect. It investigates how they were heritagised through display and documentation, offering new insights into the history of Swedish museums and its connection to war and military traditions.
Read the Thesis in DiVA – Academic Archive Online
Karin Tetteris is an art historian based at Stockholm University. Since 2010, she has been curator of the collection of flags at the Swedish Army Museum. Captured Colours is her doctoral thesis.
Last updated: March 24, 2025
Source: Department of Culture and Aesthetics