The grand carousel in Stockholm in 1672

In the seventeenth century there were a handful of lavishly illustrated books published in Sweden. The most notable are Suecia antiqua et hodierna, containing topographical engravings of Sweden’s attractions, De rebus a Carolo Gustavo, about Charles X Gustav’s wars in Poland and Denmark from 1655 to 1660, and Certamen equestre, a volume depicting the carousel and festivities organised to mark Charles XI’s accession to the throne in 1672.

About twenty years ago, I published an annotated facsimile edition of the latter work, and it has now been made freely available in digital form. The book and the commentary can be downloaded from Lund University’s digital repository and also on this website.

Festival books, commemorating festive occasions and preserving them for posterity, was a widespread phenomenon in the early modern period and can be counted in the hundreds. Certamen equestre is the foremost – not to say the only – Swedish example of the genre. The man behind the work was the German-born court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, who hoped in this way to make his art better known to a foreign audience. The engravings were produced in Nuremberg by Georg Christoph Eimmart, and the entire work took fourteen years to complete.

The festivities took place over three days, with the handover of the throne on 18 December, equestrian contests on 19 December, and a banquet and fireworks display on 20 December.

THREE DAYS OF FESTIVITIES

The immediate inspiration for Ehrenstrahl and for the entire programme surrounding Charles XI’s accession to the throne was the grand carousel organised by Louis XIV in Paris exactly ten years earlier. It was described in text and illustrations in the work Courses de testes et de bague faittes par le roy et par les princes et seigneurs de sa cour, en l’année 1662, published by Charles Perrault in 1670.

In Louis XIV’s carousel, the participants were divided into five quadrilles: Romans, Persians, Turks, Indians and Americans. In Stockholm, they made do with four: Turks, Poles, ‘other European powers’ and ‘Goths’, the latter dressed in Roman armour. Whilst the French carousel was primarily an expression of festive exoticism, the Swedish programme was a commentary on current international politics. In the early 1660s, the Ottoman Empire launched what was to prove to be its last major advance into Europe, and by the end of the decade it launched an attack on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Podolia, Polish Ukraine, was seized in 1672, and in the same year the Russian Tsar Alexei sent a circular to the European courts proposing the formation of an anti-Turkish league. In the Turkish offensive there was a threat that could unite the whole of divided Christendom.

The alliance was not formed until 1680, but the idea was symbolically depicted in Charles XI’s carousel. The king and his quadrille performed as Goths, but were clad in Roman armour. The idea was that the Goths, the mythical ancestors of the Swedes, had once brought down the Roman Empire. Thus, in his capacity as the leader of these, Europe’s mightiest warriors, the Swedish king would now unite the powers of Europe to come to the aid of the besieged Poles. Symbolically, this removed the discord arising from the wars of Charles X Gustav, but it also had the advantage of allowing the use of the many Polish uniforms held in the royal armoury.

The main public attraction during these cold December days was the long horse cavalcade moving through the snowy streets of the Swedish capital. However, the engravings also depict elaborate decorations and illuminations in the city’s market squares, the ceremony and banquet that took place at Stockholm Royal Castle, and, not least, the running at the rings itself, which was held at the royal tiltyard on the outskirts of the city.

As well as a complete facsimile of Ehrenstrahl’s book, this edition includes a separate volume of commentary with parallel text in Swedish and English. In the commentary, I describe the background to and the celebrations that took place in connection with the king’s accession to the throne, as well as the production and publication of the engravings themselves. The volume also includes a number of contemporary source texts and commentary on all the plates. The king’s armour and a great deal of the other equipment used in the carousel are still preserved at the Royal Armoury in Stockholm.