Building a separate house for festive occasions was not common everywhere in Sweden, but in Hälsingland it was part of the local building tradition. Today, Bollnäs Cottage stands on its own, but it was originally part of Knubbens Farm in Herte village.
Bollnäs Cottage has two large rooms on either side of the entrance hall. One was the everyday room, while the other was the room for special occasions. Weddings and christenings were celebrated here, and the room was also used for funerals, Christmas celebrations and the parish household interviews (husförhör), when the local priest examined people’s knowledge of the Christian faith.
The everyday room was sometimes used for teaching, as the area had no permanent school. Instead, schoolteachers moved between farms. The house also has a chamber used as a bedroom for overnight guests, and a smaller chamber for handling food.
Richly painted interiors
Hälsingland cottages like this were often richly decorated, and Bollnäs Cottage is a fine example. The interior was painted in 1786 by the folk artist Jonas Hertman.
Such paintings were often made on linen canvas, but here they are painted directly onto the logs using distemper paint. The paintings in the room for special occasions show the Passion of Christ. In the everyday room, the paintings show landscape scenes and the wall panels are decorated to resemble wallpaper.
Jonas Hertman was one of the most important painters in Hälsingland in the late 1700s. His brother Erik is also mentioned as a painter in church records. Oral tradition says that Jonas’ wife, Lisa Jonsdotter, and probably their children, helped with the work.
Folk artists painted walls, ceilings and sometimes furniture. They found inspiration in the surrounding landscape of deep valleys and mountains, but also in printed images, church paintings and interiors of wealthy homes. The paintings in Bollnäs Cottage are the only complete surviving interior by Jonas Hertman.
