talking about housing and the late 19th century and early 20th century sweden, i wanted to show off how an actual simple home looked like in Sweden during that epoch. all the old pictures are from Skansens photo archive.
These photos shows people standing infront their actual real life homes. The photos are taken between 1910-1930. The first 2 pictures to the left shows “backstugor” which were a type of housing, that poor people who owned no land lived in. These houses were build by the people living in it, using whatever scraps they could get their hands on. the top right picture shows a women infront of her torp, which, while being of a size and standard which would have been seen as standard during this era of swedish history, is falling apart.
the 4 pictures show a peasant family infront of their house. these people would have owned their own land, and considered themselves several steps up in hierachy from the people living in backstugor. that being said, that house from what i can see, have only 2 room and a hallway. thats it as living space for that entire family.
the last photo, in colour, show how a standard current day farm looks like in Sweden today. Most likely, because of the cows, a milk farm. All the houses pictured belongs to the same farm. and yes those houses are gigantic. this farm itself, is originally built several hundreds of years ago. But the farmers, who were rich enough to keep up being farmers in sweden after the industralisation, had these gigantic farms, which also have gotten even larger via add-ons through the ages.
none of these look like the house Mårbacka, where Selma Lagerlöf grew up. this is because this is very clearly a mansion. tbf Selma rebuilt it after she bought it back, when she became rich enough to do so. still. that is a mansion, and nothing else.
Sources
all old pictures of swedish housing is from skansen archive with this search https://www.nordiskamuseet.se/for-skolan/studiematerial/fotoskafferi
the picture of a modern farm is from the swedish agricultural deperment https://jordbruketisiffror.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/62-900-bondgardar-i-sverige-ar-2016/
Picture of Mårbacka is via wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Selma_Lagerlofs_Marbacka_at_Sunne.jpg
