Skip to content
VitrineRoyal Houses of Europe
Sign in

Charles-Gustave de Suède

1802–1805

Born
2 Dec 1802, Drottningholm Palace
Country of birth
Sweden
Died
10 Sep 1805, Stockholm
facts
7
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

A life in time

  1. Born · Drottningholm Palace

    Birth, Drottningholm Palace

  2. Died · Stockholm

    Death, Stockholm

What was it like?

The world around Drottningholm Palace, 1802: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Charles-Gustave was born the same year as Elias Lönnrot, Cesare Pugni, and Marianna Marquesa Florenzi.

Born the same year

  • Elias Lönnrot

    Finnish physician, philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry (1802–1884)

  • Cesare Pugni

    Italian composer (1802–1870)

  • Marianna Marquesa Florenzi

    Italian philosopher (1802–1870)

  • Alexandre Dumas

    French writer and dramatist (1802–1870)

  • Niels Henrik Abel

    Norwegian mathematician (1802–1829)

  • Lajos Kossuth

    Hungarian politician (1802–1894)

Fashion

Aprons were essential for women

Until the mid-19th century, it was considered immoral for a woman to appear outside her farm without an apron, which served both as protection during work and as decoration on festive occasions.

Layered skirts indicated status

Women often wore several skirts layered on top of each other to mark their social status and provide extra warmth, with thicker underskirts sometimes reaching the thickness of a blanket.

Music

The long-distance vocal technique kulning

Women working at mountain pastures used a distinctive high-pitched vocal technique called kulning to communicate with animals and people over distances of up to 5 kilometers.

The dominance of the polska dance

By the mid-19th century, the polska had evolved as the primary dance and tune style for the fiddle in Sweden's provinces.

Getting around

Bringing private carriages for comfort

To avoid being shaken painfully in simple farmers' carts, travelers were advised to bring their own carriages, as spring-equipped vehicles were rarely available for hire. Carriage rates were set at 1 skilling banco per mile for a cart and 2 skilling banco for a carriage.

Stagecoach travel duration and luggage limits

A stagecoach journey between Stockholm and Gothenburg covered 50 Swedish miles and took 4 days. Passengers were allowed to carry baggage weighing up to 60 pounds.

Daily life

Diet and coffee restrictions

Coffee was a rare luxury that children and servants often did not taste; one boy was even paid two riksdaler banko annually by his father to abstain from it and sugar. Meals were commonly prepared and eaten by the hearth using simple tools, often consisting of potatoes, herring, and bread.

Early nineteenth-century schooling

Formal schooling was limited, as the primary education system relied mostly on informal domestic instruction focused on reading and religious knowledge. While parish schools began to appear in the early 19th century, writing and arithmetic were often reserved for the upper strata of rural society.

Food

Everyday drinks were fermented to avoid contamination

People drank "blanda," a mixture of skimmed sour milk and water, and fermented malt-based "small beer" to avoid drinking contaminated well water.

Home-distilled brandy was consumed daily

Brandy was widely consumed, with a still often found on every farm until the practice was banned in 1855.

Prices and wages

Budgeting for food and housing

From the 17th century through the early 19th century, ordinary wage earners typically spent approximately 80 to 85 percent of their income on food and housing. The remaining small portion had to cover essential costs for clothing and footwear.

Work

Child labor in agricultural settings

Children participated in the labor force, as evidenced by records of nine-year-olds assisting with clearing grain seeds at the Strömsholm stud farm.

Long working days in 19th-century Sweden

In the early 19th century, a typical workday for an agricultural worker lasted about 10.5 hours, often starting between 6:00 and 7:00 AM and ending around 7:00 or 8:00 PM, including breaks for meals.

News and letters
Around 1808–1809

Optical telegraphs vs postriders

During the war of 1808-1809, an optical telegraph system was used to send urgent reports, reaching speeds of 12 characters per minute, while a postrider took two days to travel from Gävle to Stockholm.

Fragile news delivery in the early 1800s

During the early 1800s, news delivery was extremely fragile and could be halted by weather, such as drifting ice or heavy snow, leaving newspapers to report on the missing post instead of current events.

During their lifetime

  1. 1804

    Smallpox vaccination edict issued

    The Edict of Inoculation was proclaimed in 1804, helping to reduce smallpox epidemics significantly.

Family

Parents

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.