Historical context
In the mid-nineteenth century, the population of Sweden was mostly rural with around 90% of the population still living in the countryside in 1850. Sweden’s industrialisation and urbanisation was rather late compared to many other West European nations. Cities only began to grow in the 1880s and 1890s, when industries were established, infrastructures were modernised and the demand for a labour force increased. Simultaneously, Sweden had a large trans-Atlantic emigration [30]. Rural areas were abandoned, and by 1930, about 50% of the population lived in cities. Today (2020), almost 88% of Swedes are urbanites [31].
With urbanisation came modernisation and cultural changes. The socio-cultural implications were extensive. Old customs of the pre-industrial peasant society began to fade away, as new consumption patterns increased, social control softened, the influence of the Lutheran church lost ground, and new political ideas were introduced. New attitudes, norms and practices replaced old ways [7]. The urban working class and eventually the middle class were increasingly secular, individualistic and modern. Their attitudes too and needs for plants differed from those of the pre-industrial peasantry in their new habitats [32].
Historical use
Southernwood is mentioned in medieval medical books and herbals [11, 16, 33]. From Swedish medieval sources, Inger Larsson lists its use as a treatment for sleep talking, female diseases, and in animal medicine [33]. In Johannes Franckenius’ Speculum Botanicum from the early 1600s, Artemisia abrotanum was called abrodd mann “male southernwood” and shared its Swedish name with cotton lavender, Santolina chamaecyparissus L., also called abrodd qwinna “female southernwood” [34]. These early names are also known from Denmark [35, 36]. Most of its Swedish folk names from medieval times and onwards (abrot, obroth, aabrut abrott, abrodd, contemporary åbrodd) are derived from its pre-Linnaean Latin name abrotanum (originally from Ancient Greek ἀβρότονον) [16, 37].
The plant has been widely used within European folk botany and local medicine [37]. The early herbals mentioned its use as a medicinal plant, treatment for impotence, spice, herbal tea, and as insect repellent in continental Europe and among immigrant communities in North America. It was also used as an ethnoveterinary remedy to treat horses and sheep [11, 37,38,39,40,41]. On the other hand, concerning its usage there only exists a limited number of similar folk botanical data in Swedish ethnographic literature. For instance, the blacksmith Gustaf Ericsson describes how Swedish peasants in the province of Södermanland in the early 1800s would put southernwood in their wardrobes in order to repel moths [42]. In the province of Uppland, it was reported that southernwood was beneficial in healing wounds [43].
It has been mentioned in the publications of Schola Medica Salernitana since the twelfth century [44]. Its diverse utility in the preparation of medicaments is confirmed as early as the sixteenth century Swedish-Danish medicinal books [14, 14]. European pharmacopoeias have long recommended the use of southernwood for making remedies. In the Swedish Pharmacopoeia, it is listed in the various editions from 1775 to 1874 [44]. While it was particularly prized as a diaphoretic, it also was used to treat liver, spleen and stomach problems [11, 44]. In Johannes Palmberg’s herbal from 1684, southernwood is described as a cure for hair loss and amnesia [45]. The lectures of Johannes Franckenius, professor in medicine at Uppsala University from the 1640s, discussed the many medicinal virtues of southernwood [46]. There are also a few records of its use in folk medicine. According to a report, the inhabitants of the province of Skåne crushed the plant and applied it to boils [47]. Other treatments consisting of southernwood are also mentioned in the ethnographical literature [42].
Its use in the church bouquet
The church bouquet was an important female attribute in the church. A grown-up woman could hardly arrive at the church service without a bouquet in her hand, or at least a scented twig in the hymnal. Southernwood was probably the most common species in this context (with the exception of the province of Gotland, where Lavandula angustifolia Mill. was the most common species). It was grown in the peasant garden, and its fragrance kept the churchgoer awake. It also had the advantage of being sustainable [42, 48, 49]. The amateur botanist, clergyman and local historian, Erik Modin, stated that southernwood was known as a church herb in the province of Härjedalen [50]. Another priest, Georg Bergfors, also reports from Ångermanland that the twigs of southernwood were brought to church during summer for their fresh and pleasant scent. He adds that its scent may also have prevented churchgoers from falling asleep [51].
Another account describes how young women from Blekinge would compete with each other on their way to church to find the best-smelling southernwood to tease and impress the men by tickling the men’s noses with bouquets. The respondent stresses that there could be quite a difference in scent between the plants but that this was solely a result of different growing locations. Even though this might have been the common belief, inventories showed that, historically, different genotypes certainly have been spread and grown in rural areas throughout Sweden. The ethnographic literature points out that southernwood were common in the countryside, even in the far north of Sweden, during the early 1900s [20, 50,51,52].
Documentation of the church bouquet and the practice of bringing different herbs to the services might give us an insight into older knowledge tied to plants and their uses. Besides southernwood, other common herbs known to be in use in the church bouquet were common lavender, Lavandula angustifolia Mill., costmary, Tanacetum balsamita L., garden thyme, Thymus vulgaris L., spearmint, Mentha spicata L., hyssop, Hyssopus officinalis L., common balm, Melissa officinalis L., and tansy Tanacetum vulgare L., [2, 7, 52,53,54,55,56,57]. The most common species used in the church bouquet in the province of Gotland were Lavandula angustifolia Mill., Thymus vulgaris L., Matthiola incana (L.) R. Br., Tanacetum vulgare var. crispum L. and Hyssopus officinalis L. in the province of Härjedalen, while in Norrbotten the women used scented grass [58].
These were all cultivated species grown widely by the peasantry and also had a wide range of uses outside the church. Every household could manage to grow at least some of these herbs in its small allotment, along the village street, and in the peasant garden [2, 53, 54, 56].
Ornamental plants used in the church bouquet
However, what the church bouquet contained was not limited to scented plants. Flowers considered beautiful were also important in bouquets, especially those of younger women. The interest in and use of ornamental flowers was certainly an influence, first from the Baroque Period and later from the Romantic Period. The ethnographic reports and responses to questionnaires show that girls in springtime gladly included Hyacinthus orientalis, Tulipa gesneriana and Narcissus pseudonarcissus in their bouquets. These are all well-known cultivated plants from the peasant allotments and gardens [2]. When the bird cherries, Prunus padus, were flowering, women put some flowers in their hymnbooks [59]. On Whitsunday 1834, one observer in Uppsala noticed that girls coming from outside of town brought countless Fritillaria meleagris, L. These grew in large quantities on a meadow south of the town, which the girls passed on their way to church. After the service, he saw the flowers spread on the streets [60]. In the early summer of 1749, Linnaeus noted stalks of Fritillaria imperialis L. in a church in the eastern part of the province of Skåne [61]
Later, they could bring flowers of Syringa vulgaris L. and Convallaria majalis L. The red peonies, Paeonia officinalis L., were in bloom for at a time when the churches celebrated special youth holidays [59, 61]. They were thus assigned a special virtue in the play between the sexes [2]. When botanist Samuel Liljeblad visited Karlstad in 1797, he noticed that young peasant women at rural churches carried bouquets of Epilobium angustifolium L. [62].
As the summers progressed, the species in the bouquets were changed to new ones. Around midsummer, women carried branches of lavender and carnations in their hand when they attended church, according to one record from Loshult parish in Skåne. Of course, the splendour of flowers increased in summer and declined in autumn [63]. Houseplants also came into use [2].
In this way, the composition of bouquets varied during the year, giving new experiences, new floral scents and new colours. After the service, flowers could be placed on a relative's grave or taken home to keep in a box for the scent. Plants that were prone to wither quickly were left in the benches, much to the annoyance of the churchwarden [60, 63, 64].
Instead of bouquets
As observed, southernwood was common also in the bouquets carried by churchgoing women in the province of Dalecarlia in the middle of Sweden. In addition, yet a peculiar custom existed there. In some parishes in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was common for women to chew onions Allium cepa L., during church service in order to stay awake. The custom was observed by several visitors and was sometimes described as barbaric, and the smell hard to bear. Still the women seem to have appreciated the taste and aroma [19, 59].
The occurrence of local variation may be observed. In some parts of central Sweden, for instance the province of Härjedalen, the church visitors brought the scented bracket fungus Haploporus odorus (Sommerf.) Bondartsev & Singer, to sniff during the service [52, 65]. In the subarctic northernmost Sweden, churchgoing women often carried scented grasses instead of herbs, especially Anthoxanthum odoratum L. and Milium effusum L. This is also known from Dalecarlia, as observed in Nås parish by Linnaeus in 1734 [52, 66, 67].
The custom of chewing and sharing spruce resin, Picea abies (L.) H. Karst, was another way for the peasants to entertain themselves during the service. This custom of chewing raisin in the church is especially identified with Dalecarlia. The resin was gathered in particular by the herding maids who spent the summer with the cattle in the mountains, and it was given as gifts to the boys when they arrived back at the villages in the autumn [68,69,70,71].
Function of the church bouquet
After a long week of heavy work with few opportunities to rest, the churchgoers drifted asleep during the long, boring sermons. The aromatic herbs, onions, scented grasses and resin had one essential function—to keep the churchgoers awake. While the women were smelling the herbs, the men chewed tobacco, snuff or even shared strong liquor. A churchwarden made sure that they stayed awake by using a stick or even a whip. However, there were also other explanations for their use [72]. From the Reformation to the end of the nineteenth century, the men sat on the right-hand side of the church during services and the women sat on the other, i.e. the left-hand side. We may conclude that the use described was primarily a women’s custom [2, 7].
If the season allowed, the women carried a bouquet of fragrant plants of three species, referring to the Trinity, according to one record. The twig could also serve as a bookmark. It was put in the hymnbook to mark the day’s text and moved as the church year progressed. It can also be noted that southernwood and lavender leaves have been used since a long time ago to prevent the destruction of books by insect pests [2, 7, 73].
The custom of church bouquets thus testifies the peasant women’s knowledge of plants, of which we nowadays only have limited knowledge ourselves. The fragrant herbs typically carried by the women corresponded to the snuffbox carried by the men seated on the other side of the church. The bouquet, the resin, and the bottle of spices played an important role in expressing solidarity and friendship on the women’s side. It was a form of closeness that was lacking on the men’s side where one of them would at most offer his benchmate some snuff or a shot of aquavit. The women offered candies to their bench neighbours, shared their herbs and sent round the bouquets and fragrance bottles. The women’s side also stood for beauty and fragrance. One informant recalled that in the past, “it was lovely in the church, it smelled wonderfully of lavender and southernwood” [7, 74, 75].
For the youth, the church bouquet has also served as an amorous item of exchange, not least at the special youth worship services. On these occasions, the young people had large flower brooms with them, which were swapped when their homeward roads separated them from each other. In this way, the herbs became an important element of the communication between the sexes. Flower brooms could also be exchanged during the worship service. At a parish meeting in the eighteenth century province of Småland, complainants were displeased that the youngsters had thrown flower bouquets at each other during the service [64]. The custom of church bouquets made its entrance among the young people at their confirmation [7].
Contemporary use
In the national inventories in Sweden, southernwood stood out as a relatively common heirloom plant that had been shared among garden owners outside the commercial distribution paths, spread from hand-to-hand [20]. In several cases, the southernwood had been grown within a family for generations and carefully cared for and transplanted when the household moved within the country. Southernwood was often described as being connected with positive memories of the scent and stories about the use of the herb in church by earlier generations [20].
One of the accessions collected in the inventories has been released as an heirloom cultivar with the name Predikoväcka “wake up during sermon” through the trademark “Grönt kulturarv” (“Green Heritage”) established by the Programme for Diversity of Cultivated Plants to promote the use of cultural heritage plants with documented histories (Figs. 4 and 5).
Although sometimes recommended as a plant to flavour aquavit or as a spice in food, it is nowadays hardly ever used by Swedish consumers. Currently, one often encounters the species in contemporary Bible gardens, monastery museum gardens (e.g. Gudhem, Nydala, Vadstena, and Vreta) and other herbal gardens with historical plants, which have been established for educational and museological purposes [76].
Cultivars
In Sweden, no known named cultivars were commercially available in the early 1900s, not even by growers who specialised in medical herbs. Because of the climate, no sexual propagation of the species is possible in the Nordic countries, but the material collected from the inventories organised by the Programme for Diversity of Cultivated Plants still showed a remarkable morphological variation (Fig. 3). Difference in earliness, colour, scent and growing habit were evaluated and described [20].
One of the accessions, abbröt, named after the dialectal pronunciation of the common name in Western Sweden, morphologically resembles a variety which is occasionally spread in the trade as Artemisia alba “Cola”. This form with its light green and robust foliage and pleasant low camphor scent was found in several gardens in the Swedish inventories and was always known and grown as Southernwood, Artemisia abrotanum. The taxonomic status of this form is still to be evaluated.
Even though no cultivars are known from old garden literature, a few records of popular, rural knowledge can be found regarding different qualities of the species’ plant material. From the province of Blekinge, one of the several respondents born in the 1850s and 1860s describes how southernwood was used by her mother as a dried herb mixed in the blood when making blood sausage. The respondent refers to the southernwood used as “the green kind” and points out that the light one was not good enough. She also refers to one of the forms as “German Southernwood” [77].