In Search of the Three Crowns: Conserving, Restoring, and Reproducing Cultural Memory in Early Modern Sweden

Among the disputes concerning political, historical, and cultural priority that beleaguered Swedish-Danish relations during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the quarrel over the provenance of the heraldic emblem of the Three Crowns played a central role. In Sweden the dispute led directly to the formation of an expansive, state-managed heritage industry that remains largely intact today. This article discusses Swedish efforts to establish the antiquity and domestic origin of the emblem through the lens of early modern theories of memory and shows how these efforts were bound together with developing strategies for the conservation, restoration, and reproduction of historical monuments.