The Swedish National Heritage Board started sharing photos by Berit Wallenberg on The Commons on Flickr in 2012. We will now add “Berit Wallenberg – Ireland“ to her 11 previous albums with photos from Sweden, Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, England, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Most of these images are from the 1920s and 1930s.
Berit Wallenberg (1902-1995) was a Swedish archaeologist and art historian, specialized in medieval churches and mural paintings. She began photographing early, and brought her camera on her many travels in Sweden and other European countries. As an adult, she often travelled on her own, in her own car and under modest conditions, even though she was part of the influential Wallenberg family with bankers, industrialists, politicians and diplomats.
Berit Wallenberg spent about two weeks on Ireland in August 1939, travelling around, mainly studying ancient remains, as monastic sites and churches. The images are from the provinces of Ulster, Leinster and Munster. According to the photo dates, she started her trip in Ulster in Northern Ireland, UK, then continued to Leinster and Munster in the Republic of Ireland. However, we will not upload the images in cronological order.
The entire Berit Wallenberg archives collection holds more than 25,000 photos. About 5,000 are digitized and searchable in our photo database Kulturmiljöbild, thanks to financial contribution from the Berit Wallenberg Foundation. The new album “Berit Wallenberg – Ireland“ will show a choice of 20 images, selected from the 150 images from Ireland by Berit Wallenberg in the photo database.
We warmly welcome all Flickr viewers to the Swedish National Heritage Board’s photostream on Flickr Commons to follow Berit Wallenberg on Ireland, and to download and use the copyright free images. We also hope for Flickr members to comment on the images, to tag, to show comparative images, and to tell us things we did not know about the images we share! We start uploading today, and more images from Ireland will follow during autumn, so keep watching! :)
