Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 2 (2013), p. 364

Patrik Olsson opens his study of avenues, or tree-lined roads (in Swedish, alléer), in Scania, the most southern part of Sweden, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the remark that an avenue is both culture and nature, an object created by man and a carrier of symbolic meanings, while at the same time being a living organism. This interplay between man and nature is at the heart of both human geography, the field to which Olsson’s thesis belongs, and agricultural history. The study touches upon a number of central issues about how to study a landscape, people’s perceptions of it, and its development through time.

To understand why people have planted trees in straight lines on both sides of the road, Olsson has looked at maps, mainly, as well as paintings and photographs. Many of them are shown to the reader: the book contains more than 100 illustrations. This is not only a treat for the eyes; it presents the sources, too, and the interplay between text and image is superb. Throughout three empirical chapters – on estate landscape, on landscapes surrounding towns, and on the landscapes of villages – the author guides us from one avenue to the next or, rather, between different systems of avenues. The avenue is used as a tool for understanding the landscape as a whole. At the same time, Olsson emphasizes that an avenue cannot be understood properly without reference to its surroundings. A border between the infields and the outlands of a manor, for example, or the link between a town and a summer farm owned by one of its burghers, explain the starting point of an avenue. This interdependence between part and whole directs the investigation.

Maps are great for studying the history of a landscape, but not without problems. Olsson’s survey makes it clear that many maps (and paintings) include projected elements as well as actual ones. They might, therefore, show avenues that were never there. Other maps leave out avenues that existed, because it was not important to register them. Olsson stresses, therefore, the importance of knowing the purpose of a map, but, too often, the purpose is not known. Moreover, while a map shows what was (or was intended to be) done, it does not really say why. In the images studied, Olsson finds more and more of a geometric landscape. Roads and borders were straightened out and trees were planted to mark these lines. To account for this, Olsson links to ideas held in many parts of Europe – and described by earlier research – about nature, pruned and ordered, as beautiful. Referring to Emily Brady, Olsson describes a dialectical relationship between the practical and aesthetical functions of the avenue. Lopping is the prime example. To cut branches of trees had the double effect of enhancing the beauty of the landscape and providing people with leaves and wood. The latter was important in Scania, where large areas lacked trees.

More of the reasoning behind avenues is found in scientific dissertations, journals and travellers’ accounts, which Olsson cites, but could have used to a greater extent. It is also evident in a campaign, launched by an eighteenth-century governor, to make peasants plant trees alongside the roads. Peasants seem to have been reluctant to plant avenues and most of the trees that were planted disappeared shortly thereafter, partly because they were cut down by people who, in a woodless environment, needed wood. Although Olsson initially remarks that different people experience landscape in different ways, this perspective is largely absent from the analysis. The travellers’ accounts he cites – as well as maps – express the views of the upper class. In maps from the nineteenth century, Olsson discerns an expansion of avenues around estates, which tells of an expansion of the landlord’s domination over the landscape. This is very interesting. But, to the peasant who, in this process, had lost his land, did the lines of trees represent beauty, or oppression? What about encroachments?

The history of a landscape is not only the result of the interplay between human intentions and natural constraints. It is also the result of social conflicts. Adding sources where conflict is more evident – court records, for example – would broaden our understanding of how people have perceived the landscape. There is more to be learnt about avenues. Patrik Olsson has provided us with a good foundation.