A rare portfolio of late-eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century Swedish fortification drawings, executed to an advanced standard by military engineering students and demonstrating the full breadth of contemporary instruction in bastioned defense. Likely produced at the Fortifikationen (Swedish Corps of Engineers) training school in Karlberg or Marieberg, these drawings follow the pedagogical model established across northern Europe in the wake of Vauban and Montalembert, adapted to Sweden’s particular topography and evolving military doctrine.
The sheets number more than twenty in all and move from geometric ideal to practical application. Two large-format fortress plans in rose madder and verdigris show pentagonal bastions with internal layouts, including barracks, magazines, and casemated artillery positions. Another depicts a concentric circular fort with radiating caponiers, a late-eighteenth-century innovation designed to concentrate flanking fire across a dry ditch. One striking sheet assembles a series of cross-sections, vividly shaded to emphasize the depth of ditches and thickness of ramparts, and includes plan and profile views of ravelins, tenailles, counterscarps, and hornworks.
Topographical integration is a particular strength of this archive. Several sheets depict imagined or real Swedish sites, rendered with delicate watercolor and wash to capture terrain, vegetation, and man-made defenses. One view, executed in black, grey, and ochre, shows a fortified hill town tucked into a fjäll landscape, its outer works adapted to steep ravines and clustered knolls. Elsewhere, precise and finely ruled studies explore the relationship between glacis trees and fields of fire, the drainage and revetment of low-lying positions, and the logistical geometry of parade grounds, artillery parks, and formal gardens.
The language of measurement is consistent throughout, with frequent use of famnar (Swedish fathoms), supporting a Swedish origin. Many sheets are signed, with clear authorial attribution to at least one student: C. A. Nannerhantz (or a close variation), whose hand appears repeatedly. The cadet’s flourishing script, paired with the professional finish of the work, suggests an individual preparing for commission or advancement within the Swedish engineering corps.
These drawings are practical studies informed by service needs and military training. The work as a whole captures the moment when Enlightenment-era fortification design, still governed by bastioned theory, began to confront the limitations revealed by Napoleonic warfare and Swedish realities.
A visually and intellectually rich survival, this group offers a rare window into the discipline, rigor, and spatial imagination of early nineteenth-century Swedish military science.