Many ask about the background to the magnificence and luxury of the Hälsingland farmhouses. How did Hälsingland in particular come to have such large farmhouses? Is it because of flax, or the forest?

Many say that it is because the Hälsingland people have always been independent farmers who owned their own land, and who were thus able to build on a grand scale.

The two strange expressions "farmer's castle" and "farming nobility" are also used. The farms themselves weren't big; the farmhouses were, but not the tax base of the farms themselves. And yet they are remarkable.

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