ABSTRACT
This chapter offers close readings of selected examples from the joint kingdom of Denmark–Norway and the kingdom of Sweden during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It introduces the commemorative family portraits as a valuable source material for the field of historical childhood studies. The chapter emphasizes the pre-Pietism and pre-Enlightenment Lutheran ethos as one of the sustaining foundation stones of what people think of, even today, as Nordic childhood. It presents Lucas Cranach's emblematic painting of Jesus and the children in Larvik Church in south-eastern Norway. The chapter comments on orthodox Lutheran views on children and their role in the family. It highlights a validation of children and parents that lay at the core of a Lutheran understanding of society. The children represented in the confessional Lutheran commemorative portraits were always included in the socially fundamental unit of the family and were put on display in churches.
