Dr Caroline Wilhelmsson

Position: Assistant Curator of Historic Buildings, HM Tower of London

About

Caroline initially trained as a historian of medieval Scandinavia and gained her PhD from the University of Aberdeen. She specialised in state formation and the development of national identity in Sweden from the Viking Age to 1300. This led her to delve into court studies, ecclesiastical, and military history, and the dynamics between urban and rural cultures, not only in Scandinavia but also in a wider north-European context.

After returning to university to study building history at the University of Cambridge, she focused on military architecture, notably eighteenth- and nineteenth-century barracks, as symbolic representations of state authority and as physical vectors of institutional ideologies.

Caroline joined HRP in early 2025 with the primary aim of researching the history and development of the Waterloo Barracks (or Waterloo Block) to inform its impending refurbishment as well as the Royal Fusilier Museum and, more generally, investigate the Tower’s use as an active garrison in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Select Publications

Wilhelmsson, C., Sarah McCutcheon, et al., “The limitations of the Black Book of Limerick and the Civil Survey as sources for the study of urban topography in medieval and early modern Kilmallock, co. Limerick”, History Studies, 25:2 (2025) [forthcoming].

Wilhelmsson, C., The Queens and Royal Women of Sweden, c. 970–1330: Their Lives, Power, and Legacy (London: Routledge, 2024).

Wilhelmsson, C., “The Eriksgata in Early Medieval Sweden c. 800-1300: A Political ‘Ritual’, a Legal Necessity, or an Identity Marker?”, CERAE: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 9 (2022), pp. 32-60.