3. Books Of Ordinary People

Abstract

Studies of inventories from rural Norwegian areas, most of them from the late seventeenth century onwards, point to the pervasiveness of the books on the popular market. Inventories from the regions of Sunnmore, Romsdal, Nordmore and Telemark and ranging across the period from 1690 to 1839 indicate that the most broadly distributed types of literature were Bibles, ABCs, catechisms, hymn books and sermon collections. With the tenacity of Lutheran orthodox authors and works, the circulation of Pietist- and Enlightenment-inspired literature seems to have been a late eighteenth-century phenomenon. Religious works, however, were never alone on the market: collections of popular tales and other types of non-religious literature remained steady sellers within a market that had expanded by the end of the early modern period to encompass a higher number of non-religious works.Keywords: Hymn books; non-religious literature; Norwegian areas; religious books