The last hunger years? The 1826–1832 mortality crisis in Denmark

Abstract

ABSTRACT From 1826 and the six years following, Denmark underwent a severe mortality crisis. The conventional understanding is that it was caused by a malaria epidemic, although recent literature has challenged this. This study examines the demographic and clinical features of this mortality crisis to understand it further. The crisis began in Langeland in 1826 and spread throughout most of Zealand and Lolland-Falster in the following years with a dramatic culmination in the autumn of 1831. In addition to a lethal measles and scarlet fever epidemics in the spring of 1829, the affected regions experienced returning lethal epidemics during harvest in this period. The complex of symptoms during these epidemics resembles enteric infections such as typhoid fever, paratyphoid or E. coli, and typhus fever. In the same period, Denmark also underwent a subsistence crisis from several years with crop failures. The mortality crisis, and namely the harvest epidemics, was probably related to this subsistence crisis. A scarcity of fresh food meant that the rural population ate contaminated food products, making them ill. The crisis thereby exemplifies the synergetic relationship between epidemics and subsistence crises that were common before the breakthrough of the demographic transition in the 19th century.