Nineteenth-century Sweden Research Articles

Reexamining reclamation: A comparative analysis of agricultural transformation in nineteenth century Sweden

Wetland reclamation was an intrinsic part of nineteenth-century global agricultural transformations. In Swedish research, reclamation has mainly been situated in larger general processes of population rise, commercialization and societal/technological development. The intersection of reclamation, physical environments and local economies has seldom been studied in detail. This paper conducts a local analysis of nineteenth-century wetland reclamation in two parishes in Sweden, Knätte and Mörlunda, through combining a study of specific reclamation processes with an analysis of local agrarian-economic development. The results show that these processes varied depending on specific historical-geographical circumstances. In Knätte, reclamation was not primarily related to population rise, but to increasing commercialization during the period. The case in Mörlunda instead shows how reclamation was first a response to increasing population but later developed into a project of agricultural market adaptation. In both cases, the physical environment led to varying degrees of geographic constraint in the process. In combination, these results point to the importance of detailed case studies in nuancing our understanding of nineteenth-century wetland reclamation both in Sweden and internationally.

Women's Work and the Occupational Structure in Late Nineteenth-Century Sweden

Abstract It has long been recognized that, in order to understand economies in the past, we need better information about women's work and tertiary sector work. It is also well known that, while valuable in many ways, nineteenth-century censuses give incomplete information about women's contributions to the economy. Consequently, censuses are a poor basis for estimating the occupational structure. This article offers a solution to these problems by triangulating census data with qualitative information extracted from court records. The result is a more reasonable estimate of the first-level occupational structure in a Swedish local society (Västerås and its surroundings) around 1880. This estimate suggests that just before the onset of industrialization, around eighty per cent of the adult population, women and men, were active in primary and tertiary sector work. Compared to the census, the analysis sets women's share in the primary and the tertiary sectors at higher levels. The article has a strong methodological focus and describes in detail how the court records were analysed and adjusted to be comparable with the census.

Colonial Fantasies

This article explores exotic and orientalized motifs in the Swedish illustrated press at the end of the nineteenth century. I argue that one way to be part of the European colonial project was to engage in colonial practices, and among these were the mass production of exotic and Oriental motifs through the illustrated press that became prevalent throughout Scandinavia. Furthermore, I describe how illustrations were part of a broader media landscape in late nineteenth-century Sweden than previously perceived. To understand its relevance today I discuss briefly how Swedish artists have been engaged with colonial and exotic motifs. The article concludes that the various colonial visual media cultures have a long tradition in Swedish media culture which still engage questions of race and representation.

Diligent and docile workers: descriptions of the working poor and the social order in the Läsebok för folkskolan, 1868–1920s

ABSTRACT The educational system in nineteenth-century Sweden was, as in many other industrialising states, segregated by social class. Children of the economically and politically marginalised classes were educated in basic primary subjects in the nationwide Folkskola (primary schools). From 1868 to the early 1940s, the government issued, subsidised, and distributed the Läsebok för folkskolan (Reader for Primary School; “the Reader”). Besides poems and songs, the Reader contained religious, fictitious, moral, and historical texts – all wrapped in an explicit nationalist discourse. However, it also contained images and ideologies about social class which have remained unexplored. The representations and social vernaculars in the Reader about how children of the working poor should identify and conduct themselves in order to grow up as functional members of a bourgeois society have been more or less overlooked. This paper deals with the images of the poor and marginalised in the Reader. We suggest not only that the Swedish state reproduced a class-based society through a segmented school system, but that the social descriptions in the book were aimed to produce diligent and docile workers to serve the political and economic interests of the dominant classes.

‘Over-indebtedness’ – or not? Household debt accumulation and risk exposure in nineteenth century Sweden

ABSTRACT In light of the ongoing extensive discussion concerning the increasing financial risk levels of the household sector in modern, credit-based societies, this study explores the level and structure of credit markets in nineteenth century Sweden. The growing international research focusing on informal credit markets outside formalised institutions has demonstrated that credit was abundantly and pervasively included in the lion’s share of all inter-personal financial relationships in early modern Europe. In this particular study, based on probate inventories and the inverted mortality method, the changing structure of nineteenth century credit market is estimated for the living population. The household financial situation is studied as life-cycle indebtedness and as debt ratios in relation to income, wealth and financial assets and how these ratios evolved during the transformation from a predominately agrarian to a more commercialised, monetised and industrialised economy in Sweden during the nineteenth century. The source material for this article consists of more than 5800 household probate inventories from Southern and Central Sweden, including three rural and two urban areas. The geographical selection is based on a sample utilised in a wider research project. It permits comparisons of debt structures not only between rural and urban areas, but also among different regions within Sweden.

Souvenirs from North America: Understanding and representing ‘Indianness’ in nineteenth-century Sweden

ABSTRACT Swedish museums curate numerous objects made by indigenous peoples of North America. Collected already in the seventeenth century, their numbers increased in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. While some of them were collected systematically by scientific expeditions, majority of these objects were obtained as personal mementoes. Scrutinizing examples of North American souvenirs collected in the early nineteenth century by Swedes visiting America and donated to the Lund University Historical Museum, this article explores souvenirs as a particular category of representational objects. It relates them to the early nineteenth-century popular notions of the American Indian stemming from the popular literature and investigates how these two tools of representation informed one another to create and perpetuate a stereotype of Indianness.

Printing a new architectural style in mid nineteenth-century Sweden

In 1850, a small group of liberal reformers and business partners in Stockholm launched a magazine entitled Tidskrift för praktisk byggnadskonst och mekanik m.m. [The Journal for Practical Art of Building and Mechanics etc.], the first architectural magazine in Sweden. This article situates the magazine in its historical context. Through a close reading of published articles and editorial correspondence, it explores the magazine’s main objectives. It argues that this shortlived magazine was used as a tool for implementing comprehensive architectural and societal reforms. Above all, the magazine served as a laboratory for creating a new Swedish architectural style. Since this new architectural style was originally envisioned to be used by white Europeans all over the world, the transnational network of architectural magazines played a crucial role in the highly ambitious endeavour of its founders. This article shows how a national architectural style was conceptualised as an exportable commodity in mid nineteenth-century Scandinavia. In so doing, it further illuminates architectural magazines as agents and mergers of highly ambitious aesthetic, commercial, and patriotic aims.

The transnational dissemination of the infant school to the periphery of Europe: the role of primary schools, religion, travels, and handbooks in the case of nineteenth-century Sweden

ABSTRACT The infant school was a nineteenth-century innovation with British roots that quickly achieved an international reputation. This article contributes to the study of the transnational dissemination of the infant schools by examining the case of Swedish infant schools. Using theoretical concepts from the transnational history of education, this article focuses on how the model of infant schools was transferred to Sweden, and how this model was translated and transformed in this process and by local Swedish contexts. Combining printed handbooks and unprinted archival materials from infant school societies, this article emphasises the role of travels, handbooks, and the infant school society of Stockholm in this transfer process, and its inherent contradictions. This study indicates the vital role that religion played in transforming the content of the teaching taught at infant schools, and the impact of primary schools on the educational practices. As elsewhere, Swedish infant schools were sometimes transformed into a kind of preparatory primary school.

Child Labour, Parental Neglect, School Boards, and Teacher Quality: School Inspector Reports on the Supply and Demand of Schooling in Mid-nineteenth-century Sweden

By examining the state school inspector reports of 1861–1863, which provide rich insights into the local conditions of schooling in Sweden, this article sheds further light on the wide range of factors that weakened school enrolment and attendance in nineteenth-century Sweden. In terms of parental demand, these included child labour on farms, at manors, and in industries; the transformation of the servant system among rural households; and religious practices, such as the confirmation and the beliefs of Protestant sectarian groups. On the supply side, factors that school inspectors reported included the inability of Swedish teacher seminars to examine enough teachers and the problematic behaviour of local school boards. As a result, this article provides additional input into the debate in educational history regarding the role of the state, religion, rural elites, and parents in the rise of mass schooling, while simultaneously providing further qualitative evidence to a quantitatively oriented research field in economic history on the determinants of schooling.

Child Labour, Parental Neglect, School Boards, and Teacher Quality: School Inspector Reports on the Supply and Demand of Schooling in Mid-nineteenth-century Sweden

By examining the state school inspector reports of 1861–1863, which provide rich insights into the local conditions of schooling in Sweden, this article sheds further light on the wide range of factors that weakened school enrolment and attendance in nineteenth-century Sweden. In terms of parental demand, these included child labour on farms, at manors, and in industries; the transformation of the servant system among rural households; and religious practices, such as the confirmation and the beliefs of Protestant sectarian groups. On the supply side, factors that school inspectors reported included the inability of Swedish teacher seminars to examine enough teachers and the problematic behaviour of local school boards. As a result, this article provides additional input into the debate in educational history regarding the role of the state, religion, rural elites, and parents in the rise of mass schooling, while simultaneously providing further qualitative evidence to a quantitatively oriented research field in economic history on the determinants of schooling.

The market and ‘the making’: the economics of the first workers’ associations in nineteenth-century Sweden

ABSTRACTThe first phase of class formation in mid-nineteenth-century Sweden was characterized by its liberal stance. The first workers’ organizations in continuous operation focused on attaining political rights and representation; offered self-help, education and social and economic support; and were engaged in neither socialist agitation nor contentious politics. The middle classes and even the bourgeoisie often supported these endeavours in various ways. The aim of this article is to provide a new explanation of why this first transitional phase developed. Previous explanations of class formation have paid scant attention to the material economic conditions behind the survival and stability of workers’ organizations. I argue that the material should be brought back into the analysis of class formation to further our understanding of organized class politics. By analysing the economics and strategies of a typical liberal workers’ association in Sweden, I show that organized politics were conditioned by the market. The organization’s main source of income were commercial activities. This strategy speaks to the structural significance of commercial economic thinking. In conclusion, the first phase of working-class organizational development was profoundly conditioned by the economic structures of an industrializing social formation.

National Renaissance and Nordic Resonance: Language History and Poetic Diction in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

National Renaissance and Nordic Resonance : Language History and Poetic Diction in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

Editorial Note

The image on the cover of this second issue of JOLCEL shows a detail from the so-called Franks Casket, an early eight-century Anglo-Saxon chest made out of whale’s bone, possibly designed to hold a psalter. This artefact constitutes a truly breath-taking nexus of cultural traditions, juxtaposing tableaus as varied as Romulus and Remus being suckled by the shewolf, the mythical Germanic Wayland the Smith at work on his anvil, and the Adoration of the Magi. The scene which has been reproduced here depicts the consequences of the Roman emperor Titus’ sacking of the city of Jerusalem. The inscription in the upper righthand margin starts out in the Latin tongue and script: “hic fugiant hierusalim” (“Here flee from Jerusalem…”). This phrase is then continued vertically, still in Latin but rendered in Anglo-Saxon runes: “ᚪᚠᛁᛏᚪᛏᚩᚱᛖᛋ,” which can be transcribed as “(h)abitatores” (“…its inhabitants”). If we also were to take a look at the left side of this panel (not included here), we would encounter further runic inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon that describe the ancient siege itself. Clearly, Latin and its cultural past are being represented here as being part of a larger and more complex whole, a whole in which, at first sight, they do not even seem to occupy a central position.
 This leads us to the present volume’s overarching topic, ‘Latin on the margins’, which has its earliest origins in the Telling Tales Out of School-conference organised by RELICS in 2017. It might come as a surprise to the reader that, only having arrived at our second issue, we turn to the aspect of Latin on the margins. However, by placing these topics at the centre of our journal, and in dialogue with texts that are traditionally considered key texts of the Latin tradition, we seek to reconsider the aspect of centre versus margin in Latin literature, with a particular focus on how education in Latin played a crucial role in this.
 Indeed, the three articles we present to the reader in this issue deal with texts that are generally viewed as examples of the use of Latin in the margins. The margins in question are either geographical ones (Tlatelolco in Mexico City) or chronological ones (nineteenthcentury Sweden). This issue hopes to show that what we have come to define as ‘marginal’ is only a question of perspective. In the formation of writers that we consider today to be at the margin of the Latin tradition, Latin education still was—or had recently become—a central element.
 Andrew Laird (Brown University) and Heréndira Tellez Nieto (Cátedras Conacyt), in their respective articles, draw attention to the College of Tlatelolco, located in Mexico City. The use of Latin for the instruction of the Nahua peoples was never regarded as a ‘marginal’ phenomenon; on the contrary, Latin was a crucial medium to enhance mutual understanding, which in turn created a new and vibrant dynamic, far from Europe. This explains how Tlatelolco became a new centre for the study of the Latin language and its literatures, in interaction with the indigenous traditions of native Mexicans.
 Chronologically and geographically, nineteenth-century Sweden is, undoubtedly, at the margin of the Latin tradition; but, as Arsenii Vetushko-Kalevich (Lund University) explores in his article, for someone like Carl Georg Brunius, author of the longest Latin poem ever written in Sweden, the attempt to rewrite Nordic mythology in classical Latin hexameters probably felt more like a natural reflex than as an anachronism. By reinterpreting the classical echoes in the epic De diis arctois as more than mere “metrical necessities,” Vetushko-Kalevich seeks to give new meaning to the poem.
 Finally, in his illuminative response to the articles of this issue, Alejandro Coroleu (ICREA—Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) reflects more deeply on the consequences of this thinking in terms of what he calls “beyond Europe, beyond the Renaissance, and beyond the vernacular.” He makes a plea for the inclusion of these texts that are usually left out of the picture, in order to get a better insight in the aspects which make the Latin tradition a cosmopolitan one.
 The second issue of JOLCEL focuses on texts from the (early) modern period, but intentionally goes beyond those of the Italian humanist ideals. The articles analyse the use of Latin in contexts where the idea of translatio imperii is at first sight no longer a logical one: the Latin tradition has to impose itself on already existing traditions, such as the Nahua mythology or Nordic sagas. Interestingly, this imposition soon shifts to a renegotiation of the hierarchy of traditions. Latin, then, becomes a medium in which new traditions emerge.

International mercantile networks and financial intermediation in nineteenth century Scania (Sweden). Foreign private capital imports and informal credit market imbalances

Estimates of informal credit markets in nineteenth century Sweden tend to indicate that debts were much more widespread than claims. If this is not just coincidental – however, these studies are statistically insignificant – further research needs to elucidate whether this is connected with direct private capital imports through regional cities by merchants, and whether they were intermediaries for mercantile credits to the agrarian sector. The outcome indicates a previously unnoticed importance of such capital imports. Credit market estimates from cities need be adjusted somewhat upwards. However, capital flows to the countryside obviously went through established retailers, not directly to farmers.

Conditions of a Feminine Man: Rumors of a “Hermaphrodite” Pastrycook in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

The pastrycook Aron Forss was a well-known person in his hometown Uppsala in the 1840’s and 1850’s, famous both for his popular café and for his femininity. This article analyses the rumors that surrounded his person, using paintings, newspaper clippings, and memoirs written by his former customers. Through his business, Forss could lay claim on normative masculinity through the rousing bourgeois ideals of financial success and craftsmanship. Being a successful businessman was a way of securing social acceptance and respectability. However, it was apparently not enough. In order to sustain his business, Forss was forced to put up with harassments. Some of his costumers treated him much like other women in public places were treated—as objects of sexual advance. Several of Forss’s contemporaries describe him with particular fascination. By describing Forss as a spectacle, he is made an exception to the rules of social appropriateness.

Undervaluation in probate inventories probate inventory values and auction protocol market prices in eighteenth and nineteenth century Sweden

ABSTRACTIn this article we examine the accuracy of valuations of movable property for a sample of 22 probate inventories from Swedish. The sample comprises a total of 785 probated items which we have been able to match with contemporary auction protocols, giving us an official sales price for each item. This enables us to determine the consistency between the appraisal values in the probates and prevailing market prices, despite the fact that the probated items were invariably second-hand and of uncertain quality, as the comparison can be made for one and the same items. Our results show that probate appraisal values were marked underestimates of contemporary market prices, but also, that they lacked internal consistency. We find a mean undervaluation for probated items of −36 ± 3 percent, but the degree of undervaluation varied both depending on (i) the category of item, (ii) the year of the probate, as well as depending on (iii) the social class of the deceased. Our results apply, first and foremost, for the Swedish counties of Uppland and Södermanland, but as there is no reason to assume that Swedish probate proceedings exhibited significant regional variation, our results are most likely valid for the whole country.

A Science of Nature, a Science of Crime: The Reception and Embedding of Positivist Criminology in Sweden

This article considers how, and to what extent, the ideas and theories developed by Lombrosian, Positivist criminology were received and came to be embedded in Sweden. It demonstrates first the way in which new criminological ideas were widely reported in the press and by other means in nineteenth-century Sweden, partly due to Lombroso’s own celebrity but also partly due to public interest in the proceedings of international congresses. It then goes on to analyze the way in which ideas of “the born criminal” and the social bases of crime came to be seen, by some, as a challenge to the existing political order. Finally, the article considers the impact of Positivist criminology in the spheres of medical discourse and jurisprudence.

Agents and subjects: schooling and conceptions of citizenship in early nineteenth-century Sweden

ABSTRACTThis article aims to analyse how the emerging Swedish school system in the early nineteenth century can be understood within the context of a gradual break-up of the estate society and its replacement with a class society in which citizenship was an important foundation. This is done through the discussion of the conceptions of citizenship on two levels. The first is the national level, focusing the national debate on education, and the second is the local level, investigating the local schools and the school setting. The main result is that the conceptions of citizenship in the school context were formed along two major lines: an inclusive social and civil citizenship and an exclusive, active and political citizenship. Consequently, the emerging Swedish school system simultaneously fostered these two citizenship conceptions, which coexisted in an educational system that was able to cast pupils as either subjects (comprehensive citizenship) or agents (designated citizenship).

How did teachers make a living? The teacher occupation, livelihood diversification and the rise of mass schooling in nineteenth-century Sweden

ABSTRACTDrawing inspiration from the new social history of livelihood, this article examines how rural nineteenth-century teachers made a living by engaging in livelihood diversification. By using a wide variety of source materials from nineteenth-century Sweden, this article shows that, far from specialising exclusively in teaching, teachers were often engaged in multiple occupations as late as the year 1900, and that teachers’ work ranged from activities that were encouraged to those that were frowned upon or even illegal. As a result, this article sheds new light on teaching as an occupation in the nineteenth century and contributes to the discussion of the social and economic positions of teachers. By investigating how teachers earned their livelihoods, this article also addresses the role of teachers’ multiple occupations in the expansion of mass schooling during the nineteenth century.

Buying and Borrowing Books: Book Consumption In Late Nineteenth-Century Sweden (pp 121-154)

How did Swedish readers in the late nineteenth century acquire reading materials, and what books were the most popular? And how did their reading preferences change over time?A few unique, recently discovered sources, consisting of sales’ and borrowers’ ledgers from three different institutions – a parish library, a commercial lending library and a bookshop – can help to answer these questions. These three institutions represented key elements of the Swedish book trade, and together they served customers from the entire social spectrum, from farmhands, blacksmiths and labourers to bishops, noblemen and literary critics. Generally speaking, the Swedish reading public of the late nineteenth century was divided into two groups: those who bought books, and those who borrowed them. The bookshop was where all the latest books could be found, and Strindberg, Ibsen and Daudet were among the best-selling authors. The parish library, by contrast, had only a limited range of fiction – mainly written by an earlier generation of authors – and primarily acquired books that would enlighten and educate, rather than entertain. However, the members of the parish library preferred fiction above all, and over the years they transformed from omnivorous to discerning readers. The commercial lending library, which specialised in novels, attracted many bookworms, with some people borrowing from fifty to one hundred books a year, very often historical novels.Different customer groups seem to have had different literary preferences. The study shows for example that female customers of the bookshop tended to buy books on women’s emancipation, and preferred Tolstoy to Strindberg – who was the male customers’ favourite. And while romantic and gothic stories, and the so-called “city mysteries” by Eugène Sue were hugely popular among the students and the artisans of the commercial lending library, they aroused little interest among the bookshop’s customers.