The Versatile Farmers of the North; the Struggle of Norwegian Yeomen for
Economic Reforms and Political Power, 1750-1814
Victor Condorcét Vinje
Author Bio
The author is a descendant of the 19th century author, poet and editor, Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, and he has been doing journalism and writing for the past 30 years or so. Apart from his own writing, he has translated several works into Norwegian — especially related to historical subjects. During extensive travels in Scandinavia he became familiar with the topographic peculiarities of the landscapes and geography in this region of Europe — insights which proved to be very useful in writing the actual book on Norwegian yeomen in the late 18th and early 19th century. Vinje is formally educated in history and English, and he furthermore has some experience with more practical tasks such as carpenting (wooden boat building) and gardening, which were also helpful in dealing with the subjects of this book.
Description
The Versatile Farmers of the North; the Struggle of Norwegian Yeomen for Economic Reforms and Political Power, 1750-1814 deals with the socio-economical background for the highly progressive and libertarian constitutional drafts presented by the Norwegian yeomen in the spring of 1814. As Europa moved into a general period of reaction in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, it is a highly interesting phenomenon — addressed in the book — how it came about that the Norwgian yeomen retained the radical orientation of the Enlightenment and the Revolutionary era, and even ventured to produce their own constitutional drafts — a singular effort in history in general.
The constitutional efforts of these yeomen are seen in the context of their former historical experiences — including their struggle with the absolutist Danish state and its burgher privileges from the late 17th century onwards — and the natural conditions under which they lived and worked. The book makes a comparison of the peculiarities of the Norwegian topography and geography with the other Scandinavian and European countries, as part of an explanation of their radical stance. Moreover, the very versatility of their ways of life is connected to their demands for economic freedom and political influence and power — a versatility which reaches all the way back to the Viking era and which gave the yeomen (and even tenant farmers) a relatively high standing in early modern society in Norway.
As Norway — in the wake of the Napoleanic wars — was “delivered” to Sweden from Denmark because of the latter’s involvement in Napoleon’s eventual defeat, an entirely new political situation occurred in Scandinavia: At the Swedish throne, Napoleon Bonaparte’s former general, Bernadotte — a former French revolutionary soldier — was chosen as the leader of the state after a coup d’etat in the Swedish high quarters. The book challenges the common view that Bernadotte (Charles John) played a reactionary role in the constitutional strife which developed in Norway in 1814 and afterwards. It argues, on the contrary, that Bernadotte, having experienced the reactionary turn among the French farmers during the Great French Revolution, was roused by enthusiasm of the Norwegian yeomen’s radical and libertarian stance, and the yeomen in turn nourished the highest respect for and expectations from the new “revolutionary king”.
As it turned out, the Norwegian yeomen’s constitutional drafts were turned down by the burghers and the state officials at Eidsvoll in April and May, 1814 — a fact that induced Bernadotte to refuse acceptance of the Norwegian constitution as it was, demanding improvements. Such improvements were in fact accomplished in the late autumn of 1814, including freedom of speech and printing, which underpins the rather radical role played by the new Swedish king in this context. As pointed out in the book, the yeomen’s demands for economic freedom were not granted before close to Bernadotte’s death in 1844, due to the vehement resistance from the Norwegian burghers — who held fast to their age old privileges. However, the yeomen had their ancient ways of doing trade and craft outside the regular market, including seasonal markets off the main tracks and even sailing their own ships abroad to do trade and make contacts with the wider European public — probably even to the extent of importing revolutionary ideas from the Continent. In fact, one of the main yeoman figures of the era, Kristian Jensen Lofthus from Agder — who was a ship builder and sailor in addition to ordinary farming activities — sailed regularly to Britain and France with specialities from the Norwegian produce of the era (such as tar), and made contacts overseas in the 1780’s — a few years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. The so-called Lofthus-rising, decribed towards the end of the book, in the wake of which Lofthus himself was chained to a stone at Akershus fort for life, is the closest Norway has ever been to a revolution, and its aftermath largely influenced on the subsequent developmenst and stance among the yeomen. Concluding the book is a discussion of the choice between two different types of market structures which had to be taken among the Norwegian public at this stage in history, and the book argues the case for the yeomen’s way of doing commerce — even though it was largely occurring in a so-called “black market”. The reason for this preference is that their way of doing it included highly moral relationships within economic affairs, creating bonds among people up and down the Norwegian coast and, by way of inland trade routes, also reaching major populations in the hinterland.
Book excerpt
The Psychological Implications of Yeoman and Peasant Versatility
The mercantilist state, with its laws of city and burgher privileges, made a huge cut in the Norwegian farmers’ economic opportunities and scope of action. For example, the saw mill industry was monopolized for the city inhabitants, so that the farmers were only allowed to saw timber for their own usage. Additionally, they were generally prohibited from trading activities, apart from certain ineffaceable annual markets outside city areas, and denied the right to do artisanal work in the cities – work that they traditionally had been doing since the Viking era. Thus, the mercantilist period was a challenging one for the Norwegian farmers, and it goes a long way to explain why a usually conservative social class like theirs, in Norway made headway for liberalistic reforms and innovative progress, such as they came to be accomplished to a fuller extent with the reforms of the new state under Swedish authority in the 1830’s and 40’s – towards the end of Carl Johan’s reign – in the form of the municipal laws introduced in 1837.
An earlier historical parallel to the burgher privileges which were introduced after the establishment of absolutism in Norway in 1660, were the efforts made by the kings in the 13th and 14th centuries to cut short the farmers recourse to trading activities. In this period, the state power was about to take root in our European region, and this tendency towards a clearer partition into various social estates must be understood as a strategic and power related trick on behalf of the crown, due to the fact that the court in this way was freer to conduct a divide and conquer policy towards the various social classes or estates. If the farmers had been left free to pursue trading activities in that period, they would have won a very strong influence, and may potentially have challenged the increasing centralization which went on in those centuries. However, as their seemingly quiet accept of the acquisition by the king’s court of the power of legislation in connection with Magnus Lagabote’s landslov (“law of the land”) in 1274 testifies, they were not fully conscious of the extent to which the king actually wore down their power and independent position with his so-called efforts to “mend the laws”, which occurred in this period. As a matter of fact, the king in person took over the entire law giving authority from the farmers. In the 18th century, by contrast, there are major indications that the farmers – to a considerably more extensive degree – were conscious about their own potential position, and that they came to consider the burgher privileges as a highly unjust and directly anti-democratic – not to say outright economically counter-productive – ordinance. They had become less servile towards the government officials, even though they largely strove to keep their loyalty towards the king himself, whom they primarily regarded as the one who was pledged to maintain the law in their favor, which once was a substantial fact until it was dismantled by the new conceptions that “the kingly power and its laws derived from god”, from the late 13th century onwards. To what extent were the farmers aware that this dismantling process, and the reworking of the law making procedures, had taken place? Was the political struggle among Norwegian farmers in the period 1750-1814 – which Robert R. Palmer has aptly termed “The Age of Democratic Revolution” – of a conservative character, or maybe of a utopian one, or even radical republican? Or was it maybe a struggle which was positioned in the field of tension between the backwards looking and the future prospects, in a similar vein as the entire cultural life in Western Europe in this age was marked by the tensions between Enlightenment ideals of progress and the Romantic perspectives on tradition, as we find these problem complexes debated for instance in the exchanges between Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft?
The large extent of Norwegian yeomanry – as distinguished from the general European peasant serfdom – together with the adherent right of inheritance (odelsretten) – which had been retained all the time since the Viking era, throughout the Early Middle Ages and the period of union with Denmark – have been singled out as decisive causes to the elevated position of the farmers in Norwegian society well into the 19th century. Moreover, these traits have been said to play the same decisive role when parliamentarianism was introduced in 1884. I will not deny the influence of neither self-ownership nor the odelsretten in connection with these events and developments. However, there is a chance that they possibly have got a too prominent position compared to the traditional versatile position of the farmers, especially when we acknowledge the fact that the most radical and republican among them wanted to abolish the right of inheritance (odelsretten) in 1814 as a vestige of feudalism, and that they wanted usufruct principles, free trade, free speech and spiritual freedom instead. This means that they were generally much more radical than the other participants at Eidsvoll – bourgeois, state officials and a few nobles – during the sitting of the Constitutional assembly, when seen in a libertarian perspective. In fact, since both self-ownership and the right of inheritance literally ties the farmer to his soil – and to the soil related life – rather paving way for parochialism and xenophobia than for the opposite, it is my contention that it was exactly the versatile attitude and way of life among the farmers, most notably the yeomen, which gave them the largely more wide grasping horizon – politically and socially as well as economically – which throughout history has contributed to opening up the susceptibility among them to foreign and innovative impulses, made possible by the vast and strategically positioned coastline and even ill defined border zones to the east. The versatile orientation confers quite another, and more dynamic, vein to the pride and dignity of the farmers themselves; hence, this social class was elevated to a position of overview from which it became enabled to take the whole of society and its well- being into consideration. This latter fact, then, put them into the prominent position due to which they embarked on writing constitutional drafts during the spring of 1814 – by way of spontaneously organized discussions and mandated writing processes – when the circumstances called upon them to act more directly into the political sphere. This fact is unique in world history, and it demands a closer explanation; hence, it is one of the major themes in this investigation. Would the freehold (sjøleie) and the right of inheritance (odelsretten) alone have put the farmers in a position in which they reckoned themselves mature enough to shape the constitution of the country, viewed in the light of the limitations of a strictly landed property orientation – an orientation which never mattered much in Norway anyway, a country mostly consisting of a myriad of tiny agricultural plots and timber resources, only accessible to the most enduring and independent of souls, and understandably shunned by most nobles?
It seems natural to compare the Norwegian farmers in 1814 with the French peasantry during the Great French Revolution a few decades earlier, when the latter – as indicated above – only had their own self-interests in mind when they ignited the revolutionary events in 1788, with the pillaging of the chateaux and the burning of the feudal titles – in a fury propelled by sheer hunger. Hence, instead of mingling with the artisans and other citizens of Paris and Lyons, the French farmers withdrew to their country districts after their early revolutionary victories, and never took part in the constitution making processes in Paris after 1789. Several historians, among them Peter A. Kropotkin and J. M. Thompson, in their studies of the Great French Revolution, have arrived at the conclusion that the French farmers in fact turned quite reactionary as soon as their own class interests were achieved – and the vestiges of the feudal system were removed – and thus contributed to isolate the citizens of Paris, Lyons and other major hotbeds, making their revolutionary efforts into an almost hopelessly futile venture – as repeated during the Parisian commune in 1871. Social revolutions which do not include a broad social basis, will have minimal chances for success in the direction of producing social progress and political freedoms; quite to the contrary, they will most often degenerate into social and economic stagnation, political despotism and civil war. Leading Norwegian historians have been arguing that it was the official elite – the King’s administrators – who exclusively were in a position to overview and comprehend the Norwegian social complexity at the outset of the 19th century, and that the farmers were marked by more locally oriented perspectives and a general parochialism. However, in this period when the nation was hardly more than an idea, it is especially important to distinguish between “the nation as a whole” and society in a general sense in this period. Thus, the nation was of little importance in this highly regionalized era, while the overall structures of society and its operations meant everything. The government officials may have had theoretical notions and knowledge of a largely vestigial nation, while the versatile farmers knew practically how things worked in society on a day to day basis; a few weeks’ general strike among the largely self-sufficient yeomen would have sent the state officials into exile, and the burghers fleeing to some location were profits could be had. Thus, the yeomen were the de facto rulers of society, without whom everything would have come to a standstill. A general strike among the farmers would virtually have aborted the entire social fabric, and left the king and his officials helpless. Those among the farmers who embodied the traditional versatile economic orientation and practices to an extensive degree – either in its coastal or its inland form (for example in Agder, Lofoten and Gudbrandsdalen) – had a far more hands-on experience and practical knowledge of the multifarious aspects of economic life in the highly diverse rural communities. Moreover, it is safe to say that they harbored perspectives on the proper role of human beings in their respective ecological environments of their communities, and throughout centuries and generations upon generations had learned how these environments could be tended in a “sustainable manner”, to use present day language. All of this obviously gave them a quite palpable feeling of mastery which probably seemed both challenging and frightening from the king’s officials’ point of view. The latter obviously knew by heart that they were utterly dependent upon the work of the farmers for their very well-being and survival. In fact, the farmers’ pride and self-consciousness had laid the foundation for their risings during the Strile war, the Lofthus rising and Haugianism, and testified veritably to the fact that they encompassed a social class which could not be overlooked in the event of a social and political crisis, such as the one which occurred in the period leading up to the constitution making process in 1814.
It is a commonplace that farmers by nature, as it were, are conservative and subscribe to a defensive orientation. This may hold good in areas and periods where and when they live on memories of long gone freedoms, and fight against further deterioration of their living conditions. Among versatile yeomen (and even tenant peasants), however, the premises were – and will always be — different. Through their spontaneity, adaptability and innovativeness they are always on the look-out for new possibilities, combinations and progress – in other words, a process oriented life in which brain work and manual work go hand in hand – and in our context unfolding in the very era of Enlightenment itself, which had far different implications than the present “information society”. Surely, the mere sight of the detailed illustrations of all kinds of agricultural and artisanal equipment innovations in Denis Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s French Éncyclopedie (published between 1751 and 1772) must have stirred huge enthusiasm among commoners who came across them – and especially yeomen who had the immediate resources at hand to implement and make avail of them.
Thus, Lofthus and his sympathizers were on the side of progress – rather than defending vestiges of archaic freedoms – a fact that is illustrated by the tendencies even among professional artisans, honorable merchants, school masters, ship captains and saw mill owners, to align themselves with this combined yeoman and tenant peasant movement – which also drew support among the cottagers. In this highly revolutionary context, in which the conscript peasant soldiers naturally refused to obey the crown’s orders, the reactionary Danish regime preferred to demonize Lofthus rather than give in to his widely acknowledged elaboration on Struensee’s reform efforts in the early 1770’s – a sure sign of an absolutist regime in its patently “senile” stages. In fact, the commission appointed to investigate the Lofthus rising was horrified by “the spirit of Anarchy” shown by the rebels – and in this connection the denotation only meant that they were more than ready to do without state authorities who took away their natural rights – which had been stated so clearly in the foregoing American and French Revolution – to utilize their resources to the best of their abilities and understanding.
Yeoman Fishermen at High Seas
In an analysis of the issue regarding the psychological implications of peasant and yeoman versatility in the pre-industrial world, the fishing farmers of Lofoten, where nearly the whole population (88 %) was involved in these combined occupations, stand out as a central point of focus. Within such a population pattern, combined with the extreme living conditions where grown male adults spent a considerable amount of their time at rough sea, egalitarianism and mutual aid were strongly favored – community assets which, moreover, were strongly reinforced in the face of the burgher privileges and the quest for the fishing famers direct trade with the fish mongers in the city of Bergen.6 The major social conflict in this area throughout centuries was between the owner of the local fishing central (vaereieren), where the fish traditionally was delivered by the teams of fishermen, and refined by the owners before transportation to Bergen – a trade structure which obviously left most of the earnings to the early capitalists privileged by the mercantilist state. In their response to this challenge, and the tendency to incur debts to the merchants in Bergen and the emerging bourgeoisie in the north, the subdued commoners turned in their proud and stubborn manner to their own form of cooperative shipping (!) Their urge to achieve fair fish prices as against the grain which they sorely needed from abroad, knowing by themselves the value of their product and being reluctant against indebtedness after risking their lives at sea on a day to day basis – the risks taken being higher when too low prices forced them out at sea in untimely weather – resulted in their partly take-over of the transportation to Bergen, through their own ship-building, refineries and transportation of the dried fish down the coast.
Underlying this virulent business, their degree of self-sufficiency – except from grain – was close to 100 %, except in areas where they had to import wooden materials, and their market relations as regards their main staple product – the dried cod – tended towards European regions outside Scandinavia, and had fed people on the European continent for centuries. The way of life among the Lofoten fishing farmers was largely representative for the coastal populations from Trondheim towards the arctic zone, and it would be no far-fetched claim that had some of their leading figures been more directly involved in the constitutional work of 1814, then the revolutionary fervor would have been far more palpable. From the bourgeois, state official and nobility point of view these northern independence lovers luckily couldn’t get all the way to Eidsvoll “because of the travelling distances” – though it took some 2-3 months from the revolutionary events started to the constitutional assembly gathered at Eidsvoll in Apri
l. It is tempting to conclude that they weren’t invited, dexterous sailors as they were – regularly doing about half the distance to Bergen and back again in a matter of days. No wonder that to this very day, there has been talk of “secession” in the northern counties – into an eventual confederacy with the other northernmost Nordic regions. Was there a sort of “compensation”, for being left out of the constitutional work, when the central authorities lifted the prohibition of fishing nets in 1816? At the same time tempting the fishing farmers into specialization as fishermen?
To illustrate the significance of the exclusion of the whole of the fishing farmer population along the northern coasts from the constitutional work, while yeomen elsewhere were deeply involved, the dynamic versatility of their individual lives involved various crafts such as boat building and refinery of fish products, which gave them a strong foothold in the markets, even as their degree of self-reliance was relatively high – especially as compared to modern standards. Accustomed to dealing with wealthy Bergen burghers and foreign merchants, it is highly probable that these fishing farmers would have raised their voices in the constitutional assembly far more loudly, and even with more international backing, than did the largely inland yeomen who represented their estate during the deliberations of April and May, 1814. Radical and just as the demands of the yeomen’s constitutional drafts were, they were denied some of the most important ones, such as free occupations and free trade – aspects of the farmers’ campaigning which would have been strongly defended by northern and north-western fishing farmers, as by yeomen elsewhere. It is a common notion of any statesman that “too independent” people – especially when organized in co-operatives – constitutes a potential threat towards the very raison d’etre of the state; and in their sudden effort at building a nation state, the state officials, the bourgeoisie and their chosen monarchical candidate had no desire to confront a proud and essentially confederally oriented population in the north.
The solid and persistent staple value of the dried (and salted) cod from the north – which could be stored for 4-5 years – had given them a prominent position in the markets ever since the heyday of the Hanseatic League in the late Middle Ages, and before long reached markets as far south as Portugal, via Flemish ships. Thus, it is fairly possible that the easterners’ reckoned people along the west coast as “too Francophile” in these days of Napoleon’s defeat, after an imperialist craze raging over Europe – causing hardship everywhere. In such an effort at a nationalist “kick-start” as took place in Norway in 1814, any connections among the commoners with foreigners easily became suspect among those who may claim central power – hence, no wonder that the coastal yeomen were excluded from the constitutional assembly. The fact, indeed, that the former French revolutionary soldier, Bernadotte (Charles XIV John), who had been chosen by a revolutionary Swedish Estates General to lead the Swedish nation, chose to deal with the Bergensian state officials, Wilhelm F. K. Christie and Peter Motzfeldt – who stood on good terms with the farmers in general – in the autumn period when the final constitution was elaborated and granted (November 4th), suggests that there were powerful forces which were dismayed with the proceedings in the spring. After all, the most supreme quality among the dried cod transported to Bergen was labeled “Dutchman”, with all its republican implications.
To what extent Bernadotte had been confederally inclined during the Great French Revolution, is indicated by his clash with Napoleon Bonaparte over the constitutional rights of the German states – long before Prussia grew into a dominating European power – rights which had been subject to intensive studies during the previous Enlightenment era; however, it is difficult to estimate the extent to which he retained his republican ideals in his new position as a Swedish state leader, other than recognize the fact that he paid close attention to the Norwegian constitutional work in a context when almost any other given monarch would have rode rough shod over it. Furthermore, he was obviously not a fool, and had hardly fought a revolution “out of whim” – and he was well positioned to understand the claims of insurgent farmers and the jealousies of ambitious elites; hence, the peculiar compromises included in the constitution itself, as well as similar ones occurring throughout his reign. It is also known that he nourished a high regard for Norwegian yeomen, and was deeply concerned with their grievances – far more so than any “god given” Danish king had been through centuries, or even all of them together. To the traditionally state supported Danish-Norwegian bourgeoisie, however, the yeomanry appeared far too revolutionary – as they had proved during the risings in Strileland, Nedenes, Telemark and Laerdal since the 1760’s, all of which had been influenced by international currents like the American War of Independence and the Great French Revolution.
At the other extreme of the versatility specter, in the mining districts with their burgher controlled markets, the overall rural population had become largely subdued by the consolidating bourgeoisie, and scarcely involved in the constitutional work at all – despite their relative vicinity to the events at Eidsvoll. With the accelerating loss of their traditional crafts because of the enforced specialization in various services to the mines and metal works, and the consequent decreasing self-reliance and increasing sense of alienation, they stood bereft of the indispensable social overview necessary for any task pertaining to constitution making – an outlook which had long since evaporated, for example, in most of the French rural districts. Indeed, the reactionary turn among the French peasants during the Great French Revolution (1789-93) must, to a certain extent, be ascribed to their lack of such an overview, as they had been bereft of the craft related occupational ties which – in former eras, such as the jaqueries in the late Middle Ages — fraternized them with the urban populations. It is hardly accidental, then, that the Norwegian yeomanry in revolutionary ferment, confronting the ex-revolutionary soldier, Bernadotte with their love of independence and possession of the required social overview, inspired him with some degree of fascination and awe – and maybe even nostalgia – especially those who played prominent roles in important regional and inter-regional markets. After all, trade complications and food shortages were highly fateful all the way through the revolutionary years in France – in the cities as well as in the countryside.
Between the extremities as regards versatility, self-reliance and the degree of independence among the yeomen, there were a multitude of mediating positions; the vast majority, however, tended to avoid specialization, and concentrate on subsistence farming and fishing, while seeking possible fruitful market outlets for their surplus staple goods and utilization of their craft skills – largely at odds with the law and its burgher privileges, which hardly could be morally justified anyway.
Thus, the most radical libertarian and democratic constitutional drafts written by yeomen in the spring of 1814 – the fishing farmers along the vast coastline being largely excluded – originated largely in fertile valley areas where agricultural surpluses provided opportunities for utilizing other natural resources in a creative and stimulating way, often related to forestry and mountain resources such as high quality trout and extra pastures for the life-stock. The market oriented outlet for their surplus production – evading the privilege system in ingenious ways dating back to eras when such royal whims were hardly thought of – poised them acutely against the burghers; a conflict which is clearly testified by the very content of the drafts themselves, the significance of which will be discussed in the concluding paragraphs.