Rural History (2020), 31, 121–134

doi:10.1017/S0956793320000035

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Unfree labour by free peasants: labour service in the

Swedish and Finnish countryside, from the late
seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries
Marjatta Rahikainen
University of Helsinki, Finland
Email: smrahikainen@gmail.com

Abstract
This article discusses the received image of free Swedish and Finnish peasants, charting parallels with peasants
in the Baltic region. It draws upon the post-Cold War discussion of free and unfree rural labour in early
modern Europe. The discussion maintains that the labour service by free Swedish and Finnish peasant
landholders and peasant tenants at its heaviest point may have been on a par with the corvée in the early
modern Baltic provinces. It is suggested that the Cold War mental map may have led to an overstatement
of the East-West distinction between peasants’ circumstances in the Baltic Sea region.

Introduction
In 1978, Jeromy Blum presented in his The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe a map of ‘the
servile lands’ of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. In the map, Sweden escaped the label
of ‘servile land’. Yet, Blum’s characterisations of the ‘servile lands’1 would nevertheless have largely
applied to eighteenth-century Sweden. Even though peasants in Sweden were personally free by
law, a large number owed labour service to the Crown, a landowner or an ironworks proprietor.
The portrayal of Sweden in Blum’s map is an example of the long since established image of Sweden
‘as an historical residence for an emancipated peasantry’ (M. Olsson, referring to E. Heckscher).2
Swedish historians have for some decades now debated this received image. The Swedish historian
Janken Myrdal places the Swedish case closer to a general European development. He argues that
in the High Middle Ages in Sweden, ‘something very like serfdom was customary for those who were
freedmen, or rather “half-free”’. Moreover, Sweden ‘took on a social structure that in its basic contours
would have been recognizable across much of Europe’.3 This article is intended as a contribution to the
discussion, only it includes Finland and charts parallels with peasants in the Baltic region.
The Swedish discussion is part of a larger debate that has taken place after the end of the Cold
War about the history of the manorial economy and unfree labour in Europe. In this discussion,
some historians now interpret serfdom and the relationship between peasants and lords in Europe
in relatively lenient terms, whereas others, among them Sheilagh Ogilvie, maintain a critical per-
spective.4 Alessandro Stanziani has compared the forms of bonded labour in Britain and France
with serfdom in Russia and Central Asia.5
In the context of this discussion, Marcus Cerman has called into question the ‘traditional
concept of an agrarian “dualism” dividing Europe along the river Elbe’ and its distinction between
Gutsherrschaft and Grundherrschaft, which gained ground in the ‘Cold-War environment’.6 The
two concepts were originally presented by the German historian Georg Friedrich Knapp, who
wrote after the unification of Germany. In terms of politics, therefore, for him the Elbe did not divide

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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 122 Marjatta Rahikainen

but unite: the lands east of the Elbe (rechts der Elbe) were ‘the new Germany’ of the late Middle
Ages.7 In the 1920s, Knapp’s definitions still served a historian of the German countryside,
but by the 1970s this was no longer the case.8 However, by then the image of the Elbe as dividing
Europe in the east versus west was efficiently established. Thus, Robert Brenner could write as follows:
‘Finally, in Europe east of the Elbe we have the familiar story of the lords entirely overwhelming the
peasantry, gradually reducing through legislation peasant personal freedom’. In her critical comments
to Brenner, the German historian Heide Wunder remarked that with his ‘east versus west Elbian
Germany’ Brenner had ‘fallen victim to the Prussian myth (Hohenzollerlegende)’.9
Swedish historians studying the history of the manorial economy took a stand on the
Grundherrschaft-Gutsherrschaft discussion. After laborious archival studies, they were able to
present information on the amount of labour service and its share of land rent in several larger
manors. In their analysis, early modern Sweden appears basically Western.10 In a more recent
contribution, Mats Olsson explicitly asks whether the changes in Scania/Skåne went towards
‘the eastern Gutsherrschaft or the western Grundherrschaft’.11
However, in the discussion below that focuses on labour service by free Swedish and Finnish
peasants, the Grundherrschaft-Gutsherrschaft framework does not appear appropriate. From the
perspective of the peasants who performed labour service, what mattered were how many
days and what kind of labour the service indicated, under what kind of conditions the work
was undertaken and whether they had to use their own horses, their most valuable personal
property. These were everyday concerns, overshadowed by graver ones in troubled times.
Labour service has a wide-ranging history in Europe east of the North Sea and the English
Channel.12 Labour service, or corvée, appeared profitable to manor owners. This was because,
as Michael North writes, ‘the Early Modern auditors considered only expenses in money and
kind’; in their view, ‘the labour cost nothing, whilst wage labour raised the costs of production’.13
Although compulsory labour service was generally connected with serfdom, it may have been
extracted by the landowner from free peasants as land rent. In addition to land rent in labour,
money and/or kind (grain, butter, forage, charcoal, etc.), there were usually other duties and
liabilities required of peasants. There are examples of aversion to labour rent, and heavy labour
service tended to provoke resistance by peasants.14 The amount of labour service varied from a
couple of days per year to six days and over per week; furthermore, it could be unregulated or by
order. In the recent discussion, the labour service of one to two days per week is thought to have
been a ‘relatively light’ burden and three to five days per week a heavy one. ‘The most unfortunate
German serfs’, as Sheilagh Ogilvie writes, ‘owed “undefined” (ungemessene) labour services.’15
Moreover, from the perspective of peasants, it seems to have made a difference whether their
landowner was a private nobleman or the holder of a high office.16 In the former case, land rent in
labour and duties was manifestly a sign of subservience, whereas in the latter case, labour rent had
an air of paying taxes. Peasants would have agreed with Adam Smith, who considered paying taxes
oneself as a sign of a freeman: ‘It denotes that he is subject to government.’17
This article has the character of a discussion paper. I start by briefly presenting the Swedish
expansion politics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that led to the annexation of ‘corvée
societies’ into the Swedish realm. In the next section I present the main lines of the institutional
changes in landownership and their consequences for the peasants’ obligations to the manor
owners. I then proceed to discuss labour service, first by free Swedish peasants and then by
free Finnish peasants. It took a long time for labour service to end in the Swedish and Finnish
countryside. In closing, I reflect on the impact of the legacy of the Cold War on the discussion
on the history of free and unfree labour in rural Europe.

The Swedish expansion in ‘corvée societies’

Agricultural labour dues, or corvée, emerged in the Baltic Sea region during the same centuries
that brought new conquerors and rulers of German origin. By about 1550, in the regions today
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 Rural History 123

known as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, most peasants had been made unfree serfs pressed into
corvée labour. In regions that today are included in Sweden’s southern provinces but were until
the mid-seventeenth century part of Denmark, peasants did corvée for manor owners.18
In Sweden the arrival of the first German conqueror in 1363 brought with it one of the heaviest
periods in the history of the peasantry, as Janken Myrdal describes it. Four kings of German origin
ruled there from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, and the power struggles ended
only with Gustav Vasa (ruled 1523–60).19 During his reign, Sweden started to invest in military
competence to prepare for aggressive expansion politics that would then continue for a century.20
Swedish expansion towards the south-east over the Baltic Sea commenced in 1561, when
the nobility of Estonia/Estland decided to submit to Sweden for protection against Russia.
During the reign of Gustav II Adolf (1611–32), Sweden conquered Ingria/Ingermanland
(1617) and Livonia/Livland (1621).
In Estonia and Livonia most peasants were unfree serfs, bound to their landowner’s property,
whereas in Ingria, a borderland province, it was difficult for landowners to bind peasants to the
soil in the same way. In addition, in three parishes in north-west Estonia, there were a few thou-
sand peasants of Swedish origin who were personally free, because they were subject to Swedish
law.21 They had their counterparts in Poland, where peasants of German origin subject to German
law had maintained their personal freedom and the right to move.22
Estonia, Livonia and Ingria had suffered heavily from plague epidemics, famine and frequent
wars, so at the outset of the Swedish rule many holdings lay derelict. Large domains were enfeoffed
or leased to aristocrats from Sweden, while deserter Finnish conscripts stationed in Sweden’s
Baltic garrisons settled illegally in derelict smallholdings in Ingria. Smallholdings lying in waste
eventually attracted numerous free Finnish peasants to settle in Estonia and Ingria.23
In Livonia in the mid-fifteenth century, corvée had been nine days per year, but by the mid-
sixteenth century it was as much as six days per week for a man with a yoke of two oxen. Corvée
was doubled from St George (23rd April) to St Michael (29th September); twelve corvée days per
week indicated that peasants had to hire farmhands to do corvée. In late medieval Estonia, corvée
had been less than ten days per year, but in the mid-sixteenth century it was also six days per week
for a man with a yoke of oxen. In the seventeenth century, this was standardised as the corvée of
one haken.24 Corvée was doubled during the agricultural high season in Harrien/Harjumaa,
Jerwen/Järvamaa and at some domains in Wierland/Virumaa and Wiek/Läänemaa. Free peasants
were exempt from corvée, but some landowners nonetheless required them to do labour service
two to six weeks per year during agricultural peak seasons. At times, Baltic-German landowners in
Fellin/Viljandimaa also made use of peasants’ gratis collective village labour (talgud).25
During Swedish rule, Courts of Appeal were established in Estonia and Livonia and peasants
were given the legal right of appeal, which they did use. Furthermore, peasants were given the right
to lodge complains against landowners, and they did so.26 On the other hand, the labour service of
Estonian and Livonian peasants grew heavier with the number of landowners increasing due to
enfeoffments to the Swedish aristocracy. In addition, the Swedish Crown required labour duties of
Livonian peasants for fortification work. The growth of corvée labour forced Estonian serf families
to increase the number of able-bodied household members by hiring farm servants.27
In Sweden’s Baltic provinces, the confiscation of tax-exempt lands by the Swedish Crown (on
the Reduction, see below) in the 1680s indicated a turning point. When asked, peasants in Ingria
expressed satisfaction that their manor owners had been replaced by the Crown and that they
would now pay tax/rent to the Crown. To their disappointment, however, the Crown leased
the confiscated lands, together with tax/rent collection, to new manor owners. This provoked pro-
longed peasant unrests and labour-service strikes in Ingria.28 By contrast, King Karl XI declared
peasants in the confiscated Crown lands in Estonia and Livonia to be free and the Crown’s
representatives were sent to announce in vernacular to the peasants that they were no longer their
manor owners’ serfs but subjects of the Swedish king. The emancipation29 also included a
regulation of labour service. However, improvements in peasants’ lives had barely started when
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 124 Marjatta Rahikainen

they were abated by the disastrous famine of the 1690s and a new war. In the Great Northern War
(1700–21), Russia conquered Estonia, Livonia and Ingria.30 Russian authorities at first vaguely
thought of keeping the administrative system built up by the Swedish, but before long the rule
of noble landowners over corvée serfs was re-established. In the local folklore the memory of
‘the good Swedish time’ outlived the serfdom of the Russian era.31
Swedish expansion towards the south brought warfare between Sweden and Denmark. Danish
nobility had in the sixteenth century gained wide-ranging rights over peasants, and Danish land-
owners ruled over large agricultural properties that were worked by dependent peasants undertaking
corvée (hoveri). The amount of hoveri was unregulated.32 In 1658, after a war, Denmark had to cede
to Sweden the Danish Skåneland east of the Danish Sound, but landowners in Skåneland managed
to maintain their extensive Danish privileges even after the incorporation into Sweden.33
Sweden’s successful expansion politics and the incorporation of ‘corvée societies’ into the
Swedish realm had consequences for peasants in the Swedish and Finnish countryside. The nobility
was bestowed with land, riches and greater political influence, while the status, rights and political
weight of peasant landholders34 weakened. They gradually regained their significance, as the war
economy gave way to a more peaceful policy after 1720.

The Crown, manor owners and peasants

To the advantage of noble landowners, a new interpretation of landownership was adopted in
sixteenth-century Sweden; eventually it was formalised by learned men knowledgeable about the
Justinian Roman Law.35 What the new interpretation indicated is a debated issue. According to
Lars Herlitz, it indicated that the owner of land rent was the owner of the land. The owner of land
rent was either the Crown or a member of noble, ecclesiastical or burgher order, whereas peasants
could not own land rent. What they in the best case owned was the right to pay tax (skatte) to the
Crown.36 In any case, peasant landholders were no longer considered landowners. However, skatte
peasants could not be evicted from their holdings if they had not accumulated tax/rent arrears. They
also maintained their hereditary rights (bördsrätt). In fiscal contexts and in practice, taxes and land
rent payments were mingled and became indistinguishable.37 In the course of time, paying taxes to
the Crown and maintaining hereditary rights proved decisive for peasants’ rights and status.
Only the nobility could own tax-exempt land (frälse). In attracting a labour force, owners of
tax-exempt noble land enjoyed the great advantage that the exemption of taxes was extended to
their frälse peasants, landbo peasant tenants and any other peasants within the radius of one gen-
erously measured Swedish mile38 from the säteri manor house, the sätersgård. Frälse peasants and
landbo peasants owed tax/rent and labour service of ‘a day’s work’ (dagsverke) to the landowner.
Moreover, noble landowners’ peasants and peasant tenants were largely exempt from conscrip-
tions. From the perspective of the peasants, it was a considerable advantage to be exempted from
the frequent conscriptions and dues and duties required of skatte peasants and Crown tenants.39
In the early and mid-seventeenth century, large land areas in Sweden, including its Finnish prov-
inces, were turned from Crown land into fiefs or other privileged tax-exempt noble land. Large num-
bers of skatte peasants and Crown tenants were thus turned into landbo peasants and frälse peasants
who owed tax/rent to their noble landowner. A smaller group known as skatte-frälse peasants
maintained their hereditary rights. In 1652, by the decision of the Swedish Riksdag (the Estates
Assembly, or the Diet) the dagsverke labour service required of skatte-frälse peasants per year
was limited to eighteen man-days and six days by man-with-horse; later the same was applied to
skatte peasants. By contrast, labour service required of landbo and frälse peasants, that is, peasants
who had lost their hereditary rights, remained unregulated by law.40
In the Reduction introduced in 1680 during the reign of Karl XI (ruled 1660/1672–97), landed
properties that had in the seventeenth century turned from Crown land into privileged tax-exempt
land were confiscated by the Crown. In the short run the consequences of the Reduction appeared
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 Rural History 125

disadvantageous to peasants who were turned from frälse peasants into skatte peasants and Crown
tenants. This was because the high bailiff, the collector of taxes to the Crown, made no concessions
as regards tax/rent arrears, unlike many aristocratic landowners, unless they changed those into
dagsverke labour.41
To what extent the Reduction weakened the wealth of the Swedish landowning aristocracy is a
debated issue. In any case, after the Great Northern War, facing an acute labour shortage, noble
landowners managed to increase their power over peasants.42 In the new Privileges of the Nobility
of 1723,43 landowners succeeded in copying the Danish privilege of 1547 that gave the landowner
the right to make his property ‘as useful for himself as he can’. They also gave landowners the right
to administer corporal punishment to their peasants and servants.44

Labour service by free Swedish peasants

In late medieval Sweden, labour rent may not have been common. Even so, medieval decrees
stated dagsverke labour service for the Church and the Crown, while fifteenth-century decrees
recognised eight to twelve dagsverke days per year by landbo peasants of privileged aristocratic
agricultural properties. During the reign of Gustav Vasa, agricultural dagsverke labour was introduced
on Crown lands.45
In the mid-sixteenth century, in the agricultural provinces of Småland, Västergötland,
Södermanland and Uppland, many peasants of aristocratic domains were subject to dagsverke
labour service, landbo peasants three to twelve days per year and torp peasant tenants three days
per year. However, some aristocratic landowners required landbo peasants to perform dagsverke
labour by order. Landbo peasants who lived close to a privileged säteri manor house may have
been required to perform daily dagsverke labour.46
Dagsverke labour had played a lesser role in sixteenth-century aristocratic agricultural
properties in Sweden. By contrast, in the seventeenth century dagsverke labour was an important
resource for noble landowners, as proved by the fact that aristocratic landowners may have
changed other forms of tax/rent into dagsverke labour. In the contemporary understanding,
unpaid dagsverke labour was gratis labour: because it could not be sold, it had no market price.47
The weight of dagsverke labour rent in relation to other forms of tax/rent required of peasants –
in money, in kind and goods, in transport duties and/or as a share of crops in manors practising
sharecropping (hälftenbruk) – varied from one region to another and from one landed property to
another. The principal form of rent may also have varied over time, from labour rent to money
rent and back.48 Moreover, dagsverke labour for manor owners was at its heaviest during the short
agricultural peak season, when peasants had to cultivate the fields that would provide for their
own households. Labour service was generally divided into summer and winter dagsverke days.
Winter dagsverke, worth less than summer dagsverke, usually involved forestry work and trans-
port duties. All heavy transport took place in the winter along networks of snow-covered winter
roads over frozen lakes and marshes.
Although hoveri (corvée) peasants in Scania/Skåne were turned into free subjects of the
Swedish king in the mid-seventeenth century, their hoveri continued until the mid-nineteenth
century. Large peasant unrests related to hoveri took place from 1690 to 1708. Eventually, the
average hoveri per year was increased from 83 days in 1750 to 118 in 1800 and to 314 in
1850. Moreover, Scanian landowners strove to tie their free peasants to the property by making
moving away subject to the landowner’s approval.49
Influential men who owned several tax-exempt agricultural properties had at their disposal a
substantial amount of dagsverke days, counted in the thousands. In the 1650s in Uppland prov-
ince, an agricultural region north of Lake Malar/Mälaren, a new standard for dagsverke labour was
introduced on the Bielke and De la Gardie properties. It consisted of approximately one hundred
days per year and mantal,50 which indicated, as a rule, two days per week for each frälse peasant.
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 126 Marjatta Rahikainen

In addition, there were heavy transport duties and unregulated dagsverke labour. A few years later,
peasants lodged complaints in the district court against their dagsverke burden. In the 1660s, the
amount of frälse peasants’ unregulated ‘additional’ dagsverke was at least forty-five man-days and
sixty-five days of man-with-horse. However, skatte-frälse peasants who had maintained their
hereditary rights evidently managed not to do more dagsverke labour than stated by the Riksdag
resolution of 1652.51
In 1684 in the Skaraborg province, dagsverke was eighty man-days and twenty days of man-
with-horse; in 1702 on another property, it was forty man-days and ten days of man-with-horse.
At the Höja manor in Uppland, dagsverke was thirty man-days and ten days of man-with-horse,
in addition to the threshing of twenty barrels of grain, long-distance transport of forty barrels
of grain, one trip to Stockholm using one’s own horse and several other duties. In the early
eighteenth century in Uppland, dagsverke labour largely formed the backbone of the manorial
economy; around the mid-eighteenth century, several landowners changed all other duties and
forms of tax/rent into dagsverke labour. On the huge privileged property of Count Stenbock,
dagsverke labour was by order. Peasants may have countered by sending adolescent boys
and not fully able-bodied men to do the labour service.52
In short, the labour service required of free Swedish peasants by noble landowners varied. But
given that unregulated and unreported dagsverke was not exceptional, the amount of labour
service on privileged agricultural properties may have been quite heavy, on a par with the
corvée required of serfs across the Baltic Sea.

Labour service by free Finnish peasants

Many Swedish aristocrats and Baltic German officers received for their services frälse or other
tax-exempt landed properties on the Finnish side of the kingdom, yet very few Swedish or
Baltic-German landowners ever visited their Finnish domains. Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna,
whose extensive fiefs included the large Kimito/Kemiö island in the south-western Finnish
archipelago where Swedish was the vernacular among peasants, visited the island once.
Peasants in Kimito were heavily burdened with unregulated dagsverke and substantial transport
duties. In 1620 they sent their representative to meet Oxenstierna in Stockholm to get their
dagsverke burden lightened.53 Bailiffs of absent Swedish landowners may have pressed the peas-
ants hard, but Baltic-German landowners and their bailiffs became notorious.54
Gertrud von Ungern, the widow of a Baltic-German officer Henrik Wrede,55 in 1605 received
enfeoffments in Elimä/Elimäki in the Finnish southern coastal province of Nyland, where Swedish
was the vernacular among the peasants. Conflicts over peasant holdings and statutory labour
service of dagsverke flared up in Elimä right from the beginning and continued until the late nine-
teenth century. Wrede’s peasants lodged appeals first with King Gustav II Adolf and then Queen
Christina, who imposed fines on Casper Wrede. Peasants continued to make complaints against
the manor owner and the dagsverke burden, and in the end one peasant, considered the worst
troublemaker, was executed. After learning about the Reduction in 1680, Fabian Wrede’s peasants
in Elimä immediately suspended performance of dagsverke labour for the manor. However, King
Karl XI decided that the lands enfeoffed to Henrik Wrede could not be taken away from his heirs.
Hence, dagsverke labour for the manor owner continued – as did the peasants’ protests.56
In 1606, Catharina Hess von Wichdorff from Estonia, whose Baltic-German husband Capitan
Hans Vegesack (Feisack) had been killed in the war, was enfeoffed with several peasant villages in
eastern Nyland. They were formed into the Malmgård säteri manor, which later became the prop-
erty of her second husband, Baron Ernst Creutz. Around 1630 he made a bargain with his peasants
on six dagsverke days per week in summer and three days in winter; in 1645 his son reduced the
summer dagsverke to five days per week. This meant that the landowner had at his disposal six to
eight thousand dagsverke days per year. Four peasants who had maintained their hereditary rights
refused to do dagsverke in 1673 and 1674. They appealed to Karl XI but lost the case; two peasants
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 Rural History 127

considered leaders suffered one month’s imprisonment with only bread and water, a severe
penalty. After the Reduction the four peasants were found to have been right.57
In the Sjundeå/Siuntio parish in western Nyland, by the early 1650s more than two thirds of all
peasant holdings owed tax/rent to privileged noble landowners. Dagsverke labour was the basis of
the manorial economy, and therefore manor owners never remitted dagsverke, although they may
have remitted other forms of tax/rent. In the Sjundby manor of Count Claes (Clas) Tott, the dag-
sverke per mantal was for frälse peasants two days per week during summer season (1st May to
29th September), in addition to an unknown amount of unregulated dagsverke and transport
duties. In 1654 the count sold the manor to Queen Christina (in legal terms, to the Crown).
She donated it to Count Gustaf Sparre, who never visited the estate and sold it in 1660 to
Baron Ernst Johan Creutz, the owner of Malmgård manor. As the new owner of Sjundby,
Creutz strove to purchase the hereditary rights of skatte-frälse peasants who had accumulated
tax/rent arrears. In addition, he introduced summer dagsverke of nine days per week, seven days
of which were by women, while other peasants within one Swedish mile58 of the manor house had
even heavier labour duties.59
In 1772, King Gustav III (ruled 1771–92) publicly declared that he had ‘promised to rule free
people (et fritt folk)’.60 Swedish peasants in Scania/Skåne and Halland used the king’s words in
their efforts to get their hoveri burden lightened.61 On the Finnish side of the kingdom, the state-
ment was interpreted by landbo and frälse peasants in Elimä and several other manors to mean
that they were now skatte peasants who would pay tax/rent to the Crown. Consequently, the peas-
ants in the manors concerned refused to perform labour service for the manor owners or settle
their taxes/rents with them. But the king sided with the manor owners and soldiers were sent to
discipline insubordinate peasants. Approximately one hundred peasants were confined for several
months and many were evicted from their holdings, while labour service continued.62 By contrast,
west of Elimä, a manor owner who was on conciliatory terms with his peasants could benefit from
their gratis collective talkon/talkoot labour.63
Baltic-German landowners were accustomed to unfree serfs, and in their enfeoffments on the
Finnish side of the Gulf of Finland they and their bailiffs tended to treat free Finnish peasants as if
they, too, were serfs. Possibly the Baltic-German Wredes of Elimä served to some extent as models
for Swedish and Finnish landowners with privileged manors in Finnish provinces. Free Finnish
peasants protested against being treated as serfs as much as against heavy labour service.

Labour service during the agricultural revolution and beyond

In the West European context, the agricultural revolution and the commercialisation of agricul-
ture consisted of growth in agricultural output and the productivity of land and labour, together
with a reshaping of the rural labour force.64 In Sweden, the agricultural provinces in the south and
around Stockholm and Lake Malar/Mälaren offered good incentives for agricultural growth.65 In
the sparsely populated area of Finland, located north of the 60th latitude, only dairy farming
offered incentives for manors with access to larger markets.
In the Swedish and Finnish countryside, the agricultural revolution did not signal a general
breakthrough of the cash economy. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, agricul-
tural wages may still have been paid partly in kind with work organised as dagsverke. For the
landowners – who since the late eighteenth century had included peasant farmers66 – the eco-
nomic rationale lay in minimising the use of cash in remunerating the labour force.
In the nineteenth century, the agricultural labour force included several categories. First, there
were torpare tenants67 and stat-torpare tenants with some land to cultivate, for which they per-
formed dagsverke labour rent. Manors also had landbo tenants who performed dagsverke labour
rent. Secondly, there were married statare farm labourers, who were subject to the Hired Labour
Act.68 Statare labourers were paid in foodstuffs and other necessities of life, a dwelling and some
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 128 Marjatta Rahikainen

money. Landowners expected the wives of torpare, statare and stat-torpare labourers to perform
poorly paid ‘extra’ dagsverke by order. The third group consisted of unmarried male and female
farm servants, hired by the year, but they were increasingly replaced by day labourers and other
short-term labour.69 In addition, many peasant farmers made use of labour by parish paupers,
young and old.70
With its extensive resources, the large Vittskövle manor in Scania/Skåne offers an example of
manor owners’ rights over land and labour in nineteenth-century Sweden. With cereal prices ris-
ing, the manor increased its arable land by evicting large numbers of peasants from their holdings.
The hoveri labour service of the remaining peasants grew so heavy that they had to hire farm-
hands. To further increase the domain’s production, more statare farm labourers were hired.
Towards the end of the century, however, with the agricultural crisis and rising labour costs,
the labour rent of torpare tenants again appeared profitable; in fact, dagsverke labour remained
an important resource for the manor economy until the Second World War.71
By contrast, in the Nynäs manor in the coastal eastern Södermanland province south of
Stockholm, old manorial practices disintegrated in a few decades. In 1895, dagsverke labour
by underlings still comprised half of the manor’s land rents, and in 1925 all land rents were paid
in cash. Nonetheless, wages continued to be paid partly in foodstuffs.72
In Finland, dagsverke labour by underlings was a part of the manorial institution.73 From the
1810s until autumn 1917, newspaper announcements about agricultural properties for sale
included precise information on how many landbo tenants and/or torpare tenants the property
had and how many dagsverke days they worked, with or without a horse.74 Dagsverke labour
could not be sold, but it was an economic asset to the landowner.
Nonetheless, at the Karsby manor of Tenala/Tenhola in western Nyland, in 1880–1 statare farm
labourers already performed a larger share of dagsverke labour than the torpare tenants, whose
number had been decimated.75 At the Sarvlax manor in eastern Nyland, the number of landbo and
torpare tenants decreased, while the labour service required of the remaining peasant tenants
increased. From the late 1870s onwards, landbo tenants with large holdings had 208 dagsverke
days, that is, four days per week. Torpare tenants had 146 dagsverke days, supplemented by heavy
‘extra dagsverke’ of highway maintenance. The manor owner complained that the working days
of his four statare farm labourers (spannmålskarlar) were worth more than the dagsverke days of
the torpare tenants, because these mostly sent their ‘feeble farmhands with still feebler horses’ to
perform the labour service.76 At the nearby Malmgård manor, the number of landbo and torpare
tenants fell, while in 1894 all other forms of land rent were changed into labour service. By 1900,
landbo tenants’ and most torpare tenants’ dagsverke had risen to 208 days, in addition to 30 ‘extra’
dagsverke days. The manor’s tenants seldom performed the labour service themselves but hired
farmhands to do it.77
In Sweden and Finland, as in most of Europe, the agricultural crisis provoked unrest. In April
1907 at the large Råbelöv manor in Scania/Skåne, day labourers started a strike for shorter work-
days and the right to organise. Statare labourers did not join the strike, but in solidarity torpare
tenants ceased to perform dagsverke labour. The torpare tenants who had joined the strike were
evicted. At the largest manors in south-western Finland, peasant tenants, farm servants and day
labourers joined in a strike in summer 1903 for shorter dagsverke days; in the peak summer season, a
workday of sixteen to eighteen hours was not unusual. Across Finland, conflicts over torpare tenants’
rights led to the evictions of more than two thousand torpare tenants between 1902 and 1909. Clauses
concerning tenancy contracts were reformed in Sweden in 1907 and in Finland in 1909.78 After the
Civil War of 1918, the tenant system on private lands was abolished by law in Finland.
The conditions of agricultural labour force were charted in Sweden in 1911. In addition to
dwellings and some cash, statare wages per household per year consisted of 900–2,200 litres of
milk, 600–1,200 kilos of grain (mostly rye), plenty of potatoes, garden peas and various necessities
of life.79 In fact, statare wages seem to have largely consisted of manors’ leftover grain and milk. In
Finland the conditions of the agricultural labour force were detailed in 1919–20. In addition to
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 Rural History 129

dwellings and some cash, statare wages consisted of about twenty different necessities of life,
chiefly foodstuffs.80
The statare system continued at Swedish and Finnish manors up to the Second World War.
Before the old order ended, its last signs were documented in the International Labour Review. In
1933 it published information on the wages of Swedish and Finnish agricultural workers, includ-
ing statare farm labourers, called ‘Deputatists’ (a German term). Farm wages were still largely paid
in kind. In the original Swedish report reviewed in the journal, the hours of work per day were
presented as the average working hours of one dagsverke.81

Discussion
During the Cold War, Europe was in real life and in people’s mental maps divided by the Iron
Curtain into ‘the West’ and ‘the East’. On the Baltic Sea, it was unsubstantial but nonetheless
unsurmountable, notwithstanding the fact that the Baltic Sea can be crossed with modest vessels
and limited navigational skills, and peasants had done so for centuries.82 The short Soviet period
of five decades pushed the Baltic region to the margins.83
It seems to me that this led to a mental distancing of Western scholars from societies east of the
Iron Curtain and in its wake a tendency to project onto earlier centuries the West-East division of
‘the short twentieth century’ (E. Hobsbawm). The Cold War mental map also seems to have
turned the Elbe River from a means of communication into an early modern ‘iron curtain’ that
separated ‘the West’ of free labour from ‘the East’ of unfree labour. Thus, it became relevant for
Swedish and Finnish historians to ask whether their own societies were part of ‘the West’ in the
past, despite peasants’ heavy labour service and the severe punishments the historians docu-
mented in their publications. Without their research it would not have been possible to write this
article.
The Canadian historian James Mavor, who lived for some time in the Russian countryside
around 1900, observed: ‘The old Russian conception of a free man was that of a man who
was responsible to the State for taxes.’84 Peasants in early modern and nineteenth-century
Sweden, Finland and the Baltic provinces would have fully agreed. On both sides of the Gulf
of Finland, peasants knew collective village labour during haymaking: talka/talgus/talgud/
talkon/talkoot. According to Janken Myrdal, in Sweden such collective village labour was known
as hoparbete. Moreover, the Baltic-German fiscal Haken had a counterpart across the sea in the
Swedish fiscal mantal. Each language had its own terms for rural practices and institutions that in
their basic contours would have been recognisable to peasants around the Baltic Sea.
When preparing this article, I read pre-1940 authors’ works about serfdom in the Baltic Sea
region. All these authors clearly had an agenda.85 In the present-day discussion about unfree
labour in the European past, the agenda may not be equally evident but it is certainly there.
Historians have long since lost the innocence of their Rankean predecessors. The present-day dis-
cussion may appear as a disinterested post-Cold War rewriting of European history, but ‘free’ and
‘unfree’ are contentious words, with a potential to imply value judgement about the relationship
between peasants and lords.
Acknowledgements. The first draft for this article was presented at the Economic History Meeting, University of Stockholm,
in November 2017. I am grateful to the discussant Johan Svanberg (University of Stockholm) and the session participants. The
second draft was presented at Baltic Connections, University of Helsinki, in March 2019. I am grateful to the session par-
ticipants and especially to Marten Seppel (University of Tartu) for his valuable comments.

Notes
1 Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton, 1978), pp. 3, 7, 356.
2 Mats Olsson, ‘Manorial economy and corvée labour in southern Sweden 1650–1850’, Economic History Review, LIX:3
(2006), 481–97 (p. 482).

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 130 Marjatta Rahikainen

3 Janken Myrdal, ‘Farming and Feudalism, 1000–1700’, in Janken Myrdal and Mats Morell, eds, The Agrarian History of
Sweden: 4000 BC to AD 2000 (Lund, 2011), pp. 72–117 (pp. 77, 90). See also Ruth Mazo Karras, Slavery and Society in
Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven, 1988). For a free-peasants argument, see Tryggve Siltberg, ‘The Conception of and
Egalitarian Gotlandic Peasant Society’, in Michael F. Scholz, Robert Bohn and Carina Johansson, eds, The Image of the
Baltic: A Festschrift for Nils Blomkvist (Visby, 2012), pp. 203–27.
4 Sheilagh Ogilvie, ‘Communities and the “second serfdom” in early modern Bohemia’, Past & Present, 187 (2005), 69–119;
Sheilagh Ogilvie, ‘Serfdom and the Institutional System in Early Modern Germany’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Schiavitù e
servaggio nell’economia europea secc. XI–XVII – Serfdom and slavery in the European economy, 11th–18th centuries, Tomo I
(Firenze, 2014), pp. 33–58.
5 Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage: Labour Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries (New York and
Oxford, 2016).
6 Markus Cerman, ‘Agrardualismus in Europa? Geschichtsschreibung über Gutsherrschaft und ländliche Gesellschaft in
Mittel- und Osteuropa’, in Ernst Brückmüller, Ernst Langthaler and Josef Redl, eds, Agrargeschichte schrieben: Traditionen
und Innovationen im internationalen Vergleich (Innsbruck, 2004), pp. 12–29; Markus Cerman, ‘Rural Economy and Society’,
in Peter H. Wilson, ed., A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Europe (Malden, 2008), pp. 47–65 (p. 57); Marcus Cerman,
‘Seigniorial Systems in East-Central Europe, 1300–1800: Regional Realities’, in Cavaciocchi, ed., Schiavitù e servaggio I,
187–213 (p. 187).
7 Georg Friedrich Knapp, Die Bauern-Befreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preussens. Erster
Theil: Ueberblick der Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 28, 30, 31.
8 See, for example, Werner Richter, Die Organisation einer Grund- und Gutsherrschaft in Saale-Unstruttal um die Mitte des
16. Jahrhunderts (Halberstadt, 1925), pp. 62–7, 81–4, 94–7; Wilhelm Guddat, Die Entstehung und Entwicklung der Privaten
Grundherrschaften in den Ämtern Brandenburg und Balga (Ostpreußen) (Marburg/Lahn, 1975), pp. 25–8.
9 Brenner’s article originated in 1974. Robert Brenner, ‘Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-
Industrial Europe’, in T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin, eds, The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic
Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 10–63 (pp. 35–6); Heide Wunder, ‘Peasant Organization
and Class Conflict in Eastern and Western Germany’, in Aston and Philpin, eds, The Brenner Debate, pp. 91–100 (p. 91).
See also Wilhelm Abel, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe: From the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, trans. Olive
Ordish (1966, London, 1980, German orig. 1978), pp. 180–2; Harmut Harnisch, ‘Peasants and Markets: The Background to
the Reforms in Feudal Prussia East of the Elbe, 1760–1807’, in Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee, eds, The German Peasantry:
Conflict and Community in Rural Society from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century (London, 1986), pp. 37–70.
10 Olle Ferm, De högadliga godsen i Sverige vid 1500-talets mitt – geografisk uppbyggnad, räntestruktur, godsdrift och hushållning
(Stockholm, 1990), p. 383; Lars Magnusson, Ty som ingenting angelägnare är än mina bönders conservation : : : – Godsekonomi i
östra Mellansverige vid mitten av 1700-talet (Uppsala, 1980), pp. 15–24, 43–5; Margareta Revera, Gods och gård 1650–1680:
Magnus De la Gardies godsbildning och godsdrift i Västergötaland, I (Uppsala, 1975), pp. 16–24, 60–2. See also Eino
Jutikkala, ‘Large Estates and Small Holdings, Lords and Peasants in Scandinavia: Finland’, in Péter Gunst and Tamás
Hoffmann, eds, Grand domaine et petites exploitations en Europe au moyen age et dans les temps modernes: Rapports nationaux
[Large Estates and Small Holdings in Europe in the Middle Ages and Modern Times: National Reports] (Budapest, 1982), pp. 249–55.
11 Mats Olsson, Storgodsdrift: Godsekonomi och arbetsorganisation i Skåne från dansk tid till mitten av 1800-talet
(Stockholm, 2002), 53.
12 Compare the variation of the local terms: in French corvée; in German-speaking regions Frondienst, Fronarbeit, Scharwerk,
Hofdienst and Robotdienst; in Czech robot; in Bohemian robota; in Danish hoveri; in Swedish dagsverke; in Finnish taksvärkki;
in Estonian teoorjus and mõisategu; in Russian barshchina (барщина); in Ukrainian panshchyna (панщина). But see Marc
Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (1954, Manchester, 1976, French orig. 1949), pp. 163–4.
13 Michael North, ‘Serfdom and Corvée Labour in the Baltic Area 16th–18th Centuries’, in Cavaciocchi, ed., Schiavitù e
servaggio I, pp. 139–54 (p. 148).
14 See, for example, Blum, The End of the Old Order, pp. 50–9, 71–4; Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth
to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1972), pp. 35–57, 391–400, 448–51; Rodney Bohac, ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance: Serf
Opposition to Gentry Exactions, 1800–1861’, in Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixer, eds, Peasant Economy, Culture,
and Politics in European Russia, 1800–1921 (Princeton, 1991), pp. 236–60; Reinhart Koselleck, Preußen zwischen Reform und
Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 200–1, 488–91;
Emil Niederhauser, The Emancipation of Serfs in Eastern Europe, trans. Paul Bődy (Highland Lakes, 2004), pp. 27–30, 56–62,
70–86, 101–06; Christoph Schmidt, Leibeigenschaft im Ostseeraum: Versucht einer Typologie (Köln, 1997), pp. 30–1, 57–8.
15 Paolo Malanima, ‘Serfdom in Eastern Europe after the Revisions’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Schiavitù e servaggio
nell’economia europea secc. XI–XVII [Serfdom and Slavery in the European Economy, 11th–18th Centuries] Tomo II
(Firenze, 2014), pp. 677–87 (p. 679); Ogilvie, ‘Serfdom and the Institutional System’, p. 37.
16 Guddat, Die Entstehung und Entwicklung der Privaten Grundherrschaften, pp. 281–93, 386–97. See also Wunder, ‘Peasant
Organization’, pp. 99–100.
17 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vols 1–2, R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner,
eds, with W. B. Tobb (1776, Indianapolis, 1981), p. 857.

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 Rural History 131

18 Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (London, 1994),
pp. 111–25, 140–61, 236–68, 296–313; Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic
Frontier, 1100–1525 (London and Basingstoke, 1980), pp. 200–18; Karl Kaser, ‘Serfdom in Eastern Europe’, in David I.
Kertzer and Mario Barbagli, eds, Family Life in Early Modern Times: Volume One (New Haven and London, 2001),
pp. 24–62; David Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Baltic World, 1492–1772 (London and
New York, 1990), pp. 15–73; Michael H. Gelting, ‘Legal Reform and the Development of Peasant Dependence in
Thirteenth-Century Denmark’, in Paul Freedman and Monique Bourin, eds, Forms of Servitude in Northern and
Central Europe: Decline, Resistance, and Expansion (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 343–67; North, ‘Serfdom and Corvée
Labour in the Baltic Area’; E. L. Petersen, ‘Large Estates and Small Holdings, Lords and Peasants in Scandinavia:
Denmark’, in Gunst and Hoffmann, eds, Grand domaine et petites exploitations, pp. 229–47.
19 Janken Myrdal, Jordbruket under feodalismen 1000–1700: Det svenska jordbrukets historia, band 2 (Stockholm, 1999),
p. 147; Myrdal, ‘Farming and feudalism’; Johan Söderberg and Janken Myrdal, The Agrarian Economy of Sixteenth-
Century Sweden (Stockholm, 2002), pp. 91–108, 201–05.
20 Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States,
1500–1660 (London, 2002), pp. 174–212; Jan Lindegren, ‘Men, Money, and Means’, in Philippe Contamine, ed., War and
Competition between States (Oxford, 2003), pp. 129–62.
21 Aleksander Loit, ‘De estlandssvenska böndernas rättsliga ställning under 1700- och 1800-talen’, in Max Engman, ed., Väst
möter öst: Norden och Ryssland genom historien (Stockholm, 1996), pp. 109–24; Arnold Soom, Der Herrenhof in Estland im 17.
Jahrhundert (Lund, 1954), pp. 199–202; Kari Tarkiainen and Ülle Tarkiainen, Provinsen bortom havet: Estlands svenska
historia (Helsingfors and Stockholm, 2013), pp. 216–23.
22 Schmidt, Leibeigenschaft im Ostseeraum, p. 39. See also Knapp, Die Bauern-Befreiung, pp. 36–7.
23 Erik Amburger, Ingermanland: Eine junge Provinz Rußlands im Wirkungsbereich der Residenz und Weltstadt
St. Petersburg-Leningrad (Köln, 1980), pp. 37–41, 192–93, 229–48; J. Jurginis, ‘Die litauische Dorfgemeinschaft im 16.
Jahrhundert’, in Die Bauerngesellschaft im Ostseeraum und im Norden um 1600 (Visby, 1966), pp. 163–70; J. Kahk and
E. Tarvel, ‘Large Estates and Small Holdings in Estonia from the 16th to the 19th Centuries’, in Gunst and Hoffmann,
eds, Grand domaine et petites exploitations, pp. 361–77; Aleksander Loit, ‘Invandring från Finland till Baltikum under
1600-talet’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 67:2 (1982), 193–214; Andrejs Plakans, The Latvians: A Short History
(Stanford, 1995), pp. 12–35; Kasper Kepsu, Den besvärliga provinsen: Reduktion, skattearrendering och bondeoroligheter i
det svenska Ingermanland under slutet av 1600-talet (Helsingfors, 2014), pp. 47–55, 71–90; Soom, Der Herrenhof
in Estland, pp. 199–221; Heinz von zur Mühlen, ‘Der Ostbaltikum unter Herrschaft und Einfluß der Nachbarmächte
(1561–1710/1795)’, in Gert von Pistohlkors, ed., Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas Baltische Länder (Berlin, 1994),
pp. 173–264; Ülle Tarkiainen, ‘De svenska jordrevisionerna i Estland och Livland före den stora reduktionen’, Historisk
Tidskrift för Finland, 99:3 (2014), 217–52.
24 The haken was a fiscal assessment unit for land and people for determining taxes, land rent, corvée, etc. (see note 51).
25 Schmidt, Leibeigenschaft im Ostseeraum, pp. 57–8; Soom, Der Herrenhof in Estland, pp. 2–5, 242–62; L. N. Terentjewa
and N. W. Schlygina, ‘Gemeinderelike in den Bauernsiedlung Lettlands und Estlands im XIX. Jahrhundert’, in Die
Bauerngesellschaft im Ostseeraum, pp. 146–62.
26 Pia Letto-Vanamo and Heikki Pihlajamäki, ‘Funktionen des Livländischen Hofgerichts (1630–1710): Bericht über ein
Forschungsprojekt’, in Jörn Eckert and Kjell Å. Modéer, eds, Geschichte und Perspektiven des Rechts im Ostseeraum
(Frankfurt am Main, 2002), pp. 129–46; Marten Seppel, ‘The Growth of the State and its Consequences on the Structure
of Serfdom in the Baltic Provinces, 1550–1750’, in Cavaciocchi, ed., Schiavitù e servaggio I, pp. 291–305.
27 Ragnar Liljedahl, Svensk förvaltning i Livland, 1617–1634 (Uppsala, 1933), pp. 353–5; Aleksander Loit, ‘Die Baltische
Länder im schwedischen Ostseereich’, in Aleksender Loit and Helmut Piirmäe, eds, Die schwedischen Ostseeprovinzen
Estland und Livland im 16.–18. Jahrhundert (Stockholm, 1993), pp. 63–85; Heldur Palli, ‘The Population of Estonia
in the Last Decades of the Swedish Period’, in Loit and Helmut Piirmäe, eds, Die schwedischen Ostseeprovinzen,
pp. 195–208; Soom, Der Herrenhof in Estland, pp. 199–202; Tarkiainen and Tarkiainen, Provinsen bortom havet, pp. 216–23.
28 About the same time, peasants in the neighbouring Kexholm/Käkisalmi, north-west of the Ladoga, rose up violently
against the leaseholders of tax/rent collection. Kasper Kepsu, ‘Fjärdepartsreduktionen och införandet av skattearrendering
i Ingermanland 1669–1684’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 94:4 (2009), 385–440; Kepsu, Den besvärliga provinsen,
pp. 133–63, 189–249.
29 This early emancipation was reported in An Account of Livonia: With a Relation of the Rise, Progress and Decay of the
Marian Teutonic Order (London, 1701), letter 15, cited in Aleksander Loit, ‘Feodalsamhällets uppluckring i de svenska
Östersjöprovinserna Estland och Livland i slutet av 1600-talet’, in Peter Ericsson, Fredrik Thisner, Patrik Winton
and Andreas Åkerlund, eds, Allt på ett bräde: Stat, ekonomi och bondeoffer: En vänbok till Jan Lindegren (Uppsala, 2013),
pp. 33–44, note 29.
30 Mati Laur and Katrin Kello, ‘Zum Rechtstatus der livländischen Bauern im Übergang von schwedischen zur russischen
Zeit’, in Mati Laur and Enn Küng, eds, Die baltische Länder und der Norden: Festschrift für Helmut Piirmäe zum 75. Geburtstag
(Tartu, 2005), pp. 400–13; Aleksander Loit, ‘Die Abwicklung des Lehnswesens in Estland und Livland am Ende schwedischen
Herrschaft’, in Laur and Küng, eds, Die baltische Länder und der Norden, pp. 374–99; Erwin Oberländer, ‘Das Konzept der

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 132 Marjatta Rahikainen

Frühen Neuzeit und die Geschichte Estlands, Livlands und Kurlands 1561–1795’, in Norbert Angermann, Karsten
Brüggemann and Inna Põltsam-Jüro, eds, Die baltischen Länder und Europe in der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln, Weimar, Wien,
2015), pp. 11–35.
31 Werner Buchholz, ‘“ : : : so würde es am besten seyn, daß ein jeder in Lieffland seine Bauren so tractire, dass selbige keine
Ursache haben, davon zu gehen und zu entlaufen.” Bauertum und schwedische Herrschaft in Pommern und in baltischen
Landen im Vergleich’, in Otfried Czaika and Heinrich Holze, eds, Migration und Kulturtransfer im Ostseeraum während der
Frühen Neuzeit, Acta Bibliothecæ Regiæ Stockholmiensis, 80 (Stockholm, 2000), pp. 201–27; Claes Peterson, Peter the Great’s
Administrative and Judicial Reforms: Swedish Antecedents and the Process of Reception, Rättshistoriskt bibliotek, 29
(Stockholm, 1979), pp. 294–300; Ülle Tarkiainen, ‘Estonian Manors during the 18th and 19th Centuries’, in Kerstin
Sundberg, ed., Work and Production on Manors in the Baltic Sea Region: 1700–1900, Skrifter om skogs- och lantbrukshistoria,
16 (Stockholm, 2002), pp. 38–59.
32 See, for example, Jeppe Büchert Netterstrøm, ‘Feud, Protection, and Serfdom in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Denmark (c. 1400–1600)’, in Freedman and Monique Bourin, eds, Forms of Servitude, pp. 369–84. See also Thorkild
Kjærgaard, Den danske Revolution 1500–1800: En økohistorisk tolkning (København, 1991), pp. 23–48, 135–43, 179–218.
33 Olsson, ‘Manorial economy and corvée labour’. On the wars, see Lindegren, ‘Men, Money, and Means’.
34 The English terms available for translating the Swedish and Finnish terms for different categories of country people are all
misleading in one way or another and must be taken as indicative only.
35 Stig Jägerskiöld, Studier rörande receptionen av främmande rätt i Sverige under den yngre landslagens tid (Lund, 1963),
pp. 29–48, 90–8, 135–7.
36 Lars Herlitz, Jordegendom och ränta: Omfördelning av jordbrukets merprodukt i Skaraborgs län under frihetstiden
(Göteborg, 1974), pp. 27–30, 144–6, 153–7.
37 Maria Ågren, Att hävda sin rätt: Synen på jordägandet i 1600-talets Sverige, speglad i institutet urminnes hävd (Stockholm,
1997), 42–51, 89–122; Kathryn Gary and Mats Olsson, ‘Business as usual: nobility and landed estates in Sweden’, Essays in
Economic and Business History, XXXV:1 (2017), 151–73; Staffan Granér, Samhävd och rågång: Om egendomsrelationer,
ägoskiften och marknadsintegration i en vämländsk skogsbygd 1630–1750 (Göteborg, 2002), pp. 15–19, 56–84; Eino
Jutikkala, ‘Tenancy, freehold and enclosure in Finland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century’, Scandinavian
Journal of History, 7:4 (1982), 339–44; Lotta Leijonhufvud, Grain Tithes and Manorial Yields in Early Modern Sweden:
Trends and Patterns of Production and Productivity, c. 1540–1680 (Uppsala, 2001), pp. 26–33; Myrdal, Jordbruket under feod-
alism, pp. 323–4; Myrdal, ‘Farming and feudalism’, 102–04, 121–3; Heikki Ylikangas, ‘Receptionen av romersk rätt i Sverige’,
Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 60:4 (1975), 239–52.
38 One old Swedish mil equalled 10.7 kilometres, or about six English miles.
39 Kurt Ågren, Adelns bönder och kronans: Skatter och besvär i Uppland 1650–1680 (Uppsala, 1964), pp. 112–56; Myrdal,
‘Farming and feudalism’, 115–17. For conscriptions, see Jan Lindegren, ‘Frauenland und Soldatenleben: Perspektiven auf
Schweden und den Dreißigjährigen Krieg’, in Regina von Krusenstjern and Hans Medick, eds, Zwischen Alltag und
Katastrophe: Der Dreissigjährige Krieg aus der Nähe (Göttingen, 1999), pp. 137–58.
40 Myrdal, Jordbruket under feodalism, pp. 334–8. On the Riksdag, see Michael Roberts, The Age of Liberty: Sweden 1719–1772
(Cambridge, 1986), pp. 3–9.
41 Myrdal, Jordbruket under feodalism, pp. 338–9.
42 Erik Bengtsson, Anna Missiaia, Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson, ‘Aristocratic wealth and inequality in a changing soci-
ety: Sweden, 1750–1900’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 44:1 (2019), 27–52; Myrdal, ‘Farming and feudalism’, 115–16.
See also Lage Rosengren, Jord och folk: Om produktiva resurser i västsvensk blandbygd under 1700-talet (Göteborg, 2001),
pp. 17–20, 28–60.
43 [Modée], Utdrag Utur alle ifrån den 7. Decemb. 1718 utkomne Publique Handlingar, Placater [etc.]. Första Delen til År
1730 (Stockholm, 1742), pp. 462–82.
44 Lindegren, ‘Men, Money, and Means’, pp. 131–44, 161–2; Olsson, ‘Manorial economy and corvée labour’; Olsson,
Storgodsdrift, pp. 82–4.
45 Folke Dovring, De stående skatterna på jord 1400–1600 (Lund, 1951), pp. 51–66, 80–7; Thomas Lindkvist, Landborna i
Norden under äldre medeltid, Studia Historica Upsaliensia, 110 (Uppsala, 1979), pp. 25, 39–59; Myrdal, ‘Farming and feu-
dalism’, 89–102; Myrdal, Jordbruket under feodalismen, pp. 144–54, 210–18; S. A. Nilsson, De stora krigens tid: Om Sverige som
militärstat och bondesamhälle (Uppsala, 1990), pp. 82–3. See also Svend Gissel, ‘Rents and Other Economic Indicators’, in
Svend Gissel et al., Desertion and Land Colonization in the Nordic Countries, c. 1300–1600 (Stockholm, 1981), pp. 143–71.
46 Ferm, De högadliga godsen i Sverige, pp. 45–8, 86–93, 153–8, 416–18.
47 K. Ågren, Adelns bönder och kronans, pp. 40–1, 166; Ferm, De högadliga godsen i Sverige, pp. 222–3, 383; Revera, Gods och
gård 1650–1680, pp. 52–60, 73–5.
48 Herlitz, Jordegendom och ränta, pp. 27–75; Myrdal, Jordbruket under feodalismen, 323–32.
49 Mats Olsson, ‘Att icke understå sig att lämna sina hemman : : : Om bondeklassens frihet och adelns dominans i Skåne’,
Historisk tidskrift, 121:1 (2001), 5–27; Mats Olsson, Skatta dig lycklig: Jordränta och jordbruk i Skåne 1660–1900 (Hedemora,
2005), pp. 30–6, 87–100, 105–08, 143–57; Olsson, ‘Manorial economy and corvée labour’.

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 Rural History 133

50 The mantal was a fiscal assessment unit for land and people used for determining taxes, land rent, labour service, etc.
(see note 24 above).
51 Ågren, Adelns bönder och kronans, pp. 156–78.
52 Herlitz, Jordegendom och ränta, pp. 35–56, 74–5; Magnusson, Ty som ingenting angelägnare är : : : , pp. 57–90; Myrdal,
Jordbruket under feodalismen, 326–8; Göran Ulväng, Herrgårdarnas historia: Arbete, liv och bebyggelse på uppländska
herrgårdar (Uppsala, 2008), pp. 37, 45–8, 57–8, 86–99.
53 John Gardberg, Kimito friherreskap: En studie över feodal läns- och godsförvaltning (Åbo, 1935), pp. 5, 40, 67–89.
54 Antti Kujala, The Crown, the Nobility and the Peasants, 1630–1713: Tax, Rent and Relations of Power (Helsinki, 2003),
pp. 54–114. See also Eino Jutikkala, Bonden, adelsmannen, kronan: Godspolitik och jordegendomsförhållanden i Norden,
1550–1750 (Copenhagen, 1979), pp. 51–9.
55 In 1605 in Kirchholm/Kirkholm/Salaspils in Livland, Henrik Wrede saved Karl IX’s life but lost his own by giving his horse
to the king. The lands were enfeoffed to his infant sons, and thus in practice to his widow.
56 Kimmo Katajala, ‘The Changing Face of Peasant Unrest in Early Modern Finland’, in Kimmo Katajala, ed., Northern
Revolts: Medieval and Early Modern Peasant Unrest in the Nordic Countries (Helsinki, 2004), pp. 149–87; Kimmo
Katajala, Suomalainen kapina: Talonpoikaislevottomuudet ja poliittinen kulttuuri Suomessa Ruotsin ajalla (n. 1150–1800)
(Helsinki, 2002), pp. 220–60, 318–22.
57 Kurt Antell, ‘Bönder under adeln: Förhållandena i Stor-Pernå före reduktionen’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 56:1
(1971), 1–32; Olle Sirén, Malmgård: Grevliga ätten Creutz’ stamgods (Helsingfors, 1985), pp. 11–19, 41–8. On penalties,
see Ditlev Tamm, Jens Christian V. Johansen, Hans Eyvind Næss and Kenneth Johansson, ‘The Law and the Judicial
System’, in Eva Österberg and Sølvi Bauge Sogner, eds, People Meet the Law: Control and Conflict-Handling in the
Courts: The Nordic Countries in the Post-Reformation and Pre-Industrial Period (Oslo, 2000), pp. 27–56.
58 See note 39 above.
59 Alf Brenner, Sjundeå sockens historia, Första delen (Sjundeå, 1953), pp. 280–96; Kujala, The Crown, the Nobility and the
Peasants, pp. 59–62.
60 [Modée], Utdrag Utur alla ifrån den 19 Augusti. 1772 utkomne Publique Handlingar, Placater [etc.]. Tionde Delen til 1776
års slut (Stockholm, 1801), pp. 2–5, 120–2. On Gustav III, see Roberts, The Age of Liberty, pp. 174–6, 189–212.
61 Olsson, Storgodsdrift, pp. 93–5.
62 Katajala, Suomalainen kapina, pp. 20–90; Kujala, The Crown, the Nobility and the Peasants, 105–08.
63 Olle Sirén, ‘Godsdriften och godssamhället ca 1690–1950’, in Henrik Degerman, Torsten Edgren and Olle Sirén, eds,
Stensböle i Borgå: En herrgård under 700 år (Helsingfors, 2004), pp. 163–251; on talkon, see pp. 236–8.
64 Mark Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500–1850 (Cambridge,
1996); K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (1985, Cambridge,
1992), pp. 67–103.
65 See, for example, Eric Bengtsson and Patric Svensson, ‘The wealth of the Swedish peasant farmer class (1750–1900): com-
position and distribution’, Rural History, 30:2 (2019), 129–49; Gadd, ‘The agricultural revolution in Sweden, 1700–1870’; Mats
Olsson and Patrick Svensson, ‘Measuring and Explaining Agricultural Growth’, in Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson, eds,
Growth and Stagnation in European Historical Agriculture (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 15–33; Mats Morell, ‘Swedish Agriculture in
the Cosmopolitan Eighteenth Century’, in Göran Rydén, ed., Sweden in the Eighteenth-Century World: Provincial
Cosmopolitans (Farnham, 2013), pp. 69–92.
66 In 1789, peasant landholders paying tax/rent to the Crown (for example, skatte peasants) gained equal proprietary rights as
enjoyed by owners of tax-exempt noble land (frälse).
67 The closest English equivalent for ‘torpare’ would be crofter (in Scotland), but the institutional framework differed.
68 The Hired Labour Acts, or Servant Acts, of 1664, 1686, 1723, 1739 and 1805 stated a labour obligation for underprivileged
men and women (see also German Gesindeordnung).
69 Gadd, Den agrara revolutionen, pp. 85–92; Gadd, ‘The agricultural revolution in Sweden, 1700–1870’, 138–43, 176–9; Mats
Morell, Jordbruket i industrisamhället 1870–1945: Det svenska jordbrukets historia, band 4 (Stockholm, 2001), pp. 61–73; Mats
Morell, ‘Agriculture in Industrial Society’, in Myrdal and Morell, eds, The Agrarian History of Sweden, pp. 165–213; Gustaf
Utterström, Jordbrukets arbetare: Levnadsvillkor och arbetsliv på landsbygden från frihetstiden till mitten av 1800-talet. Första
delen (Stockholm, 1957), pp. 778–876.
70 Marjatta Rahikainen, ‘Compulsory child labour: parish paupers as indentured servants in Finland, c. 1810–1920’, Rural
History, 12:2 (2002), 163–78.
71 Mats Olsson, ‘Storföretaget Vittskövle 1500–1950’, in Mats Olsson, Sten Skansjö and Kerstin Sundberg, eds, Gods och
bönder från högmedeltid till nutid: Kontinuitet genom omvandling på Vittskövle och andra skånska gods (Lund, 2006),
pp. 149–71.
72 Kirsti Niskanen, Godsägare, småbrukare och jordbrukets modernisering: Södermans län 1875–1935 (Stockholm, 1995),
pp. 88–107.
73 Even the (old) university in Åbo/Turku had torpare holdings allocated to it: in its finances, one dagsverke day was equal to
four silver crowns. Henrik Gabriel Porthans bref till Mathias Calonius 1. (Åren 1791–1796) (Helsingfors, 1886), pp. 42–3.

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 134 Marjatta Rahikainen

74 See, for example, Åbo Allmänna Tidning, 24th October 1815, 18th January 1817; Åbo Tidning, 8th March, 23rd August
1899; Finlands Allmänna Tidning, 24th April 1821, 20th February 1823, 17th November 1827, 9th September 1828, 20th
August 1913, 4th November 1914; Hufvudstadsbladet, 25th November 1910, 11th June 1914, 22nd August 1915, 2nd
April 1916, 7th October 1917.
75 Bo Lönnqvist, ‘Levnadsstandarden under 1800-talet’, in Bo Lönnqvist, ed., Finländskt herrgårdsliv: En etnologisk studie
över Karsby gård in Tenala ca 1800–1970 (Helsingfors, 1978), pp. 121–265.
76 Olle Sirén, ‘Godsekonomi och godssamhälle från 1600-tal till 1900-tal’, in Henrika Tandefelt, ed., Sarvlax: Herrgårdshistoria
under 600 år (Helsingfors, 2010), pp. 175–227; Olle Sirén, Sarvlaks: Gårdshushållningen och gårdssamhället från 1600-talet till
1900-talet (Helsingfors, 1980), pp. 176–209.
77 Sirén, Malmgård, pp. 82, 112–17.
78 Mats Hellspong, ‘Från Råbelöv till Södra Möre: Om retoriken kring lantarbetarstrejker’, in Mats Hellspong, Karin Lindvall,
Nicole Pergament and Angela Rundquist, eds, Herrgårdsromantik och statarelände (Stockholm, 2004), pp. 233–66; Matti
Peltonen, ‘The peasant economy and the world market: Finnish peasant farming in the age of agrarian crises, 1880s–1910s’,
Review Fernand Braudel Center, XVI:3 (1993), 357–81.
79 [Bertil Nyström], Lantarbetarnas arbets- och löneförhållanden inom olika bygder och å typiska lantegendomar (Stockholm,
1915), pp. 47–85, 130–74, 346–55.
80 ‘Statarsystemet i Finland’, Social Tidskrift, 15:8 (1921), 663–8; Anna-Maria Åström, ‘Statarsystemet i Jorois på 1900-talet’,
Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 65:3 (1980), 245–60.
81 ‘Deputatists’ paid largely in rye were also important on large landed estates in Poland. International Labour Review,
XXVII:1&6 (1933), 66–78, 789–804; [Bertil Nyström], Arbetarfrågan inom det svenska jordbruket: Statistisk undersökning.
Statens Offentliga Utredningar 1932:14 (Stockholm, 1932), pp. 15–31, 68.
82 For earlier crossings, see Kristel Zilmer, ‘He Drowned in Holmr’s Sea – His Cargo-Ship Drifted to the Sea-Bottom, Only
Three Came Out Alive’: Records and Representations of Baltic Traffic in the Viking Era and the Early Middle Ages in Early
Nordic Sources (Tartu, 2005).
83 Sven Lilja, ‘Macro Theories and Baltic History, c. 1500–1800’, in Kekke Stadin, ed., Society, Towns and Masculinity: Aspects
on Early Modern Society in the Baltic Area (Stockholm, 2001), pp. 14–61.
84 James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia, Volume One: The Rise and Fall of Bondage Right (London and Toronto,
1914), p. 92.
85 Hermann von Engelhardt, Beitrag zur Entstehung der Gutsherrschaft in Livland während der Ordenszeit (Leipzig-R., 1897),
pp. 60–85; J. Engelmann, Die Leibeigenschaft in Russland: Eine rechtshistorische Studie (Leipzig, 1884); A. v. Gernet, Die
Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft in Russland (Reval, 1896); Heinrich Gerdes, Geschichte des deutschen Bauernstandes
(Leipzig, 1910), pp. 93–104; Georg Hanssen, Die Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft und Umgestaltung der gutsherrlich-
bäuerlichen Verhältnisse überhaupt in den Herzogthümern Schleswig und Holstein (St Petersburg, 1861); Samuel
Sugenheim, Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft und Hörigkeit in Europa bis um die Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts
(St Petersburg, 1861); N. Tourgueneff [Turgenev], La Russie et les Russes, Tome II (Paris, 1847), pp. 78–113; Juris
Vīgrabs, Die Rosensche Deklaration vom Jahre 1739: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Leibeigenschaft in Livland und Estland
(Tartu, 1937).

Cite this article: Rahikainen M (2020). Unfree labour by free peasants: labour service in the Swedish and Finnish countryside,
from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Rural History 31, 121–134. https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0956793320000035

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