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The Versatile Farmers of the North

The Struggle of Norwegian Yeomen for Economic Reforms and Political Power, 1750-1814

Victor Condorct Vinje

Nisus Publications
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For my parents

The Versatile Farmers of the North; The Struggle of Norwegian Yeomen for Economic Reforms and Political Power, 1750-1814 Copyright: Nisus Publications, 2014. nisus2014@gmail.com ISBN 978882 91612 126

Preface
Remembering the 200th anniversary of the Great French Revolution back in the final stages of the 20th century, the present author is still somewhat astonished by the overwhelming ignorance of the French rural populations role before and during the revolutionary events from 1789 onwards. This year, another significant event during the Age of Democratic Revolution is going to be celebrated, namely the relatively democratic constitution adopted by the Norwegians in 1814 amidst political reaction in Europe and a converging Holy Alliance between the still autocratic regimes but approved by the new revolutionary king of Sweden, Bernadotte (Charles John), who had been a revolutionary soldier in France, general under Napoleon, and happened to be recruited to the Swedish throne after the recent revolutionary (coup detat) changes in the Swedish governmental structure. The Treaty of Kiel concluded in the early stages of 1814 had bequeathed the former Danish province in the north the various regions of Norway to the Swedish state, as a compensation for the loss of Finland and as a reward for the Swedes military assistance in the allied war campaigning against Napoleon Bonaparte; consequently, the constitutional issues confronting the various social groups in the North were quite open as they were at the outbreak of the Great French Revolution.
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Like conventional historical writing on the French Revolutionary events, the role of the rural Norwegian population during the turmoil in the North in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars has largely been neglected, to the extent that most people in Norway today are not even aware of the fact that the yeomen produced their own constitutional drafts, as presented in front of the constitutional assembly at Eidsvoll in the spring of 1814. Some may have been told about them, and got the impression that they represented some kind of primitivism because of their briefness. Others, even professional historians, have tended to depict them as conservative, as compared to those penned by state officials and other privileged estates. A closer and honest look, however, reveals quite the opposite picture. These simple facts, which this essay aim at elucidating and explain, certainly amount to what Friedrich Nietzsche labeled abuse of history and, accordingly, calls for efforts at rectification. Surely, such warping of a whole cultural legacy is not exceptional among selfserving academic institutions and their state backed powers and the reasons are not hard to disentangle. However, notable and fair accounts have been produced by historians throughout history, and the present essay is published in the hope to rank among those. Freeport, November 5th, 2013 Victor C. Vinje

Table of Contents

Preface, p. 5 Introduction, p. 8 The Scope and Complexity of Historical Analyses, p. 18 Versatility a Common Nordic Way of Life in the Pre-Industrial Era?, p. 22 Topography and Bioregions in the Nordic Countries, p. 26 The Influence of Climatic Conditions, p. 34 Population Trends in the Nordic Regions, 1750-1800, p. 36 The Significance of Dynastic Whims and Entanglements, p. 38 Socioeconomic Structures and the Scope for a Versatile Yeoman Way of Life, p. 41 Psychological Implications of Yeoman and Peasant Versatility, p. 52 Yeoman Fishermen at High Seas, p. 61
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The Versatility and Pride among Inland Yeomen, p. 69 The Yeomen, Staple Goods, and Inter-Regional Markets, p. 74 Early State Infringements on Yeoman Versatility and Regional Markets, p. 77 Yeoman Versatility versus State-Backed Burgher Privileges, p. 79 Two Conflicting Conceptions of Economy (the Laws of the Household versus precious metals), p. 81 Market Relations in the Long Run, p. 86 The Gathering of Yeomens Fighting Spirit, p. 91 Yeoman Pride, Constitutional Republican King, p. 92 Strife, and a

The Issue of Freedom of Thought and Expression, p. 96 The Scope for Revolutionary Ideas, p. 98 The Origin and Essence of Yeoman Constitutional Drafts, p. 99 Concluding Remarks: Structures?, p. 110 Notes, p. 112
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What

Kind

of

Market

Introduction
One would have to search high and low for literary treatment of the economic importance of the versatile productive activities of the Norwegian farmers from the time of the Vikings and the Early Middle Ages and until the middle of the 19th century, when vocational specialization manifested itself in the wake of The Industrial Revolution and the entrance of Capitalism into Norwegian village societies. Even less has been said among historians about the psychological and political consequences of the economically versatile attitude and conduct among the farmers. This fact is understandable enough since these aspects fall under the compartments of the history of mentality and ideas, which are somewhat harder to get at from a scientific point of view especially since the farmers to a very little extent utilized the written word as a way of communication in the actual time period. Most often museums provide the most important entrance into the subject matter. However, the supplications written to the Danish king and, most notably, the Constitutional drafts put forward by the Norwegian yeomen in 1814, are important exceptions to this rule as are also early topographical descriptions of the various regions, preferably written by historians such as Gerhard Schning, who wrote in the actual time period.

Representing a culmination of the developments in the North in this Age of Democratic Revolution, it seems like a very natural thing to do to take a look at the constitutional drafts presented by the yeomen (according to historian Jens. A. Seip, it was about 6 or 7, but it seems to have been more), in front of the constitutional assembly at Eidsvoll in April and May, 1814, in order to analyze the extent to which they expressed a particular farmers mentality with respect to political life. In this connection, it will be of some interest to make clear the degree to which they were influenced by their fellow estate members in the American and French revolution a few decades previously. Already at this state one can discover an important difference between, for example, French and Norwegian farmers in the actual time period, for while the French farmers engagement during the revolution largely restricted itself to economic demands on behalf of their own class even to the degree that they showed ignorance of, and even reactionary attitudes towards, the further progress of the revolution as soon as these demands were met the Norwegian farmers involved themselves to such a high degree in the wellbeing of society at large, and had achieved such a prominent position within it, that they even ventured into the constitution making process itself. This fact must be denoted as reasonably unique in modern European history, and it is natural to seek part of the explanation in the time honored yeoman legalism, with its roots way
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back into the Viking era. This legacy the yeomanry held on to all the way through the Danish-Norwegian union period from the late 14th century and until 1814, when Norway was subjected to the hegemony of Sweden under the former French revolutionary soldier, Bernadotte (Charles John), who, significantly, had clashed with Napoleon over the issue of popular constitutional rights. If only the fact that the Norwegian yeomanry felt so confident that they elaborated on their own constitutional drafts in the spring of 1814, tells quite a lot about their brave position, it furthermore testifies to a social estate which had its pride, dignity and self-respect intact, and which was not marked by the kind of servility which one might have supposed from an officially lower class or, rather, estate in the fringes of Europe. Moreover, it is a testimony to a veritable endurance that these attributes were not lost in the course of the 4-500 years during which the Norwegian peasantry and yeomanry (some were freeholders throughout the entire period) were confronted by the pressure from Danish and German fiefs, who sought to bring with them their own feudal social structures and mentalities to Norway. From their position, it must have seemed like a shocking experience to be confronted with the Norwegian farmers resistance and more or less organized opposition to the extent that communications allowed for in the early modern era. As we know, the German peasants had been unable to state
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their cause after their crushing defeat in the Peasants Wars of 1524-25, while the Norwegian farmers had offered the higher classes increasing challenges all along the way, until their self-consciousness, pride and freedom struggle culminated towards the end of the 18th century. In his classical work, Norsk Bondereisning1a, Halvdan Koht has thrown considerable light upon the social and political travails of the Norwegian farming classes all the way from the Middle Ages and towards the 19th century, and hence contributed greatly to pointing out the continuity in the farmers fight for self-expression and economic thrift. The above mentioned book is an important source for the present study, which will concentrate on the upsurge of farmers activism in the latter half of the 18th century even though the present author largely disagrees with the Marxist historical materialism of the Norwegian historian who wrote in the mid-war era. While many historians have pointed towards the largely loyal attitude among the farmers towards the king and his government, and emphasized that their opposition primarily was directed towards the feudal lords and the local government officials (later: amtmenn and stiftsamtmenn) and taxmen who were conceived of as going against the kings law (cf. their recurrent references to St. Olavs law), Koht has documented that it was during the Strile War in the 1760s that the farmers started to direct their opposition against the king himself and his court. It presents itself as
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a natural question as to what this shifted focus really implied, and what was the social and political background? Did, for example, Montesquieus ideas on the balance of power and criticism of absolutism reach the Norwegian commoners by this time? After all the, Strile farmers were situated at the coast, not far from Bergen; they had been dexterous sailors for hundreds of years and nourished regular trading contacts with all of Western Europe, including Enlightenment France. And what about Rousseaus grassroots democratic concepts of peoples sovereignty and the common will to what extent were those ideas filtering into the Norwegian farmers movement from the mid 1760s onwards? And, not least, to what extent did the events in the American colonies influence on the Norwegian farmers? (cf. Jeffersons background and the idea of a republic of independent farmers, which the freedom fighting colonists aimed at building across the Atlantic). Were the Strile farmers, in their fight against the extra taxes, influenced by the slogan in the American colonies which sounded No Taxation without Representation, such as it was voiced in exactly those years around the Stamp Act? To what extent did the ideas of the Enlightenment in general reach out to the Norwegian farming population in this period? The book by Kristoffer Jonson, Vaare bedsteforeldre1b, providing an invaluable first hand source to the actual time period, relating the authors experiences in higher circles in the capital of
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Copenhagen, as well as encounters with yeomen and foreign travelers in Norwegian regions, is well worth consulting in order to get a notion of the spirit of that age. It is a well-known fact that for example the Royal Sagas of Snorre found their way to the farmers bookshelves during the course of the 18th century, but to what extent did they make avail of the reasonably newly acquired literacy to familiarize themselves with, for example, political literature and express themselves literally and politically through supplications to the kings court and the possible spreading of an early form of leaflets, such as for example the French artisans did during the Great French Revolution? What about the simple question of their access to paper and printing facilities? How completely was the Danish censorship established de facto? Quite a lot has been written about the germinating nationalist sentiments in the decades previous to 1814, and a lot of attempts have been made to establish a continuum between such a growth and the struggle for independence in 1814 and the years ahead. The deliberations at Eidsvoll, and the content of the various constitutional programs presented in the spring of 1814, however, show that such nationalist sentiments largely were an elitist phenomenon and, hence, to a lesser degree developed among the farmers and artisans (two classes who converged and mixed in the countryside). The latter
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social groups clung to their communalist approach (such that it has been depicted by Steinar Imsen1c) throughout most of the 19th century; indeed, all the way into the constitutional struggles of the 1880s, which brought the farmers into national forms of organizations for the first time as a continuum from the so-called Farmers Friends Societies (Bondevennsbevegelsen) headed by Soren Jaabaek from the 1860s onwards. This development was pushed forward by the great revolution in communications which occurred during the decades around the middle of the 19th century, with the railroads, canals, steamships and telegraph and the concurring development of the so-called spirit of association at the time. In the period leading up to 1814, however, the cultural mentality and political conceptions of the farmers yeomen as well as tenant peasants were rooted in local and regional ties (with a modern, somewhat broader conception termed bioregionalism); and the distinction between farmers of the eastern parts and farmers of the western parts of the country were much more marked than in modern times, though they can be easily pointed out even today. This local and regional affiliation necessarily had to express itself in opposition to the court and its increasingly centralizing tendencies, and result in demands for local self-government and some form of confederalism such as this political orientation can be traced back to the Gulatinget (the confederacy in the
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western parts of the country from the early middle ages, probably as old as Merovingian times), as delineated by historian Torgrim Titlestad in his work, Norge blir et rike.2 The fact that the yeomen, in a spontaneous manner, engaged themselves so strongly in the constitutional work, largely on the request by the way of the farmers of Trondelag, who have tended to celebrate the Viking king, Olav den Hellige (St. Olav), may be a sign that there had been some maturing of nationalistically related ideas ahead of the dramatic episodes that year, with a front against the Danish kingdom which ignored the travails of the Norwegian people during the war years of 1807-14, and the repercussions of the Napoleonic craze in Europe possibly drawing some farmers here and there away from the largely French Enlightenment influences that they had gathered throughout the previous century. During this period, the farmers endured considerable hardships, and they had to turn to a new crop the potato to save the population from a still more damaging hunger than would otherwise have occurred because of ill harvests and naval blockade by the British. In this context, it may well be that the Norwegian farmers rose to a more acute recognition of their own importance, such as they did during the war years a century later (WWI), albeit at a time they were pushed hard on the defensive by an all too rapid industrialization process.
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In chapter one I will investigate whether the versatile orientation of the Norwegian farmers, and their specific outlook, was a specifically Norwegian phenomenon, or rather, to what degree it distinguished itself from the farmers in the other Nordic countries (especially Sweden and Finland). The focus here will be directed towards the vast Norwegian coastline, the relatively scarce availability of fertile soil, and the traditions dating back to the Viking era and even earlier. Obviously, topographical, climatic and ecological factors play a crucial role in such an analysis and would be far more useful than a mass of minute data bereft of a socialecological context. The few data we obtain in such a study, however, will be all the more relevant the more we get the big picture and the long lines hence the recurring tendency in this essay of drawing the historical lines back and forth, in order to avoid the rear mirror trap, so easily adopted towards historical phenomena, as it were, putting the cart before the horse. In chapter two I will consider possible psychological and political consequences of the versatile orientation among the farmers (yeomanry as well as tenant peasants and cotters) a field of study which is highly challenging and little understood, belonging to the subject of mental history and history of ideas. This part of the study will necessarily be marked by a great deal of working hypotheses and speculations, but also by verified anthropological facts.
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Chapter three will address the general traits of the farmers opposition from ca. 1750 to 1814, and their struggles against officials and burghers, the motivations and implications of the burgher privileges issued in the mid 17th century, and the extent to which they collided with the very sense of justice among the rural populations who were mostly rid of their overlords in the semifeudal sense of the word. The outcome in the form of a highly dynamic and energetic yeomanry, with all their socio-economical implications, is tentatively discussed with the hope to encourage further study. Chapter four deals with the more directly political implications of the general orientation of the yeomanry, and largely also the peasantry with special focus on the constitutional strife during the revolutionary circumstances following the Treaty of Kiel in January, 1814, when the victors of the Napoleonic wars intended to decide the fate of the Scandinavian question. In stark contrast to the conventional wisdom that the yeomen somehow were the conservative ones during the constitutional strife, the essay includes an analysis of some of the yeomens drafts, which speak for themselves as regards undermining the above mentioned prejudice and perfectly rational in light of the major socioeconomic issues at stake in which the yeomen were on the side of progress, as well as in light of the long, radical lines in their historical legacy.
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The Scope and Complexity of Historical Analysis

To the extent that Professor Gwyn A. Williams is correct in his statement that all history writing is a question of selection, it follows that the motivation and the bias of the author as regards his or her selected material often reaching into the domains of other sciences and the entailing interpretation of its content, are of the greatest importance as regards the scientific adequacy and truth value of the written material and tutelage produced. Thus, according to the principles of historical perspectivism in the nitzschean tradition, it may well be that analyzes of ancient, pre-modern or early modern historical structures, events and developments conducted in, say, the Enlightenment era or in the post-war era of the previous century, still contain valuable truths which appear with infinitely more difficulty within a postindustrial society far removed in time and spirit from, for example, Ancient Rome or Medieval Europe. Within the old discipline of the philosophy of history from Montesquieu and Herder, to G. W. F. Hegel and R. G. Collingwood the aim was always to seek an overview of causes to deduce the implications in, and elucidate the main consequences of, a seemingly overwhelming diverse source material in dialectical exchanges with the perspectives of other historians, in the effort to disentangle conflicting interests among the
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various social groups which has often taken on the character of puzzling socio-political labyrinths. In short, the material presents such a stunning complexity and influential long term currents which may not easily be explicable in the strict materialist sense of Marxist history writing, or even the broader historical materialist view derived from it. Hence, the dictum that all history is a history of class war -- with somehow progressive results will always remain oblivious to the most basic and uwavering phenomena we know of; topographical structures and the reproducing cycles of Mother nature, and also of considerable relevance for the present context a peoples or a regions cultural and spiritual legacy. For the present author, highly influenced by the dialectical approach albeit in an un-Marxist vein the following two penetrating questions are always applied on the actual historical phenomena under discussion: Firstly, what does the scale of balance between oikos and polis put bluntly in modern language, between production and administration look like; and which and how large segments of society control each of them? Secondly, what constitutes the historical background and matrix of ideas and values represented by the various social groups such as estates, trades or classes, even within their respective sub-divisions? The answers to these two fundamental questions, adequately elucidated, should go a long way in explaining the main traits within
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different stages and tendencies throughout history, including the causes of revolutionary outbursts. In the basically European Enlightenment context of the present essay, the clash between privileged burghers clinging to a mercantilist ideology and state monopolies on the one hand, and laissez faire oriented philosophers, reformers and farmers on the other, played a crucial role at the political and ideological, as well as the economical level leaving no room for an economically deterministic class war perspective. Furthermore, what the markets looked like in that pre-industrial era is of the uttermost importance, even for understanding the very initial meaning of laissez faire which, in that heyday of civic virtue, was laden with ethics most notably within the habitually denigrated black markets of that era. To draw a relevant historic parallel for our purposes, such as the English peasant rising of 1381, Professor Rodney Hilton in his treatment of those events urged that: some assessment of the historical consequences must be undertaken, not simply in terms of success or failure in the realization of explicitly stated goals, but also in terms of such changes in direction in the history of society which peasant movements may effect.3 According to this view, and in our context, even if the farmers movements apparently lost the more specific and accentuated fights against the state apparatus, they
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gathered momentum all along well into the 19th century, and at the height of their vitality even challenged the bourgeoisie in influence on both the economic and political level. Though their position and political merits, for example during the constitutional struggles of 1814, are largely wiped out of memory today illustrated by the lack of yeoman portraits alongside state officials and burghers on the walls of the constitutional building at Eidsvoll their constitutional drafts remain, as do singularly informative records of their proud culture based on the firsthand experiences by the pioneer Norwegian historian, Gerhard Schning.4 The fact that these yeomen, and to some extent even tenant peasants, were predominantly concerned with cultural and economical aspects of life, and consequently toned down the political ones like such vocational groups always tend to do, unless they are compensated in some way or other for the actual loss of the time and energy from their organically guided productive activities posed them in the positions of skeptics towards every motivation and conduct among the urban ruling elites, with their clock and paper work orientation. Like the Athenian yeomanry more than two thousand years before them, who introduced the very idea and practice of democracy to the world and whom the versatile farmers of the North resembled in so many respects the Norwegian yeomen of the actual era preferred the minimalistic approach to politics seriously allergic towards all
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tendencies towards political careerism, and keeping up their primary production amidst strongly focused political campaigning.

Versatility A common Nordic Way of Life in the Pre-Industrial Era?

In the richest agricultural areas of the North, which for the most part have been situated in coastal districts except for Denmark and Southern Sweden, where relatively large scale productive soils are distributed more evenly over the mainland the rural economies were already at a relatively early stage far more integrated in the monetary capital nexus which always makes for vocational specialization than the more peripheral and less accessible regions. However, even in some of the areas in which capital accumulation was prominent, such as locally rough shorelines a long way from safe harbors, the materially solid combination of agricultural production and fishery was a time honored way of life which at a certain level and in due course constituted an economic foundation for various degrees of yeomanry status among the rural populations, by the simple fact of adequate surplus production of staple goods among the versatile farmers. The rich stocks of cod and herring, the raw produce of which could be refined and stored in several ways (drying, smoking,
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salting and, eventually, canning), made for this combination dating thousands of years back in time the more so where agricultural production was a uncertain affair, the plots small and scattered, and the regional populations had access to timber for boat production. In fact, in times of ill harvest and famine, the mortality rates have been far lower in such districts than elsewhere, as they were in the vicinity of inland waters rich in fish resources and where the peasants were able to keep their rights to their utilization from encroachments by the nobility. Within this socio-economic pattern, the access to timber resources and their effectual utilization always played a singularly important role ever since Merovingian times. Norse boat building is widely known for its prolific character and ingeniously adapted vessels small and large and the building technique passed from father to son for hundreds of years, right up to modern times. The industriousness of the common people as regards boat building even caused so palpable worries among the early modern state authorities that their utilization of the timber resources was restricted by law after the introduction of the primitive saw mills in the early 16th century a technological innovation which was quickly grasped, especially in Norway where waterfalls for powering are omnipresent. Excluded by law from the regular access to the markets an access which was monopolized by the burghers through the urban
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privileges from the mid 17th century onwards in Denmark-Norway, and at that stage long since largely controlled by the noble fiefs through their land grabbing and taxation in kind the seaside farmers kept up a versatile subsistence production and involved themselves in those relevant black marketing opportunities which may have occurred. The densely forested regions of the Nordic countries, all the way to the coastlines the Danish mainland being stripped of most of its productive woods early on, when huge ships were built and the land turned into agricultural soil were rich in boat timber such as oak and fur, and gave scope for extensive sea oriented activities for every industrious man. In many areas, principles of usufruct still subsided over notions of property rights and do so to this very day. However, it was the yeomen who had the greatest opportunities in this respect, even if their resource utilization, too, at bottom was based on usufruct notions their favorable position obviously being that they could pursue their versatile occupations on a legal basis and undisturbed by overlords. Hence, it would seem fair to expect the most elaborate forms of productive versatility in areas where farmers had attained ownership to the land and especially forests. Throughout the centuries following the Viking era, during which subsistence economies were overwhelmingly prominent over most of the Nordic region, the yeoman percentage among the rural
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populations had been declining until the sudden change in population patterns in the wake of the Black Death made the conditions for noble ways of life largely untenable, only to be recovered when there were again enough manpower to work their lands. After its revival, however, the nobility could not keep their sole hegemony for long, as the cities started to grow and the burghers with their capital and royally privileged position, especially in Denmark-Norway came to prominence through their large scale shipping and extensive trade networks. Anyway, the two privileged classes together, whether through tax exemptions for the nobility or exclusive entrance to the legal markets for the burghers, remained a lasting challenge for industrious and venturing farmers in pursuit of progress and thrift. Before entering into the various preconditions for a fruitful versatile way of life among farmers in the various corners of the Nordic cultural sphere, the reader may keep in mind that in the main bulk of our period there existed major differences among the Nordic countries as regards the relatively strong position of the nobility in the Eastern parts (except for the Finnish hinterland or backwoods), the early hegemony of the bourgeoisie in the south (Denmark, southern parts of Norway, and the Stockholm area), and the relatively high percentage of yeomen in the northern regions even graduating into pure usufruct principles farthest north. These variations necessarily influenced decisively on the economic
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opportunities and freedoms of the common people in the respective regions in an era when at least 90 % of the overall population lived in the countryside and consequently on their political strength and confidence at the dawn of the Age of Democratic Revolution in Europe and the North American colonies in the latter part of the 18th century.

Topography and bioregions in the Nordic countries

As the reader will already have noticed, the extent and geographical position of the coastlines play a significant role in the context of this study like they still do, in an immensely altered sense, in our daily lives in the present era. Surely, seaways travelling, communication and transportation were the predominant and preferred forms of commotion before the age of aircrafts a quite crucial aspect of history, however, the implications of which tend to be neglected in cultural contexts within which airplanes lift off from major airports with hardly a minutes pause, and the vegetables you ma y use for dinner are flown in from other climate zones in less time than it takes to prepare a decent dinner. In the formative stages of the worlds vast diversity of cultural patterns however much their unique character
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traits subsequently have been effaced through centralization and a cancer like form of market economy bereft of ethical standards that is, in the age of mast and sail, access to the coastline and facilities for various forms and degrees of shipping largely determined the very outlook of the respective socio-cultural groups, the degree of social stratification, and so on, including the relations between these cultures as a whole and their respective estates and vocational groups. For our purposes, considering the conditions in the actual era, the northernmost coastline in the Arctic zone, way north of the polar circle, the resources were divided according to the royally designed maps between the kingdoms of Denmark-Norway and Great Sweden, which included Finland throughout the period. In real life, though, these northernmost parts of Europe were still largely ruled by the principle of usufruct since time immemorial the resources being available to those who had the sturdy and enduring spirit to make a living under the inhospitable conditions up there. Eastwards into Russia, the situation was largely the same although the even more extreme conditions in those vast areas across Northern Asia made human settlements accordingly sparse and less populous. Down the Norwegian coast as far as Lofoten, the basic orientation towards natural resources and their utilization was similar to the one indicated above, to be replaced by
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increasingly firm property relationships when moving south towards the old cities of Trondheim, Bergen and Stavanger no doubt associated with the combination of rich fisheries, fertile pastures and harbor opportunities for larger ships. The fish trade up and down the coast, with dried cod from Lofoten to Bergen, where it was purchased in bulk by wealthy burghers, who reaped the profits of the northern staple wares when they traded them on to foreign ship captains mostly German, Dutch, French and Scottish. Moreover, the grain with which the northerners exchanged their fish products tended for the most part to hold an unreasonably high price in relation to the fish partly due to lack of adequate knowledge of its nutritional value, and partly due to the merchants manipulation of, and control over, the markets in lieu of the burgher privileges. Consequently, the farmer fishermen along the northwestern coastline devoted a considerable portion of their ingenuity and energy to efforts aiming at equalizing the unfavorable premises imposed from above, as regards the traffic in staple products from both southern and northern regions. In the regions where the coastline turns east- and northeastwards, timber resources were increasingly rich and accessible not least thanks to floating systems far into the hinterland, and fisheries were conducted in a less intensive scale with the exception of periodic influxes of herring up along the coasts. Taken together, the
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potential reinforcement of peasants and yeomen with rich timber resources, in addition to the fish and the variegated husbandry products not to mention their involvement in a multitude of crafts in wood, textiles and metals came to put the southernmost farmers in a very prominent position in the struggle for economic liberty and political freedom in their heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, along both sides of the Oslo fiord, the coastline becomes far smoother and shipping far less risky, even as agricultural lands widen out in a more continental like manner. From ages long past, these regions have been marked by a stronger degree of centralized power than in the rest of the country; hence, the nobility traditionally usurped the most profitable natural resources for hundreds of years. In these regions, the yeomanry was pushed into the hinterland areas, isolated from the coastline and cut off from direct contact with major trade routes, and even largely wiped out from the regions down the western Swedish coast some of which belonged to the Norwegian kingdom in the high Middle Ages. The shores of Denmark present the same picture, the traditional yeomanry here being almost wiped out at an even earlier stage than in the similar regions of Sweden and Norway. The agriculturally rich Danish mainland, topographically exchangeable with areas in, say, Prussia, France, The Low Countries or Britain, presented an unNordic social landscape, compared to the major regions
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when it comes to acreage and regional specifics: Rich and extensive soils expropriated by the nobility, with the farming population either more or less in serfdom or driven into the cities, while the fisheries were largely controlled by the burghers, and the once rich forests long since gone. The stronghold of the nobility decreased when moving northwards along the Swedish regions on both sides of the Gulf of Bothnia in the northern arm of the Baltic Sea; the densely forested and sparsely populated semiarctic, boreal landscapes left some scope for industrious farmers to utilize the rich staple resources. However, the outlet of their products to wider southern regional and inter-regional markets was largely blocked by the burghers and nobility, who controlled the seas from the south, and the burghers who established themselves in the emerging towns around the estuaries of timber floatable rivers notably Umea, Lulea, Tornea and Uleaborg. Moreover, the distances were too vast for the farmer fishermens small vessels, which were not even remotely comparable to the highly efficient ships (jekter) of the fishing farmers along the northwestern shores along the Atlantic. Another brute fact, which effectively diminished the very opportunity to move about with their staples in the northernmost parts of the Gulf of Bothnia was that sea ice closed down the trade routes to the south during the winter months, at a time when farmers in the
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north had the best opportunities to tend to commercial activities other than soil cultivation and husbandry. In the southernmost coastal regions of Finland, the tendencies toward feudalization in the late Middle Ages, and especially the Early Modern Era, approximated the southern Swedish conditions in some respects even exacerbated by the influence of Russian and Prussian pressures. The tremendous timber resources, and several highly transportable waterways, encouraged the claims of the nobility and, somewhat later, the burghers who, as elsewhere, received their respective privileges from the crown, to the great detriment of effective and fruitful yeoman versatility in the vicinity of the major shipping centers and emerging towns. Like in certain parts of the Swedish mainland and in southern Norway, the yeomanry was pushed back into the hinterland. As regards the main inland areas of the Nordic cultural sphere, they are equally diverse in resources and socioeconomic implications. The Finnish back country, with its vast forests and numerous lakes, made for slow communications, faint attraction for the idle ways of a nobleman, and suitable for frugal rural people, who were content with their subsistence economies as long as they kept their freedom from the encroaching nobles in who occupied the main coastal regions. On a par with the Northern sea shores of the Gulf of Bothnia, the thousand
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lakes of Finland gave scope for extensive fisheries -albeit with the similarly circumscribed access to regional and inter-regional markets. Thus, the rural people in these regions tended to be independent and self-reliant, but without sufficient momentum and force to play any crucial role throughout the actual time period regarding political developments in their respective parts of the Nordic cultural sphere. The Northern Swedish back country was marked by much the same conditions as in the Finnish back country, the main difference being the age old trade routes into the border regions with the middle regions of Norway, and also some less prominent trade routes further north, providing for some links even to more distant markets along the western coasts. Further south, the country was divided by rich iron ores and extensive mining operations in the rocky region to the northwest of Stockholm, the socalled Bergslagen (rock hitting), uniting the interests of noblemen and burghers the farmers in the area being largely subdued under the interests of these early industries and known to have revolted repeatedly in early modern times. The southernmost regions, for their part, rich in extensive agricultural soils and with relatively easy access to the commercial centers and main trade routes, were largely controlled by the nobility well into the modern era, leaving a heavily restricted scope for flourishing yeoman versatility.
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The Danish mainland, even richer in soil productivity, saw the nobility dominating to the extent that peasants were tied to the lands of the lords of the manors throughout the entire early modern period, only to be abolished in the wake of the Great French Revolution a situation which in all probability contributed to an increasing urbanization by drawing the Danish semi-serfs into the free city air by escape. In fact, Copenhagen swelled to a prominent European city by the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, encouraged by commercial contacts along the Atlantic coasts, and spurred on by the mercantilist monopolies and burgher privileges following the introduction of absolutism in 1660. As regards the Norwegian hinterland areas, they are highly diverse but largely characterized by Alpine conditions, hardly presenting a single nobleman throughout history except for some military expeditions across the mountains, and in such cases highly dependent upon the wisdom and strength of trained mountain farmers. Most of these areas have been in the hands of frugal, self-reliant and industrious yeomen since time immemorial often combining husbandry with hunting and fishing and developing ingeniously versatile ways of life, often with reasonably well functioning direct relations to regional and inter-regional markets, irrespective of the central economic policy in Copenhagen. The exceptions were in the mining districts, where the same processes occurred as in the trend
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setting Swedish iron works, with their imported German noble bergmenn (ironmasters) and their entrepreneurially oriented burghers, who established their businesses during the 16th century. Seldom mentioned in these perspectives on Nordic history, Iceland which belonged to the kingdom of Denmark-Norway had topographic conditions very similar to the fishing farmers of northwestern Norway, albeit with much more difficult socio-economic conditions for yeoman trade, and a decisive lack of wood for boat and ship building at that. The landowners or quasi-nobility controlled most of the natural resources, agricultural production and transportation of goods to the markets, and the exchange with the outer world. Hence, the overall scope for yeoman versatility was as narrowly limited as on the Danish mainland, including the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which constituted the southernmost parts of the kingdom and provided a gateway for the influx of feudal social structures and sentiments to the north.

The Influence of Climatic Conditions To the common farmer who is largely occupied with cultivating his lands, climatic conditions obviously have crucial impact on the well being of his family, himself and the wider community. A single nights frost may
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well mean famine and eventually death; hence, the importance in the actual time period of the introduction of the potato which survives comfortably in the soil amidst air temperatures of 4-5oC below zero, while unripe grain is spoilt by such sudden temperature falls, which often occurred in Nordic agricultural regions in early autumn, in a period when the climate still was somewhat predictable. At least equally important for our purposes, however, wind conditions proved to be highly decisive for the elaboration of a dynamic versatile way of life among peasants and yeomen; the strength and direction of the average wind patterns largely determined the very distances the commoners could travel, provided they had recourse to wooden material for boat building. In fact, it makes some sense to speak of regional trade winds in certain areas, which were to be maximally utilized, most notably by the dexterous sailors along the western coasts, while fishing farmers in calm waters were bereft of the carrying capacity of the wind at least as regards providing adequate speed to make the venture worthwhile. Thus, while the superficial conditions for fishing farmers, as seen from a map, seem relatively equal for the rural people of northwestern Norway and the regions of Osterbotten and Vaesterbotten along the Gulf of Bothnia, there is one major difference apart from the tendency of infringement by the nobility on the living conditions of the overall population in the latter: Along
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the Norwegian coastline, most notably in the stretches of the trade route between districts like Lofoten and Bergen, the wind most often hit the coast from the west, often of fairly considerable strength, making for rapid excursions to major markets in the south. The same stable wind conditions also provide the required ventilation for drying the cod before transportation to the markets. The commoners of the Gulf of Bothnia, however, although fairly well situated with natural resources such as timber and fish if they could keep them from the hands of the nobility had to deal, in their sailing and commercial ventures, with wind patterns of a far more unpredictable character, tending towards far weaker wind strengths and when strong most often heading right in their face from the south. Indeed, the very orientation of westnorthwestern boatbuilding, with their long keels, high stern and stem, and long keels, is an adaptation to the wind conditions along these coasts, unparalleled by any traditional boats from the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia.5a

Population Trends in the Nordic Regions, 1750-1800 Apart from Denmark and certain southern parts of Sweden, the Nordic cultural sphere was still relatively sparsely populated towards the end of the 18th century. It was, moreover, only in Denmark and southern Sweden that urbanization played any considerable role, and
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furthermore, most of the urban activities were concentrated in the respective capitals of Copenhagen and Stockholm. Certainly, the denser the population, the stronger the overall human pressure on natural resources, and the less opportunities for the same peasant or yeoman individuals to utilize a multitude among them in a balanced and creative way in order to advance to commercial activities and even elementary manufacture with all the self-esteem and recognition they bring. If only from this simple fact, we must look outside the most densely populated areas in the actual period in the search for the essential traits of a versatile yeoman character in the Nordic regions in other words, at some distance from the major urban areas, where specialization tended to get the upper hand because of the pressure from capital interests and crown policies. As an illustration of the population picture, the whole of Norway counted some 900 000 souls at the beginning of the 19th century some 10 % of them living in cities and only Finland, and obviously Iceland, being more sparsely populated, and having a lower degree of urbanization among the Nordic countries. Industrialization was delayed in most of the Nordic regions, with the exceptions of the iron works in the vicinity of Stockholm and certain industry manufactures in Copenhagen. Under some circumstances, and at a predominantly local level, the influx of rural people to such urban centers may provide more scope for a fruitful,
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versatile economy for those who remain in the countryside but the overall impact of their culture and ideals on society at large would not have increased considerably before generations had passed, by which time other obstacles may have come in the way. The changes in attitude and outlook we are dealing with here are operating extremely slowly, and the versatility patterns requires some degree of dynamic stability for well rounded yeomen (and occasionally also tenant peasants) to mature and respond effectively to abrupt changes at the political level which call for response from effectively organized and self-confident social groups. And in the Age of Democratic Revolution, which corresponds fairly precisely with the time period discussed here, events of both international and regional importance occurred suddenly, and took unexpected turns all along indicating that only the best adaptable ones, well trained in spontaneous organization, would benefit to a substantive degree from this climax period of the Enlightenment.

The Significance Entanglements

of

Dynastic

Whims

and

The palpable imperialistic ambitions of the Swedish crown in the 17th century, in a period of massive warfare and social unrest throughout Europe, the economic
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pressures on the rural populations especially those who lived within the proximity of the war events and army supplies reached an unprecedented degree in modern European history. However, while the Swedish farmers found less occasion to rise in such numerous revolts as in equally imperialistic France in the age of the Thirty Years War (1618-48), the reasons for their largely submissive stance may well be attributed to the feebler hold of feudalism in the North, making the extra war taxes less intolerable than among the French, and to the fact that they had a say in the Estates General getting used to their inferior position. Nevertheless, the long war periods meant far heavier taxation than in the previous centuries, with but limited access to a variety of natural resources, and virtually no possibilities of accumulating capital taxation by then being largely exacted in money; most rural people in the predominant regions of Sweden from Stockholm and southwards were largely forced into a role of raw material providers, specializing in certain staple produce to maximize their money income to meet the tax demands, or simply fled to the towns to seek new opportunities there, or simply tried to escape recruitment to the army. There can be no doubt that this kind of overwhelming militarism proved highly unfortunate regarding the prospects for yeoman versatility as it did during the Punic Wars in the ancient Roman Republic. In fact, history is laden with examples of the deep impacts
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of protracted warfare on what had previously seemed to be almost unshakeable cultural patterns just think of the effects of World War I on socio-economical conditions in Europe, and even in far corners of the world. Thus, militarized industrial expansion always fosters more or less rapid centralization, specialization and urbanization seemingly neutral social phenomena, and often treated as such, although they result in the withering away of time honored and well functioning cultural patterns, including a versatile individual approach to sustainable resource utilization, and extensive ties of mutual aid at the grass roots level of society. Most problematic, however, these patterns developed and elaborated through centuries are wantonly torn away by socioeconomic forces, according to whom they seem largely like obstacles to their alternative vision of development while their reconstruction, when times of crisis and need once again render the well proven patterns a desideratum, has always proved to be the most formidable task in human existence. Thus even if the Danish crown was hardly less obsessed with militarism in the 17th century than the Swedish, the virtual lack of nobility, insignificant degree of urbanization, a deep seated tradition of war resisting farmers, and topographical peculiarities, may have been sufficient causes for the extensive survival and subsequent prominence of peasant and yeoman versatility in the northern province.
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Socio-economic Structures and the Scope for a Versatile Yeoman Way of Life The far stronger position of the nobility in Denmark and Sweden than in Finland and Norway, decisively circumscribed the scope for a dynamic versatility among the farmers there, as they confronted a more strongly centralized state power than in the less accessible regions of the latter countries. At the same time the largely secluded and isolated rural communities in the Finnish backcountry, while maintaining certain age old institutions for popular decision making at the local level all of which provided some leeway for yeoman economic thrift lacked the seaways transportation routes for bringing their surplus staple products directly to the customers or trading partners in more distant corners. With the Swedish nobility and, in our period, the burghers controlling the most valuable and strategic coastal areas, seafaring was almost solely in their hands, and any surplus yeoman produce was effectively exploited by the royally privileged estates. Consequently, the population of farmers, who often turned to hunter and gatherer activities apart from cultivating the soil, had their potentialities for social progress and economic prosperity highly restricted compared to the Norwegians a fact that goes a long way to explain the immigration of Finns into Eastern parts of Norway during the early modern centuries, wisely slipping through the strongholds of the Swedish noble fiefs and settling in
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districts of Norway in which the nobility was virtually absent. The rural people in the land of the Finns, in the border regions between Sweden and Norway, brought with them their industrious attitude from their mother country, and in the absence of an usurping nobility they built up one of the most prominent inland fisheries in the whole Nordic region; fisheries which deliver high quality and refined products of salmon fishes to this very day from their location in Femundsmarka. With their geographical position they were also situated along an ancient trade and communication route inland and beyond the reach of the main commercial traffic but still connecting traders from east and west, and in a close vicinity to the central north-south transportation routes through Gudbrandsdalen and Osterdalen. Thus, it comes as no surprise to learn that the Lofthus rising in the 1780s drew many sympathizers in subsequent years in these valley areas, which played an important role in the Norwegian yeomens constitutional work of 1814; indeed, it is interesting to note the intensely democratic and egalitarian tone of the constitutional drafts eloping from the yeomen in this region even to the extent of claiming the right of everyone to meet in the national assembly, and other anti-bureaucratic sentiments, such as the yeomen of Hedemark county (amt) did.

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Though vastly different in outlook, the versatile yeomen along the southern coasts, and the proud valley farmers of Gudbrandsdalen and Osterdalen with their Finnish influences shared the same urge towards occupational versatility freedom; thus, one may well perceive that the relatively secluded rural people in the Southern Finn region, and their neighboring communities, looked up to the wide ranging influence of the southerners, who stood in direct contact with people from shores far away. True, many people in this region was absorbed by the copper works at Roros throughout the centuries, and came to cling to the bourgeoisie and bow to the powers that be, in a common proletarian vein. It is, moreover, this very unfortunate position of the proletariat, combined with historical knowledge of its disruptive impact on the Roman republic, which induced the left-liberal Norwegian statesman, Christian Michelsen towards the end of his life in the early 20th century to pose the provocative, but largely neglected question: Do we really want to replace a proud yeomanry with an unhappy proletariat? words that, in a similar vein, easily could have been spoken by the Roman reformers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, when they tried to save the Republic by their efforts at redistributing agricultural land to destitute proletarians in the late second century B. C. Michelsen, by the way, was from Bergen the center of the strongest republican sentiments in Norway throughout the centuries, dating back to the Gulating organization (9th
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century) and beyond. Thus, the issues at stake during the constitutional strife in the spring of 1814 were of far reaching and crucial importance, with major dividing lines between notions of political power and scope for economical freedom and not least related to what the markets were going to look like in the future. The contrasts between the prolific yeoman versatility and trading activities among the overall population in the Northern province despite all the restrictions of the burgher privileges issued by the crown, and the well neigh serfdom of the Danish peasants are no less than astonishing, as seen in the context of their belonging to the same European region and even judicially controlled by the same state apparatus.5b In Denmark in the actual time period, while the situation for the peasants in the inland areas was largely fixed by the feudally inclined stavnsband, those along the coast naturally had their focus on the sea and towards the end of our period, when the stavnsband was abolished, the result was not a revival of yeoman versatility but rather specialization within market gardening, fishery and various crafts, all of which drew rural people towards the growing cities. In Sweden, the social-economic structure was considerably more favorable to a versatile yeoman way of life, albeit with huge differences from the North to the South, and from the central to the peripheral districts. The highly contested regions of Skaane, Halland,
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Blekinge and Bohuslen, which had changed hands to and fro between the Nordic countries during the centuries previous to the actual era, had finally been settled within stable borders, making for more distinguished character traits among the various countries commonly termed nationalities, but more properly labeled bioregional culture patterns, as people in the actual era hardly had any notion of nations at all. Thus, north of the main agricultural regions in which the Swedish nobility always had its stronghold, the country was somewhat divided by the massive iron works of Bergslagen, to the northwest of Stockholm, with their major role throughout history from the Middle Ages when the Swedish kingdom began to take form, to the role of the trade with raw iron in modern times and tending towards capital accumulation and occupational specialization, the latter both by carrot and stick. Thus, the scope for an elaborate yeoman versatility for the farmers of Sweden was always very limited at least since the Middle Ages and limited to certain distant and sparsely populated areas. They did, though, like their Finn colleagues in eastern Norway, evolve a proud stock of fishing farmers along the northernmost coast of the Gulf of Bothnia the arm of the Baltic Sea reaching north between Sweden and Finland. To the extent that they had access to timber, they certainly would turn to boat building and venture into seaways activities and navigation to some extent or other. However, their
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numbers were few and they were never nearly close to the prominent socio-economic position of the growing Norwegian yeomanry who virtually determined political developments over large parts of the Nordic cultural sphere, during the major popular outbursts in the Age of Democratic Revolution. As for Finland subjected to the Swedish state, which was highly militaristic and largely controlled by the nobility during the early modern centuries and well into the Enlightenment era she could not hope to retain her richest and easiest accessible resources for her native population, even enduring imported nobles from Sweden and Germany, who were determined to impose feudal strictures on their traditional rural ways of life since time immemorial based on the principle of usufruct. Hence, the Finnish farmers were forced on the defensive; some escaped to the above mentioned regions of Eastern parts of Norway, probably being dismissed but encouraged by the fishing farmers at the northern shores of the Gulf of Bothnia along the way. Others may have tended to retreat into the vast and densely forested hinterland areas, rich in resources for a subsistence way of life, but too far removed from considerable regional markets to facilitate trade with their eventual surplus staple products a trade, moreover, which was easily monopolized by the higher social strata who had capital to raise ships for traversing the seas. In southern back country areas, moreover, they were affected to varying
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degrees by the early textile industries in the region across the Russian border. Thus, the outlet for a dynamic occupational versatility among the Finnish population in general was highly restricted, and consequently their liberal spirit seems to have been broken at some stage during the centuries leading up to the actual period. Hence, throughout the entire 19th century, when the Finnish people had to deal with tsarist Russian sovereignty, there were virtually no liberal political movements at a time when the Russians themselves were at the forefront of liberal thought, albeit often in exile in Western Europe, with clandestine movements growing in their mother country.5c Historically, groups of men have always compensated for their eventual lack of capital, judicial rights and military facilities with co-operation and mutual aid but only at a certain level of self-reliance and collective selfconfidence. Thus, there is every reason to suggest that the yeomanry of Finland was much too scattered and inhibited from organizing co-operative efforts, especially as regards the crucial element of shipping, to have any major influence upon society as a whole. In fact the first popular organization in the country did not appear until the late 19th century, when the legislative restrictions on the use of technology were finally repealed by the Russian tsar. Hence, even the most elemental principles of usufruct were roundly condemned by the authorities throughout the whole of the 19th century, and we must
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accordingly allow for some more scope for yeoman versatility in the period we are discussing than later on albeit without changing the general picture. After all, the economically privileged nobility and the upward striving burghers may well have been an equally forceful challenge to the Finnish yeomen, only somewhat lessened until 1809 by the absence of a tsarist regime which had fallen into a state of mania after the Pugachev rebellion in the 1770s, in which usufruct principles had been a major cause among the numerous Siberian rebels. The treatment of the captured rebel leader, Pugachev, in the hour of defeat and his torturous execution could have had no other intent than to statute an example for all those informed about his fate that infringing on the crowns ownership of the land was a capital offence on a par with treason. Surely, Pugachevs trick for tactical purposes of claiming to be the real tsar, escalated the turn of events and the regimes response.5d Such conditions and scenes, however, were unknown in the Swedish territories which included Finland until the very finishing stages of the actual time period the Estates General had a considerable influence on the crowns whims. The framework of such a governmental structure provided at least some scope for yeoman versatility, modified by the state backed pressures from privileged social strata, topographical conditions, and so on. It is also illustrating that the first popular mass organization to occur in Finland apart from the strictly
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cultural and language oriented ones was the saw mill co-operation movement, exploding into activity in the very moment when the tsarist prohibition of steam powered saws was lifted, a few years before the first Russian Revolution. So, even if the Finnish farmers largely kept their lands throughout the tsarist period, they were denied the full utilization of its resources; a basic right of utilization (according to their usufruct principles) which had lifted them to a yeoman level during former periods. However, wherever there existed a nobility of some prominent position backed by tax redemption, military positions, and so on the most fertile agricultural, as well as the easiest accessible timber resources, were usurped by fiefs and lords. In Finland, this process had been slowly unfolding since the Middle Ages, and the subsequent additional influx of burghers with capital specializing in wooden trades made the scope for a dynamic and fruitful occupational versatility among the yeomanry however self owning relatively small. At the other geographical and socio-economical Nordic extremity, the nomadic peoples of the Arctic the Lapps and the Sami barely had any notion of landed property at all, not to say restrictions on the use of tools imposed by a superior authority. Often misunderstood and ridiculed by the central authorities throughout the centuries, these aboriginal peoples nonetheless lived fairly comfortable and singularly self-reliant lives under
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the harsh climatic conditions in the outermost northern fringes of the European continent, feeding mainly on the abundant protein resources of the reindeer herds roaming these regions. In our context, however, it is relevant to consider the impact of their persistent usufruct principles on people living further south. Old and thriving cultures tend to export essential traits of their socio-economic structure to their trading partners, a classical example being the adoption of a democratic orientation by the Romans during the heyday of their Republic from the Greek traders and colonists. In our context, the issue becomes even more relevant by the fact that at an early stage in history the Sami people established a southern colony way down in the middle regions of Norway, situated in the vicinity of the subsequent highly dynamic nexus of regional and inter-regional markets propelled by versatile yeomen in the more concentrated time period we are dealing with here. To this very day, moreover, the general public still put a high premium on usufruct principles, at least as regards wild life resources despite the harsh repression conducted by state officials toward the Sami people, from the persecution of their Shamans in the era of the witch hunts, to the grave injustices at the time of the Kautokeino rebellion in the mid 19th century. These decisive facts and tendencies, admittedly and deliberatively avoiding a mass of minute details, should make clear why the overwhelming focus in this essay included in a book on Nordic history is concentrated on
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developments in Norway with an unavoidable view to the whereabouts of a Danish crown which claimed the right to the resources of northern regions by way of dynastic entanglements since the late Middle Ages. Thus, the historical socio-economic setting should be adequately established, and its about time to enter into some details which elucidate the significance of peasant and especially yeoman versatility or the lack of it in Nordic history, while considering the phenomenon in a universal sense. Indeed, this very universality can largely be deduced from the highly diverse natural conditions under which this much too neglected cultural trait rose to such heights as the yeomens constitutional drafts in the Age of Democratic Revolution, more specifically in Norway in the spring of 1814. Despite the scarce written source material, however, one can recognize that the versatile economic activities among the farmers in the pre-modern world, necessarily came to put its mark on their self-conception and their self-understanding as members of society at large in a distinctive manner, and that it gave them a sense of dignity and social importance which farmers elsewhere, for example on the European continent, largely were bereft of in the actual time period. The traditions of versatile rural economic productivity way into modern times may also contribute to an explanation of the lesser sense of polarization between the farmers movement and the labor movement in Norway (except from the troubled
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mid-War era), which, however, produced the so-called Crisis Agreement between the two sides in 1935 in an effort to deal with the Great Depression in the wake of the Crash at the New York stock exchange in 1929. True enough, however, the turbulent mid-War years falls way outside the scope of this investigation. Still, developments in our own day will have to deal with what has happened in previous centuries, if we are to understand them at all.

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
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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 1830s and 40s towards the end of Carl Johans 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 kings court of the power of legislation in connection with Magnus Lagabotes 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
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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 antidemocratic not to say outright economically counterproductive 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 17501814 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
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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
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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 wellbeing 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 (sjleie) 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
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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
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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 Kings 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 selfsufficient 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
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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 kings 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.
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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 Diderots and dAlemberts French ncyclopedie (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
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the conscript peasant soldiers naturally refused to obey the crowns orders, the reactionary Danish regime preferred to demonize Lofthus rather than give in to his widely acknowledged elaboration on Struensees reform efforts in the early 1770s 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 preindustrial 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
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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 selfsufficiency 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
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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 couldnt 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 April. It is tempting to conclude that they werent 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
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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 yeomens 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 northwestern 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 detre 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 45 years had given them a prominent position in the
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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 Napoleons 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
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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 DanishNorwegian bourgeoisie, however, the yeomanry appeared far too revolutionary as they had proved during the risings in Strileland, Nedenes, Telemark and Laerdal since the 1760s, 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,
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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.
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Between the extremities as regards versatility, selfreliance 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.

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The Versatility and Pride among Inland Yeomen Though the combination of agriculture with several other occupations produced its most widespread and farreaching dynamics in coastal areas, inland versatility tended throughout centuries to produce a brand of yeomen (and, to some extent, even peasants and cottagers) with a singularly independent frame of mind, and creatively frugal economies. Especially in valley areas with rich and varied soils, high quality timber in the hillsides, and trout fishes and pastures in the mountains above, finely tuned rural economies were the framework in which yeoman constitutional drafts were drawn up in the spring of 1814 maybe even already long since written down, inspired by the American and French Revolutions. Such valleys were especially Numedal and Gudbrandsdalen with their far reaching trade networks north and south, east and west, in traditional routes evading the burgher privilege system. Thus, it is no coincidence that one of the most prominent Nordic historians during the Enlightenment era, the already mentioned Gerhard Schning, conducted a close study of, and undertook an elaborate journey through, Gudbrandsdalen in the 1770s. From the northernmost parts of the valley, in the mountainous areas of Hjerkinn, to the lowlands converging on the lake Mjoesa, Schning found an industrious, frugal and creative stock of sturdy and
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freedom loving yeomen. Thus, even in the higher latitude they produced significant harvests of quality hay through apt field management and use of manure the fed lifestock being a stable source of their refined products of hides, butter, cheese and meat. Moreover, in this alpine region they combined the haying labor and pastoral activities with fishing, so that their most valued staple goods consisted in hides, woolens, and fish (smoked and salted). Though their farmsteads were located somewhat further down the valley, they had their mountain cabins most often built of stone to which they migrated with their life stock in the summer season. And while they grew hay high in the mountains, they even managed to ripen barley in their fields close to their farmsteads in the upper valley region. Hence, the versatility of their production consisted mainly in the refinement of basic agricultural and fishery resources the surpluses of which were intended for the various regional and interregional markets but also of a multitude of various crafts more or less for home use. The distribution channels for their surplus staples, in this age of burgher privileges as regards trade and crafts, were concentrated at what Schning calls unauthorized market places which in the present era would equal black markets most significantly those at which easterners and westerners met at regular and appointed times of the year, to exchange products faceto-face. Furthermore, these valley mountaineers had
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communal mills for their saw timber, often floated down from the hills by way of adequate streams, and also similar mills for their woolens and grain as manifestations of a balanced degree of mutual aid, underpinning their general independence and selfreliance. Further down the valley, for example at Bjoelstad, Schning found flourishing horticulture which included demanding vegetables such as cucumber, cauliflower and leek, in addition to various spicy herbs and this at a stage when the potato had hardly reached these northern Nordic regions. Most probably the obsession with the potato valuable as it became in time has caused modern historians to ignore the extent of vegetable production in Norway in these period of Agricultural revolution in Europe, and the degree to which it contributed to basic self-sufficiency for those who adopted it. After all, garlic was grown in the north already by the Vikings, and horticultural knowledge was preserved in the monasteries until the Reformation in the wake of which ordinary herb cultivation was largely demonized among the commoners during the witch hunts in the 16th and 17th centuries, while the crown kept its royal gardens for its luxury. Hence, it is most likely that the overall horticultural practices largely had to be reinvented during the Enlightenment, and in this respect the practical horticultural work and writings by an interesting Enlightenment figure, Christian Gartner in
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Trondheim, at the dawn of the 17th century, played an important role in spreading the knowledge of vegetable and herb growing far and wide and most certainly southwards through Gudbrandsdalen.7 Anyway, the advanced horticulture in Gudbrandsdalen, as documented by Schning during his travel, in combination with, for example, the masterful carpentry and house building conducted by the yeomen themselves, is a neat testimony to the often neglected in our era of well nigh crippling specialization extent to which versatility may combine very well with quality production, like it also did in Ancient Greece and in several other cultures. Amidst all of this versatile basic production and refinery, yeomen in certain regions most notably the strategically situated Ringebu even acted as a kind of professional traders between various regional markets in blunt defiance of the burgher privileges and fostering a confederal orientation. Thus, they connected people over vast distances (considering the scope for inland transportation in that era) in an organic way, encompassing wide regions of Trondelag by the coast (whose people demanded a new constitution in 1814), Hedemark county and further south, and eastwards deep into Swedish regions.8 At Gausdal the yeomen were so highly notable for their craftsmanship in woodwork that they were hired for building purposes in far away
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districts without being tempted to specialize in such crafts, until capital accumulation outside their control undermined their traditional way of life, and forced more and more of them to do so during the latter half of the 19th century. If only to illustrate the prominent socio-economic position of the yeomanry of Gudbrandsdalen and their proud stature at the dawn of the Age of Democratic Revolution in northern Europe, according to Schning: the urge for reading and learned matters notwithstanding, the yeoman does not neglect his agricultural tasks or farm work but conducts them industriously, for which he deserves double esteem.9 This nexus of a multitude of occupations, self-reliance and wide reaching networks undoubtedly positioned the Gudbrandsdalen yeomen singularly well to claim a leading position among the farmers during the constitutional struggles in the tumultuous final stage of the Napoleonic Wars. Moreover, they posited that crucial overview of social and economic life which was hardly attainable for specialized city burghers, or impractical state officials, not to say the clergy who couldnt see the leek and cucumbers for the bulk of potato by which I do not mean, however, to denigrate the importance of the sturdiness of the latter in bad seasons or its vital storage capacity under proper conditions. In any case, the
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dynamic yeomen were on the lookout for progress anywhere and anyhow they could attain it, and the tendency among many historians to consider the overall rural population as unenlightened is just another testimony to modern prejudice and myopia.

The Yeomen, Staple Goods, and Inter-Regional Markets In his study of the pre-capitalist era in rural Norwegian regions professor Andreas Holmsen10 presents a vivid portrait of the versatile yeomens ways of life and their well functioning regional markets with links to the wider world. According to Holmsen, yeomen only turned to the markets to purchase products which in no way could be produced by themselves, illustrating the high sense of self-reliance which followed from their precapitalist culture. The regional markets, moreover, were remarkably stable and well balanced, so that, for example, the exchange of two barrels of grain for one barrel of herring at the most notable regional market place, Romsdalsmarkedet, with its far-reaching trading tentacles in all directions both by land and sea, were stable currencies generation after generation in a fairly common pre-capitalist way.11 It is of major importance for the main topic of this essay the socio-economic position underpinning the
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yeomens political activities during the Age of Democratic Revolution to note that the yeomen along these inter-regional and, according to the intent of the crowns burgher privileges, largely virtually illegalized trade routes, often undertook the seasonal journeys to the market places, even under such circumstances in which they were hardly worthwhile in the strict economic sense. Thus, the motives for these efforts must have had wider implications, such as the need to sustain wider networks, ethical obligations towards trading partners, and, most importantly, a more or less informal, confederal coordination of mutual affairs a form of doing politics which largely escape the notice among people in our era, who take the political party system and its political careerists almost as a natural law.12 Indeed, the very ideological orientation towards selfreliance within rural Nordic districts developed during hundreds of years in harsh climates, short growing seasons and relatively scattered agricultural soils made possible by age old principles of usufruct as regards the utilization of natural resources contributed to a multitude of additional occupations among yeomen, and even tenant peasants and cottagers, which could only be dreamt of among rural commoners on the continent. Illustratively, while the starved and furious French peasants who instigated the revolution with their mass revolts throughout the country in 1788 forcing Louis XVI to convoke the Estates General for the first time in
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more than 150 years acted out of sheer desperation, the Norwegian yeomen of the era were in a position to confine their rebellion to significantly more dignified actions such as arresting a bailiff or two, and put down some clarifying words on paper without any urge to excessive violence or pedantic circumlocutions: They knew that they had their backs free, as it were, and fought for essentially republican ideals, rather than bare survival. It is quite illustrating for the topography and the socioeconomic structure of the spine of the Norwegian regions, the extensive valley of Gudbrandsdalen, that the product most easily exchanged on the markets in its wide surrounding regions, was the horse all along until the mid 19th century. As everywhere in the pre-railroad era, inland locomotion was slow, but necessary and steady through terrain that would have seemed largely impenetrable from the air and it combined perfectly well with versatile ways of life, highly sensitive to the natural surroundings; a sensitivity which certainly pertained to the coastal farming fishermen as well. In time, however, it was not only the economic significance of the horse in the inter-regional market nexus of Gudbrandsdalen which was wiped out; in the course of a few decades, from the introduction of the imperialist railways in the 1850s and the resulting industrial forestry largely dominated by British capital
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and its connections in the state apparatus the emerging globalized market caused the loss of fine tuned regional markets at an increasing rate, thereby precluding the very operation of laissez faire in its ethical and ecological dimensions as proclaimed by its ideological originator, the French physiocrat, Francois Quesnay, who dedicated most of his life to reform work on behalf of the French peasants without getting notable hearing from the Court and the nobility.13

Early Pressures on Yeoman Versatility and Regional Markets In our context, relating to the Age of Democratic Revolution and especially the constitutional struggle of 1814, it is worth noting that the royal Norwegian power already in the High Middle Ages most notably through Magnus Lagabotes Law of the Land of 1274 usurped the farmers age old legislative rights (the already mentioned yeomen legalism or bondelegalismen). More specifically, while he simply pretended to uphold the Law, he was basically serving dynastic interests, and in his efforts at state centralization he was especially eager to restrict yeoman trade, most notably their collective shipping efforts striking with both a judicial and an economical fist against their time honored rights. Then, 540 years later on these onslaughts
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by the state power became major issues in the yeomens democratic struggle, and they were up against powers which had increased immensely in strength throughout these centuries. Indeed, it would certainly have been easier had they been more alert in the old days to resist the initial usurpation than to win the old rights back in the modern era, and when they finally did so towards the mid 19th century capital accumulation and currencies based on precious metals, rather than staple goods, had eventually reached such a magnitude as to render the longed for rights virtually useless. In other words, free trade did not relate any longer to the ordinary rural commoner as more than an idea, with nostalgic connotations to past struggles. It is a sad history, especially in the light of depopulated rural districts, the loss of a rich cultural legacy, and a present degree of self-sufficiency in staple food stuffs below 50 % -- after declining continually since about 1860. Moreover, to illustrate the potentially ecologically damaging consequences of excessive commercial focus, often related to and accentuated by political and economical centralization, the pressure on certain forested areas in Nordland not far from the rich fisheries of Lofoten became so intense already by the late 1600s that forest conservation measures became necessary. The demand for ship timber rose out of proportion as the northern farming fishermen tried to keep up with the naval merchants of Bergen, while the
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ships were more and more heavily taxed due to the surmounting war costs. Thus, although yeoman versatility by no means was restricted to coastal areas, it achieved exceedingly important political implications in these regions laden with political tensions and interconnected with the inland yeomen through the inter-regional trade routes by horse power which most probably would have shook the framework of the constitutional scenery to its foundations, had they been more intimately involved in the decisive constitution making process.

Yeoman Versatility Burgher Privileges

versus

State-Backed

It is hardly accidental that the extent of the unauthorized or black market activities was by far most encompassing and most successful in distant areas from the judicial centers, and that attempts to join them in more central districts were subdued far more effectively, in the era of mercantilism. Hence, the highly significant inter-regional market nexus of Gudbrandsdalen was situated in landscapes without cities of notice and beyond the bourgeoisies control, while it sent out its westward black market trade tentacle in the border region between the privileged burgher zones of
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Bergen and Trondheim. The outlet eastwards was virtually entirely open, and the commercial activities in that direction would largely have depended upon the presence of adequate trading partners beyond the Finn area along the Swedish border which had never been a consolidated dividing line. In this inland area cultural patterns and trade relationships had been changing but very slowly throughout the centuries, and it is highly likely that the very westward trade route from Gudbrandsdalen towards the sea side markets, largely determined the location of the border zone between the major privileged cities along the west coast. After all, it had been in operation since time immemorial, and included a relatively high percentage of the population fairly well coordinated who would have met any state infringements on its time honored rights with enraged opposition. In the aftermath of the Lofthus rising at the south coast, in which a leading versatile yeoman had been treated like a felon for demanding justice and freedom of trade, the yeomen of Gudbrandsdalen and their contacts far and near became even more alert with respect to their rights, and recognized the need for their legal ratification. With the reactionary turn of events in France after the dismay of initial revolutionary hopes; Prussia developing in an increasingly authoritarian direction; Russia as autocratically top heavy as ever; and British capital bursting head on in an industrialization process in which
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infants were used to clean up the factory chimneys (!) the future must have seemed quite uncertain and unpredictable for any fairly well informed yeoman eager to retain old liberties and acquire new ones in the pursuit of happiness.

Two Conflicting Conceptions of Economy (the Laws of the Household versus precious metals) An interesting study of the northern fishing farmers has been made by the already mentioned Alf A. Kiil, who has drawn the lines way back in history as regards the development and extent of fish trading between the coastal farmers of Nordland and the burghers of Bergen, which significantly gathered momentum with the expanding activities of the Hanseatic League from the 14th century onwards, before the trade largely fell into Dutch hands during the early modern era. To illustrate the importance of these market relations, reaching far southwards in Europe, the people of the North hardly knew of grain in their diets before it was offered in exchange for their fishing resources; before the introduction of grain they subsisted on a variety of sea food, meat and dairy products. The growing naval activity among the coastal farmers, most notably the very active traders in the North, strongly inclined them towards peace seeking solutions to
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disputes between major powers and orderly relationships at sea. Moreover, the roots of their prominent trading position back to the confederally oriented Hanseatic League, perpetuated by the similarly organized United Dutch Provinces, also put them up against statist claims to sovereignty all the references to the loyal Norwegian farmers notwithstanding; this loyalty, in fact, was directed towards the Law as they defined it, on the basis of their age old yeoman legalism not according to dynastic whims. In the largely moral economies of the Middle Ages, apart from the most conspicuous feudal regions of Europe, there were no powerful states which could simply intervene into the markets with edicts and legislation; they could surely try, but would not succeed before they were strengthened by capital accumulation among at least one influential social group, at the cost of the others. Indeed, in those periods when the infant states tried to swell their treasuries by raising the customs duties, the result was often boycott campaigns from the traders, and war between neighboring states such as occurred over the Oresund-customs claimed by both Sweden and Denmark. Accordingly, the introduction of the burgher privileges in the early modern era appeared simply incomprehensible and ridiculous to fishing farmers accustomed to large scale trade. Indeed, as the dried fish literally constituted their capital, they were
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highly reluctant to submit its valuation to stingy burghers bent on accumulating wealth. The old trade routes along the coast, moreover, dated back to the Viking era an age in which the no less versatile northerners in that time period traded their hides, furs, feathers, walrus teeth, ropes, etc. with honey, wine, wheat and cloth from the south. Indeed, already around 500 A. C., people at Halogaland purchased their first grain with their fish products in Trondelag only to disappear from the diet in subsequent centuries. In the late Middle Ages, however, the exchange with the merchants of Bergen started venturing with their ships northwards to purchase dried fish in large quantities. Their merchant fleet, however, was in due course challenged by collective northern shipping activities, as mentioned above, namely the so-called bygdefarsbruket, as a consequence of which there occurred shifting alliances between the Bergen burghers, northern fishing farmers and foreign traders. In this triad nexus, the Danish crown lent its support to the burghers of Bergen and, in 1542, in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation, it issued edicts favoring the burghers albeit without having any means to strip the northerners of their trading freedom altogether. Indeed, ever since the heyday of the Gulatinget (the confederacy along the western coast in the Viking era), the commercial traffic up and down the coast had been
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firmly established, and even amounted to questions of law and justice among the social strata to the extent of collectively chasing claimants to the throne out of the area if he ventured to disrupt it. Thus, the libertarian and collective character of the northerners trade had deep historical roots and wide ranging geographical threads; and from the 17th to the 19th century it constituted a major force in vast economic regions. So, despite the tendency of indebtedness to the Bergen burghers, resulting from the mercantilist privilege system, these versatile farmers were far less subdued by the changing market pattern than, say, the mining farmers of Telemark, who tended to be reduced almost to cattle being commanded into corve labor within the so-called circumferences to provide raw material for the mining operations of the kings fiefs (regional administrators). The northerners control of the entire economic process, from felling the fur trees, cutting boat planks, building the boat, making the fishing equipment, pulling the fish out of the sea, refining it and transporting it to the markets all these advanced activities, in addition to their farming, put the fishing farmers in a far more favorable position than inland peasants who were often bereft of wild life resources, subjected to increasing land rent, had no direct recourse to the sea and even were in the possession of forests which were turned to their detriment. Thus, the respective living situation for people belonging to the

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very same social stratum, varied immensely from district to district. In his essay on the peasant rural economy in relation to the copper works far to the north, historian K. Sprauten15 poses the question whether the peasantry was locally reduced to dependence of these works, while other historians have included even the commoners in the euphemistic economic growth category without relating to issues pertaining to self-reliance and security, psychology and outlook. Certainly, increasing taxation in money in addition to the circumference impostures increasingly tended to tail them to markets over which they had virtually no influence; and the mines and metal works were strong nexuses for the early modern break with the dynamic, but balanced, inter-regional market systems based on organic staple goods, rather than cold an dead metals. Moreover, on the basis of their several hundreds of years old state imposed duty work for the mining operations largely propelled by dynastic warfare they had to tone down their traditional and versatile side occupations, often related to various crafts, and become far more specialized and, hence, vulnerable in their day to day existence. Hence, they would have tended to cling to the state and capital far more readily than self-reliant and cooperative fishing farmers or valley farmers far removed from the mines and iron works. Indeed, as regards the veritable market turnover during the early modern centuries which, in
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this northern European sphere, was not completed until the mid 18th century the mines and works played such a crucial role that capital accumulation around this state owned industry, literally funded the state apparatuses and the dynastic military adventures. Thus, according to Sprauten, the payments from the copper works to miners and farmers constituted about 50-60 % of the ordinary tax incomes from the whole of Norway between 1760 and 1779.16

Market Relations in the Long Run The failure among farmers who ventured to specialize their production at an early date, such as the so-called oats and horse combination in Eiker in southeastern Norway, induced the versatile yeomen and the tenant peasants who were in a similar position to continue their time honored ways, even to some extent into modern times. According to historian Ove Bjarnar17, the Eiker farmers occasionally had to import hay from England in the 18th century, and quite often these farmers ended up shooting their horses from lack of feeding resources. An aspect of this perversion of agriculture was that these farmers were distracted from soil cultivation by the nearby mining operations and metal works, which they long since had been obligated to assist by providing the above mentioned goods and services. Thus, the metal
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and capital oriented markets pertaining to the mining industry tended to encroach upon the rural staple oriented regional and inter-regional markets, and initiate the tendency of ecology and economy to part ways. However, money earned by 18th century farmers in the North rarely resulted in the accumulation of capital; rather, the residue after the taxes had been paid went into farmstead buildings, tools, life stock, saw mills, boats and, not least, purchase of land among those who had not yet reached yeoman status. Indeed, by the 1780s most farmers had acquired ownership to their lands which were becoming ever more important as the traditional usufruct orientation increasingly was under attack and they were ready to take their demands to a further level, and with good reasons: The judicial position of their estate at the bottom intended to dictate the farmers place in the totality of socio-economic life, largely inhibited them from developing their own projects, utilizing their own resources to the fullest and most creative extent, and even determined their activities to underpin the state power apparatus and the economic elites. To meet these challenges, the rural populations naturally turned to civil disobedience and direct action in order to evade the unjust burgher privileges; ways of action which could vary considerably with topographical and ecological conditions in the respective regions. Thus, in the counties of Agder along the southern coast of Norway, economic conditions were highly egalitarian
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and the agricultural plots tiny, and as a result of which few of the farmers were self-sufficient with grain. To compensate for their shortages they traded directly primarily with Dutch ships, purchasing the grain with hides, leather, fish oil, dried and smoked fish, butter and lumber goods. This traditional trade, outside the general royal law since the 1660s, was increasingly threatened by the Danish grain monopoly (introduced in 1733), which caused much stir within certain regions, as it tended to degrade peasants and yeomen alike to the status of deliverers of raw materials to the burghers and the state in the ordinary colonial vein while they traditionally had made a living by versatile small scale manufacture from their own (usufruct) natural resources. Hence, many yeomen tended, like Lofthus, to embark on shipping and export of the products from their own saw mills even if illegalized in former time periods and some of them even drifted away from agriculture altogether or reduced it to a non-intensive state, which, moreover, suits well in northern climates with their restricted growth seasons. According to historian Gustav Saetra, most farmers in Agder took part in the wooden industries18 during the second half of the 18th century; thus, 455 persons were registered with a vocational mixture between farmer/yeoman and sailor in this area in 1801 and quite a few of those were ship and boat builders at that. Moreover, this combination of wooden
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manufactures, boat building and shipping was fairly common among farmers all along the coastline, and had very ancient roots along with their fisheries and was always the obvious main reasons for the tendency among people to settle more densely in these areas than in the backcountry. In the Bergen area the burgher privileges established by the absolutist monarchy were habitually ignored by the rural population. According to the edict, trade within vast coastal regions was to be conducted exclusively within that major city, subject to the state officials control and favoring the merchants economic gain. The seafaring farmers, though, kept up their own commercial routes along the coast, to the extent that the king, in 1702, ordered his officials to register them. This anti-burgher trade facilitated the preservation of locally and regionally based economic structures, and even interconnected these rural people directly with traders from shores far away, especially from Scotland and the United Dutch Provinces two areas of Europe in which centralized state power had always been in very low esteem. An important regional and inter-regional inland market, albeit in a coastal area, was the so-called Laerdalsmarkedet which dated back to the Middle Ages and at which staple products such as fish and life stock from the western regions were exchanged with grain from the east. As discussed in another essay19 the Laerdal
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farmers had traditionally been exempted from military service as a compensation for their transportation services along this important communication route; hence, the militancy of their resistance when they suddenly were ordered to serve in the army amidst the escalation of turmoil in Europe during Napoleons take over, should be seen in the context of their confederally oriented trade as against statist conquest efforts. The burghers of Bergen had virtually nothing to do with the Laerdal trade route across the mountains and, needless to say, they were far from apt to sympathize with the disobedient and revolting farmers of Laerdal in 17991802. Along the coast northwards, however, the farmers often collectively not only built their own small fishing boats, but also acquired larger freight vessels (jegter) to do trade in more distant regions, most notably in the above mentioned bygdefarsbruket. Especially in the latter half of the 18th century yeomen in general were urged to expand their economic activities so as to be able to pay back their loans contracted in order to purchase landed property; however, even if their monetary needs grew, they largely shunned specialization. Thus, for example in the county of Moere and Romsdal specialization in agriculture was not only rare; it was more or less taboo and regarded as far too risky in these harsh climates. From these fishing farmers point of view, districts specializing in grain production were regarded as poor
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 regardless of location and even if they were situated on the richest of soils. Accordingly, among these proud amateurs building the most beautiful and sea-going wooden boats purchase of goods was reduced to a minimum, illustrating the essence of the subsistence economy. This basic structure, however, did not prevent them from market activities off the record, such as at Sundalsoera, the market place of which was organized against the law and co-existed with the officially approved Romsdalsmarkedet, at which the urban merchants attended. In certain districts, moreover, such as Haram, yeomen in the latter half of the 18th century encouraged by rich fisheries and good prices for their surplus staple products rose to an especially prominent position, employing extra labor force to operate their fishing vessels far out at sea and to work their fields. Such an elevated position, however, was rare, and these yeomen had certainly every reason to reckon themselves on a par with burghers and state officials, despite all judicial ranking of the estates by the crown.

The Gathering of Yeomens Fighting Spirit According to early 20th century historian of the Strile War (1765), as well as the Lofthus rising (1786-87), Georg Sverdrup has stated that:

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 the burgher privileges forced [the farmers] to sell their goods to a tiny, self-enclosed stock of urban merchants who had no competitors and, accordingly, were in a position to force their own will upon the former.20 It was especially in relation to the wooden trades that the government policies infuriated the farmers, and most notably in the southern coastal districts. No wonder that they turned increasingly to ship building to search for trading partners along more distant shores. During this process even their very wooden boats became commodities, purchased by fishermen elsewhere, for example in Scotland. As for the Lofthus rising, which came to be laden with heavy symbolism in the subsequent decades, and a major inspiration for the ensuing constitutional draft resolutions conducted by yeomen, Sverdrup summed it up as a farmers rising for economic freedom. One may well add, moreover, that the freedom they sought tended towards confederal structures rather than nation states. It is interesting to note that the verdict against Lofthus, which robbed him of his dignity and, eventually, his life even as the concrete grievances from yeomen and peasants expressed far and wide during the rising, were largely heeded by the state authorities in Copenhagen was concluded in the very same year as the so-called September Massacres against the clergy and wealthy
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burghers in revolutionary France in 1792. As is widely recognized among historians, these events in France turned even initially sympathetic people across Europe against the Great French Revolution, and may well have influenced the outrageous treatment of Lofthus even to the extent of demonizing him as the Norwegian Pugachev. Pugachev, as already mentioned, led the infamous Siberian rebellion against Russian tsardom in the early 1770s, retorting to violent means that bear no similarity whatsoever to the decent and largely pacific conduct of the lofthusians. Considering the subsequent turn of events, it is tempting to envisage a more militant attitude among the latter; they were obviously in a position and had wide enough support both regionally and internationally to topple the Danish regimes bulwark in its Norwegian province. Such an imagined more militant attitude, moreover, would also, most probably, have produced additional leading figures who could have succeeded Lofthus immediately after his capture.

Yeoman Pride, Constitutional Strife, and a Republican King

Compared to the Enlightenment country par excellence before its Great Revolution France the Nordic Enlightenment was marked by far more vicissitude at the
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state level most dramatically exemplified by the fate of the liberal reformer, Struensee, the imbecile kings physician and right hand. After propounding the ideals of meritocracy and freedom of thought and expression which implied lifting the censorship these challenges against state privileges and inherited rights cost him his head in 1772. At that point, the Strile farmers in a western region close to the city of Bergen had already risen in rebellion a few years previously, and after the execution of Struensee there were massive protests in eastern as well as western parts of Norway, by yeomen and peasants who feared the bourgeois and aristocratic reaction in Copenhagen a fear all too well founded, as the turn of mind within the Danish government took an astonishingly anti-liberal direction in the subsequent period. The Norwegian burghers were more obsessed with obtaining approval for establishing their own bank, than with political and economic freedoms; hence, it was the farmers and most notably the yeomen who had to undertake the main burden of campaigning for liberalization and democratization. Thus, during the War of American Independence in the 1770s, coastal yeomen utilized their timber resources to the full short of selling plank on the Norwegian markets, which was the burghers privilege and, like the main leader of the Lofthus rebellion, cut boat planks, built ships, and sailed them with their staple cargo to distant shores bringing Enlightened ideas and
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revolutionary impulses with them back home. In certain districts, there were even veritable yeoman industries like tar and turpentine refineries traditionally produced from their own fir timber for their own use in preserving houses and boats, but in due course increasingly transported to foreign lands through their shipping activities. Thus, as already noted, in the years leading up to the Lofthus rising, there had been widespread grievances from farmers against the reactionary Danish court and the old burgher privileges on which Struensee was about to infringe when he was simply removed like another Gracchi brother. In Gudbrandsdalen and the counties of Christians (Oslo?), Bratsberg (Telemark) and Nedenes amts (counties), rural demands were pouring into the bailiffs and other state officials hands from 1784 onwards to be followed up by sympathy actions towards Lofthus, and the relatively massive movement which he led, in the years following his arrest and sentence to labor in chains for life. The symbolism of this penalty, moreover, should not be ignored considering the high minded spirit of this freedom loving man and it comes as no surprise to learn that the yeomens and peasants attempts to free him, were numerous until his death in 1794. Illustratively, in a memorial note on Lofthus, in 1797 printed in the magazine Norske Intelligenzsedler there are references to Rousseau, highly understandable in the light of Lofthus fight for
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the common will indeed, common sense, as understood by the vast majority of the population in the regions in which the rising occurred, and far beyond them. At an earlier stage of the Enlightenment era, the Norwegian philosopher, Ludvig (Louis) Holberg, alluded to the highly assertive Norwegian yeomen while the Danish bishop of Bergen described them as ambitious and proud, while the wealthy burgher, J. Aall, complained about their free spirited independence in the period around the constitutional events of 1814. Indeed, the general esteem in which yeomen willingly or unwillingly were held by the other social strata, even found expression in the form of a warship christened The Norwegian Yeoman (!) For his part, historian Halvdan Koht held that in the actual time period -Norway was basically the only country in Europe in which people could be proud to be a farmer22 thus, a painting of a yeoman from a western region of the country carries the subtitle: I sustain all of you. Surely, as we all should know by now, agriculture (and horticulture and fishery) feed all, and when the yeomen in addition turned to lumbering, wood refinery, various crafts such as ship building, and occasionally wrote their own poetry and composed music and even controlled trade routes long since established it goes without saying that their pride and political courage swelled to the annoyance of those who considered themselves the
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upper classes. Thus, the yeoman slogan during the Lofthus rising was: We represent the most useful and industrious class in the country.23 Accustomed to their elaborate and traditional oral literary way of communication remembering age old legends and histories by heart the yeomen of the revolutionary era produced but few examples of written political pamphlets as far as the records can tell and their most significant constitutional drafts in 1814 were brief, concise and radical. Furthermore, they were more specifically adapted to Nordic conditions than the corresponding drafts from state officials, burghers and nobles a fact that most certainly would have earned the enthusiasm of the father of Liberalism Montesquieu and his successors in the Enlightenment century, such as Thomas Paine.

The Issue of Freedom of Thought and Expression When arriving as a student in Copenhagen in 1794, about the time when Lofthus drew his last breath in his chains at Akershus fort near Christiania (Oslo), P. A. Heiberg was warned by his fellow students against political expressions with the following words: Here in Denmark freedom of thought has been just as ephemeral as the importation of Austrian grain to Norway.25
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Obviously, even without the Danish grain monopoly, this would mean that the most elementary political rights were virtually zero even at a late stage of the Enlightenment era. Thus, the scope for patriotism so indispensible for revolutionary thought and action, and a backbone of civic virtue was largely restricted to a regional orientation especially in the Norwegian province, where the national question was something which belonged to gods chosen monarch and his officials. Among the efforts at tying the malcontent rural populations in Norway closer to the crown, was the tendency to establish a sort of quasi-nobility by way of peculiar rights of inheritance (the so-called odels- and asetesretten), derived from the more aristocratic period of the Viking era. However, the revolutionary yeomen of 1814 rejected almost in unison this principle as not conducive to their meritocratic orientation indeed, as pointing towards idleness, stagnation and decline, just as in the old days. Moreover, as the revolutionary ideas necessarily proved unstoppable, despite the dismal turn of events in France largely provoked by the plotting and dealings among Europes dynasties the Danish crown was forced to co-opt some of the new currents and concede some minor reforms. The implicit Orwellian message to the public was: You have liberty, equality and absolutism. The subsequent efforts by society at large to sort out the confusion, moreover, were largely disturbed by the cataclysmic turmoil of the Napoleonic
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wars, referring the essential issues to some lucky moment in a far distant future after the honorable efforts by the yeomen in their constitutional drafts of 1814 were ignored and ridiculed by the ruling elites, clinging to monarchical power.

The Scope for Revolutionary Ideas Even if not being the Norwegian city with the most intensive contact with the outer world in this era, Christiania (Oslo) had become the city with the largest influx of and overall contact with rural people from surrounding agrarian regions. Thus, it comes as no surprise to learn that the Enlightenment philosopher with whom the city dwellers and their visitors were most acquainted inspiring them with revolutionary ideas was J. J. Rousseau; probably the most agrarian oriented of them all, along with Quesnay. Considering Rousseaus view on property, and his tribute to the principle of usufruct, the determined stance among yeomen against property accumulation and inherited rights and privileges propounded in their constitutional drafts becomes even more explicable. Thus, it was a common saying to anyone feeling bad in Oslo in the early 1800s: Whats wrong? Has anyone defamed Rousseau? It is well worth noting that these were years of distress and hardships among the Northerners amidst war
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blockades, ill-harvests and starvation; consequently, the wanton indulgence, luxury and waste displayed among the state officials and burghers during the prince, Christian Fredericks birthday in 1813, appeared highly provocative to the frugal rural populations and among impoverished city dwellers. As if to demonstrate their superiority, the privileged elites even tore down the building raised for the celebration, immediately after the festivities ended almost like a whim of Nero in ancient Rome in glaring contrast to yeoman craftsmanship, according to which one built to last as a matter of course.

The Origin and Essence of Yeoman Constitutional Drafts The entanglement of absolutism with bourgeois privileges (from the 1660s onwards) and the consequent huge infringements on the very heart muscle of rural Norwegian thrift the scope for yeoman and peasant versatility necessarily influenced strongly on both the essence of the yeomens constitutional demands and drafts, as well as on the degree to which they conflicted with the bourgeois, nobility and state officials approach to the sudden revolutionary situation in the early winter of 1814 a situation in which the few Norwegian noblemen played a singularly
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disproportionate role. In fact, the very institution of nobility was abolished within a few years after the constitution was adopted in 1814. The yeomen, however who had become a prominent estate of versatile economic agents even conducting small scale industry, extensive boatbuilding and large scale shipping were necessarily orienting themselves with neglect towards nations and hostility towards state infringements. They tended to be confederal republicans, by way of their regional and inter-regional trade with surplus staple goods, supplemented by certain refined and manufactured products from their basic natural resources in exchange for foreign staple wares covering their basic needs; a trade conducted largely on the black market, as defined by a court which granted the burghers virtually monopoly of commercial activities. Thus, the prominent yeoman leader, Lofthus, had been repeatedly persecuted for transgressions of the burgher privileges in the years preceding the rising he led in 1786-87 even as he had received royal distinctions for magnificent husbandry. Then, at the dawn of the revolutionary stirrings in 1814, Norway was a largely divided society, in which the yeoman majority could thrive very well without the ruling privileged social groups, but not the other way around a fact that both sides were very well aware of.

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In this connection it is quite interesting to note the strong confederal tendencies in the constitutional draft from the yeomen of Gudbrandsdalen which, as we saw, was the nexus for a far-reaching inter-regional trade, with a hundreds of years old history behind it. These were socio-economical manifestations which no monarch could simply rule out of existence by law edicts in which case they might as well have stopped breathing at his command. So they kept on with their natural born versatile production and trade, got fined and harassed on a fairly regular basis, but stayed alive and vital and put their demands and notions of social, economic and political organization on paper when the time was ripe: Less bureaucracy, freedom of speech and printing, universal suffrage and popular democracy, confederal assemblies, a Peoples Bank, and abolition of absolutism and nobility these were the main issues in this radical and innovative constitutional draft from the versatile, industrious, and geographically well situated yeomen of Gudbrandsdalen, allegedly penned by a central figure in the region named Halvor Hoel. In the draft submitted by the neighboring region to the south, the case was stated that anyone has the right to meet in the national assembly which by way of logic would mean that the assembly was thought of as a confederacy, with mandated delegates, and the basic decision making process being conducted in popular assemblies at the local level.
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With their strong economic position through interregional staple trade, the yeomen of Gudbrandsdalen were well acquainted with the requirements of selforganization, co-operation and ethical conduct and may well have been regarded by large segments of people along the coastline more or less as their mandated chosen delegates to the constitutional assembly. The trade nexus of Gudbrandsdalen spread its proliferate tentacles in several directions most importantly from the Swedish backcountry and the Gulf of Bothnia, down the valley towards Lake Mjoesa and further on to Oslo and Copenhagen; up valley and over the Dovre mountains towards the city of Trondheim with its wide contacts up the northwestern coasts to Lofoten and beyond; and westwards there were the traditionally republican Strile farmers and habitually confederating seaside farmers all of whom were accustomed to regional and inter-regional flatly organized structures since time immemorial. We also know that the Lofthus rising found considerable sympathy and solidarity outside the actual revolting regions, not least in Gudbrandsdalen; hence, the fate of the rising in the 1780s and its aftermath were certainly understood to be decisive for any versatile yeoman in the future. Moreover, in the actual time period, an average versatile yeoman to the extent that such an expression makes any sense was synonymous with the majority of the Norwegian population, in an agrarian society in which
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about 10 % of the inhabitants could trade legally with their goods, while the basic producers of staple goods were bereft of the freedom to dispose of eventual surpluses as they pleased even as they were robbed of a great portion of these goods market value, when exchanged with the state privileged burghers currencies. In fact, the elites had a hard time trying to make avail of their accumulated silver during the constitutional process and its immediate aftermath known as the pari question, in which the monetary economists strove to assess a fixed value of the coins, melting silver in huge amounts. Thus, in another strategically positioned inland district to the west of Christiania (Oslo), Modum in another region with huge staple resources such as high quality pine and fir timber, tar, trout and salmon, in addition to various products from relatively considerable agricultural soils, and with similarly tentacled trade routes as their fellows north of Lake Mjoesa the constitutional draft demands were equally radical. The Modum yeomen were situated in the nexus of the age old trade routes from east to west in the highlands of Hardangervidda, the so-called Nordmannsslepene26a along which regional and interregional markets had been held regularly for hundreds of years even to the extent of leaving marks upon the terrain conspicuously visible to this very day. Hence, products from Bergen were within reasonable reach to venturing yeoman traders from the eastern districts
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according to the locomotion standards of the era. Moreover, with their rich timber resources which could be transported downstream the river of Drammenselva for ship building, and their contacts along the shores of the Oslo fiord they looked towards realizing the potentialities for economic ventures to distant coasts. Hence, all in all they were socio-economically situated in a position which aligned them with Lofthus cause, and made them bring it on into the 19th century. Thus, like their fellows in Gudbrandsdalen, their constitutional draft advocated abolition of noble titles, as well as struck against the state officials. They demanded equalization of societys estates, and, consequently, freedom of occupation and trade; aimed at meritocracy and restriction of inherited property; and urged the case for printing freedom. Taken together and seen in the light of their wide reaching trade connections the demands in these two constitutional drafts represented the interests of major segments of the population also in regions outside their immediate proximity. Thus, compared to these two drafts and their radical purpose and intent the others are of minor significance apart from those written by the privileged elites, who evaded as much as they possibly could the yeomens demands, and somehow basically got their will in the end enraging the single person who facilitated constitutional work in Norway at all; Charles John (Bernadotte). Needless to say, the radical and genuinely republican yeoman drafts
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were ridiculed during the constitutional negotiations at Eidsvoll, south of Mjoesa, in April and May, 1814 most notably by the bourgeois nobleman Jacob Aall, who represented a certain iron works district in the county of Bratsberg (Telemark), in which feudalism was closest to a breakthrough in Norway in the early modern era, and where yeomen had been robbed of their lands through centuries, when cheated because of their illiteracy in lumber trade with the nobles.26b In 1814, however, the voice of the people was loud and clear and writing tools made well avail of stating the agenda of a mobilized yeomanry: Economic liberty, legalization of usufruct principles as regards natural resources, as well as decentralized, non-bureaucratic and confederal ways of dealing with necessary economic and political coordination between the various regions. The political implications of the yeomens constitutional drafts, however, have been largely neglected by historians as a result of the basically informal way in which the traditional decision making processes among the yeomen were conducted often occurring in connection with the various regional and inter-regional markets, and the mandating process accordingly proceeded by way of principles of honor rather than written protocols. It was the good old way kept in place through centuries, and representing a continual challenge towards state power as such, well into the latter half of the 19th century significantly, in a period when
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the degree of self-sufficiency in this Nordic region began its decline towards the record low levels of today. At the end of the day, the Old Way is often synonymous with the good way, especially in our context in which the New Way entailed the first railway in Norway, located between Lake Mjoesa and Christiania (Oslo) in the 1850s, so that British imperialism could grab the rich timber resources of the vast forested tracts pertaining to Gudbrandsdalen, in time demolishing the entire cultural pattern here and elsewhere. In fact, the entire railway network in its initial stages in Norway hardly served 1 % of the total population an astonishing fact when considered in the light of the yeomens campaigns in 1814 and the decades before and after. As regards the position of the republican king, Bernadotte (Charles John) during the constitutional strife in Norway which is a largely uninvestigated matter he was obviously aware of the entrenched division lines within Norwegian society in this period. He was not willing to accept the privileged elites adopted constitution of May 17th, which had evaded the central yeoman demands for liberalization and democratization. Thus, after clashing with conscripted Norwegian troops in a few brief war episodes in the border regions between Sweden and Norway in the late summer of 1814, the Norwegian constitution had to be revised. According to the republican Norwegian captain, Peter Motzfeldt, the
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final constitution as modified by the Swedish authorities was more liberal than expected27 without, however, implementing the radical yeoman demands, apart from a vague clause of freedom of thought and expression. The constitution of November 4th, moreover which ended up as a poor compromise compared to the drafts of yeomen and their tenant peasant allies was only carried through by the diplomatic efforts of the Bergensian state official and acknowledged friend of the yeomen, Wilhelm Frimann Koren Christie, who is known to have uttered the following words to the conservative Norwegian author, Johan Nordahl Bruun, at the height of the constitutional strife: We are gathered here for the sake of free discussion, and must take care not to seek suppression of free utterance as a result of endowing it beforehand with the head of a donkey.28 Indeed, the yeomen who met at Eidsvoll are known to have been men of few words in subsequent eras conventionally and conveniently explained by their servility. I would submit that a graver misunderstanding hardly could be made, and far more probable reasons for their frugal use of words are at least two: Either they thought their programs clear and reasonable enough, and preferred rather to observe the theater, when ridiculed in this time of crisis and huge graveness; or they were virtually drowned in a kind of
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filibuster tactics from the representatives of a tiny privileged minority who were ready to retort to any means to perpetuate their privileges from the Old regime. Most likely, it was a combination of both, and it proved in the end to be waste of time for the yeomen in the middle of the plowing season which would tend to make any yeoman sullen under any circumstances. To what extent Bernadottes (Charles Johns) immediate and subsequent dispositions were influenced by this denigrating treatment of revolutionary yeomen, will never be possible to measure for certain; the fact remains, however, that he hated the celebrations of May 17th for the rest of his life, while keeping on good terms with the yeomen of Norway including the most radical ones. The fact also remains that the dismayed yeomen in the wake of the eventual outcome of their vehement constitutional efforts during the spring of 1814 would rather have the constitution abolished, and Bernadotte adopted as absolutist king in which case some sort of republicanism would have been instituted considering the recent dismissal of absolutist rule in Sweden, along with Bernadottes background from the Great French Revolution. And, not least, the fact remains that the yeomen for whom he had least regard, came to be those seated in the parliament in the years following 1814 while intruding personally to considerably reduce the sentences against yeoman activists from Hedemark, Valdres, Romerike and Hallingdal, whom in large
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numbers had marched towards the parliament in Christiania in 1818 (cf. the rousseauan principle in the constitutional draft from these regions, notably the common will). Thus, it was largely by way of the mediating role of the above mentioned W. F. K. Christie and his colleague Peter A. Motzfeldt who both leaned towards a republican orientation that held back Bernadottes plans for amalgamation of the two countries, in order to infuse the Swedish mainland with some refreshingly republican yeoman air. Quite another matter, however, is the certainty that such plans would have been met with stern opposition both from European powers entering into a period of reaction as well as from the Swedish nobility and bourgeoisie. In the long run, it was revealed that republicanism in Norway nearly died out with the death of the revolutionary king only subsisting to a palpable degree in certain regions along the coast especially in the west so that when the choice of governmental structure had to made once more during the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union in 1905 only certain districts along the west coast decided in favor of republicanism in one form or other. Back in the reign of Bernadotte the revolutionary king, however, the attacks on republicanism and confederalism did not erupt from the Swedish monarch who, in his younger days, had risked his life on a day-to-day basis for such ideals but from those usurpers of the markets among
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the privileged and anti-liberal Norwegian elites, who even tried to eradicate the yeomens alternatives. The latter focused on meeting basic needs in an ethically satisfying manner rather than on accumulation of capital among the tiny minority of the former groups and their idle luxuries. By the way, the revolutionary king accustomed to the encampments of a soldier, and grown up with rage against the poverty and Sisyphean toil among the French peasants who eventually ignited the Great Revolution is said to have led a frugal private life.

Concluding Structures?

Remarks:

What

Kind

of

Market

Accumulating their own age old and largely confederalrepublican socio-economic traditions and notions and adding the perspectives and debates ensuing from the American and French revolutionary events, and even entrusted with a revolutionary king the major segments of the Norwegian population entered their own constitutional campaigning in 1814, confronted by crucial economic questions related to the structure of the markets and all its political implications. Being primary producers of basic staple goods who to a large extent traditionally had refined their various raw materials in one way or other, the versatile yeomen and most tenant
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peasants had a vital interest in doing the trading by themselves exchanging the surplus produce which may have exceeded their subsistence needs, or at attain a position to choose their middlemen. Thus, they fought with all their decent means against the burgher privileges, which were nothing more than vestiges of an archaic and patently unjust economic doctrine. In this postNapoleonic era when nationalism was born as a protest against imperialism not even a revolutionary king was able to eradicate the utterly counter-productive relics of mercantilism. However, the yeomens versatile way of life was no novel invention in the North; what was new, however, was their increasingly strong economic position (thanks to the agricultural revolution, co-operative efforts, and so on) especially in certain Norwegian regions, and often in locations which appeared too rough and inconvenient for the nobles, clergy and burghers and even occasionally far away from the nearest state official. Such conditions made for self-organization and mutual aid; and help each other and self-organize they certainly did raising barns together, constructing saw mills and other mills, embarking on large scale collective shipping, and, not least, controlling wide-reaching inter-regional market structures with a confederal and singularly ethical orientation.

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The whole scope of this cultural pattern, however, had been under attack from the absolutist mercantile state since the mid 17th century but still growing in prominence by the eve of the constitutional struggle. Remembering the proud yeomens legalism from the Viking era somewhat resembling that of ancient Athens their Enlightenment successors understandably sought to attain legislative sanction of their ways of doing work and trade, which had been repressed in some way or other for far too long. Immaculately, the yeomen of that era has been labeled conservatives at least by modern people of various walks of life, far removed from living conditions in pre-industrial and self-reliant village communities; however, if that be so they were without a doubt the most radical conservatives which history has ever seen that is, if the very concepts of conservative and radical would bear any meaning after such an astonishing form of Orwellian newspeak.

Notes:
1a

Halvdan Koht: Norsk bondereising (1926: Oslo: Pax Forlag, n. d.)

1b

Kristoffer Janson: Vore besteforeldre (1848: Kristiania og Kbenhavn: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1913).
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1c

See Steinar Imsen: Norsk Bondekommunalisme, vol. I and II (Trondheim: Tapir Forlag, n. d.).
2

Torgrim Titlestad: Norge blir et rike (Stavanger: Erling Skjalgsson Selskapet, 2000).
3

Rodney Hilton: Bond Men Made Free (New York: The Viking Press, 1973), p. 113
4

See Gerhard Schning: En rejse gjennem Gudbrandsdalen, 1776 (Hamar: Thorbjoern Taalesen, 1926).
5a

For an interesting analysis of topographic-climatic influences on boat building through the ages, see T. C. Lethbridge: Boats and Boatmen (London: Thames & Hudson, 1952).
5b

For a useful general overview of more than a millennium of Nordic history, albeit tending to fall into the common rear mirror trap, see Harald Gustafsson: Nordens historia; En europeisk region under 1200 aar (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997). An exclusively hard facts oriented work, which may be helpful with respect to draw parallels and distinctions, is Sven Rosborn & Folke Schimanski (ed.): Nr hnde vad i Nordens historia (Lund: Historiska Media, 1996).
5c

For a thoroughgoing presentation of the various popular movements and social radicals in Russia in the
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19th century see Franco Venturis Roots of Revolution (1952: New York: The Universal Library/Grosset & Dunlap, 1960).
5d

As regards the Pugachev rebellion, see Puchkins work on the subject, History of the Pugachev Rebellion, vol. XIV of The Complete Works of Alexander Pushkin (Norfolk: Milner and Company, Ltd. 2000).
6

See Alf Kiil: Da boendene seilte; Bygdefarsbrukets historie i Nordlandene (Oslo: Messel, 1993).
7

Gudmund Balvoll & Gunnar Weisaeth (ed.): Christian Gartner: Horticultura (1694: Oslo: Landbruksforlaget, 1994).
8 9

Schning, op. cit., p. 138. Schning, op. cit., 191. My italics.

10

Andreas Holmsen: Fr bonden ble forretningsmann (Oslo/Bergen/Trondheim: Universitetsforlaget, 1982).

11

For an elucidating general overview of the main differences between pre-capitalist market relations and the modern system based on so-called fiat currencies, see Karl Polanyi: The Great Transformation (1944: Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).
12

The principle of confederation is as old as humanity itself, coordinating tribes and communities for ages
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before the nation state and parliamentarianism were even dreamt of. One of the first attempts to theoretically systematize the age old organizational principle was aptly conducted by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon during the mid19th century, when centralized state power was beginning to pose a huge threat to European civilization. See his Du princip federative et de la ncessit de reconstituer le parti de la rvolution, translated into English by Richard Vernon under the title The Principle of Federation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).
13

See Francois Quesnay: Tableu conomique, translated into English under the title The Economic Table (1758: Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2004).
14 15

Kiil, op.cit

K. Sprauten, in A. Tranberg and K. Sprauten: Norsk bondekonomi, 1650-1850 (Oslo: Det norske samlaget, n. d.).
16 17

Sprauten, op. cit., p. 145.

Ove Bjarnar: Boendene moeter nye krav i trelastnaeringa in Eikers Historie, vol. III (Eiker: Eikerminner, n. d.).
18

Gustav Saetra: Markedsoekonomi i Agders Bygder, in Tranberg and Sprauten, op. cit.

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19

See Peter Mikhail Makhno: Crown Whims and Farmers Endurance (Freeport: Nisus Publishing, 2013).
20

Georg Sverdrup: Lofthusbevgelsen (Kristiania: Grndahl & Sons Boktrykkeri, 1917), p. 42.
21 22 23 24 25

Sverdrup, op. cit., p. 249. Koht, op. cit., p. 230. Koht, op. cit. Janson, op. cit., p., 25. Janson, op. cit., p. 175.

26a

For an informative study of these trade routes across the mountains in the pre-industrial era, see Reidar Foenneboe: Nordmannsslepene over Hardangervidda (Oslo: Universitetsorlaget, 1988).
26b

Horrendous examples of this kind of robbery are to be found in local historical accounts from the respective districts, in which the foreign fiefs were positioned by the kings during the early modern era to usurp the commoners traditional resources and exploit their labor in the mining operations.
27

Motzfeldt quoted by Wilhelm Keilhaug: Det norske folks liv og historie gjennem tidene; Tidsrummet 1814 til omkring 1840 (Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co., 1929).
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28

Keilhaug, op. cit., p. 372.

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