Regulating the relationship between master and servant

As such, and as we will also see regarding laws on compulsory service, the legislation portrayed the master–servant relationship as much more than a purely contractual relationship. The master’s responsibility for their servants’ religious education was a palpable expression of this and was sometimes elaborated in the legislation. In an act issued in 1691, the king saw the need – through a particular decree devoted to the issue – to remind masters and parents in the Danish countryside that they had a legal obligation to allow their servants and children to partake in the annual ‘visitation’, in which their knowledge of Christianity would be tested by the church.5 Act of 28 February 1691. In 1746 an act on ‘house discipline’ (Huustugt) was issued in Iceland with the express purpose of furthering knowledge of God as well as advancing peace between parents and children and masters and servants.6 Act of 3 June 1746.

Although the length and level of detail of the 1746 act were unusual, similar demands about servants’ and masters’ duties towards each other were often part of the master–servant laws. We find another example in a decree on policing in the Danish countryside in 1791. The need for such a law, according to the introduction of the ordinance, was to ensure that order was kept in the household so that ‘both masters’ authority over their servants can be enforced and servants can be protected from unjust treatment from the masters’. The act therefore sought to list the ‘the limits on the paternal power and impress on the servants the obedience they owe their masters’.7 Act of 25 March 1791, introduction.

Insubordination was considered to be a valid legal reason to dismiss your servant and was explicitly mentioned in many decrees. It could even lead to the defiant servant being imprisoned.8 Act of 1755, § 5 (Copenhagen, chartered towns in Aggershus region, Bergen); Act of 21 May 1777, § 2 (the Faroe Islands); Act of 25 March 1791, § 14 (countryside Denmark). In the case of Sibilla Christensdatter Hæg we saw how insubordination as a dismissible offence existed in practice and could lead to an actual dismissal in a court of law. However, this case also illustrates how courts interpreted law, here by categorising certain behaviour as insubordination. In my previous research on court cases between masters and servants in Oslo and Copenhagen in the late eighteenth century I found that a large number of different types of behaviour could be subsumed under the heading of disobedience and be judged illegal.9 Østhus, ‘Contested Authority’.

This and other research on legal practice has revealed that breaches of master–servant law did come up in court. Although there is still need for further study, particularly of the seventeenth century and of rural areas, it seems that court cases between masters and servants were most common in urban areas of Denmark–Norway and from the second half of the eighteenth century. Predominantly such cases were concerned with issues related to contract and pay, particularly with illegal dismissal, absconding and unpaid wages. Some also addressed the use of corporal punishment, but only a few dealt with what has been termed the paternalistic side of the master–servant relationship, namely care of sick servants and the facilitation of religious education and church attendance.10 B. Gjerdåker, ‘Om tenarar i Lofoten 1754–1818’, Heimen, 17 (1977), 469–83; K. Ojala, ‘At tjene for kost og løn hos godtfolk i 1700-talets Odense’, Fynske årbøger (2005), 28–38; K. Ojala, ‘Opportunity or Compulsion? Domestic Servants in Urban Communities in the Eighteenth Century’, in P. Karonen (ed.), Hopes and Fears for the Future in Early Modern Sweden, 1500–1800 (Helsinki, 2009), pp. 206–22; Faye Jacobsen, Husbondret; Østhus, ‘Contested Authority’. Master–servant law, then, was enforced, but with substantial geographical variations and differences when it came to types of offence. Strict laws were tempered by pragmatism, where the authorities often tried to reconcile the feuding parties, which again was in line with the general practice in Nordic courts at the time.11 S. Sogner, ‘Conclusion: The Nordic Model’, in E. Österberg and S. Sogner (eds), People Meet the Law. Control and Conflict-Handling in the Courts (Oslo, 2000), pp. 271–3.

If we leave legal practice and return to what is the main focus of this chapter, servant legislation, we find substantial changes over time when it came to laws on the relationship between master and servant. While the sixteenth century had few legal regulations on this,12 148/6 (1560, on the Hanseatic community in Bergen); 167/30–31 (1562, concerned with crown land, aristocracy and towns); 343/32 (1575, areas of Marstrand and Viken). Found in Winge, Lover og forordninger. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the number of legal clauses and decrees on one or more of these issues grew.13 For example, DL 3-19, NL 3-21, Act of 3 June 1746 (Iceland); Act of 9 August 1754 (Norway), Act of 3 December 1755 (Copenhagen, from 1776 extended to all towns in Aggershus county and Bergen); Act of 21 May 1777, § 2 (Faroe Islands). This reflected a general trend in which an increasingly ambitious state sought to control more and more aspects of society. With regard to the master–servant relationship this meant not only a growing number of more detailed decrees and acts but also that the legislation laid out how the state, through various officials and the police, should solve conflicts between masters and servants.14 Act of 22 October 1701, chapter III, § 6 (Copenhagen); Act of 24 March 1741, §1 and 2 (Copenhagen); Act of 9 August 1754, § 14; Act of Act of 3 December 1755, § 22 and 23 (Copenhagen etc.); Act of 7 August 1776, § 25 (Bergen); Act of 21 May 1777, § 6 (the Faroe Islands); Act of 8 December 1769 (Trondheim); Act of 25 March 1791, § 20–32 (Danish countryside). This, of course, also meant that they could interfere in the relationship between masters and servants.