Compulsory service and labour legislation in preindustrial Iceland

Compulsory service was thus the primary form of labour management from the medieval era until the turn of the twentieth century, when restrictions on free labour and settlement were gradually lifted amid intense popular debate and significant economic and social changes.6 Vilhelmsson, ‘Siðspillandi lögbrot’; Magnús S. Magnússon, Iceland in Transition: Labour and Socio-Economic Change Before 1940 (Lund, 1985). Icelandic society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was almost entirely a rural farming community with the household serving as the fundamental economic unit and site of production. The economy consisted primarily of pastoral farming (raising livestock) at a low technological level.7 Guðmundur Jónsson, ‘Institutional Change in Icelandic Agriculture, 1780–1940’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 41 (1993), 101–28; Magnússon, Wasteland with Words, pp. 18–32. Between 90 and 95 per cent of peasants in the early eighteenth century were tenants on modest plots of land and tenancy remained the norm throughout the nineteenth century, although the level of owner-occupancy gradually increased.8 Jónsson, ‘Institutional Change’, 109–23.

Labour power accessible throughout the year for a modest price (such as live-in servants) was essential to this near-subsistence pastoral economy. It was calculated in the late eighteenth century that the average-sized farming household needed at least three male farmhands and three maidservants in order to perform all of the labour such a household required. The author added, however, that due to poverty and labour scarcity most peasants tried to make do with fewer servants.9 Skúli Magnússon, ‘Sveitabóndi’, Rit þess íslenzka lærdómslistafélags, 4 (1783), 137–207, here at 147 and 171. Indeed, labour shortage and the proclivity of workers to make a living independently as day labourers in spite of the law, earning higher wages but living with less material security, was a matter of constant complaint in the early modern era.10 See discussion and citations in Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir, A Tale of a Fool? A Microhistory of an 18th-Century Peasant Woman (London, 2019), pp. 58ff. The increasingly stringent laws on compulsory service were in part meant to rectify this problem, amongst several other social concerns.11 The purpose and context of labour legislation and its evolution in early modern Iceland is of course a more complex matter where many factors were involved, including the importance of service for the socialization of youth, the cultural role of the master–servant relationship and the general economic policy of the Danish royal state. For a nuanced and informed discussion see Hrefna Róbertsdóttir, Wool and Society: Manufacturing Policy, Economic Thought and Local Production in 18th-Century Iceland (Gothenburg, 2008), pp. 157–69. One of the aims of labour legislation was thus to enable an equitable redistribution of the workforce, evidenced for example by a decree from 1746 prohibiting peasants from keeping more than two children of working age at home.12 Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, II, p. 612. An analysis of census records from six parishes in northern Iceland in the early nineteenth century shows that the proportion of households with servants ranged from 45 per cent up to 84 per cent, most of which had only one or two servants.13 Manntal á Íslandi 1801: Norður- og austuramt (Reykjavík, 1980); Manntal á Íslandi 1816, vol. 5 (Reykjavík, 1973). The parishes analysed were: Staðarbakka- and Efranúpssókn, Melstaðarsókn, Víðidalstungusókn, Undirfellssókn, Holtastaðasókn and Höskuldsstaðasókn. In most regions there were also a couple of larger manorial estates, occupied by wealthy upper officials and the land-owning elite, which employed greater numbers of servants and farmhands doing more specialised tasks, although the manorial economy had been in long-term decline in terms of both size and number of estates since the sixteenth century, a process which accelerated from the late eighteenth century onwards.14 Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Landbúnaðarsaga Íslands, vol. 2 (Reykjavík, 2013), pp. 14–18.

As several historians have argued, social stratification in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iceland was minimal in comparison to other European countries. For the most part peasants and servants belonged to the same social class, commonly worked side by side, ate the same food, lived within the same single-room turf cottages and generally shared the same life experience.15 Loftur Guttormsson, Childhood, Youth and Upbringing in the Age of Absolutism: An Exercise in Socio-Demographic Analysis (Reykjavík, 2017), pp. 276ff.; Guðmundur Hálfdanarson, ‘Social Distinctions and National Unity: On Politics of Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Iceland’, History of European Ideas, 21 (1995), 768–70; Jónsson, ‘Institutional Change’, 103. There was also significant social mobility, where individuals would move back and forth between independence as tenant farmers and periods working as servants.16 Gunnlaugsson, Family and Household, p. 61. Life-cycle service was the perceived norm, however. It was the general expectation that all youths, except perhaps for the children of state officials and the land-owning elite, would spend some years as servants before marrying and becoming part of the peasantry.17 Hálfdanarson, ‘Social Distinctions’, 768–70. Studies have shown that around 80 per cent of servants in Iceland became peasants themselves at some later date, although Icelanders seem generally to have remained servants much longer than in the other Nordic countries, and as much as 10 per cent of males and 20 per cent of women ended up as lifetime servants because they never married.18 Júlíusson, Landbúnaðarsaga Íslands, vol. 2, p. 50; Loftur Guttormsson, ‘Il servizio come istituzione sociale in Islanda e nei paesi nordici’, Quaderni Storici, 23 (1988), 355–79.

Despite the relative egalitarianism of Icelandic society the labour system in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iceland nonetheless had a high degree of legal compulsion and physical coercion. All persons (with only a few exceptions) above a certain age who did not run their own household were required by law to become servants in legal households. They were subject to the authority of their masters who, until 1866, had the right to physically punish disobedient or insolent servants. A decree from 1783 placed the power (and responsibility) of labour management more firmly in the hands of district commissioners and county magistrates, who were now required not only to stringently enforce compulsory service but also to procure for those who were unable to do so themselves a place in service or a farmstead to rent.19 Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, IV, pp. 683–6. This highlights the fact that compulsory service in Iceland, as in several other countries in north-west Europe, was not only a matter of regulating labour but also one of moral and social order and was entwined with legislation on matters such as vagrancy, settlement and poor relief.20 Lis and Soly, Worthy Efforts, pp. 444–6; Raffaella Sarti, ‘Freedom and Citizenship? The Legal Status of Servants and Domestic Workers in a Comparative Perspective (16th to 20th century)’, in Suzy Pasleau and Isabelle Schopp (eds), Proceedings of the Servant Project, vol. 3 (Liège, 2006), pp. 134–7; Østhus, ‘Contested Authority’, p. 88; Carolyn Steedman, ‘Lord Mansfield’s Women’, Past and Present, 176 (2002), pp. 114ff. Numerous examples in court archives illustrate this, such as when magistrates or district commissioners forced peasants to take vagrants in as servants or forbade peasants to get rid of troublesome servants who would then become wards of the commune.21 See examples and further discussion in Vilhelmsson, Sjálfstætt fólk, pp. 111, 159–62, 201ff. In lieu of poorhouses or other such solutions, annual service within established households thus remained an important measure against homelessness and similar social problems in nineteenth-century Iceland.22 Gísli Ágúst Gunnlaugsson, ‘The Poor Laws and the Family in 19th Century Iceland’, in John Rogers and Hans Norman (eds), The Nordic Family: Perspectives on Family Research (Uppsala, 1985), pp. 16–42.

Legally speaking, landless adults in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iceland had little choice but to become servants. In practice, however, the entire system was more flexible, as some managed through a variety of evasive tactics to avoid service for extended periods and work instead as casual labourers on the margins of the law.23 Vilhelm Vilhelmsson, ‘Tactics of Evasion: The Survival Strategies of Vagrants and Day Labourers in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rural Iceland’, 1700-tal: Nordic Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 17 (2020), 34–56; Vilhelmsson, ‘Ett normalt undantag?’ 32–40. The majority of labourers, however, probably entered service as the law required. As servants they were subject to regulations on master–servant relations as proscribed in a decree on domestic discipline from 1746. A part of a series of reform decrees inspired by the ideology of the Pietist movement influential in Denmark at the time, the decree was to instigate a general moral reform of households based on the Lutheran values of industriousness, obedience and submission to patriarchal authority.24 Guttormsson, Childhood, pp. 81–3. On pietism and its influence, see Thomas Munck, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History 1721–1794 (London, 2000), pp. 52, 169. The decree ordered that servants should work ‘with utmost devotion and loyalty for their master’s benefit and respond to any orders they are given with submission and obedience’. It also proscribed a number of rights and duties, including the right of masters to physically punish their servants for any oversight ‘in the same manner as their own children’. Masters were in turn required to treat their servants fairly, feed and clothe them properly, avoid overburdening them with work and provide them with spare time to practise their Christian duties.25 Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, II, pp. 605–20. Citations are from p. 613. The decree was superseded by legislation on master–servant relations in 1866. While the new law removed the legal right of masters to physically punish servants above the age of sixteen it retained the prescriptions on servant submission and obedience, allowing masters to rescind contracts with servants who violated household discipline.26 Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, XIX, pp. 383–95. They would then be treated as vagrants according to the law unless they were at least twenty-five years old and able to purchase a licence to work as casual labourers for a fee, which amounted to a year’s wages.27 Vilhelmsson, ‘Siðspillandi lögbrot’, pp. 181–3; Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, XVIII, pp. 544–53. The legal requirement for youthful and landless people to become servants thus remained in full force until the end of the nineteenth century, when further changes were made to the law.

Other legislation directly impacted the everyday life of many servants. Household discipline from the mid-eighteenth century onwards was subject to regular inspection by the parish clergy, who were in turn required to report unruly servants to the authorities.28 Guttormsson, Childhood, pp. 107ff; Vilhelmsson, Sjálfstætt fólk, pp. 62–4, 69. The decree is in Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, II, pp. 566–78. A decree on marriage from 1746 dictated that unwed parents should be forcibly separated and forbidden to live in the same parish in order to put an end to ‘scandalous’ living arrangements, leading many unwed servants to concoct schemes to be able to remain with their partners and their children.29 Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, II, pp. 600–5. Pertinent examples can be found in Vilhelmsson, Sjálfstætt fólk, pp. 11–12, 160–1, 211–20. The particular nature of the master–servant relationship also served to add a degree of severity to any crimes committed by servants within the boundaries of that relationship. Thus a decree from 1789 proscribed additional punishment for servants guilty of theft from their masters, towards whom they ‘owed special loyalty and care’, as it was phrased in the revised criminal code of 1840.30 Sigurðsson and Stephensen, Lovsamling for Island, V, p. 577; ibid., XI, p. 544.

The special loyalty that servants owed to their masters refers to the role of service in the socialisation of youths and in regulating the morals of peasant society through clearly defined duties and responsibilities, and thereby maintaining social order.31 On ‘moral regulation’ as a subject of analysis in social history see Alan Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge, 1999). This view was perfectly described by MP and later bishop Pétur Pétursson (1808–1891), who argued vehemently in defence of compulsory service in a speech in 1861 on the grounds that it served as a ‘moral contract’ within which the subservient learned to obey and respect their superiors while the latter took to heart the responsibilities which their status entailed, thereby reinforcing social order and harmony.32 Tíðindi frá alþingi Íslendinga 1861, pp. 1127–8. The master–servant relationship was thus defined by law as a moral relationship which encapsulated dominant ideas of social hierarchy and discipline, and was perceived and understood as such by contemporaries who wrote numerous treatises on the matter.33 Some notable ones include Magnús Stephensen, Ræður Hjálmars á Bargi fyrir börnum sínum um fremd, kosti og annmarka allra stétta, og um þeirra almennustu gjöld og tekjur (Reykjavík, 1820/1999), pp. 72–6; Bjarni Einarsson, ‘Um dyggð og elsku þjónustufólks og hvernig henni verði náð’, Rit þess íslenzka lærdómslistafélags, 5 (1784), 33–65; n.a., ‘Um hússtjórn á Íslandi’, Ársritið Húnvetningur, 1 (1857), 29–48; [Baldvin Einarsson], Ármann á alþingi, eða almennur fundur Íslendinga, 1 (1829), 13–95. This paternalistic view of the master–servant relationship dominated public discourse in Iceland until the final decades of the nineteenth century, even though the same authors continually chastised servants for their insolence and peasants for their disregard of their paternal duties. These everyday practices and experiences are the subject of the remainder of this chapter.