ABSTRACT: This article shows the changing household composition of an Icelandic rural community of isolated dispersed farms as it shifted from nineteenth century tenant farmers who raised mixed herds of sheep, dairy cattle, and horses for their own subsistence to twentieth-century freeholders who produce livestock foodstuffs for a domestic market. The farm population of the community reached its highest level under the subsistence economy with households of nuclear families and contracted live-in servants. The farmers' children replaced the live-in servants at the end of the nineteenth century as opportunities for wage labor opened up in nearby fishing settlements. Extended families became common in the community. After World War II, tenant farmers have become freeholders, the farm households are both extended families with adult children remaining on the farms and nuclear families who still retain the services of adult children who moved away as livestock owners. A range of household structures has emerged as the homogeneous Icelandic rural community has persisted.
References
1.
AnnandaleNelson. 1905. The Faroes and Iceland. Oxford: Clarendon.
2.
BjörkvikHalvard. 1956. “The farm territories II.” The Scandinavian Economic History Review4 (1):33–61.
BjörnssonLydur. 1972. Saga sveitrastjórnar á Íslandi (History of Rural Government in Iceland). Reykjavik: Almenna Bokafelagid.
5.
BurtonRichard. 1875. Ultima Thule; or A Summer in Iceland. Vols. I and II. London: William P. Ninmo.
6.
ChadwickH. Munro. 1905. Anglo-Saxon Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7.
DrakeMichael. 1969. Population and Society in Norway 1735–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8.
GauntDavid. 1977. “Pre-industrial economy and population structure.” Scandinavian Journal of History2:183–183.
9.
GauntDavid. 1978. “Household typology: problems, methods, results.” Pp. 69–83 in Chance and Change: Social and Economic Studies in Historical Demography in the Baltic Area, Edited by AckermanSuneJohansenJ.GauntD.. Odense: Odense University Press.
10.
GauntDavid. 1987. “Rural household organization and inheritance in northern Europe.” Journal of Family History12: 121–141.
11.
GillAnn Pinson. 1978. Transhumance and ecology: A Study of Changing Patterns of Economic Activity and Continuities in Social Organization in a Rural Icelandic Township. Unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation. Stony Brook, New York: State University of New York.
12.
GjersetKnut. 1915. A History of the Norwegian Speaking Peoples. New York: Macmillian.
13.
GudbjartssonGunnar. 1972–1973. “Landnýting og skipulag landbúnadurframleidslu” (“Land use and changes in agriculture”). Árbók, Landbúnadarins, 1972–1973. Reykjavik.
14.
GunnarssonGisli. 1983. Monopoly Trade and Economic Stagnation. Studies in the Foreign Trade of Iceland 1602–1787. Lund: Skrifter Utgivna av Eknonomisk-Historiska Foreningen.
15.
GunnlaugssonGisli Agust. 1988. Family and Household in Iceland 1801–1930. Studies in the Relationship Between Demographic and Socio-economic Development, Social Legislation and Family and Household Structures. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.
16.
HabakkukH.J.1972. Population Growth and Economic Development since 1750. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
17.
HajnalJ.1965. “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective.” Pp. 101–143 in Population in history, Edited by GlassD.V.EversleyD.E.C.. Chicago: Aldine.
18.
Harshberger, JohnW.1924. “The Gardens of the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland.” The Geographical Review13:404–404.
19.
HattGudumud. 1953. “Early Intrusion of Agriculture in the North Altantic Subarctic Region.” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska2 (1): 51–107.
20.
Hermanns-AudardottirMargret. 1989. Islands Tidiga Bosättning (The Early Settlement of Iceland). Lund, Sweden: Umea Universitet Arkeologiska Institutionen.
21.
HermanssonHalldor. 1928. Sir Joseph Banks and Iceland. Islandica 18. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Library.
22.
HookerWilliam Jackson. 1813. Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809. Vols. I and II. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
23.
Hopkins, DonaldR.1983. Princes and Peasants: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
24.
HuftonOlwen. 1975. “Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-century France.” French Historical Studies9:1–1.
25.
JacksonE.L.1982. “The Laki Eruption of 1783: Impacts on Population and Settlement in Iceland.” Geography (I)294:42–42.
26.
Jarda-og Buendatal i Skagafjardarsyslu1781–1958 (List of Farms and Farmers in Skagafjord). 1959. Akureyri, Iceland: Sogufelag Skagfirdinga.
27.
JóhannesonJón. 1974. A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth. University of Manitoba Press.
28.
JónassonJónas. 1961. Islenzkir Pjodhaettir (Icelandic Folk Customs). Reykjavik, Iceland: Isafoldarprentsmidja.
29.
KjartanssonHelgi Skuli. 1977. “The Onset of Emigration from Iceland.” American Studies in Scandinavia9:87–87.
30.
LarussonBjorn. 1967. The Old Iceland Land Registers. Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup.
31.
LaslettPeter. 1983. “Foreword.” Pp. vii–xii in The European Family, by MitterauerM.SiederR.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
32.
Laslett,PeterWallRichard, eds. 1972. Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
MagnussonGisli. 1970. Sala Hólastólsjarda í Skagafirdi, 1802 (Sale of Lands Owned by the Bishop of Holar in Skagafjord). BA thesis. University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
34.
Magnusson, MagnusS.1985. Iceland in Transition: Labour and Socio-economic Change before 1940. Lund: Skrifter utgivna av Ekonomisk-Historiska Foreningen.
35.
Mitterauer,MichaelSiederReinhard. 1982. The European Family: Patriarchy to Partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
36.
NairGwyneth. 1988. Highley. New York: Basil Blackwell.
37.
Nordal,JohannesKristinssonVladimir. 1975. Iceland 874–1974. Reykjavik: Central Bank of Iceland.
38.
OlafssonEggertPálssonBjarni. 1805. Travels in Iceland Performed 1752–1757 by Order of his Danish Majesty, Containing Observations on the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants, a Description of the Lakes, Rivers, Glaciers, Hot-springs and Volcanoes; of the Various Kinds of Earths, Stones, Fossils and Petrifactions; as well as of the Animals, Insects, Fishes & c. Translated from the Danish. Revised English edition, Bokutgafan Orn of Orlygur, 1975.
39.
PinsonAnn. 1983. “The Changing Form of Herding Organization in Rural Iceland.” Pp. 57–72 in The Keeping of Animals: Adaptation and Social Relations in Livestock-producing Communities, Edited by Berleant-SchillerR.. New Jersey: Allenheld and Osmund.
40.
PinsonAnn. 1985. “Temperance, Prohibition, and Politics in Nineteenth Century Iceland.” Contemporary Drug Problems Vol. 12:249–266.
