Hvem styrte de nordiske byene ca. 1500–1800?
Authors: Dørum Knut 
Published: January 2023

Who governed the Nordic towns in c. 1500–1800?

This book examines the political economy in Norway, Denmark (including the German-speaking provinces under Danish rule), Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic provinces that belonged to the Swedish Crown in the early modern period. It explores not only the institutions and people that governed or dominated the small and medium-sized towns in this northern region, but also seeks to detect how various types of towns functioned in terms of government and division of power and wealth. This book is inspired by the pivotal studies of Finn-Einar Eliassen in the late 1990s concerning the progression of family dynasties in ruling several small towns in Norway from c. 1600–1800. Eliassen maintained that ownership of the very ground upon which the town was built came to define a privatized lordship, not only in Norway but also in various peripheries in central and northern Europe. The long distances to the central government, along with growth in international trade and transnational commerce networks across the oceans, laid the foundation for what he has coined ‘small town feudalism’. The families who owned the town area took advantage of having the means to determine which individuals and families were permitted to establish themselves as merchants in the lucrative timber trade. As landlords they could refuse to rent out parcels of land attached to the houses in the town, thus rejecting unwanted competitors, and in this way, they were able to reserve the major share of trade and industry for themselves. This also implied the opportunity to establish patron-client relationships with many of the inhabitants and a dominant role in political and social affairs as well.

The studies presented in our book show that ownership of the town area does not seem to be the key element in relation to the control or domination of a town and its hinterlands. This is in opposition to Eliassen’s model. We assert that the main fundament in privatized monopoly towns lay in the establishment of social networks, the ownership of strategic land estates in connection with trade, industry and transport, and, above all, controlling the credit system that bound, the peasants and other social groups to supply their masters with labour, lumber, agricultural products, and so on. This applies in particular to the small towns of Norway, where the emergence of privatized monopoly towns became most prevalent. Yet the power that the family dynasties exerted seems to have been limited when their tenants in the town transferred the right of renting and utilizing the land attached to their houses in connection with house sales. That implied the practice of permanent tenancy, allowing the tenant to sell his or her right to rent and use the parcel of land in the town. Furthermore, in the most privatized towns in Norway, the landlords had to let in competitors and tended to have a restricted capacity in regard to political authority and economic domination. In addition, their power basis turned out to be unstable and fragile. A scandal, several shipwrecks or money problems could ruin and tear down the ‘matador’ of a town.

The many towns of the Nordic countries came under the strong influence of state government or larger networks of elites. However, in certain periods and situations, conditions allowed family dynasties or an exclusive elite throughout the Nordic countries to dominate the politics and business of the town to a great extent, regardless of the ownership of the land. This was more likely to happen in areas far from the great merchant companies and their privileges in the capital cities and larger towns, or far from the reach of the bureaucratic, centralized state. A peculiar phenomenon is the ‘company town’ – related to mining, shipyards and other industries – which could be found in all countries, especially in connection with mining in Sweden and Norway. Mining towns rose to be the most monopolized urban sites – either as state-run or private company towns. The company monitored all administrative, judicial and economic functions in the urban site. The tendencies of town feudalism in terms of family dynasties or the domination of elites must be seen as a consequence of a patrimonial society, based on personal ties between patrons and clients including strong social networks that rested upon marriage, kinship, political and economic friendship, and alliances.