The history of the city of Trondheim

Abstract

The study of ‘local history’ i.e. the history of particular towns and rural districts, has been much in vogue in Norway in the last twenty or thirty years and has produced some valuable results of significance for more general history. The initiative in studies of this kind, as well as the burden of financing them, has usually been assumed by the communities themselves, and it is natural that the purely local interest in particular events, institutions, and persons has had to be emphasized more than might be desirable from a more comprehensive point of view. Apart from this obvious limitation, there is a good case to be made for the study of social history in particular at the level of relatively small communities. The limited material and scope of such studies make it possible to go into greater detail in the analysis of social relations within the unit under observation and, equally important, to see a relatively complete social system functioning as a whole. When a series of such studies has been made, a basis is then provided for comparisons and generalizations which cover a larger national society.