Agricultural growth in a cold climate: the case of Iceland in 1800–1850

ABSTRACT

During the first half of the nineteenth-century Iceland experienced a steady increase in exports. New products were sought after for export by Danish merchants and the peasant farming community responded by increasing the production of the relevant products. The whole period from 1800 to 1850 saw a continuing increase in the exports of sheep products and shark liver oil, which had a common origin in peasant farming production. This period contrasts with the eighteenth century when there was no corresponding growth in exports. The level of exports in the eighteenth century remained overall much the same except during periods of dearth, when it fell. Traditionally the beginning of the modernisation of Icelandic society is dated to around 1880–1910. However, it could be argued that increasing exports of sheep products and shark liver oil after 1800 saw a clear break with the eighteenth-century pattern and that the period should be taken into consideration as being the origin period of economic modernisation in Iceland. This article discusses questions the exclusion not only of the role of peasant farming in the modernisation narrative of Iceland, but also of the Copenhagen merchant houses that organised the goods export from Iceland after 1800.

KEYWORDS:

• Iceland
• agricultural history
• agricultural growth

Acknowledgements

The writing of this article is partly based on research supported by RANNÍS, the Icelandic Research Council, and Riksbankens jubileumsfond in Sweden, in the MYSEAC and ICECHANGE projects. I wish to express the warmest gratitude to my fellow researchers in these projects, Steve Hartman, Megan Hicks, Viðar Hreinsson, Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, Astrid Ogilvie and Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir for all their help, companionship and inspiration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The prices had been skewed in order to keep grain, other foodstuffs, salt and tare cheap, while luxury goods were dearer. In 1776 this was changed to market prices in Copenhagen, so the foodstuff became dearer while the luxury goods fell in price. For export goods the price of fish and fish oil more than doubled, while the price of sheep products did also rise but not as much.

2 Besides those preserved from the firm of Ørum & Wulff for Djúpivogur, where the books begin in 1835, until about 1850 books from Ísafjörður, Akureyri, Skagaströnd and Reykjavík are available. Trade books are preserved for the period 1800–1850 from Ísafjörður – Clausen from 1846, Sassverslun from 1824, Busch & Paus from 1804, Benedictsen from 1835. From Reykjavík the books of Thomsensverzlun are preserved beginning in 1839. For Skagaströnd there are the books of Gísli Símonarson beginning in 1825 and of the Jacobsensverslun from 1837. From Akureyri the books of the Thyrrestrupsverslun beginning in 1823 are preserved. All of this material is preserved in the National Archives of Iceland (Trade books 1800–1850). For Akureyri the books for the Gudmannsverzlun are preserved in the Municipal Archives from 1800 (Gudmannsverzlun). A sizeable inventory of material is thus available for the analysis of peasant farming trade for many areas in the first half of the nineteenth century.