Masculine responsibility across generations: living arrangements in a Norwegian parish around 1900

Abstract

This article researches living arrangements longitudinally on the basis of census materials and church records from around 1900 in a Norwegian parish. We are interested in patterns of obligations and expectations between generations, and to what extent these were related to rules of inheritance practices. We hypothesize that the parity of children co-residing with elderly fathers in the census reflects expectations and attitudes towards filial responsibility. Based on linking the census records of elderly fathers to their fertility history in the church records, the article indicates that traditions in the circumpolar north differed from the usual practice of primogeniture among countries in the Germanic cultural area, including most of Norway. Irrespective of the father’s marital status, the majority of children living with their elderly fathers were sons. One important reason for this is the masculine character of the fisheries, where the transfer of knowledge from father to son was crucial for successful economic results, thus promoting masculine obligations across generations, strong enough to have a significant effect upon living arrangements.

Keywords:

• Masculinity
• inheritance
• gender contracts
• co-residence
• ethnicity
• fishery
• Norway

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Allodium: Old Norse ‘odal’, old High German ‘oudal’, old Saxon ‘odil’.

2. The system resembles the southern European norm previously described by Reher (1998) arguing that if familial care and generational responsibility were anchored as a cultural norm, a contract was optional – as is the case in southern Europe. A more detailed analysis of retirement contracts is scheduled for the future.

3. Cf. census instructions at http://rhd.uit.no/nhdc/census.html.