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Abstract
The article presents a comparative study of two stem-family European systems: on the one hand, the well-known central Pyrenean family as found in the Barony of Esparros, and, on the other hand, the one prevalent in highland farms of South-East Norway. In the two communities, the continuity of the “house” was maintained over generations through non-egalitarian practices of transmission to a privileged heir or heiress. Other siblings received compensations or stayed at home unmarried. Comparing long-term mechanisms of the Norwegian odal farm and of the Pyrenean house permits identification of similar strategies of co-residence and more-or-less controlled family reproduction through choice of marriage partner and regulated fertility. These mountainous rural communities developed efficient responses to preindustrial and early-industrial demographic changes, facing and absorbing demographic growth and transition. They had to open to new markets, new techniques of production and exploitation of natural environment – particularly the forest – and adapt to social and legislative change. In both agro-pastoral systems, population pressure created a large group of landless or semi-landless families-cottars, day labourers or servants-whose reproduction strategies (age at marriage and fertility rates) diverged from those of the owners of land.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Solvi Sogner for her generous collaboration and encouragement, and for helping to bring about extensive discussions and fruitful comments from Norwegian historians on a draft of this article at a session of The Norwegian Historical Association, Oslo, 29th June 2002. She also allowed me to include later additional information from the large machine-readable Rendalen database, and provided comments on recent findings. I also warmly thank Hans Henrik Bull who gave me access to his Ph.D. dissertation for the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, entitled “Marriage decisions in a peasant society: The role of the family of origin in the choice by adult children of marriage partners and in the timing of their marriages in Rendalen, Norway, 1750–1900” (2006).
Notes
1 The international working group convened to analyze European stem-family patterns associated researchers from all over the world within the framework of the EurAsian Project, initiated and directed by Professor Akira Hayami during the period 1995–1999. The purpose of the first Conference, hold in Nichibunken in September 1997, was to examine various hypotheses about the stem family and to discuss empirical evidence from different areas of Europe and Asia. Emiko Ochiai and A. Fauve-Chamoux were responsible for a session on the subject at the XIIth International Congress of Economic History in Madrid, Spain, in summer 1998. These two meetings were good occasions for historians from all over the world to explore comparative efforts (Fauve-Chamoux & Ochiai, Citation1998; Fauve-Chamoux, Citation2005; Ochiai, Citation2003). Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux and Solvi Sogner presented the first results of a comparative study of France and Norway in March 2002, at University of Lugano (Switzerland).
2 The Pyrenean Baronies Project was initiated in 1975, within the frame of a large two-year interdisciplinary CNRS grant (1975–76) for the anthropologic history of the Baronies region (Chiva & Goy, Citation1981, Citation1986). A general family reconstitution was later conducted by Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux using the Esparros parish registers and civil registration sources from 1660 to 1914 (longitudinal individual and family studies) and with the assistance of the Centre de Recherches Historiques, EHESS, Paris. A database is under construction for Esparros.+Nominative censuses were available every five years from 1846 on. Cadastres and tax lists provided further information on family properties and economic status. For an earlier monograph on Esparros, no notarial records were collected, but the history of each patrimonial property was retraced thanks to the three cadastral surveys of 1663, 1773 and 1826. Finally, for each “house”, family structures and modes of intergenerational co-residence were noted as they appeared in the five-yearly nominative censuses for the period 1846 to 1911 and these results were compared with other sources. The demographic analysis was conducted for the period 1792–1911. Particular attention was given to the early fertility transition in this community of the Pyrenean Baronies (Fauve-Chamoux, Citation1984, Citation1987).
3 Bourg-de-Bigorre is used here as replacement of Esparros, since the nominative listing for Esparros has disappeared.
4 Abstinence was mentioned by old Esparros women as a common way of stopping pregnancies in the Baronies and controlling family size, and breastfeeding as a way to delay them, during interviews conducted in 1976 by Fauve-Chamoux.
6 See CitationSolli (1995), pp. 84–89. The censuses of 1865 and 1900 are now electronically readable, opening up possibilities for further research.
7 Hedmark (where Rendalen is situated), Oppland, Rogaland, Sogn og Fjordane, Møre og Romsdal.
8 Nordland, Troms og Finnmark, Nord-Trøndelag, Telemark, Østfold, Vestfold.