Books by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
Moving Workers: Historical Perspectives on Labour, Coercion and Im/Mobilities
This book explores how workers moved and were moved, why they moved, and how they were kept from ... more This book explores how workers moved and were moved, why they moved, and how they were kept from moving. Combining global labour history with mobility studies, it investigates moving workers through the lens of coercion.
The contributions in this book are based on extensive archival research and span Europe and North America over the past 500 years. They provide fresh historical perspectives on the various regimes of coercion, mobility, and immobility as constituent parts of the political economy of labour.
Moving Workers shows that all struggles relating to the mobility of workers or its restriction have the potential to reveal complex configurations of hierarchies, dependencies, and diverging conceptions of work and labour relations that continuously make and remake our world.
Vinnuhjú strjúka úr vist sinni vegna sultar og illrar meðferðar. Hjón skilja sökum ósamlyndis og ... more Vinnuhjú strjúka úr vist sinni vegna sultar og illrar meðferðar. Hjón skilja sökum ósamlyndis og framhjáhalds. Nágrannar kíta um jarðamörk og hvalreka. Jarðeigandi kallar leiguliða sinn ambátt og hlýtur svívirðingar fyrir. Þetta er meðal þess efnis sem finna má í sáttabók Miðfjarðarumdæmis frá árunum 1799–1865. Bókin veitir merkilega innsýn í líf og hagi alþýðufólks á Íslandi á nítjándu öld. Þar birtast leiðir almennings til þess að leysa úr ágreiningsmálum og um leið halda friðinn í nærumhverfi sínu án þess að leita á náðir dómstóla.
English title: Independent People: Compulsory Service and Icelandic Society in the 19th Century
... more English title: Independent People: Compulsory Service and Icelandic Society in the 19th Century
English summary in pdf
Journal articles by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
Ritið, 2024
Introduction to special issue of Icelandic humanities journal Ritið on the theme "Recent research... more Introduction to special issue of Icelandic humanities journal Ritið on the theme "Recent research in labour history"
Scandinavian Journal of History, 2023
This introduction discusses the constitutive role played by various practices of coercion within ... more This introduction discusses the constitutive role played by various practices of coercion within a range of labour relations across the Nordic region in the early modern period. In recent years a growing body of international literature has worked to re-conceptualize histories of labour coercion. Current trends in global labour history have emphasized the interrelational nature of labour regimes, eschewing traditional boundaries of free and unfree labour, productive and unproductive labour, wage labour and unpaid labour, and focused rather on the entangled history of labour and coercion in its various guises. Based on a critical discussion of the teleological frameworks and essentialized analytical categories that have largely characterized the historiography of labour in many of the Nordic countries, we argue for shifting the focus of attention to study the actual practices of labour and coercion in order to establish a more inclusive, contextual and historicized historiography of Nordic labour.
Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2023
This article deals with the recent developments of labour history in and about the Nordic countri... more This article deals with the recent developments of labour history in and about the Nordic countries. We identify patterns, problems and possibilities in these recent developments in the fieldroughly within the last two decades. Our main source of analysis is the research presented and exchanged in the Nordic labour history journals, the Nordic Labour History Network, the labour history associations, the archives and libraries. We relate current trends to developments in European and Global labour history. We claim that the revival and expansion of Nordic labour history must also be understood through its exchange with labour history outside the Nordic sphere and with other disciplines and research fields. The expansion of the field occurred through increased attention and sensitivity to the specificities of various forms of labour, the lived lives of those who work, the places in which work takes place, the various ways in which workers form collective practices and structures, and how they understand themselves in relation to as well as within and outside the parties and institutions that organise and claim to represent workers and labour interests.
Scandinavian Journal of History, 2023
The historiography of labour in pre-industrial Iceland has commonly portrayed it first and foremo... more The historiography of labour in pre-industrial Iceland has commonly portrayed it first and foremost as life-cycle service in rural households and has suggested that, in a European context, the Icelandic system of compulsory service – or vistarband – was exceptionally harsh due to its broad scope and inflexibility. This approach has been built primarily on demographics and a normative analysis of legal sources. Less attention has been paid to the everyday practices of workers and their employers (or the state) as they manoeuvred within and around the labour legislation to establish working relationships to make ends meet. Similarly, ambiguities within the legislation and discrepancies between law and practice have rarely been explored, nor has people’s understanding of the principal concepts of the labour laws, concepts such as ‘household’, ‘farm’ and ‘servant’, been scrutinized. This article invokes such questions and provides a microhistorical analysis of two court cases which illustrate the nuances and ambiguities of putting such a broad-reaching set of regulations into practice in a pre-industrial rural setting.
Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2023
This article deals with the recent developments of labour history in and about the Nordic countri... more This article deals with the recent developments of labour history in and about the Nordic countries. We identify patterns, problems and possibilities in these recent developments in the fieldroughly within the last two decades. Our main source of analysis is the research presented and exchanged in the Nordic labour history journals, the Nordic Labour History Network, the labour history associations, the archives and libraries. We relate current trends to developments in European and Global labour history. We claim that the revival and expansion of Nordic labour history must also be understood through its exchange with labour history outside the Nordic sphere and with other disciplines and research fields. The expansion of the field occurred through increased attention and sensitivity to the specificities of various forms of labour, the lived lives of those who work, the places in which work takes place, the various ways in which workers form collective practices and structures, and how they understand themselves in relation to as well as within and outside the parties and institutions that organise and claim to represent workers and labour interests.
Skírnir, 2021
This article contains a study of seal hunting and seal hunting rights around Húnaflói bay in nort... more This article contains a study of seal hunting and seal hunting rights around Húnaflói bay in northern Iceland from the early 18th to the early 20th century. It argues that seal hunting gradually changed from hunting mostly for household consumption on many farms scattered around the bay to a market-based hunting from fewer but more productive seal hunting areas, seeking primarily seal fur for export.
Saga, 2015
Review article on historical exhibition in Safnahúsið in Reykjavík, Iceland. Not peer-reviewed.
1700-tal: Nordic Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2020
Abstract: Legal restrictions on vagrancy and day labour in Iceland became increasingly strict in ... more Abstract: Legal restrictions on vagrancy and day labour in Iceland became increasingly strict in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, culminating with a decree in 1783 which prohibited any form of masterless labour and proscribed compulsory service on a yearly basis for most people over the age of eighteen. Despite strict regulations and the strenuous efforts of various state officials to uproot the problem, vagrancy and day labour remained relatively common and publicly acknowledged throughout the nineteenth century, thus highlighting the contrast between normative prescription (such as law) and everyday life and the ambiguity of power relations in rural Iceland, underscoring their contested nature. This article discusses how vagrants and illegal day labourers in Iceland in the early nineteenth century found ways to evade the authorities and make a living for themselves on the margins of society. It stresses the agency of the working poor and highlights some of the survival strategies employed, including passport fraud, the careful exploitation of cultural notions of hospitality and methods of earning social capital by providing useful services. The article builds on the case of a travelling healer and vagrant named Árni Sveinsson who was found guilty of vagrancy, forgery and quackery in 1821. His trial provides rare insights into the tactics employed by those on the margins of the law to get around undetected.
Skírnir, 2018
Á árunum 1896–1902 skrifaði Jón Ólafsson (1850–1916), sem þá var ritstjóri Skírnis, ítarlegar yfi... more Á árunum 1896–1902 skrifaði Jón Ólafsson (1850–1916), sem þá var ritstjóri Skírnis, ítarlegar yfirlitsgreinar um atburði liðins árs á erlendum vettvangi í tímaritið. Líkt og þekkt er var Jón undir miklum áhrifum frjálslyndisstefnunnar, líberalismans, og talaði ákaft fyrir hugmyndum stefnunnar hér á landi, auk þess að þýða eitt af höfuðritum stefnunnar – Frelsið eftir John Stuart Mill – á íslensku (Mill 1886). Þjóðfélagsþróun undir lok 19. aldar dró þó úr fyrri bjartsýni frjálslyndra, um að auknu frelsi fylgdi sjálfkrafa aukin velmegun fyrir alla og þar með betra samfélag, og leiddi til eins konar tilvistarkreppu stefnunnar og endurskoðunar á ýmsum grundvallarhugmyndum um ríkisafskipti af hinum frjálsa markaði og umbótastarfi í samfélagsmálefnum. Greinar Jóns veita fróðlega innsýn bæði í hugmyndir hans og skoðanir og ekki síður þær áherslubreytingar sem urðu á málflutningi og hugmyndafræði frjálslyndra í ljósi þessarar þróunar. Þær birtast meðal annars í þeim viðfangsefnum og atburðum sem Jón leggur áherslu á í greinum sínum auk þeirrar afstöðu sem hann tekur til viðkomandi málefna. Hér er litið á þessar yfirlitsgreinar í því skyni að greina áhrif frjálslyndisstefnu á hugmyndafræði Jóns og þau áhrif sem hræringar í heimsmálunum höfðu á skoðanir hans og tilverusýn.
Arbetarhistoria, 2017
This article discusses the role and status of casual labourers in the pre-industrial rural labour... more This article discusses the role and status of casual labourers in the pre-industrial rural labour system in 19th century Iceland. Between 1783 and 1863 casual labour was almost entirely prohibited in Iceland. Instead, compulsory service was the principal form of labour relations. Illegal casual labour was nevertheless a constant problem for the authorities and this article argues that it remained an important part of the economy despite the law. Casual labour can thus be deemed a ‘normal exception’ in 19th century Iceland; simultaneously a cultural norm and a deviation from the norm. This conclusion raises several important questions about the common dichotomy between free and unfree labour systems.
Saga 53:1 (2015), pp. 15-45, 2015
Narrative and context in the (de-)construction of interrogative testimony in judicial sources
... more Narrative and context in the (de-)construction of interrogative testimony in judicial sources
The records of Icelandic county courts is a vast but largely unused type of source material for historians. The National Archives hold over 700 books of interrogations, sentencing and other judicial proceedings dating from the early 17th century until the 20th century. These sources hold the testimonies of people who are otherwise nowhere to be found in historical sources as well as information about various minute details of everyday life. As such, they are a veritable goldmine for historians in search of the life of „ordinary people“ in the past. A recent project undertaken by the National Archives to register the contents of these court books and establish a searchable online database will undoubtedly – hopefully – increase interest and scholarly use of these records in the near future.
Because of that the need for historians to engage in a theoretical discussion of interrogative testimony as a source type is pressing. Its contents cannot simply be taken at face value. This article discusses several of the epistemological and methodological issues at stake when analyzing such testimonies. Questions discussed include how interrogations took place in the late 18th and 19th centuries and in turn who can be deemed the author of the text, how events and experiences are narrated in court settings as well as in the creation of autobiographical memories and, consequently, what „truth-value“ interrogative testimonies hold, and finally the relation between fact and context in historical analysis. This theoretical discussion is then compared with recent analyses by two Icelandic scholars of testimonies of the accused in the murder of Natan Ketilsson in the early 19th century. This famous case led to what turned out to be the last public execution in Iceland in 1830. Both analyses are found to be highly problematic due to the absence of methodolocial and analytical nuance and a sense for, or at least a discussion of, the limitations of the sources and their interpretation.
The main argument of the article is that any analysis of interrogative testimonies must take into account the creative processes involved in constructing them, including (but not limited to) the discursive as well as performative aspects of the trial proceedings, the processes of pre- and reconstruction of narratives as well as the communicative intent of their authors, the intentions of the scholar reading and analysing their meaning, and finally the contextualisation of each testimony and/or court case.
Ritið 3/2013 (Icelandic language peer-reviewed journal in the humanities)
The Different Shades of Human Existence: A Few Words on Resistance, Power and Icelandic Histori... more The Different Shades of Human Existence: A Few Words on Resistance, Power and Icelandic Historiography
This article discusses the concept of resistance as an analytical tool for historians. Problematic definitions of the concept are discussed as well as several different ways in which the concept has been employed by scholars in different academic fields. The author advocates for a creative usage of the concept in researching Icelandic history and deals critically with Icelandic historical writing in the process. In addition, the article discusses the question of subaltern agency and the theoretical and methodological debates which have surrounded the issue in recent decades. The author argues for the use of an individualist approach when researching power relations in a historical context. Using examples culled from nineteenth century judicial records, the author shows how James C. Scott‘s theory of everyday resistance can be applied to analyse power relations in the past.
THE ARTICLE IS IN ICELANDIC
Vefnir: Tímarit félags um átjándu aldar fræði, Mar 2013
SAGA L:2 2012, pp. 34-69
In the early years of the twentieth century a small and diverse but very vocal group of political... more In the early years of the twentieth century a small and diverse but very vocal group of political radicals ignited bitter debates within the Icelandic immigrant community in North America. Their insistence that canadian political culture and social structure were fundamentally flawed and in need of radical reform, if not revolutionary change, upset the dominant discourse among the Icelandic immigrant leadership, who were keen to maintain a „model-immigrant“ image of the Icelanders as morally pristine and politically moderate.
This article is in part an analysis of the ideas proposed and held, discussed and debated among these radicals as well as their socio-political context. Those ideas ranged from anarchism and free love to a moderate form of socialism and populist direct democracy. What bound these radicals together – aside from a shared emphasis on moral, political and social reform – was their Icelandic background and their status as immigrants in a polyglot and highly inegalitarian country radically different from their homeland. Their status as both radicals at odds with the majority of their Icelandic peers and as immigrants with a specific cultural background created a need for them to make their own autonomous space, „havens“ that were both culturally and politically specific to their unique worldview. To that end, they established journals and newspapers as well as discussion clubs like the nominally apolitical Hagyrðingafélag (e. poets‘ club). In addition, they found a haven within the Unitarian church, which functioned both as a platform for political and social (as well as religious) debates as well as a crucial hub of social life.
The analysis also focuses on the role radical ideologies played in these radicals‘ adaptation to life as immigrants in Canada/North America. Such acculturation is always a site of contention and the critical positions towards Canadian society and politics adopted by Icelandic immigrant radicals were simultaneously a form of resistance to the pressure for unconditional assimilation to Canadian laissez-faire liberal democracy and a self-created form of „acculturation-through-participation“. They repeatedly stated their desire to become „useful“ citizens in their adopted home and by positioning themselves on the radical left of the political spectrum they were in effect doing so on their own terms.
These radicals have in many ways been marginalized in most historical writing on Icelandic immigration in North America. Their existence has either simply been excluded or, perhaps more commonly, co-opted and whitewashed in historical writings which have tended to portray a „model-immigrant“ version of the history of Icelandic immigrants in Canada and North America. That historiographical tendency has been on the decline in recent years in favour of more critical works that incorporate theoretical and methodological insights raised in recent trends in migrant and ethnic studies, historical or otherwise. This article is intended as a small contribution to this current reconfiguration of „western-Icelandic“ historiography.
Saga, 2011
In Iceland just after 1900, the moral condition of the younger generation became a heated topic. ... more In Iceland just after 1900, the moral condition of the younger generation became a heated topic. Young women in Reykjavík and other population centres were repeatedly accused of engaging in licentiousness and promiscuity with foreigners regardless of status or background. These women were said to tarnish both their own reputations and that of the whole nation, and even to endanger Icelandic bloodlines. This debate reflected widespread anxiety about the country’s current urbanisation and other societal trends. At that time in its infancy, the women’s rights movement for female equality and suffrage likewise caused concern among those who feared negative consequences from female participation in public life. Among those criticising the “moral conditions” was Ingibjörg Ólafsson. Her pamphlet, Nokkur orð um siðferðisástandið á Íslandi (Comments on Icelandic moral conditions), was harshly criticised by the feminist leader Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir in the feminist journal Kvennablaðið.
Morality was also a controversial issue among feminists abroad, split in Europe and America by a profound ideological distinction between two wings. On the one hand, there were the so-called sex radicals whose revolutionary ideas about sexuality and free love were usually accompanied by further political radicalism. On the other hand, there was the reform movement which scholars have dubbed the social purity movement; it had the primary goal of advancing moral conditions in society in accordance with Christian values. Among the points of contention between these two poles were contraception, abortion, marriage, extramarital sex, female sexuality and morality in general. The feminist debate over free love did not reach Iceland until rather late, around 1920, but signs of these issues had arisen in ethical discussions right after the turn of the century, especially in the dialogue between Ingibjörg Ólafsson and Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir. Ingibjörg based her arguments on the concerns about Christian values voiced by the social purity movement, while Bríet employed a moderate version of the free-love concept to argue for liberalised marriage laws and more tolerant attitudes towards extramarital sex and cohabitation. This clash paved the way for the discussions on free love and morality which dominated feminist discussions about a decade later
Talks by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
conference. 5th -7th september 2012. University of Brighton.
Book chapters by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
Moving Workers: Historical Perspectives on Labour, Coercion and Im/Mobilities, 2023
In the 1780s, a series of legislative reforms were introduced in Iceland which aimed at enhancing... more In the 1780s, a series of legislative reforms were introduced in Iceland which aimed at enhancing the regulatory framework of labour. The law strengthened the pre-existing dominant labour regime of compulsory service. Amongst other measures, such as revised and stricter forms of punishment for non-compliance, the new laws introduced a reformed passport system to enhance the control and surveillance of labour mobility. The laws were revised again and softened in the 1860s and it became somewhat easier to acquire a permit to make a living as a wage labourer.
Despite the rigidity of the compulsory service system, studies have shown how seasonal migrant labour of both male and female workers was essential to an economy based on labour-intensive fishing on open rowing boats in the winter and pastoral farming practices where the summer hay harvest required a greater number of workers than the rest of the year. Experiments with proto-industrial wool manufacturing and an expanding foreign trade in the eighteenth century led to greater labour diversification as well as growing concerns about vagrancy and masterless day labourers and their assumed negative effects on social and moral order. The legislative reforms in the 1780s were a part of a broader development and they represent the growing desire of the Danish authorities to rationally govern and control the labour market in Iceland without disrupting economically important traditions such as seasonal labour migration.
In this paper, we discuss the role of day-labour permits, passports and other state-issued documentation in facilitating the increased governance of labour coercion in eighteenth and nineteenth century Iceland. The ambiguity of travel documentation such as passports will be highlighted as they simultaneously offer freedom of movement to those who possess them while immobilizing those who do not, and are thus important weapons in the state arsenal for coercive labour management. Focusing on the use and non-use of passports by labourers, we argue that while the extensive archival records of issued passports reveal great insights into the mobility of the labour force they cannot be studied without taking note of the various tactics employed by some labourers in either evading or exploiting, and thus subverting, the passport and permit systems in order to avoid the restrictions of compulsory service regulations and laws on settlement. The paper will address spatial disparities in passport use and control, gender and age differentials in issued passports, and the apparently selective enforcement of the legal mechanisms of coercion to discuss the divergence of normative prescription (such as coercive legislation) and everyday practice with all of its contradictions in order to analyse the friction inherent in regimes of coercive labour relations.
Uploads
Books by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
The contributions in this book are based on extensive archival research and span Europe and North America over the past 500 years. They provide fresh historical perspectives on the various regimes of coercion, mobility, and immobility as constituent parts of the political economy of labour.
Moving Workers shows that all struggles relating to the mobility of workers or its restriction have the potential to reveal complex configurations of hierarchies, dependencies, and diverging conceptions of work and labour relations that continuously make and remake our world.
English summary in pdf
Journal articles by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
The records of Icelandic county courts is a vast but largely unused type of source material for historians. The National Archives hold over 700 books of interrogations, sentencing and other judicial proceedings dating from the early 17th century until the 20th century. These sources hold the testimonies of people who are otherwise nowhere to be found in historical sources as well as information about various minute details of everyday life. As such, they are a veritable goldmine for historians in search of the life of „ordinary people“ in the past. A recent project undertaken by the National Archives to register the contents of these court books and establish a searchable online database will undoubtedly – hopefully – increase interest and scholarly use of these records in the near future.
Because of that the need for historians to engage in a theoretical discussion of interrogative testimony as a source type is pressing. Its contents cannot simply be taken at face value. This article discusses several of the epistemological and methodological issues at stake when analyzing such testimonies. Questions discussed include how interrogations took place in the late 18th and 19th centuries and in turn who can be deemed the author of the text, how events and experiences are narrated in court settings as well as in the creation of autobiographical memories and, consequently, what „truth-value“ interrogative testimonies hold, and finally the relation between fact and context in historical analysis. This theoretical discussion is then compared with recent analyses by two Icelandic scholars of testimonies of the accused in the murder of Natan Ketilsson in the early 19th century. This famous case led to what turned out to be the last public execution in Iceland in 1830. Both analyses are found to be highly problematic due to the absence of methodolocial and analytical nuance and a sense for, or at least a discussion of, the limitations of the sources and their interpretation.
The main argument of the article is that any analysis of interrogative testimonies must take into account the creative processes involved in constructing them, including (but not limited to) the discursive as well as performative aspects of the trial proceedings, the processes of pre- and reconstruction of narratives as well as the communicative intent of their authors, the intentions of the scholar reading and analysing their meaning, and finally the contextualisation of each testimony and/or court case.
This article discusses the concept of resistance as an analytical tool for historians. Problematic definitions of the concept are discussed as well as several different ways in which the concept has been employed by scholars in different academic fields. The author advocates for a creative usage of the concept in researching Icelandic history and deals critically with Icelandic historical writing in the process. In addition, the article discusses the question of subaltern agency and the theoretical and methodological debates which have surrounded the issue in recent decades. The author argues for the use of an individualist approach when researching power relations in a historical context. Using examples culled from nineteenth century judicial records, the author shows how James C. Scott‘s theory of everyday resistance can be applied to analyse power relations in the past.
THE ARTICLE IS IN ICELANDIC
This article is in part an analysis of the ideas proposed and held, discussed and debated among these radicals as well as their socio-political context. Those ideas ranged from anarchism and free love to a moderate form of socialism and populist direct democracy. What bound these radicals together – aside from a shared emphasis on moral, political and social reform – was their Icelandic background and their status as immigrants in a polyglot and highly inegalitarian country radically different from their homeland. Their status as both radicals at odds with the majority of their Icelandic peers and as immigrants with a specific cultural background created a need for them to make their own autonomous space, „havens“ that were both culturally and politically specific to their unique worldview. To that end, they established journals and newspapers as well as discussion clubs like the nominally apolitical Hagyrðingafélag (e. poets‘ club). In addition, they found a haven within the Unitarian church, which functioned both as a platform for political and social (as well as religious) debates as well as a crucial hub of social life.
The analysis also focuses on the role radical ideologies played in these radicals‘ adaptation to life as immigrants in Canada/North America. Such acculturation is always a site of contention and the critical positions towards Canadian society and politics adopted by Icelandic immigrant radicals were simultaneously a form of resistance to the pressure for unconditional assimilation to Canadian laissez-faire liberal democracy and a self-created form of „acculturation-through-participation“. They repeatedly stated their desire to become „useful“ citizens in their adopted home and by positioning themselves on the radical left of the political spectrum they were in effect doing so on their own terms.
These radicals have in many ways been marginalized in most historical writing on Icelandic immigration in North America. Their existence has either simply been excluded or, perhaps more commonly, co-opted and whitewashed in historical writings which have tended to portray a „model-immigrant“ version of the history of Icelandic immigrants in Canada and North America. That historiographical tendency has been on the decline in recent years in favour of more critical works that incorporate theoretical and methodological insights raised in recent trends in migrant and ethnic studies, historical or otherwise. This article is intended as a small contribution to this current reconfiguration of „western-Icelandic“ historiography.
Morality was also a controversial issue among feminists abroad, split in Europe and America by a profound ideological distinction between two wings. On the one hand, there were the so-called sex radicals whose revolutionary ideas about sexuality and free love were usually accompanied by further political radicalism. On the other hand, there was the reform movement which scholars have dubbed the social purity movement; it had the primary goal of advancing moral conditions in society in accordance with Christian values. Among the points of contention between these two poles were contraception, abortion, marriage, extramarital sex, female sexuality and morality in general. The feminist debate over free love did not reach Iceland until rather late, around 1920, but signs of these issues had arisen in ethical discussions right after the turn of the century, especially in the dialogue between Ingibjörg Ólafsson and Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir. Ingibjörg based her arguments on the concerns about Christian values voiced by the social purity movement, while Bríet employed a moderate version of the free-love concept to argue for liberalised marriage laws and more tolerant attitudes towards extramarital sex and cohabitation. This clash paved the way for the discussions on free love and morality which dominated feminist discussions about a decade later
Talks by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
Book chapters by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
Despite the rigidity of the compulsory service system, studies have shown how seasonal migrant labour of both male and female workers was essential to an economy based on labour-intensive fishing on open rowing boats in the winter and pastoral farming practices where the summer hay harvest required a greater number of workers than the rest of the year. Experiments with proto-industrial wool manufacturing and an expanding foreign trade in the eighteenth century led to greater labour diversification as well as growing concerns about vagrancy and masterless day labourers and their assumed negative effects on social and moral order. The legislative reforms in the 1780s were a part of a broader development and they represent the growing desire of the Danish authorities to rationally govern and control the labour market in Iceland without disrupting economically important traditions such as seasonal labour migration.
In this paper, we discuss the role of day-labour permits, passports and other state-issued documentation in facilitating the increased governance of labour coercion in eighteenth and nineteenth century Iceland. The ambiguity of travel documentation such as passports will be highlighted as they simultaneously offer freedom of movement to those who possess them while immobilizing those who do not, and are thus important weapons in the state arsenal for coercive labour management. Focusing on the use and non-use of passports by labourers, we argue that while the extensive archival records of issued passports reveal great insights into the mobility of the labour force they cannot be studied without taking note of the various tactics employed by some labourers in either evading or exploiting, and thus subverting, the passport and permit systems in order to avoid the restrictions of compulsory service regulations and laws on settlement. The paper will address spatial disparities in passport use and control, gender and age differentials in issued passports, and the apparently selective enforcement of the legal mechanisms of coercion to discuss the divergence of normative prescription (such as coercive legislation) and everyday practice with all of its contradictions in order to analyse the friction inherent in regimes of coercive labour relations.