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Title: Across the North Sea Author: Freedom Press Date: August, 1887 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 1 -- No. 11, August, 1887, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=2949. Notes: Freedom Press (London)
We are a mixed race, we English, and perhaps the mixture of which we
have most reason to be proud is our strain of Norse blood, our kinship
with the Scandinavians.
We are accustomed in our childish history books to read of the "Danes"
and their continual invasions of England as if these human beings, many
of whom came from Norway and not Denmark at all, were a mere swarm of
locusts, seeking what they might devour. Certainly their resolute
efforts to obtain a share of the soil and wealth of Britain from the
earlier settlers were frequently attended with destruction of life and
of peaceful industry. Those old Norsemen cared as little for the life of
the man or woman of an alien community as their descendant, the
fisherman of to-day, cares for the suffering of the wretched whiting,
from whose living body he cuts slices for bait, and then throws it back
to agonize in the water. Nevertheless, they were fine fellows, them old
sea rovers who colonized England, the ancestors from whose resolution,
enterprise and daring comes much of the most sterling stuff in our
national character.
Just such a bold, sturdy, resolute, independent race are their
descendants of the nineteenth century across the North Sea. The
Norwegians have not been corrupted as we have been by immense wealth,
and, as a rule, the peasantry, that is the vast majority of the people,
have known how to protect themselves from land thieves. There are large
estates in Norway, but they are few and far between; the greater part of
the land still belongs to peasant families who cultivate it themselves.
In 1865, there were 147,000 farms, i.e., a farm for every 12 persons,
and 131,800 of these holdings were cultivated by their owners.
Much of the country is a barren rocky plateau, partly covered with
perpetual snow, and inhabited only by bears and reindeer. The only
portions habitable by men are the valleys, from 2,000 to 6,000 feet
below, where foaming rivers rush down from the glaciers into the fjord,
and the deep lakes sleep beneath mighty cliffs. There, among the pine
trees beside the waterfall, on a grassy ledge of the precipitous
mountain, or on the narrow strip of meadow near the sea, nestles here
and there a farmstead, with its wooden dwelling-house, roofed with turf,
where a hay-crop grows in summer, and sometimes a birch or ash 12 or 15
feet high springs up beside the stone chimney. The outbuildings too are
built of logs, and there are often five or six of them; for everything
must be kept under cover, even the manure, through the long, dark, icy
winter. Very often there is also a little water-mill; for a Norwegian
peasant family do almost everything for themselves. Grow their own corn,
mostly rye and oats, grind it and make it into bread, shear from their
town sheep the wool for their own clothes, comb and spin and weave it,
dye the cloth or serge, and make it up themselves, or get the traveling
tailor, who works from house to house, to make it. The things they want
and cannot make, like coffee or cotton, they buy out of what they get by
selling their butter and cheese.
Sometimes one farm holding belongs to several families. Then each family
considers its particular house and bits of cultivated land scattered
among the rocks as its own, whilst the forest and grazing ground is held
in common. Again, , large estate (for Norway) often consists of a
principal farm, and four or five smaller holdings cultivated by "
housemen." The houseman and his wife have a life tenure of their house
and land, and pay a sort of rent in labor to the proprietor of the
principal farm. The lads and lasses usually go out as farm assistants,
if they are not all wanted on their parents' farm. They get their food,
clothes, and lodging, and from E2 to 94 wages. Of course they live with
the family of the farmer they are assisting, and there are no social
barriers between employer and employed; the "servants" are treated as
sons and daughters of the house.
When a Norwegian peasant dies, his land and property belong to all his
children; but if there are too many for the farm to support them
comfortably, one or two usually buy out their brothers and sisters'; so
that the land has not been broken up into over-small portions. These
young Norwegians, for whom there is no land at home, constantly emigrate
to America, where they form Norwegian colonies, and continue the simple
honest life of the mother country, living by their own labor and
exploiting no man.The effect of this human, dignified, independent life
of honest labor, is to fill the majority of Norwegians with a manly
respect for themselves and for others. They treat one another with the
true politeness which springs naturally from real kindness and fellow
feeling–that real kindness between man and man which is impossible in a
nation of masters and slaves. The curses of social inequality and the
uneven distribution of wealth have touched Norway but very slightly.
There are next to no great industries under the control of monopolists
of the means of production; and by dint of much-hard fighting the brave
Norsemen have held their own against the land-grabbing of king,
churchman, and baron. Though they are poor–many a worthy farmer lives
upon nothing better than porridge, musty rye bread, cheese, dried fish,
and sour milk–they have preserved their freedom to a greater extent than
almost any other civilized people, and they are meeting their present
grievances and the encroachments of the Court in the same bold and
rebellious spirit which defeated so many previous attempts to enthralled
them. Would that their English cousins showed equal manhood in resisting
the extortions of landlord and capitalist.