The Rise of Little Big Norway by John F. L. Ross

Author:John F. L. Ross [Ross, John F. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781785271946
Google: VRa_DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 51321120
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2019-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Dutch connection derived its real importance from the exchange of people. Historians often speak of “push” and “pull” factors in describing migrations, and in this case both were prominent. Departing Norwegians left behind lives of isolation and seasonal-at-best employment. They flocked south—a timeless Scandinavian pattern—across the Skaggerak, lured by the milder winters and to-do Dutch imperial bustle, a case of “bright lights, big city” outshining humdrum farm life. The migration, in the tens of thousands, to Haarlem, Delft, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and other booming Dutch cities created an expatriate foreign community, a miniature Noordsie Natie, a Nordic nation, and within that a substantial Norwegian nation or Norse Natie.

They filled crucial if unheralded jobs. For men in the mobile maritime fraternity, this involved ships, on land as builders or at sea as sailors. They had expertise and worked willingly. Often they were recruited at home in Norway by Dutch interests facing manpower shortages. Countless other, stationary workers wove the ropes, swept the docks, tended the parlors and sewed the shoes that tread on every continent.

Historians have noted some surprising aspects to this flow. Most came from rural locales rather than cities. And many were girls and women, going as domestic servants before staying on. Like the timber they followed to Holland, much of this movement was unregistered, but two forms of paper trail—church and marriage registers—give some indication of numbers and trends. Between 1600 and 1800 nearly 12,000 marriages were recorded in Amsterdam involving Norwegians, over a third of whom were Norwegian women, often very young.

Still, sailors were the main migrants. Around 5 percent of the Dutch merchant marine was Norwegian, but much higher concentrations marked some sectors. The promise often outstripped the reality as sailors faced constant uncertainty and danger. The long-distance voyages aboard VOC vessels were by far the most perilous. Sailors spent many months in strange climes, facing enemies ranging from exotic diseases to pirates to sudden enemy engagement, with the additional, abundant possibility of falling overboard. An astonishing two-thirds never survived their first such voyage, a fact rarely mentioned in recruitment drives. Not surprisingly, the VOC represented the lowest of the low in terms of sailor status and had the highest percentage, often up to half the manpower, of foreigners—notably Norwegians—working the ropes.

Life was a little more stable for the “fixed” workers who remained on dry land. An expanding premodern economy, heavily dependent on imported labor, was unstable almost by definition. Holland sometimes set new standards in this regard. In the midst of the great boom, the famous Tulipmania of 1637 peaked, leaving such a destructive wake that it still serves as a cautionary tale by market economists. Nordic migrants lived in hovels and plied low-skill trades as dockhands, seamstresses, shopkeepers, market hawkers and other roustabout trades that we associate with rootless port-city life. While short of forced labor, it did not make for a pretty picture.

A lone statistic speaks volumes: of Norwegian immigrants in Holland, roughly 35 percent of the men could read and write—but just 7 percent of the women.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.