The Evolving Icelandic Rural Household in the Shift From Pastoralism to Ranching: Hólahreppur, 1703–1974

Abstract

This article shows the changing household composition of an Icelandic rural community of isolated dispersed farms as it shifted from nineteenth century tenant farmers who raised mixed herds of sheep, dairy cattle, and horses for their own subsistence to twentieth-century freeholders who produce livestock foodstuffs for a domestic market. The farm population of the community reached its highest level under the subsistence economy with households of nuclear families and contracted live-in servants. The farmers' children replaced the live-in servants at the end of the nineteenth century as opportunities for wage labor opened up in nearby fishing settlements. Extended families became common in the community. After World War II, tenant farmers have become freeholders, the farm households are both extended families with adult children remaining on the farms and nuclear families who still retain the services of adult children who moved away as livestock owners. A range of household structures has emerged as the homogeneous Icelandic rural community has persisted.

Sources of Risk, Institutions for Survival, and a Game against Nature in Premodern Iceland

“…See Pinson (1992), who has studied the evolution of rural households in an Icelandic commune [Holahreppur], 1703[Holahreppur], -1974 High cost made it impractical to import grain and establish central granaries for storing emergency fodder. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, Bjarnason (1909;182) reports that transportation costs would add a margin of about one-third to one-half to the foreign price of grain.…”