Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29 DOI 10.1007/s10761-010-0127-5
Visible Men and Elusive Women Josefina Andersson & Magnus Elfwendahl & Gunvor Gustafson & Britt-Marie Hägerman & Rolf Lundqvist & Ulrika Stenbäck Lönnquist & Johanna Ulfsdotter & Stig Welinder
Published online: 10 November 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract Early gender archaeology formulated two statements: men are visible, women are invisible, and men work in hard materials, women work in soft materials. We discuss these dichotomies in connection with nineteenth-century folklore and an excavated eighteenth-century cottage at a summer-farm. We conclude that much of the gendered order-of-work tasks broke down in pragmatic day-to-day life, especially by women crossing the gender border. However, social chaos was held at bay by ritual acts and magic objects. Keywords Folklore . Gender . Ritual . Summer farm . Sweden
J. Andersson : M. Elfwendahl : G. Gustafson : B.-M. Hägerman : R. Lundqvist : U. S. Lönnquist : J. Ulfsdotter : S. Welinder (*) Department of Humanities, Mid-Sweden University, SE-871 88, Härnösand, Sweden e-mail:
[email protected] J. Andersson e-mail:
[email protected] M. Elfwendahl e-mail:
[email protected] G. Gustafson e-mail:
[email protected] B.-M. Hägerman e-mail:
[email protected] R. Lundqvist e-mail:
[email protected] U. S. Lönnquist e-mail:
[email protected] J. Ulfsdotter e-mail:
[email protected]
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
11
Introduction In pre-industrial mid-Sweden, a farm consisted of the buildings, the farmyard, the fenced infield with arable land and meadows, and the outlying land (utmark in Swedish). The latter contained areas for grazing, fishing, birch-bark collecting, charcoal stacks, and other places for various tasks, including summer farms (fäbod in Swedish). The various uses of the outlying land were essential parts of the many-sided and flexible subsistence economy and surplus production of the households at the farms. A full household at a farm was composed of both women and men, who seasonally worked at various chores. We will discuss the summer farms, where women tended the cattle by themselves during the summer season. On occasion, however, men also worked at the summer farms, sometimes together with the women, and sometimes by themselves, especially during the winter. Accordingly, a summer farm may be seen as a kind of experimental aquarium in gender studies, where gender order was formed and reproduced. The people at the farms lived according to a patriarchal order supervised by the orthodox Lutheran church (Amussen 1999; Jarlert 1999). The male head of the farm, most often the husband of a core family, exercised authority over the members of the household; he had the right, and duty, to punish them if necessary. He also had responsibility for the farm and the people, perhaps in that order. The gender order of the farms and households, however, was formed also in more subtle ways. The chores, the landscape, and the material culture constituted part of the relations between women and men. They formed both the ideal norm and the pragmatic flexibility of everyday life—and ritual. We discuss the formation of gender order in the pre-industrial, mid-Swedish countryside from an archaeological excavation of an eighteenth-century cottage, possibly a dwelling-house, at a summer farm. We are interested in how the relations between women and men were formed by material culture. This discussion concerns, among other things, gender and garbage.
Women and Cows During the Middle Ages in Scandinavia, herdsmen watched the cattle. Around the sixteenth century matters changed, and in 1687, it was actually forbidden by law for men to tend cattle (Myrdal 1999, pp. 132–135). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both the cattle and the cowshed were female domains. It was shameful for men to milk or in other ways to take part in cattle-rearing. Only old men or young boys could be seen tending cattle (Levander 1943, pp. 157–158). The women and the cows on a farm were intimately interrelated. The cows were given names, and they were spoken to by the women, who hugged them and whispered in their ears (Fig. 1). The cows were said to understand. Magic and ritual were performed to protect the cows from evil and to make them good for milking. Accordingly, one of the women from the farm accompanied the cows to the summer farm to graze, and while there she worked as a dairy-maid (vallkulla in Swedish). The days were long and hard, and the women had much responsibility. The cheese and butter constituted a main income for the farms.
12
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
Fig. 1 Alma Norgren (b. 1921) had her cows browsing in the woods until 1994. The cows used to stray to Svartviksbodarna to benefit from the tasty grazing at the abandoned summer farm. (Photo: unknown photographer, 1938)
Gender and Summer Farms The buildings and fences of the summer farms were built by men several kilometers from the main farm in forest areas or in the low mountains. The summer farms were used seasonally by women alone, seasonally by men alone, and now and then simultaneously by both women and men (Erixon 1918; Frödin 1929; Lidman 1963; Linder and Magnusson 2001; Rosander 1977). The concept of “gender” denotes the social and cultural contents of sexual identities, and the relations between the sexes (Thurén 2003). At the summer farms, gender identity was formed and performed, created and recreated. The buildings and their material culture are the materiality of the gender identity (Butler 1990). The garbage inside and around the houses is the archaeology of gender (ArwillNordbladh 2001; Nicolay 2007). The activities of women and men formed their gender identities and gender relations at the site—and they created the garbage. We will not contribute to the dialogue on gender theory. Rather, we seek to show how gendered activities form gendered garbage. Our discussion is based on a gender perspective that relates women and men to one another (Olsson 2007, p. 8)
The Dairy Maids Our experience of summer farm life derives from visits to some of the few farms still operated in ways similar to traditional uses. On a dark August night, only two sounds could be heard in the yard of a summer farm, the soughing of the wind in the tree tops, and the stamping of the cows on the wooden floor in the cowshed. Perhaps more important is our reading of hundreds of narratives in the folklore archives. A list of these sources appears among the references at the end of the article. The narratives were recorded during the first half of the twentieth century. The narrators were aged women and men. The women’s stories tend to be redundant stereotypes on how to milk the cows and how to make cheese, but they also tell of the arrival at the summer farm as the best time of the annual work cycle. They tell about freedom and space—freedom from the crowdedness of the village, from paternal control, and from sexual harassment—and about belonging to a female tradition of skill and pride. They also speak about fear of wild beasts, tramps, and rapists, and of the little folk below the ground. The old men tend to tell the same
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
13
stories about how their mothers, wives, and serving girls milked the cows and made cheese. They also mention their own work at the summer farms, how they mended the fences, stacked the firewood, cut the hay, and so forth. They stress that working at the summer farm during the grazing season was pleasant. They worked slowly to postpone the return to the main farm. But it is obvious that as small boys they had found it endlessly boring to follow the cattle during their long and lonely browsing days. Thus, the image of solitary women or young girls at the summer farms in the ideal landscape of the national romanticism of a century ago is, cautiously phrased, exaggerated (Daugstad 2000; Johansson 1999). Our archaeology on summer farm life revolves around how the everyday life of women and men formed their gender identities (Stenbäck Lönnquist and Welinder 2005, 2007).
The Outlying Land Both the women and men on the farms worked in the outlying land, often far away from the farmyard, thus living there seasonally (Emanuelsson et al. 2003, pp. 138– 140). The women and men left different kinds of traces in the landscape around the summer farms. The difference is a matter of visibility. Sites where typical male chores were carried out in the outlying land are obviously visible in the landscape—pitfalls, charcoal pits and stacks, bloomery furnaces and slagheaps, and quarries. The male outlying land landscape has a certain monumentality (Svensson 2005, pp. 166–168). Men built the constructions in the female summer farm landscape. The traces left by the women, when working in the forest browsing areas, are more subtle. During a stroll in the summer farm landscape, the presence of the dairy-maids, and the cows and goats, was most “visible” as sounds (Ivarsdotter 1986; Johnson 1991): the cowbells, the singing and calls of the dairy maids or the sound of a cowhorn or birch-bark horn. The calls and horns of the dairy maids were heard for kilometers (Ivarsdotter 2002, p. 22): “If you were up in the hills, on the tops, you had summer farms all around, and you could hear all the girls, the dairy-maids. There was the sound of the cowbells and mooing all through the woods.” Again, the romanticism must be restrained (Ivarsdotter 2002, p. 23): “It was so boring at times, going around and blowing the horn, day in and day out. Yes, I was really bored sometimes. … There were a lot of wolves in the woods. As long as I kept blowing my horn, they stayed away, but as soon as I stopped, they came out.” The dairy-maids carved things in the trees during their lonely days in the forest. Almost one thousand carvings have been recorded from the late seventeenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century, most of them from Ore parish in Dalarna (Andersson et al. 2005; Lundqvist 2005). The carvings contain three letters, the third being D (e.g., “AED 1848”), which is short for “Anna Ersdotter.” Women’s surnames were a combination of the name of their fathers and dotter (daughter in English), in this case “the daughter of Erik.” In that way, the majority of the tree carvings can be identified as the work of women. Our survey revealed 613 female names and only 19 male names. The “1848” is the year when the carving was made. The earliest known year is 1698, the latest 1905.
14
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
The carvings were messages between dairy maids, like the calls and the blasts from the horns, indications of presence and of territorial grazing rights (Fig. 2). The letters “SI”, that is, “Look here!” are often carved before the message. Sometimes the carvings contain the name of a farm or village, sometimes a date in the annual cycle (Lundqvist 2005, p. 67): SISTA FREDAGEN OM HÖSTEN (the last Friday of autumn). The carvings may relate the mood of the vallkullor, simply by containing the word “BRA” (good in English), or a full phrase like this addition to the three-letter initials of a group of dairy maids (Lundqvist 2005, p. 67): WI MÅR BRA SOM FAN (We feel damn good) or the opposite (field recording by Rolf Lundqvist): JAG ÖNSKAR JAG HELDRE VORE DÖDER ÄN JAG VORE HÄR (I wish I were dead rather than here). Similar carvings, including depictions of men, birds, horses, trees, and several other things, are also apparent in the logs of the houses at the summer farms (Liman 1966). Thus, the outlying land contained male visibility and monumentality and female sounds and impermanence—echoes die and the trees rot.
Early Gender Archaeology When women’s studies and soon thereafter gender studies developed into the modern field of gender archaeology during the 1980s, burials with sex-determined skeletons were the main, and almost the only kind, of data sets analyzed and Fig. 2 Tree carving in the Dalecarlian summer farm landscape. (Photo: Rolf Lundqvist, 2004)
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
15
discussed. The everyday life of the living women and men at the settlement sites was hard to grasp, unless indirectly inferred from artifacts associated with sex-determined skeletons in burials. In spite of the feminist critique of the New Archaeology, one method used in the gender archaeology of 1985–90 to reconstruct life on dwelling sites was to apply the cross-cultural generalizations of “sex allocation of 50 technological activities” by Murdock and Provost (1973, Table 1) to prehistoric settlement contexts. Out of the 50 activities in their table 25 were performed at the summer farms. The sex indices of these 25 activities suggest a complementary work-task pattern with both female and male activities (Table 1). At the male end of the scale are activities like “lumbering,” “hunting large land fauna,” and “stoneworking.” At the female end are activities like “dairy production,” “spinning,” and “cooking.” In the middle of the scale are “harvesting” and “milking.” We find it more interesting to separate those activities that are archaeologically visible. Again, activities appear all along the index scale (Table 2), but the male end is more emphasized than in the previous index. The three highest indices are “work in wood,” “stoneworking,” and “fishing.” The three lowest are “care of small animals,” “fuel gathering,” and “cooking.” Thus, at the excavated summer farm cottage discussed below, the men are seen in iron tools, stone waste, and a fish vertebra, and the women as the burned bones of goats and pigs, charcoal, and sherds. At least, that is the starting point according to the cross-cultural generalizations. The discussion so far illustrates two statements that were often advanced in early gender archaeology: women are less visible in the archaeological record than men, and men use hard materials while women use soft ones—iron and stone vs. fibers and leather. Today, no need exists to argue why both statements are inaccurate (see, for example, Gero 1991; Willemark 1997). Nevertheless, our discussion serves to remind readers of both statements. One point of our research is to challenge the sexed work tasks. Is it possible to see complexity in gendered chores in the archaeological record, to see how female and male activities were interwoven? Emphasizing one or the other activity as performed only by one or the other gender is of little interest (Ströbeck 1999). There were certainly chores that ideally were exclusively either female or male (Øye 2006), but Table 1 The sex indices of activities at the fäbodar, according to Murdock and Provost (1973, Table 1)
a
index 100 denotes an activity performed solely by men; index 0 performed solely by women
Sex-indexa
Number of activities
91–100
5
81–90
2
71–80
2
61–70
1
51–60
1
41–50
3
31–40
2
21–30
3
11–20
3
0–10
3
16 Table 2 The sex indices of archaeologically visible activities at the fäbodar according to Murdock and Provost (1973, Table 1). Based on the data from the Svartviksbodarna bustuga
a
index 100 denotes an activity performed solely by men; index 0 performed solely by women
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29 Sex-indexa
Number of activities
91–100
2
81–90
2
71–80
1
61–70
1
51–60
0
41–50
1
31–40
1
21–30
1
11–20
0
0–10
1
in everyday life these boundaries were crossed, particularly by women if not men (Schmidt Sabo 2005, pp. 173–175). Applying the Murdock and Provost indices is a problematic exercise. It is actually an unnecessary exercise in relation to the summer farms because of the narratives left by both women and men about their working lives.
The Debate on Gender Chores in North Scandinavia During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, work within and outside the households was less strictly gendered than later (Elstad 1994; Löfgren 1982). This changed during the course of the nineteenth century. The urban bourgeois norms spread to the rural households, where they were accepted in a society undergoing a process of growing hierarchy and commercialization. As an example of this, the new market economy meant that women were excluded, for example, from working in the mines (Henriksson 1994, pp. 126–135). The late nineteenth century is just that period referred to in the folklore narratives. Thus, it is doubtful whether the norms of gendered distinction of chores inferred from these narratives are valid for the time before the mid-nineteenth century (Johansson 1994; Löfgren 1994; Östman 2000). We have hinted at these norms above: women were tied to the farmyard and the summer farm, while men lived a mobile life; women worked indoors, men worked outdoors. The women were responsible for the cattle and the cowshed, the men were responsible for the horses and the stable. When working together, women and men had different chores: e.g., during the harvest, men handled the scythes, and women the rakes. These were the norms. At the same time, pragmatism and flexibility existed, more on the part of the women than that of the men. Male prestige and virility were of importance and they were inherent in everyday life and work. Men crossed the boundaries only in totally male contexts, for example, when well away from women during the winter lumbering season (Johansson 1994, pp. 134–136). The rigidity of the norms has also been discussed as concerns differences in female freedom between North Sweden and South Sweden, that is, roughly the parts of Sweden with and without summer farms.
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
17
One view is that women in the north worked more alongside men, were more mobile, and had more responsibility than women in the south (Rathje 2001; Johansson 2002). Another perspective is that no evidence exists for the first view in the narratives (Fiebranz 2002; Lövkrona 2001). Our analysis of an excavated cottage (bustuga in Swedish) at a summer farm in northern Sweden, called Svartviksbodarna, sheds light on the matter.
The Cottage Svartviksbodarna is situated along with several other summer farms around lake Stora Lönnvattnet i Stora Skedvi parish, Dalarna. It is one of the summer farms close to the small farm denoted “Torp” on a 1725 map (Fig. 3). Summer farms are known along the northern shore of the inlet Svartviken since the first mapping of the area in 1647. Two farms, 15 km away, had their animals at Svartviksbodarna during the eighteenth century. As far as summer grazing is concerned, the summer farms were Fig. 3 Svartviksbodarna is one of the summer-farms close to a small farm (torp in Swedish) at the eastern end of the lake Stora Lönnvattnet in Stora Skedvi parish, Dalarna. (Redrawn from 1725 map)
Fäbodar
Stora Lönnvattet
Fäbodar Torp
Fäbod
Fäbodar
18
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
generally abandoned toward the end of the nineteenth century, though it is not known specifically how long houses at Svartviksbodarna were used. The excavated cottage was once a small log house, 3×3 m in size (Fig. 4). Two walls rested on a stone sill, and the west wall rested on a gravel bank, while the foundation of the south wall is problematic. That was probably the wall with the door as in many still-preserved small log houses with a fireplace in one corner. The latter consisted of four boulders with a filling of smaller stones and a few flat stones on top. The latter were obviously fire-cracked, as was one of the boulders. Great amounts of stones and bits of bricks indicated that the fireplace had a fireshield between the open fire and the timber walls, possibly also a chimney. Sand had been filled between the stones of the fireplace and the timber walls. Scores of iron nails were found, the majority of which lay scattered to the south of the house (Fig. 5). Some of them were perhaps nailed into the outside of the wall to be used as hooks. Even today there are surprisingly large numbers of nails in still-standing cottages. Glass splinters from at least three different window panes also appear (see Fig. 5). It is reasonable to assume that one pane in the north wall was smashed. This interpretation provides another indication that the long axis of the house ran south to north, from one gable with the door to the opposite gable with a window. The door may also have contained a window, although this was not common. The cottage was placed on an artificially dug terrace that was twice the size of the house to the north. The function of this area remains unclear, but a firewood stack is one possibility. Some fire-cracked stones and a little charcoal suggest a hearth, but not a regularly used fireplace. All in all, the cottage may have looked something like the cottage in Fig. 6. That house is perhaps about 150–200 years old. In any case,
125
Fig. 4 The cottage at Svartviksbodarna. The stone sill, the open stove, and a pit (see Fig. 7)
128
123
121 127
116 146
134 113
117 136 116
140
112
124
94
95
109 100 0
1m
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29 Fig. 5 Artifacts from the demolished cottage itself (hatched area = >3 iron-nails per 0.25 m2; circles with figures = the number of shards from one window pane; black dots=1–2 sherds from another window pane; circles = 1 sherd from a third window pane)
19
14 5
2 19 1
0
1m
such square log-cabins, about 4–5×4–5 m, with a fireplace, a bed, and perhaps a small table were common during the eighteenth century (Levander 1947, pp. 57–60, 190–195; Nyman 1963). The cottage discussed here (see Fig. 4) was used during the eighteenth century. The dating is based on two clay tobacco pipes in the garbage associated with the house. One is a Dutch pipe, possibly from Gouda, with its bowl formed like the head of a Turk. It was manufactured in the period of 1700–30. The other datable clay pipe was manufactured in the workshop of Daniel Friedrich Theel in the nearby town of Falun. That workshop started production in 1755 and continued to exist until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The dating is roughly confirmed by the ceramics associated with the house. The use of the excavated cottage is problematic, especially because of its small size. As a result, perhaps it should not be denoted a bustuga (a dwelling), but rather a kitchen for preparing the daily food or for cheese making. In the latter case, adequate Swedish names are kokhus, eldhus or störs. The garbage indicates that the house was used for cooking and eating, some work, and some leisure. If there were beds along one or two walls, there was not much space left for a person working at the fireplace. Perhaps the house only contained benches. During the summer season, both women and men at the summer farms slept anywhere convenient, in hay barns, various outhouses, or underneath a dense spruce tree. The lack of separate houses for women and men was part of the freedom of the summer farms: sleeping together could be more tangible than the traditional courtship-at-night in the villages (Lindström 1969, pp. 82–85). During the winter season, men stayed alone at the summer farms. Sigrid Undset (1971, p. 82) has mentioned men’s houses at a summer farm, where she stayed in the 1930s: “It was the lunnboa at Krekka that Mother had rented. A lunnbo is a very solidly built little house to be used by the men who have to go up there in the winter to bring the hay down on sleighs from the summer farm [seter in Norwegian].” Such houses are not known from nineteenth-century folklore. Men seem not to have had organized sleeping places in beds as the dairy-maids had, if they did not share the beds of the latter. The starting point of the analyses of the eighteenth-
20
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
Fig. 6 A one-room cottage at Lockåsbodarna, Oviken parish, Jämtland, with the entrance in one gable and the room open to the ridge. (Photo: Gunvor Gustafson, 2003)
century cottage at Svartviksbodarna is that it was used for cooking and eating, perhaps for sleeping, perhaps by both women and men, in both summer and winter.
The Ritual of Building a House The garbage surrounding the cottage looks like discarded, broken objects and plain kitchen refuse. It was not the result of haphazard dumping, however. Our interest lies in discovering the behavior and actions that formed the patterns in the remains and the silent meaning that formed the relations between the persons who stayed at the cottage. The garbage is material and meaning, and so were the persons who deposited it (Lagerspetz 2006). Parts of the pattern were caused intentionally. Eighteenth-century life involved everyday ritual, and building and living in a house entailed a process of ritual action (Schön 2006). Some of the ritual is archaeologically observable (Fig. 7) as well as understandable from the narratives. Some of it emphasizes gender tension. The building site of a house had to be inaugurated by fire—by burning firewood from nine different species of trees or burning a bag with hair, cloves, a dried snake, or similar objects. The intention was among other things to warn the little folk underground and ask them to move somewhere else. This action may have occurred Fig. 7 Artifacts from the ritual of building the cottage (the pit with two pieces of strike-alight-flint and a piece of a clay tobacco pipe; black dots = buttons; circles = hooksand-eyes; square = steel knife; triangle = iron wedge; figures = the number of pieces of sulfur)
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
21
at the pit with soot and charcoal under the cottage’s sill and fireplace (see Fig. 7) and the fire-cracked stones and charcoal to the north of the house. When the log walls were more or less finished by the men, young women were invited for a coffee klatch (spikkaffe in Swedish). First, the men went around during the night, showing nails to the girls and inviting them to come to the building site. The girls went to the site the next day with coffee, where they were lifted up on top of the walls. They then engaged in flirting and high jinks. Women who refused to come were taken there, gently but firmly, and had their clothes nailed to the logs on top of the walls. To protect a new house, one could walk around it three times with the wedge that had been used for splitting the logs for the roof. Such a wedge was found behind the cottage. Another way to protect the house and its inhabitants was to place a sharp steel object by the door, under the corners, behind the fireplace, or above the ridge of the roof. The knife found at the cottage, however, was just lying on the floor of the house at the time of the excavation, although not far away from one of the corners. The wedge and the knife may be examples of building offerings (Falk 2006). The most common objects used in this way during the nineteenth century were coins, steel objects, snakes, and pieces of sulfur placed under the doorstep. Some of the sulfur found at the cottage was close to this position (see Fig. 7). Otherwise, sulfur was used for medicine and for making gun powder together with the earth under the cowshed. It was essential to protect the house from evil and to bring it good luck. It was also of greatest importance to control what happened in the house. At the threshold of the cottage, one cast bronze button and two eyes from hook-and-eyes were found. Buttons are little known as building offerings in the nineteenth-century narratives, but the habit of letting newly bought cows enter the cowshed across an apron or underskirt comes to mind, as does the collection of buttons excavated outside the cottage door of the old woman Göta-Lena, who was reputed to be a healer and witch. She lived in a small cottage toward the end of the nineteenth century (Rosén 2007, pp. 74–75). Plain, cast bronze buttons were used in men’s clothing. Hooks-and-eyes were used in both women’s and men’s clothes (e.g., in the men’s winter fur coats). Archaeological finds of hook-and-eyes in a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century male contexts come from sunken warships, for example, Kronan which sank in battle in 1676 (Einarsson 1997; Johansson 1985). Notable is that the hooks and the eyes were regarded as metaphors for male and female sexuality, respectively. Thus, the small collection at the threshold of the cottage includes women and men. A gender relation was built into the house. In the pit under the sill and fire place (see Fig. 7) there were no other objects than one piece of a clay tobacco pipe and two pieces of strike-a-light flint. Tobacco smoking during the eighteenth century was mainly a male habit, suggesting identity and virility (Stenbäck Lönnquist and Welinder 2008). Thus, masculinity was incorporated into the house by the male builders, as was the gender relation at the door. This was a way to disseminate subtle, magic, patriarchal control of women living and working by themselves at the summer farm. Some of the objects in and around the cottage meant protection, good luck, gender tension, sexuality, and male control of women. The ritual acts described so
22
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
far were performed because they had always been performed. They were planned beforehand and intentionally carried out. Most of what was excavated around the cottage, however, was just garbage.
To Gender the Refuse From various medieval and early modern sources, gender-specific work tasks valid for mid-Sweden may be inferred and presented in about the same way as in the Murdock and Provost (1973) list. Twenty-six chores were performed sometimes or only in the outlying land (Emanuelsson et al. 2003, Table 8). Of these, 12 were performed always by women, sometimes together with children or an occasional old man; for example, herding, milking, textile production, raking, and collecting fuel. Ten were performed always by men, such as building, fencing, plowing, lumbering, and hunting. Women and men seldom worked together, but did so in collecting animal fodder and harrowing, for example. Thus, our starting point is that women and men worked at different tasks. On the other hand, however, there was also flexibility. This was certainly so at the summer farms, when urgent things had to be done during seasons when only one gender was present. Broken ceramic pieces were thrown to the south and north of the cottage, the main part to the south (Fig. 8). The sherds form two discrete garbage heaps, one behind the house and one almost in front of the door. This pattern is frequently apparent: the garbage was piled just to the left of the door, but some was carried around the house to one of the corners. Most of the vessels represent bowls and plates, that is, tableware. Storage jars are also present. These vessels indicate that the cottage was used for handling food. The splinters of glass bottles display another pattern (see Fig. 8). They come from only a few bottles, most of them from just two. The bottles, when broken, were dealt with in another way than the ceramics. The floor of the cottage was carefully cleared of sherds but not the bottle glass. Only a few nails and splinters of window panes appeared inside the house (see Fig. 5). Fig. 8 Artifacts from the everyday garbage (lines = >20 and >50 g pottery per 0.25 m2; circles with figures= conjoined sherds of three different pots; black dots = sherds of one glass bottle; black squares = sherds of another glass bottle)
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
23
Burned bones were deposited only in the garbage heap in front of the house (Fig. 9). Accordingly, this is where ashes from the fireplace were thrown. The fragments of burned flint show the same distribution pattern (Fig. 10). Most of this material is probably strike-a-light flint (Levander 1947, pp. 280–284; Molin 2006). Sheep and goats are the most common species in the faunal remains (78% of the burned bones). The remainder are equal amounts of burned cow and pig bones, in addition to a single bone from a small pike. That all body parts are present in the sheep, goat, and pig remains shows that live animals were slaughtered, cooked, and eaten at the site. Sheep and goats were regularly brought to the summer farms, whereas the pigs were probably acquired from the small farms nearby (see Fig. 3). Unburned bones were present in much fewer numbers (see Fig. 9). Almost all of them (76% of the unburned bones) were cow ribs and vertebrae. These bones were scattered. In addition to being found in the main garbage heap in front of the cottage, they were also present away from the heap and even inside the house. That the few burned cow bones represent the same parts of the animals as the unburned bones suggests that cows were not slaughtered at the summer farm, but that beef was brought in as cuts of meat. Thus, two different food strategies for meat were present at the cottage: the slaughtering of small animals, and the bringing of high-quality meat from big animals. Horses, not unexpectedly, visited the summer farm. Frost nails for horses’ hooves were scattered in front of the cottage, indicating that men visited during the winter (only men drove horses). The man probably came alone, for example, to fetch the hay harvested during the previous summer. The garbage heap in front of the door was deposited partly by men during the winter and in all probability also by women during the summer cattle-grazing season. Depositing refuse just in front of the door was the pre-modern norm in rural Sweden (Stenbäck Lönnquist and Welinder 2006). Unburned flint was distributed quite differently around the cottage than burned flint (Fig. 11). It consists mostly of waste pieces, suggesting, perhaps, that persons sat on the doorstep and prepared gunflints. A few such pieces were found. Men were hunters, women were not, but stories do exist with dairy maids having guns or Fig. 9 Artifacts from the every day garbage (>10 and >30 pieces of burned bone per 0.25 m2; black dots = unburned bones)
24
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
Fig. 10 Artifacts from the everyday garbage (>5 and >15 pieces of burned flint per 0.25 m2)
pistols to use against predators. However, stories about how dairy maids scared bears by shouting, blowing a horn, showing their naked bottoms, or even hitting them with a distaff are more common (Lidman, and Nyman 1965; Lind 1996; Lundh 1952). Firearms were not the norm, so a more credible story, narrated by an old woman, which tells of girls sending for men and guns from the village to scare off bears may be more common (Lidman and Nyman 1965, p. 11): “But the only thing that happened was that the farmers sent up a few rifles to the summer farm. The girls didn’t dare use them—they put them in a corner, and there they stayed.” It is reasonable that men prepared gunflint at the cottage, probably during the summer because they apparently sat in the open doorway. Along the west wall of the cottage and at the west corner there are iron tools, mostly broken: mostly scythes, but also, for instance, the edge of a spade, a peg from a charcoal burner’s rake, and a chain. These are men’s tools as are the wedge and two whetstones in the same positions (see Fig. 11). At least that was the norm. When watching the cattle during the long summer days the dairy-maids were equipped with among other things a knife, a small axe, on rare occasions a gun, and the horn. When the men of the farms could not manage to get to the summer farms in time for the haymaking, the dairy-maids managed both the scythe and the rake in Fig. 11 Artifacts from presumed male activities (>5 and >15 pieces of unburned flint; dots = a knife, a wedge, and other iron tools; triangles = pieces of scythes; rectangles = whetstones)
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
25
addition to watching the cattle and doing the dairy chores. This meant even longer days. Thus, the iron tools that according to tradition and norm were regarded as men’s tools were frequently used by women at the summer farms. Discarded iron tools were not thrown away in the garbage heap at the front of the house, but in the small heap behind the house (see Fig. 11). This is a location wellknown from the excavation of the Granström cottage in the nearest village from the first half of the nineteenth century (Welinder 1992). There, where the gender norms were more strictly maintained in daily life and work, the same kinds of tools had been thrown behind the house in the same way. Women’s tools, on the other hand, had been thrown away in various places—except behind the house. At the Granström cottage, one of the corners behind the house was an obvious men’s area. All the belt buckles that were uncovered were found there. The distribution of fragments of clay tobacco pipes around the cottage tells three stories (Fig. 12). Smoking was done indoors, and then the pipes were cleaned, and broken when knocked against the fireplace. Smokers also sat on the doorstep, dropping any broken pipes in front of them. Finally, pipes were thrown in the garbage heap in front of the house. The pattern is the same at the Granström cottage. During the eighteenth century, clay tobacco pipe smoking was generally a male habit. In the succeeding century, however, it became a female habit, as men took snuff. Especially the Dalecarlian women were renowned pipe smokers in the nineteenth century with their Dalecarlian pipes. Tobacco was even sold with Dalecarlian women in folk costumes as a trademark (Rosander 1989). Thus, the relative freedom of women in north Scandinavia discussed above leaves open the question of whether the dairy maids smoked at the summer farms during the eighteenth century.
The Village, the Cottage, Garbage, and Gender Much of the work at a summer farm was done by those who happened to be present when various chores were on the agenda. Thus, little garbage occurs around the cottage that could have been deposited by either sexes on different occasions. This is Fig. 12 Artifacts from tobacco smoking (>3 and >6 pieces of clay tobacco pipes per m2; dots = clay tobacco pipe bowls)
26
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
valid especially for the household refuse (see Figs. 8, 9 and 10). However, some of the work that had to be done at a summer farm was done only by women. These tasks have left little garbage behind. Typically, all the tools and equipment used by the dairy maids when tending the cattle and working in the dairy were made of wood (Cedrenius 1971; Levander 1947, pp. 341–384). These items have not survived the taphonomic process to ultimately become part of the archaeological record today. Garbage that resulted from activities that belonged to the male norm—outdoor work with iron tools, flint knapping, smoking—is, on the other hand, apparent around the cottage (see Figs. 11 and 12). Women could have performed all of these activities at a summer farm where gender norms were less strictly upheld than in the village: men cooked and cleaned, women harvested and possibly smoked. Gender boundaries broke down. Chaos threatened unless order was upheld in ways other than as gender-specific work tasks. In the patriarch society of the Swedish eighteenth century it was male hegemony that was threatened by women living and working for themselves as dairy maids, performing male chores at the summer farms. The women had to be controlled in subtle ways by a clay tobacco pipe placed under the sill and fireplace, the latter being a female domain according to the village norm, and by buttons that are reminiscent of the gender order and heterogeneous sexuality. The visible garbage was deposited around the cottage according to the norms of the villages. Kitchen refuse formed a dump heap in front of the door, and men’s discarded tools formed a heap behind the house. Waste from smoking and flint knapping was just dropped on the spot. Thus, the pattern of garbage around the cottage was formed by both men and women according to the patriarchal norm of the villages. Gender order was maintained by both women and men also within the frames of relative female freedom at the summer farms. Chaos was kept away.
Conclusion The narratives and folklore of the nineteenth-century mid-Swedish countryside tell about both of the life of the households at the farms according to the ideal patriarchal norm of the orthodox Lutheran church and pragmatic flexibility in everyday life. This is obvious as concerns gendered work tasks and gender order especially at the summer farms, where women and men, respectively, seasonally stayed by themselves. Men had to cook, and women had to use the scythe. However, the gender-order was maintained for some tasks. Men never tended cattle and women never bridled horses. We started our discussion on how the landscape and material culture of the summer farms took part in the formation of the gender order by two simple dichotomies from the early gender archaeology: men are visible—women are invisible; men work in hard materials—women work in soft materials. In our case-study of the summer farm, women worked with hard materials and are visible when the curtain of male norms is drawn aside. The garbage around the cottage was deposited during many and various kinds of work that were seasonal and had to be performed by those who were present at the summer farm. Both women and men worked in both soft and hard materials, and both women and men are invisible and visible.
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
27
At face value, however, according to the traditional ideals of the patriarchal households at the farms, women—the dairy maids—are hardly visible in the archaeological record of the cottage at the summer farm. A fragment of a glass, yellow blouse button was found behind the house (see Fig. 7). Ideals and norms, and everyday life, respectively, are different matters. Acknowledgments
English revised and quotations translated by Carole Gillis.
References Amussen, S. D. (1999). Manligheten och det sociala systemet under den tidigmoderna perioden. In Berggren, A. M. (ed.), Manligt och omanligt i ett historiskt perspektiv, Forskningsrådsnämnden, Stockholm, pp. 96–115. Andersson, R., Östlund, L., and Lundqvist, R. (2005). Carved trees in grazed forests in boreal Sweden: Analysis of remaining trees, interpretation of past land-use and implications for conservation. Vegetation History and Archaebotany 14: 149–158. Arwill-Nordbladh, E. (2001). Genusforskning inom arkeologi, Högskoleverket, Stockholm. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, New York. Cedrenius, G. (1971). Kärna, tråg, spinnrock, Att samla gamla bruksföremål av trä, Bonnier. Daugstad, K. (2000). Mellom romantikk og realisme: Om seterlandskapet som ideal og realitet, Norges nuturvitenskapelig-tekniske universitet, Trondheim. Einarsson, L. (1997). Artefacts from Kronan: Categories, preservation and social structure. In Redknap, M. (ed.), Artefacts from Wrecks: Dated Assemblages from the Late Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 209–218. Elstad, Å. (1994). Drivandes kvinnfolk og late mannfolk? In Drivenes, E-A., Hauan, M.A., and Wold, H. A. (eds.), Det mangfoldige folket: Nordnorsk kulturhistorie 2: 188–196, 453–454. Emanuelsson, M., Johansson, A., Nilsson, S., Pettersson, S., and Svensson, E. (2003). Settlement, Shieling and Landscape: The Local History of a Forest Hamlet, Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm. Erixon, S. (1918). Bebyggelseundersökningar. Öfversikt. Periodiska bebyggelsetyper. Fäbodväsen. Fataburen: Kulturhistorisk tidskrift 1918: 21–57. Falk, A.-B. (2006). My home is my castle: Protection against evil in medieval times. In Andrén, A., Jennbert, K., and Raudvere, C. (eds.), Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspective: Origins, Changes, and Interpretations: An International Conference in Lund, Sweden, June 3–7, 2004, Nordic Academic, Lund, pp. 200–205. Fiebranz, R. (2002). Jord, linne eller träkol? Genusordning och hushållsstrategier, Bjuråker 1750–1850, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala. Frödin, J. (1929). Om fäbodbebyggelsens utbredning och olika typer i Europa. Svensk geografisk årsbok 1929: 177–194. Gero, J. M. (1991). Genderlithics: Women’s roles in stone tool production. In Gero, J. M., and Conkey, M. W. (eds.), Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 163–194. Henriksson, H. (1994). Kvinnor i gruvarbete. Med hammare och fackla 33: 111–171. Ivarsdotter, A. (1986). Sången i skogen. Studier kring den svenska fäbodmusiken, Institutionen för musikvetenskap, Uppsala universitet, Uppsala. Ivarsdotter, A. (2002). Kvinnorna och musiken i det gamla bondesamhället. In Östborn, A. (ed.), Kvinnors arbetsliv i Dalarna genom fem sekler, Stiftelsen Bonäs bygdegård, Mora, pp. 17–26. Jarlert, A. (1999). Fostran till man. In Berggren, A. M. (ed.), Manligt och omanligt i ett historiskt perspektiv, Forskningsrådsnämnden, Stockholm, pp. 59–72. Johansson, B. A. (ed.) (1985). Regalskeppet Kronan, Bra böcker, Höganäs. Johansson, E. (1994). Skogarnas fria söner. Modernitet och maskulinitet i norrländskt skogsarbete, Nordiska museet, Stockholm. Johansson, E. (2002). “På byn mer än hemma”. Manligt och kvinnligt i rörelse, rum och socialt liv. In Johansson, E. (ed.), Periferins landskap. Historiska spår och nutida blickfält i svensk glesbygd, Nordic Academic, Lund, pp. 181–204. Johansson, L. (1999). Människor i ett kulturlandskap. In Welinder, S. (ed.), Makt och kraft, människor och kön, Mitthögskolan, Östersund, pp. 63–79.
28
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
Johnson, A. (1991). Locksång i svenska fäbodar. In Björklund, S. (ed.), Kulturdagar i Bonäs Bygdegård 1990, Stiftelsen Bonäs bygdegård, Mora, pp. 17–26. Lagerspetz, O. (2006). Smuts: En bok om världen, vårt hem, Symposion, Stockholm. Levander, L. (1943). Övre Dalarnes bondekultur under 1800-talets förra hälft 1. Självhushåll, Lundequistska bokhandeln, Stockholm. Levander, L. (1947). Övre Dalarnes bondekultur under 1800-talets förra hälft 3. Hem och hemarbete, Lundequistska bokhandeln, Stockholm. Lidman, H. (ed.) (1963). Fäbodar, LT, Stockholm. Lidman, H., and Nyman, S. (eds.) (1965). Fäbodminnen, LTs Förlag, Stockholm. Liman, I. (1966). Figurristningar i Orsa. Fataburen. Kulturhistorisk tidskrift 1966: 65–74. Linder, M., and Magnusson, L. (eds.) (2001). Lilja mi Lilja mi ko! Säterkultur i Värmland, Värmlands museum, Karlstad. Lind, P. H. (1996) Smörkärnan snurrar på vallen. In Fäbodar i Delsbo. Delsbo hembygds- och fornminnesförening, Delsbo, pp. 127–128. Lindström, R. (1969). Fäbodliv, Bok och bild, Stockholm. Lundh, L. L. (1952). I Skoje-Kares rike. Mystik och musik från Fäbodskogen, C. Blom, Lund. Lundqvist, R. (2005). Ristade träd i skogen. Dalarna 75: 59–70. Löfgren, O. (1982). Kvinnfolksgöra. Om arbetsdelning i bondesamhället. Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift 3 (3): 6–14. Löfgren, O. (1994). Familj, släkt och hushåll. In Hellspong, M., and Löfgren, O. (eds.), Land och stad, Gleerup, Malmö, pp. 226–284. Lövkrona, I. (2001). Hierarki och makt. Genusperspektiv på arbetsdelningen i det tidigmoderna hushållet. In Liljewall, B., Niskanen, K., and Sjöberg, M. (eds.), Kvinnor och jord, Nordiska museet, Stockholm, pp. 31–44. Molin, P. (2006). Experiment med eldslagningsflinta från järnåldern. Arkeologi i Sverige 1: 2–9. Murdock, G. P., and Provost, C. (1973). Factors in the division of labour by sex: A cross-cultural analysis. Ethnology 12(2): 203–225. Myrdal, J. (1999). Det svenska jordbrukets historia 2. Jordbruket under feodalismen, Natur och Kultur/LT, Stockholm, pp. 1000–1700. Nicolay Arkeologisk tidsskrift (2007) 101.
Nyman, A. (1963). Utbredning: Hur man levde i fäbodarna. In Lidman, H. (ed.), Fäbodar, LT, Stockholm, pp. 15–112. Olsson, A. (2007). Genusforskning pågår. En kartläggning av i vilka institutionella miljöer forskning inom genusfältet pågår i Sverige, Nationella sekretariatet för genusforskning, Göteborg. Östman, A.-C. (2000). Mjölk och jord. Om kvinnlighet, manlighet och arbete i ett österbottniskt jordbrukssamhälle ca, Åbo akademi, Åbo, pp. 1870–1940. Øye, I. (2006). Kvinner som tradisjonsformidlere. Rom og redskaper. In Barndon, R., Innselset, S. M., Kristoffersen, K. K., and Lødøen, T. K. (eds.), Samfunn, symboler og identitet. Festskrift til Gro Mandt på 70-årsdagen, Universitetet i Bergen, Bergen, pp. 439–453. Rathje, L. (2001). Amasonen och jägaren. Kön/genderkonstruktioner i norr, Umeå universitet, Umeå. Rosander, G. (ed.) (1977). Nordiskt fäbodväsen. Förhandlingar vid fäbodseminarium i Älvdalen, Dalarna 1–3 september 1976, Nordiska museet, Stockholm. Rosander, G. (1989). Om dalkullan i reklamen. Företagsminnen. Föreningen Stockholms företagsminnen 1989: 22–33. Rosén, C. (2007). Torpare och materiell kultur. In Welinder, S. (ed.), Torpens arkeologi, Riksantikvarieämbetet, Stockholm, pp. 61–78. Schmidt Sabo, K. (2005). Den medeltida byns sociala dimensioner, Riksantikvarieämbetet, Stockholm. Schön, E. (2006). Folktro på fäbodvall, Akademibokhandeln, Växjö. Stenbäck Lönnquist, U., and Welinder, S. (2005). The archaeology of complex feelings. K.A.N. Kvinner i arkeologi i Norge 24: 36–51. Stenbäck Lönnquist, U., and Welinder, S. (2006). Folkhemmet möter butöserna. In Barndon, R., Innselset, S. M., Kristoffersen, K. K., and Lødøen, T. K. (eds.), Samfunn, symboler og identitet—festskrift til Gro Mandt på 70-årsdagen, Universitetet i Bergen, Bergen, pp. 387–398. Stenbäck Lönnquist, U., and Welinder, S. (2007). Genus och materialitet. Kvinnor, kor, kasa och kritpipor. In Fahlgren, S., and Thurén, B.-M. (eds.), Genusmaraton 2007. Mittsveriges genusforskare på frammarsch, Mittuniversitetet, Östersund. Stenbäck Lönnquist, U., and Welinder, S. (2008). Cattle, dung and clay tobacco-pipes. In Konstantinos, C., Lund, J., and Prescott, C. (eds.), Facets of Archaeology: Essays in Honour of Lotte Hedeager on Her 60th birthday, Unipub, Oslo, pp. 169–178.
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:10–29
29
Ströbeck, L. (1999). On studies of task differentiation between men and women in the Scandinavian Iron Age. Current Swedish Archaeology 7: 161–172. Svensson, E. (2005). Gender and spatial patterns in the Scandinavian farmstead and outland. In Holm, I., Innselset, S., and Øye, I. (eds.), ‘Utmark’: The outfield as industry and ideology in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages, Department of Archaeology, University of Bergen, Bergen, pp. 157–170. Thurén, B.-M. (2003). Genusforskning: Ffrågor, villkor och utmaningar, Vetenskapsrådet, Stockholm. Undset, S. (1971). Lykkelige dager, Aschehoug, Oslo. Welinder, S. (1992). Människor och landskap, Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, Uppsala. Willemark, K. (1997). Kvinnor, män och stenhantverk. In Johnsen, B., and Welinder, S. (eds.), Gender och arkeologi, Mitthögskolan, Östersund, pp. 50–62.
Folklore archives and published records Institutet för språk och folkminnen (SOFI), Uppsala, Sweden Länsmuseet Västernorrland, Härnösand [htpp://murberget.se/upptack.aspx] Nordiska museets arkiv, Stockholm, Sweden Odstedt, E (2004) Norrländsk folktradition. Uppteckningar i urval och med kommentar av Bengt af Klintberg. Gustav Adolfs akademien, Uppsala, Sweden Östersunds Museums Etnologiska Arkiv (ÖMEA), Jämtlands läns museum, Östersund, Sweden