How did the soldier live?

 

Acquiring a suitable person who could become a soldier rested entirely on the root farmers. These had the local knowledge of the people and were therefore best suited to recruit the crew. If we look at the war times in history, it was not always easy to get soldiers fast enough. During the war years, every croft where there was a vacancy would be re-appointed with a new soldier before the end of March. It was in the summer that the wars were mostly fought and then there were no vacancies. In peacetime, the soldier who resigned for one reason or another would be reimbursed within three months, otherwise a vacancy fee would have to be paid by the root farmers. If it turned out that the work did not go fast enough to get a new man, according to Carl XI, the root master could be forcibly ordered to the post. If one looks at the first one hundred and fifty years of the history of the constant boyhood, it was, during this time of peace, relatively easy to get a crew. The profession as a soldier had a high status, among other things for the reason that it was the soldiers who traveled in the society of that time.

It was at the roadside outside the croft that the old soldier heard what it was like on the moor.

The soldier was also one of the broad masses of people who learned a civilian profession needed in the army and the noble art of writing and reading, which was an important prerequisite.

The latter also meant that he became the school teacher and with the military pedagogy taught children and the elderly in the parishes to write and read long before the primary school charter was introduced in our country.

Here Ture Färdinand Stackell t.h. together with his father Carl Stackell, both soldiers in Norra Fågelås parish.

That the profession as a soldier was inherited was almost more the rule than the exception. It is often the oldest of the sons in the small soldier's croft who walks the same path as the father, it is not entirely uncommon to be able to trace several generations of soldiers. When it comes to the girls in a soldier's family, it is not uncommon for them to marry a soldier.

One of the provinces that has had the most soldiers in the organization "Det ständiga knekthållet", was Småland. Vilhelm Moberg also gives the Småland divided soldier a status and place in the society and history of the time through his story "Raskens", which was published in 1927 and which was already printed in two editions in the first year.

Of course he is in reality Rasken. There are many in the whole country who have this name, but what Moberg describes in his story is based on the story that he himself experienced in many ways by hearing his father the soldier Carl Gottfrid Moberg tell about life as a soldier.

This man has become Sweden's most famous divided soldier through Moberg's story. However, he and the other about five hundred thousand soldiers in "Knekthållet" have one thing in common and that was their belief in a free Sweden and in the vitality of the land they were set to cultivate.

It was in the company of happy friends that the soldier told and heard news told from all over the country.

Most people with a Swedish background in the veins have some connection to these by being related in a straight descending line to a soldier in the younger Allotment System. An organization that only existed in our country.

When he was adopted, this was first done by the root farmers who unanimously proposed a person as a soldier for their particular soldier's croft. Definitive adoption then took place at the next general muster when the defense representatives would approve the proposed person.

For the soldier, it was after the approval to pick up his equipment which was then stored at the root farmer in the so-called root coffin.

When the soldier was accepted, it was often at the annual meeting that he received news from the wider world. Through the close cooperation that the soldier had in the heath, the news spread from what was then called "the whole world".

As a rule, it was at the age of fifty that the divided soldier withdrew. It was then that the parishes got a well-educated person who looked around the world and it was not uncommon for the soldier to be employed as a church caretaker, church clerk, "fjärdingsman" (a sort of lawman) etc. Most of the parishes cared for their soldiers and stood up for them when they finished their service with both housing and work.

The allotement System ends on December 31, 1901, when we switch to the conscription army, which also recently disappeared.

Anyone who was a divided soldier in 1901 could, if he so wished, continue to be a soldier for as long as he wanted to. This meant that at the beginning of the 20th century the defense had a large asset in all the manpower of the knowledgeable subdivision.

During the last years of the 19th century, many soldiers of the lega (salary) had this deposited in a bank account. This money saved many from great poverty and instead made the soldiers have a saved capital which became the base plate when they bought the small soldiers' crofts from the root farmers.

During the union crisis of 1905, it turns out that many of those who continued to be soldiers quit. For many, this crisis was like a war with Norway and they did not want to be part of it, but then said goodbye.

For some, the dismissal was also an opportunity to get money from Vadstena warriors' house fund. These soldiers, who today would be called "pensioners", became what were then called "gratialists".

Already in the 1640s, Queen Kristina set up a pension institution in Vadstena for the soldiers who participated in the Thirty Years' War. An institution that then survived all the way to the last person in Sweden who was a divided soldier, Axel Ljung in Floby, passed away in August 1983. At that time, there were 4 million left in this, the first Swedish pension institution.

//Daniel