A poor farmhand

The farm-worker

The farmhand Alfred from Emil in Lönneberga.

Most people in Sweden will probably think of Alfred in Emil in Lönneberga or Robert Nilsson in Willhelm Moberg's Emigrant Series when they hear the word farmhand. Of course, the image of Alfred and Robert Nilsson as a farmhand is a bit embellished, but there are great features of how the farmhand felt at the time in these two series.

A farmhand, a service servant or Lego servant (tjänstehjon and legohjon in Swedish) as it was also called had conditions that were regulated by the Lego servant Statue between 1664 and 1926 (with certain changes over the centuries) which in practice meant a general duty to seek and find a master who wanted to hire. Of course, there were a few exceptions for the wealthy, for young people up to 21, if their work was needed on their parents' farm and for people who were unable to work. An employment as a farmhand with a farmer was valid (after 1833) between 1 November and 24 October with mutual right of termination on 24 August. Service as a farmhand (as well as a maid), was the vocational training available to those who did not learn a craft as an apprentice.

The contract statue from 1877 from the law of the Kingdom of Sweden states, among other things.

Section 10 § servant shall in his relationship be godly, faithful, diligent, obedient, sober and moral and shall not shy away from the work and chores that the master reasonably undertakes. If the servant is negligent, stubborn, or indecent and cannot be corrected, or if it turns out to be unfaithful, ignorant or otherwise incompetent in the service, it may be separated from it by loss of the entire salary, and receive such a grade as it deserves; also compensated for the master's damage, which he performs in court.

Section 52 § If a servant deviates from service earlier than service time is out or it has done all the work, the master has the power to collect it again by force, and becomes a service servant in the service until the day of moving, and loses half the salary and the damage.

In today's situation, it would have been the employer who would have been prosecuted if he had fetched a worker by force.

Maybe sort out the concepts a bit too?

Service servant (or Lego servant) in agriculture were called farmhand and maid respectively. The Lego servant Statue regulated the service servant's obligations and rights towards the master in Sweden.

Dependent tenant (Inhyseshjon in Swedish) were work incapacitated and unmediated people, usually the elderly or people with disabilities, who were placed by the parish's poor care, "housed", with a family for compensation. It was a solution in places where there were no poor houses or other public institutions for the poor. The dependent tenant was placed with the family that demanded the lowest payment to house the tenant.

Rotehjon (or pauper) were the most unfortunate, they were not allowed to remain as pauper in any family but were referred to rotation throughout the parish. For shorter periods, they were allowed to stay in each place, where they received the necessary food, accommodation and care. Rotehjon did not even get peace and rest when they lay on the deathbed. It was considered bad luck to have a dying rotehjon in the home, so they were sent around between different homes when they were dying.

My grandfather's grandfather had a dependent tenant during the 1880s and also my grandfather's father had a couple a bit in the early 20th century. How did it happen, you may be wondering? After all, they were footsoldiers and they had many children. Sometime during the second half of the 19th century (probably during the 1870s) a new soldier's croft was built for the Lantz soldiers at 123 Håkentorp (the croft was demolished when the house that stands there today was built), but the old soldier's (it is now in Götarps Brunn) croft was not moved immediately but had to stand. For a soldier who was not always in such a good position moneywise, it was good if they could get a little extra money to house a person or two.

Were there any servants in the family then? Yes, there were a few actually and some of them moved to America. Everything was not as romantic as many people think today, but it was a struggle from morning to evening for the servants.

The maids

The farmhand Alfred and the maid Lina from Emil in Lönnerberga.

For many women, there was not much of a  choice than to become a maid.

Maids who worked in agriculture belonged to the farm's servant and were the female equivalent of the farm's male farm boys. On small farms, the maid often did both housework and farm work, but on larger farms, mainly the southern parts of Sweden, there could be a number of maids who only did farm work, such as milking, while special maids did housework.

Maids who worked as maidservant in the home were called pigor in Swedish but also called jungfru or tjänarinna, were either subordinate to an employed housekeeper or housewife, or also directly subordinate to the family, then often under the wife's directive. The word "maid" was given a low status. For domestic girls in the cities, the word was replaced by a servant girl around 1919, while a childrens maid increasingly became a nanny.

In noble manors it was customary for both maids and maidens to have their weddings paid for by the employers, who also held them in the manor party room, a custom which was reflected in the fact that a noblewoman who was the court mistress also had her wedding paid for by her royal employer and the wedding held at the Royal Palace. The daughters then dressed the bride, and the employer family often attended the festivities. This was part of the informal charity that the nobility was considered to have to show towards their servants and corresponded to the financial responsibility that could be taken for elderly "faithful servants", and was repeated in the other celebrations that a noble family traditionally held for their servants during various holidays like midsummer, when they themselves participated in the dance to illustrate a form of family relationship within the household.

A maid did not earn much in cash because most of it was paid in kind. On average, a maid in the countryside earned half or two-thirds of what a farmhand earned. It was not considered that women needed money as much as men. In the cities, the maids earned more, which was one of the reasons why the maids moved to the cities.

Just like the servants, the maids obeyed under the Lego servant statue. It was written on the employer's terms. He managed the time of the servants. On the so-called maid Saturday when the maid was to be free, she had to negotiate with her master, and for a week in the autumn around Mikaelsmäss at the end of September, the servants had a week to look for a new and perhaps better place to work.

When you look more closely at how they lived in the past, today we have a hard time understanding how they could cope with the conditions that prevailed at that time. It is difficult to get acquainted with their everyday life. People usually talk about humane things but may not always understand that what they consider to be humane today may not be humane in a hundred years or that it may have been unthinkable a hundred years ago. Society is changing and many times for the better.

//Daniel