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Sweden, Norway, and Finland did not have serfdom.

If your analysis is correct, shouldn't there be a large difference in the social welfare systems between those them and the Nordic countries with serfdom-like systems; the Danish stavnsbånd, from 1733 to 1788, and the Icelandic vistarband, from 1490 until 1894?, or between the Nordic countries and, say, The Netherlands?



False.

Sweden, Norway and Finland all had monarchies, a landed gentry, and a peasant class. If you'd like to make a subtle (and perhaps useful) distinction between "peasant" and "serf" then I suppose that's worth talking about, but my generalizations about Europe include the nordic countries.

"The peasant proprietors, who, under the name of the "Lantmanna" party, formed a compact majority in the Second Chamber, pursued a consistent policy of class interests in the matter of the taxes and burdens that had, as they urged, so long oppressed the Swedish peasantry;"[1]

"Outside the political sphere, however, the peasants were considered at the bottom of the social order—just above vagabonds. The upper classes looked down on them as excessively prone to drunkenness and laziness, as clannish and untrustworthy, and especially as lacking honor and a sense of national spirit."[2]

"The difference from serfs elsewhere was that the farmer did not directly own the life and property of the homesteader (Husmann), but in most cases, he practically did."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_the_late_19th_ce...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Finland#Peasants

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_serfdom


You said "What if a population was not systematically enslaved and disenfranchised for, oh, say, 2000 years". You used the terms "systematically enslaved" and "They were property". Those are terms applied to serfs. They do not apply to all peasants.

You therefore cannot be referring to Sweden's relatively recent and short period of absolute monarchy when you talk about 1000+ years of time. See for example https://www.quora.com/Sweden/In-Swedish-history-why-did-most... "In Swedish history, why did most of the peasants own land, and why did they ally with the king against the nobility? This is substantially different from the rest of Europe, and I wonder why it developed this way?" Quoting from it:

> The Swedes retained that almost primordial, archaic concept of individual liberties and rights when other Germanic tribes had been subsumed into other legal or property concepts, such as what happened in the Holy Roman Empire.

You second link, for Finland after it was conquered by Sweden, says:

> In contrast to serfdom in Germany and Russia, the Finnish peasant was typically a freeholder who owned and controlled his small plot of land. There was no serfdom in which peasants were permanently attached to specific lands, and were ruled by the owners of that land. In Finland (and Sweden) the peasants formed one of the four estates and were represented in the parliament.

These are not "systematically enslaved and disenfranchised" peasants who were "property".

As your third link says, the "Norwegian serfdom" social system for Norwegian lower class farmers 1) started in 1750, so well after slavery was firmly established in the American colonies, and ended in 1860, that is, before the US abolished slavery, and 2) was "not actually in serfdom by European standards". This isn't the 2000 years or even 200 years you alluded to.




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