Hard Work Defined Life in Sweden’s Ironworks Communities

With vivid language and rich illustrations, Göran Rydén presents new knowledge about work and household economy in eighteenth-century Sweden. In an engaging and accessible way, the book shows what daily life was like in small industrial communities in Uppland – a local world that was also part of a global economic system.

The book draws on extensive archival material from Leufsta and other ironworks, covering twenty parishes with around 30,000 inhabitants in what was known as Dannemora bergslag during the eighteenth century. Much of the material comes from the ironworks’ own archives, and a large part of the research was conducted on site in the old Brukskontoret in Leufsta – the very building where the accounting records under study were once written.

Unlike previous studies, Göran Rydén approaches his subject from a microhistorical perspective, placing people at the centre of his analysis. Rather than focusing on overarching structures and technological progress, he explores the lives of ordinary people – their work, their homes, and their daily routines.

The book offers an important depiction of how people lived in early modern Sweden, while also highlighting Sweden’s role in the global trading system. The iron produced in these small communities, in Swedish bruk, was shipped to the steel industry in England and became an important commodity, alongside sugar and coffee.

Work at the ironworks was hard and physically demanding. Rydén describes the dangerous days of the miners in the Dannemora mine and the exhausting labour of the forgemen in the forges. The work was also tough for women, who bore the responsibility for managing the households and the small-scale farms. According to the accounts, workers did not receive cash wages; instead, they were part of a subsistence economy, receiving housing, plots of land, and monthly rations of grain and other necessities from the bruk’s warehouses. Everything was meticulously recorded, and no matter how much they worked, the labourers were almost always in debt to the ironmaster.

“It was never intended to balance out. In that way, the ironworks maintained full control over their workers. They were not slaves, but neither were they free labourers,” says Göran Rydén.

The common image of Swedish ironmasters as benevolent employers who cared for their workers is, according to Rydén, fundamentally mistaken. In earlier research, he has also shown how the iron produced at the bruk was used in the transatlantic slave trade. To some extent, these can be compared to the Caribbean plantations, but with a key difference, Rydén notes, being that the brutal physical oppression found on the plantations did not exist in Sweden.

The social and economic order that made this unequal system possible was based on householding (hushållning), a central concept in the book. Today, the word may bring to mind domestic economy or household management, but in the eighteenth century it represented an entire worldview.

“The strictly hierarchical and patriarchal system of householding was not something people of the time questioned. It was seen as part of the natural order, encompassing the whole world. Work was a way to serve God, just as prayer was. It was a worldview advocated, among others, by Carl Linnaeus. One was to manage and cultivate what nature provided,” says Göran Rydén.

Under the divine householding order, there also existed a smaller-scale householding, likewise subordinate to the divine. In this sense, the ironmaster could be seen as a link between the divine and the local. Work formed the basis of this order – the activity that united humans and nature.

The book also describes dwelling and living conditions. Forgemen and artisans lived within the ironworks gates, in houses that still exist. Miners and day labourers, however, had simpler dwellings – often poor and now long gone. The manor house and the finer residences were reserved for the ironmaster and his officials.

“Housing was a central part of the householding system. It was clearly segregated: the ironmaster and his officials lived in comfort and style, while the workers had to make do with modest and often very cramped conditions,” writes Göran Rydén.