Autore: Vilhelmsson, Vilhelm
Titolo: «We All Deserve to Live». Peasant Attitudes and Vagrant Survival Tactics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Iceland
Periodico: Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento
Anno: 2025 - Fascicolo: 2 - Pagina iniziale: 53 - Pagina finale: 68

Writing in 1785, a senior state official in Iceland wrote about customs of hospitality among the Icelandic peasantry where he described the long-standing tradition of providing food and lodging to all travelers regardless of their social status. Even vagrants received such hospitality, he said, which the peasantry justified with the refrain that «we all deserve to live». This article explores the place of vagrants in Icelandic society in the eighteenth and nineteenth century by looking at their interactions with the peasantry. It asks what strategies vagrants employed in order to evade control and punishment and simply to survive in a country which was almost entirely rural, and which lacked even the most basic infrastructure. It argues that the tolerance of vagrants, and the limits of that tolerance, in local communities rested on a combination of 'relative usefulness' (such as providing useful services) and their adherence to popular customs and mentalities.




SICI: 0392-0011(2025)2<53:«ADTLP>2.0.ZU;2-N
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.7387/118551
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.7387/118551

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