Fashionable Encounters

Perspectives and trends in textile and dress in the Early Modern Nordic World

Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen, Marie-Louise Nosch, Maj Ringgaard, Kirsten Toftegaard, Mikkel Venborg Pederson, Marie-Louise Nosch, Maj Ringgaard

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781782973836
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Materials Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

At the heart of this anthology lies the world of fashion: a concept that pervades the realm of clothes and dress; appearances and fashionable manners; interior design; ideas and attitudes. Here sixteen papers focus on the Nordic world (Denmark, Norway, Sweden Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Isles and Greenland) within the time frame AD 1500–1850. This was a period of rapid and far-reaching social, political and economic change, from feudal Europe through political revolution, industrialisation, development of international trade, religious upheaval and technological innovation; changes impacting on every aspect of life and reflected in equally rapid and widespread changes in fashion at all levels of society. These papers present a broad image of the theme of fashion as a concept and as an empirical manifestation in the Nordic countries in early modernity, exploring a variety of ways in which that world encountered fashionable impressions in clothing and related aspects of material culture from Europe, the Russian Empire, and far beyond. The chapters range from object-based studies to theory-driven analysis. Elite and sophisticated fashions, the importation of luxuries and fashion garments, christening and bridal wear, silk knitted waistcoats, woollen sweaters and the influence of the whaling trade on women's clothing are some of the diverse topics considered, as well as religious influences on perceptions of luxury and aspects of the garment trade and merchant inventories.

1

The World of Foreign Goods and Imported Luxuries: Merchant and shop inventories in late 17th-century Denmark–Norway

Camilla Luise Dahl & Piia Lempiäinen

Early modern Europe saw an increase in imported goods from the New World, Asia and Africa. Delicate china, exotic spices, coffee, tea and new types of fabrics were making their way to a wider group of European consumers. The Scandinavian demand for foreign goods and imported luxuries from Europe and the rest of the world had grown rapidly from the 16th century onwards. Not only did members of the royal household or the court desire to dress luxuriously in foreign fabrics, but the Dano–Norwegian bourgeoisie, who during the 16th and 17th centuries had experienced growing wealth, too were buying, using, reusing and discarding a large number of foreign goods. As suggested, luxury commodities were now circulating throughout society, becoming available to more people and shaping their identity in a new way.¹

A wide collection of probates has survived from early modern Denmark–Norway and among them, a number of inventories of shopkeepers, retailers and merchants. These inventories can shed light on how and what people were shopping in the 17th century Dano–Norwegian kingdom. This chapter investigates selected late 17th-century probates from eight towns: the capital of the realm, Copenhagen, East-Jutlandic Aarhus, Zealandic Vordingborg and Nyborg in Funen, all in Denmark, as well as North-East Norwegian Trondheim and Larvik, Frederikstad and the Norwegian capital Oslo, back then known as Christiania, all situated in Southern Norway.

In the 17th century, towns such as Copenhagen and Trondheim were thriving naval ports in Northern Europe. Copenhagen held the Dano–Norwegian monopoly of trade in the colonies, Greenland and Iceland, and was the political and economic centre of the kingdom, whereas Trondheim together with Bergen was the centre of the so-called Nordlandshandel, the North Norwegian trade route, which meant that most of the goods from up north passed through Trondheim on its way further down to the rest of Norway and Denmark as well as elsewhere in Europe.² Trading companies dealing specifically with and having monopolies over Asian, West Indian and North Atlantic goods were established during the 17th century, the earliest, the Danish East India Company (Ostindisk Kompagni) was founded in 1616 in Copenhagen.³ The other towns selected for this survey were smaller provincial towns of various sizes that engaged in different levels of domestic and foreign trade.

Probate records were made obligatory for everyone in Denmark–Norway in 1683, but in many cases, older record books and documents kept in the town halls were discarded to make room for new ones.⁴ This means that probate records from the late 17th century can be scarce or even non-existent in many places. Furthermore, even where probate records are present, shopkeepers’ stock inventories have not always been drawn up or preserved, and hence the preserved probate records do not always give a complete picture of the town’s demography and of the trade practised there.⁵ Thus the towns selected for the survey are those where merchant or shop inventories have survived from the 17th century. Although the preserved probates per inhabitant is low in Scandinavia as compared to elsewhere in Europe, in order to form a statistically useful source material, the number of extant probate records is still significant and large enough to be used for the purposes of this chapter. The selection of inventories can offer an interesting glimpse of the shops that operated in the area and the commodities they traded.⁶

The probate records

The probate inventory in Denmark–Norway, as in many other places,⁷ was a business document in which economic values were assigned to listed items to facilitate division among heirs and assessment of estate duty. Upon the death of a person, the home would be sealed and everything of value systematically and carefully registered and taxed, and eventually divided among the heirs. The marital status, trade and place of residence of the deceased and, in most cases, additional information on the surviving spouse and children or other heirs were entered in the probate inventory, but its prime purpose was to list and value all movables and immovables in the home. Even before the probate records were made obligatory for everyone, they were required from townspeople; in 1598 a legislative act demanded that probates had to be drawn up in inheritance settlements whenever there were underage heirs.⁸

In those cases where the deceased was a merchant or a tradesman, even the stocks of trade goods were valued and written down. These inventories of goods are, in most cases, attached to a probate record of the deceased. There are, however, examples of shop or stock inventories preserved on their own with no records of the owner as well as of probates of shopkeepers without stock inventory.⁹ The existing inventories mention a variety of stocks, such as unopened packs of cloth and commodities on board ships or in warehouses, goods stored in basements, attics and storage rooms as well as stocks in shops and stalls.

Probates from Copenhagen have survived from 1681 onwards. A few of these have earlier starting dates, even as far back as 1677, but they were finished earliest in 1681. From 1683 to 1687, the number of probates is less extensive than the years 1681 and 1688, from which a large amount of probates have survived. Since Copenhagen held the monopoly of trade with the colonies, Iceland, the Faroe Isles and Greenland, this town can present a large number of probate records of those involved in trade with these places.

Vordingborg, Aarhus and Nyborg were smaller towns than Copenhagen and can thus show fewer probates, but even in these towns a number of merchant probates have survived. From Vordingborg and Nyborg, merchant and shopkeeper probates can be found throughout the second half of the 17th century and earlier, while from Aarhus, shop inventories are found from the 1670s onwards.

From Larvik, Frederikstad and Trondheim, probates can be dated back to 1673, 1676 and 1678 respectively, whereas the Oslo probate records only date back to 1692.¹⁰ Of the Norwegian towns, Trondheim can by far present the largest number of inventories of traded goods. This is due to a great number of surviving probate records, collected in probate record books originally kept at the town hall, as well as due to the Nordland trade. A great number of the probates from Trondheim thus record people involved one way or another in trade.

A number of merchants, traders and citizens even left behind painted church memorials, epitaphs, sporting themselves and their families in all their wealth and status. And although these paintings meant for the church show the family members dressed for church – which by principle should be subdued and modest – fashionable details and foreign finery are often found in the depicted costumes. It is worth noting that these portraits were usually ordered while the family was still alive or at the death of a single family member and that those ordering the portraits must have had a great influence on the depiction of themselves and their clothes.

Shops, shopkeepers and customers

The first shopkeepers to sell from permanent structures, thus competing with marketplaces and fairs, were probably artisans. Producers sold their products from the windows of their workshops in the intervals between market and fair days. Some shopkeepers operated from their homes, selling their goods from a stall, a bod, in the house, while others owned stalls in different places in the town, usually at the town square. Such sales are probably as old as artisanal production itself. In the 17th century, a wide range of shops was available to consumers of fashion from artisan stalls to retail shops selling ready-made goods.

The probate inventories rarely mention the physical aspects of the shops, or whether they were situated in the home, or elsewhere. Primarily, probates list entries such as “Kramvarer” (goods), “i kramboden” (in the shop) or “Kramvarer i boden” (goods in the shop) not leaving much room for interpretation. Some merchants, who distributed their goods to other retailers, did not have a shop at all. Their stocks are usually described as “skibslast” (ship stock) or the stocks were kept in a warehouse in the harbour. However, most of the inventories simply list the size of the stock from which the size of the shop may be assumed as well as the quality and value of the goods.

The types of stock, and thus the shops, varied a great deal from small, petty to large ones and from specialised shops to general stores. Textile goods in the shops included fabrics sold by the piece or the ell, readymade items and various dress accessories and haberdashery as well as other textile-related items such as soap and cloth brushes to clean and maintain textiles, textile-producing tools and sewing tools, starch and dyes. A large portion of the retailers who sold cloth and dress accessories also sold a wide range of other items such as maps, tobacco, knives, nails, cups and plates.

Fig. 1.1: Heinrich Schupp, merchant and the head of the Danish East Indian Company with his two wives, Dorothea von der Wilden and Anna von Meulengracht. The merchant and his second wife Anna sport fine lace in his cravat and cuffs and in her headwear, a highly popular import item, particularly from France, in 17th-century Denmark–Norway. Epitaph from 1690, St. Petri Church, Copenhagen, Denmark (Photo: Erik Fjordside/LivingHistory).

A typical smaller town shop was a general store selling not only a limited amount of drapery goods but also all sorts of small wares (such as pins, soap and spices), ironware (nails, tools, household utensils) and miscellaneous goods from maps to mugs.¹¹ The specialist shops on the other hand sold only a limited type of goods. For example, a drapery shop sold only textiles while artisan shops, such as the wigmakers, passementerie makers, dressmakers, tailors and slipper makers and the like, sold a narrow range of goods of their own making as well as ready-made items from elsewhere.

The specialist shops were primarily a big town phenomenon, and as an approximation, there were more specialised shops in Copenhagen than in the other towns. However, they can be found already long before the late 17th century. For instance, some specialist shops in Malmoe (present-day Sweden) near Copenhagen date to the mid-16th century and at least some of them are even older.¹² Obviously, some specialized artisans can be traced far back in time, such as the weaver, the shoemaker and the like, while others like wig...