Agricultural growth in a cold climate: the case of Iceland in 1800–1850

Árni Daníel Júlíusson

Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2021, vol. 69, issue 3, 217-232

Abstract: During the first half of the nineteenth-century Iceland experienced a steady increase in exports. New products were sought after for export by Danish merchants and the peasant farming community responded by increasing the production of the relevant products. The whole period from 1800 to 1850 saw a continuing increase in the exports of sheep products and shark liver oil, which had a common origin in peasant farming production. This period contrasts with the eighteenth century when there was no corresponding growth in exports. The level of exports in the eighteenth century remained overall much the same except during periods of dearth, when it fell. Traditionally the beginning of the modernisation of Icelandic society is dated to around 1880–1910. However, it could be argued that increasing exports of sheep products and shark liver oil after 1800 saw a clear break with the eighteenth-century pattern and that the period should be taken into consideration as being the origin period of economic modernisation in Iceland. This article discusses questions the exclusion not only of the role of peasant farming in the modernisation narrative of Iceland, but also of the Copenhagen merchant houses that organised the goods export from Iceland after 1800.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03585522.2020.1788985 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:sehrxx:v:69:y:2021:i:3:p:217-232

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/sehr20

DOI: 10.1080/03585522.2020.1788985

Access Statistics for this article

Scandinavian Economic History Review is currently edited by Espen Ekberg and Francisco Beltran Tapia

More articles in Scandinavian Economic History Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().