Tenant Farmers in Denmark (Fæstebønder)

Being copyholder or smallholder meant that we rented a property with land by a landowner. A landowner could be a private person, but also eg the king or University! You could stay in the house or on the farm and cultivate the soil. In return you would pay indfæstning and country feast and make hoveri. At least until the head depot was lifted - and it was later in 1850.

Country Gilde and hoveri

Indfæstning was the amount the tenants had to pay to enter a farm or a house. Country Guild, the annual fee paid by tenants - either with cash or in kind, such as grain or pig. Hoveri was work that tenants should do squire without pay. If a hilts could not pay taxes or not drive farm well enough to squire put him off the farm and take a new hilts into instead.

Shank letters in duplicate

By regulation, 23 January 1719 it was decided that all copyhold letters were made in two copies, one for tenants and the landowner. The letter should also clip info in a particular clip protocol. In the late 1700s was copyhold system reformed - bl. a. it became established copyhold, which gave tenants the right to have such a son or son in law continue hilt. Shank care system was finally abolished by Act of 30 June 1919 - but since there were hardly any tenants back.

Several kinds of clip archives

It is not only bolster the Protocols, which tells of tenants and life circumstances. In freight archives will find example also hoveriforordninger that can reveal how much the peasant had to work for the landowner. There may be diaries of the head depot, where you can see exactly had the individual peasant granted work and when. There may also be visually business or land books, which gives names of tenants and also inform on the standard in the farms and houses they lived in.