The Norwegian patriciate (in Norwegian ''borgerskap'' or ''patrisiat'') was a
social class
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in a social class can for ...
in
Norway from the 17th century until the modern age; it is typically considered to have ended sometime during the 19th or early 20th century as a distinct class. Jørgen Haave defines the Norwegian patriciate as a broad collective term for the civil servants (embetsmenn) and the
burghers in the cities who were often merchants or ship's captains, i.e. the non-noble upper class.
[Jørgen Haave, ''Familien Ibsen'', Museumsforlaget, 2017, ] Thus it corresponds to term
patriciate in its modern, broad generic sense in English. The patricians did not constitute a legally defined class as such, although its constituent groups, the civil servants and the burghers held various legal privileges, with the
clergy ''de jure'' forming one of the two privileged
estates of the realm until 1814.
Terminology
In Norwegian, the term ''borgerskap'' in modern usage is usually taken to mean both members of the
bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
in its oldest sense, that is to say the burghers in the cities, and the class comprising the
clergy and the
civil servants
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
, also known as the "
aristocracy of officials" and by other names such as "the thousand academic families," as it was called by
Jens Arup Seip
Jens Lauritz Arup Seip (11 October 1905 – 5 September 1992) was a Norwegian historian originally trained as a medieval historian, but stood out as the strongest of his time in interpreting Norwegian political history in the 1800s, particula ...
with reference to the 19th century. The Norwegian term ''borgerskap'' thus largely corresponds to the English term
patriciate in its modern, broad, generic sense, which vaguely refers to prominent families which did not belong to the
nobility, typically members of the
bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
and elite professions, and usually before the 20th century.
In Norwegian, the native term ''patrisiat'' (''patriciat'' in older spelling) was used at least from the 19th century, based on a Danish and continental model. In Denmark the term ''patriciat'' denotes both the non-noble bourgeoisie and the non-noble class of higher civil servants, lawyers and members of other elite professions, especially before around 1900, as seen e.g. in the series ''Danske Patriciske Slægter'' (later ''Patriciske Slægter'' and ''Danske patricierslægter''), which was published in six volumes between 1891 and 1979. In Denmark usage of the term patrician is typically restricted to families that belonged to this class no later than around 1800.
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
used the term patriciate to describe his own family background, and the term has recently been used in scholarship exploring Ibsen's family and childhood milieu, and by extension the elite of the entire county of
Telemark, e.g. by Jon Nygaard
[Jon Nygaard (2013). ''"...af stort est du kommen". Henrik Ibsen og Skien''. ]Centre for Ibsen Studies The Centre for Ibsen Studies ( no, Senter for Ibsen-studier) at the University of Oslo engages in multidisciplinary research, teaching, and documentation on the nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
History
The Centre was establ ...
. and Jørgen Haave,
resulting in renewed interest in the patricians as a social group. In a Norwegian context, Jørgen Haave defines the patriciate as a broad collective term for the civil servants (embetsmenn) and the
burghers in the cities who were often merchants or ship's captains, i.e. the non-noble upper class.
While patriciate in itself is a quite broad term and often defined in terms of culture and values,
the term mercantile patriciate (''handelspatrisiat'') is sometimes used with reference to those families that acquired significant fortunes through trade.
History
From the 17th century, a new
bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
class emerged in
Denmark–Norway
Denmark–Norway (Danish and Norwegian: ) was an early modern multi-national and multi-lingual real unionFeldbæk 1998:11 consisting of the Kingdom of Denmark, the Kingdom of Norway (including the then Norwegian overseas possessions: the Faroe I ...
. Whereas Danish–Norwegian society had previously been broadly divided into the nobility, the clergy and the farmers, the new bourgeoisie, while not noble, was clearly distinct from the farmer class. From the same period, the King also increasingly appointed non-nobles to state offices, and thus the bourgeoisie, typically consisting of merchants and ship's captains, and the civil servants, in many ways constituted a common social class and often intermarried. This class is often referred to as patricians in Denmark and Norway. Norway was different from Denmark due to the lack of a substantial Norwegian nobility, and therefore the class of non-noble patricians came to occupy a more prominent position in that country than in Denmark.
Jørgen Haave highlights the fact that many patrician families were of foreign, usually Danish or North German, origin, and that they maintained a strong separate identity.
Some elite mercantile patrician families in Norway, especially in the cities of
Eastern Norway, acquired great fortunes through
timber trade and
shipping and some became major land owners.
[John Peter Collett and Bård Frydenlund (eds.), ''Christianias handelspatrisiat: En elite i 1700-tallets Norge'', Andresen & Butenschøn, 2008, ] However the majority of patrician families, while affluent compared to ordinary people, were not exceedingly wealthy, and what made them stand out was more than anything their shared elite culture, social status and education.
Together with the higher civil servants and clergy, but below the nobility, burghers such as merchants and ship's captains constituted the leading non-noble class in the kingdom in an era that lasted until some years after the
Napoleonic Wars. A small number of patrician families were themselves, per purchase, raised to the
Dano-Norwegian nobility in the 18th and 19th centuries; these included the
Løvenskiold,
Anker
Anker may refer to:
People
*Anker (name), people with the given name or surname
*Anker (noble family)
Places
*River Anker, in Warwickshire, England
*Anker Site, an archaeological site in Illinois, US
Companies and brands
*Anker (automobile), ...
and
Treschow families in
1739
Events
January–March
* January 1 – Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, in the South Atlantic Ocean.
* January 3: A 7.6 earthquake shakes the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region ...
,
1778
Events
January–March
* January 18 – Third voyage of James Cook: Captain James Cook, with ships HMS ''Resolution'' and HMS ''Discovery'', first views Oahu then Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, which he na ...
and
1812
Events
January–March
* January 1 – The ''Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch'' (the Austrian civil code) enters into force in the Austrian Empire.
* January 19 – Peninsular War: The French-held fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo Siege of ...
, respectively.
Following the
Napoleonic Wars, many of the patrician merchants struggled financially, and a new mercantile class emerged from the 1830s–1840s. By contrast, Norway during the 19th century became known as a "Civil Servant State," reflecting the role of the civil servants as "the most enduring, consistent and visible elite."
[Myhre, Jan Eivind,]
Academics as the ruling elite in 19th century Norway
" ''Historical Social Research'' 33 (2008), 2,
pp. 21–41
The clergy are often considered as part of the civil servant group and thus the patriciate in its broad, modern, sociological sense, although the clergy ''de jure'' formed one of the two privileged
estates of the realm until 1814, even though the estates had lost their political importance after 1660.
By region
The patriciate is often referred to by city or region, for example as the
Christiania Patriciate, the
Skien Patriciate and so forth. These were usually relatively small circles of related families which played a dominant role in the cities or regions.
Telemark
In
Telemark, the patricians from the early 17th century consisted of two intertwined main groups, the burghers in the
Skien area and the civil servants in
Upper Telemark which formed a close-knit "aristocracy of officials;" the two groups often intermarried.
[Nygaard (2013) p. 68 and p. 74] The most prominent members of the old elite in the Skien area were descended from
Jørgen von Ansbach, who became a major sawmill owner and timber merchant in the 16th century. The patricians of Telemark formed a distinct social group until the 19th century; a letter
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
wrote to
Georg Brandes in 1882 has often been quoted in this respect; in it Ibsen named "just about all the patrician families" in the area during his childhood, and mentioned the families
Paus,
Plesner,
von der Lippe,
Cappelen Cappelen is a Norwegian surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Cappelen (family), a distinguished Norwegian family
* Andreas Zeier Cappelen (1915–2008), Norwegian jurist and politician
* August Cappelen (1827–1852), Norwegian paint ...
and
Blom
Blom is a European service provider within acquisition, processing and modelling of geographical information. Blom maintains European databases with collections of map, images and models. With particular focus on online services, Blom provides da ...
.
Oskar Mosfjeld
Frantz Oskar Mosfjeld (20 January 1896 – 21 April 1977) was a Norwegian literary scholar known for his widely cited (in the field) ''opus magnum'' on Henrik Ibsen's biography, ''Henrik Ibsen og Skien: En biografisk og litteratur-psykologisk studi ...
, ''Henrik Ibsen og Skien: En biografisk og litteratur-psykologisk studie'', Oslo, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1949, p. 16 Jon Nygaard argues that "the most prominent patrician families in Upper Telemark were Blom, Paus and Ørn," and notes that while the burgher class in Skien was relatively open to new men, the "aristocracy of officials" in Upper Telemark was a more closed group.
Furthermore, the
Aall and
Løvenskiold families became part of the Telemark patriciate in the 18th century and acquired significant fortunes, partly through intermarriage with the older elite in Telemark. The patriciate of Telemark between the 17th and the 19th century has been extensively covered in historical scholarship, particularly in the context of Ibsen studies.
Christiania/Oslo
In Christiania the families
Collett and
Anker
Anker may refer to:
People
*Anker (name), people with the given name or surname
*Anker (noble family)
Places
*River Anker, in Warwickshire, England
*Anker Site, an archaeological site in Illinois, US
Companies and brands
*Anker (automobile), ...
were among the most prominent families of the mercantile patriciate from the late 17th century.
Other
*
Mecklenburg
*
Tanche/Tank
See also
*
Norwegian nobility
Aristocracy of Norway refers to Modern history, modern and Medieval Ages, medieval Aristocracy (class), aristocracy in Norway. Additionally, there have been economical, political, and military elites thatrelating to the main lines of History of N ...
*
Patrician (post-Roman Europe)
*
Bildungsbürgertum
*
Habitus (sociology)
*
Symbolic capital
In sociology and anthropology, symbolic capital can be referred to as the resources available to an individual on the basis of honor, prestige or recognition, and serves as value that one holds within a culture. A war hero, for example, may have ...
References
{{reflist
Patriciate of Norway
Denmark–Norway
Stereotypes of the upper class