Simen Skappel (7 March 1866 – 15 July 1945) was a Norwegian historian and

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

. He specialized in agricultural history and agricultural statistics, and worked for

Statistics Norway Statistics Norway ( no, Statistisk sentralbyrå, abbreviated to ''SSB'') is the Norwegian statistics bureau. It was established in 1876. Relying on a staff of about 1,000, Statistics Norway publish about 1,000 new statistical releases every yea ...

for 34 years, leading the Department of agricultural statistics for parts of that period. He was hired in Statistics Norway in 1902, was promoted to secretary in 1911 and department head in 1928. His most prominent publication was ''Om husmannsvesenet i Norge'', published in 1922. A ''husmann'' in Norway was a type of crofter. In the book, Skappel distinguished between

crofters A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer, especially in rural area ...

who received some land in exchange for work, often on short-term contracts, and crofters who received land in exchange for rent, often on lifetime contracts. Skappel's theory has been discussed as late as around 2000, but has been found (by historian Ståle Dyrvik) models to lack important complexity. Other prominent works by Skappel include ''Hedemarkens amt 1814–1914'' and ''Ringsaker Sparebank 1847–1927'', but he mostly published in journals. He died in the summer of 1945.

References

1866 births 1945 deaths 20th-century Norwegian historians Norwegian statisticians {{Norway-historian-stub