Statare

Statare were contract-workers, living under serf-like conditions in Swedish agriculture who, contrary to other farmhands, were expected to be married, were provided with a simple dwelling for their family, and instead of eating at the servants' table were paid in kind with foodstuff.

[2] Their lives were described by prominent Swedish novelists and writers such as Ivar Lo-Johansson, Jan Fridegård and Moa Martinson,[3] making a considerable impact on the public debate in the decades following common suffrage.

Their lives are also described by Swedish American novelist Helen Lundström Erwin in her novel Sour Milk in Sheep's Wool, published 2021.

The system was promoted by agrarian reforms resulting in enlarged fields[5] and by expanding markets for grain, meat and dairy.

Hence skilled artisans and more qualified manorial employees, as smiths, gardeners, bookkeepers, managers, etc., were not counted as statare, although similarly contracted on an annual basis, provided with a dwelling, and paid in kind.

In official records (the parish registers), stat-dreng[10] and stat-torpare are the most common titles for the employee (stat- was a Swedish word for "payment in kind"), whereas the term statare dominates in the public debate on social issues.

The parliamentary rule during the Age of Liberty (1718–1772) invited citizens to debate and discussion, to a freer formation of opinion, not the least on public affairs.

But it would turn out that the most inventive were the new owners of manors, who followed news, were financially better connected, were unhampered by tradition and conservative landlords, and who in comparison with the previous owners, the ancient nobility, lacked sentimental feelings of responsibility for their peasants, nor did they see their land as merely a source of a yearly rent, but rather as a project to be refined and streamlined according to modern theories.

Around year 1800, preconditions for the statare system were present at manors in the Mälaren Valley (i.e. the greater Stockholm region).

The evicted tenants were by law required, like anyone else who didn't own their house, to accept any employment they could find, even a position as a farmhand, disgraceful for a married man as it was.

The explanation for this delay is usually presented in terms of corvée being easier to exact in the formerly Danish provinces (Scania, Halland, Blekinge).

Between World Wars I and II, it became a theme in public discourse:[12] The appearance of a growing class of country side proletarians, without any prospects of ever getting neither tenure nor a land of their own, created unease.

A lesser share of them lived in houses classified as dilapidated, they had significantly fewer children, and two-room apartments were usual for larger families.