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FARMS : BONDERS AND HOUSEMEN.
287
not thus provided. As the supply of labour is fully up
to the demand, and a vacancy for a houseman but
seldom occurs, a considerable check is thus put upon
early marriages; but at the same time a great amount
of illegitimacy is also consequent. By Norwegian law,
illegitimate children become legitimate by the
subsequent marriage of their parents.
The farms of the bonders seldom change hands;
they pass from father to son, through many generations,
and are usually not more than large enough to provide
for the wants of the family. It is but rarely that one
can distinguish the bonder from his housemen by any
difference of dress or manner. They usually take their
meals together, and live on terms of apparent equality.
The exceptions that I have seen to this were chiefly in
the large farms of the Guldbrandsdal, and in the
neighbourhood of Trondhjem, where there are thirty or forty
labourers on one farm, and who are called to their
meals by the tolling of a bell, liung for the purpose in
a little belfry on the roof of the main building.
In the winter-time a greater degree of separation
and inequality doubtless exists; for that is the great
junketing period in Norway, especially in the extreme
north, when Yule time is a long term of continual
darkness. Then the farmers pay long visits to their
neighbours, half-a-dozen families stopping at one farm; and
the host and his family, joining the guests, start in
procession over the snow to the house of one of his visitors,
then to another, and so on till the round is completed,
and each has been a host and guest to all in turn.
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