Life-Experiences, Social Mobility and Integration

This thesis seeks to explain the large scale Norwegian female migration to the Dutch cities Amsterdam and Hoorn in the period 1600-1750 on a quantitative and qualitative level. Although it has long been known that these women in large numbers moved across the North sea, until now no detailed research has focussed on individual life-experiences of migrant women in the early modern period. Through analysis of individual life trajectories and life experiences based on Norwegian and Dutch sources, different migration patterns, motivations for leaving, the importance of kinship ties, processes of settling down and criminal behaviour among the Norwegian women have become visible. The most important results of this thesis show that the impact of the Norwegian women's ethnical, cultural and social origins is clearly connected to their level of integration and lack of social mobility in a foreign environment. The Norwegian communities in Amsterdam and Hoorn were highly endogamous and the Norwegian women had a feeling of ethnicity defined by the place of origin in Norway and the dialect shared among them.