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The fall of the Violent Soeciety. Diciplining Norway in the Seventeenth Century

The concept of violence, today, is taken largely for granted. Professional and theoretical discussions about what violence really is rarely take place, and those who are confronted with violent behaviour react immediately and instinctively - with anger, fear and perhaps, even, with fascination.

The Fall of the Violent Society is an investigation of the history of the way in which a series of very different physical acts have come to be understood as different expressions of violence. Thus, the central theme of the book is the cultural construction "violence”; not violent acts in themselves.

This study examines two regions of Norway in the first part of the seventeenth century. While this period in Norwegian history has traditionally been seen as one of widespread violence, Sandmo argues against the use of the term "violent society”. People at that time did not share our perception of "violence” as a general and threatening phenomenon. In spite of frequent fights and scuffles, friendship and solidarity were fundamental values in society - then as now.

On the basis of preserved court records, Sandmo seeks to reveal how people in the early seventeenth century related to the phenomenon we now call violence. Using recently developed analytical methods from the field of cultural history, he shows how ways of thinking and speaking changed when confronted by a mighty, new state power. This state power defined the culture of fights and scuffles as a problem of violence. The emphasis on how people and authorities talked about violent acts and placed them in context makes the book an incisive study of the discourse on violence, shedding light on how the phenomenon was constructed during the period.

Over the last few decades, the study of norms, violation of the law, and violence has emerged as an independent field of research in written Norwegian history. Sandmo’s book distinguishes itself from many earlier studies in the field through its emphasis on language and communication, and on how concepts and phenomena are culturally constructed. Apart from being an intriguing study in cultural history, The Fall of the Violent Society is an excellent introduction to the so-called "New Cultural History”

Contents: Preface/Abbreviations/Reference System/Part I Theory. Violence as an Historical Problem/Vanished History: From the History of Mentality to a New Cultural History/Part II. Truth/The History of Honour and Truth/The Honest Culture/Signs of Life: Body and Signs as Authorities/Part III. Violence. Prior Assailants/Killing/„Black and Blue”: Non-lethal Violence/Part IV. Historian in Court. People Who Fight/Sources/Literature/Index of Names

About the Author: Erling Sandmo is an historian and a researcher at the Institute of Social Research.

Publisher: Universitetsforlaget AS 1999
ISBN: 82-00-12980-2
301 pp, paperback

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