Norwegian women's migration to Amsterdam and Hoorn, 1600-1750 : life experiences, social mobility and integration

Abstract

This is a thesis on micro-history that has the life-experiences of individual women as its central theme. These women did not live spectacular lives; they were not famous or well known by their contemporaries and hardly any of them are remembered today. What made them remarkable was their migration overseas from their home regions in Norway to the Dutch Republic. This is their contribution to history. The central theme of this book is the Norwegian female migrants in the early modern Dutch Republic in general and, specifically, the Norwegian female migrants in Amsterdam and Hoorn. On an individual level these Norwegian women have been studied and their life-experiences have been analyzed by using numerous different sources, both Dutch and Norwegian. However, though the results are unique, satisfying and will certainly contribute to ongoing research on migrants, there are lacunas in this work which need to be addressed before the results are presented.