Societies of Married Women Forums for Identity Building and Female Discourse

Du r ing the 1 9th century and into the 20ih the general attitude towards worncn wa::; that they should be obliging and submissive. Contesting notions thai th is pattern should be a historical universal this paper suggests that there have been associations of married women as collective standard setters. Serving as collective authority units such associations have supported and directed patterns offemale authority within household circles. Exploring this view circumstantial evidence has been found in folklore and observations of Norwegian folk life. Continuing a discussion started by the Finn Uno Harva (1944) additional material has been provided from communities in contemporary Greece where annual celebrations take place among married women to celebrate fertility with the midwife as ihe centre of the festival. Finally a guild model for married women's societies is proposed, suggesting that their main product vital for the well-being of the community as a whole is the offspring, not at the moment of birth, but nurtured and shaped into the approved standard.


Introduction
When Iraqui leader Saddam Hussein was at his hottest in the news surrounding the Gulf War 1990-9 1, I was watching a CNN interview with a 6-7 year-old boy. He was upset at the report of Saddam's actions, and I heard his serious and indignant voice: "Why can't anybody tell his mom what he's up to." This has struck me as having to do with another episode which in volved a woman, whose son, when reaching the age of about 13, confided in her that "frankly'' he was a little scared ofher. Very upset she told her husband, and was calmed down by the answer: "All boys are afraid of their mothers." I choose to see these episodes as reminders of Mother as an authority, perhaps the ultimate authority in the minds and lives not only ofboys, but of girls, and of adults as well. I see it also as a reminder of the often blurred borders between love and respect, and between respect and fe ar. Modem women in western urban societies have been socialized into being loved as the obvious aim, and fe el guilty when expressing anger. Moder nity has introduced an image of womanhood based on the tender and loving fe male paragons of popular educators. Postmodemity seeks the pre-modern, and may find alternative paragons varying according to time, place and social belonging.
In this paper I shall go back in time, search ing for the authority of married women as indi viduals and as members of women's societies in close knit communities. The standards ofhouse wives have been much noticed and discussed, and gradually and increasingly studied in the context of housewives' own agreements. Such standards are fa ctual, but need investigation to be culturally visible. There have been closed societies of women, to which men have been denied access. Such societies have been more or less fo rmalized, ranging fr om women of specific neighbourhoods to networks of friends or kin ( cf. Smith-Rosenberg 197 5 ). There have been fields, which have been the sole domain of women, where men have been denied the right to inter-fo re . In t.radition:d rural Norway housew ives had their a rea:-; of re:-; ponsibility, until modern notions of u woman ' :-; place, and of the m u le us her :-;upcrvi:;or penetrated all :;ociul clus::;e::;.
Except us u set of norm::; the cultural proce::;s i s hurd to pin down. Such not ion::; be�an with the bureaucratic bourgeo isie in Europe ' s l eadi n g nati ons duri ng th e lust hul f o fthe l 8th century. In Norw ay it took hold late r, around 1830-40. Real authority is more easily concealed than fo rmul ized hierurch ies with authori ty a s::; umed through conventions. People conceal beh avi our which devi ates from cultural prescription (Berg green 1990). Wh at sh ou l d interest us is women's acceptance of male s u premacy and the powerful vehicles for spread ing the notio n. 'T'hat males grasp the notion is less intriguing. ln Norway there was a noticeable change in attitudes and practices, like barring women fr om the vote, which was liberally granted to men in 1814, and explicitly barring women from university edu cation in 1836 (Hernes 1982). In several ways the Zeitgeist expected women to keep a low so cial profile except in the ballrooms and at the teapot. This period lasted until ca 1880 when women openly were organized to fight for the vote (obtained in 1913). They were granted ac cess to the University in 1882. During this time span, fr om ca 1830 to ca 1880 external authori ties also contributed to breaking up traditional patterns of domestic management and neigh bourhood organizations in the local communi ties. The.modern notions of womanhood -with the man as the superior -was preached fr om the pulpits and entered the minds of common people as patterns through school-books, but not al ways as practice.
Some evidence of women's independence of male opinions can be fo und in derogatory nick names fo r women who let themselves be domi nated by their husbands. Nikkedukke, literally meaning a nodding doll, godfjotte, "a simple ton", and mehe , "a spineless person" are among them. Certainly there are also nicknames for husbands, who let themselves be bossed around by their wives, but this is not my topic here.
Somehow the idea of the submissive wife has been confused with the fa ctually submissive wife, whom it is hard to respect or admire, but easy to pity.
My research has convinced me th at there huve been conventions or codes between women regarding what kind of behaviour was or w as not acceptable, whether among them::;clves, their daughters, sons or husbands. These codes and conventions were not necessarily fi xed, but cons tan tl y renegotiated through comments and discussions. It is worthwhile to consider a "soci ety of married women" as comparable to a crafts-guild, where the behaviour is strictly controlled to secure the survival and welline of guild members (Berggreen 1973). Let us leave the common view of women as vigilant narrow minded and mean gossips and rather see them as bosses, indeed as workshop masters, with a rational approach to the management and allo cation of time and resources. Among (tradition al) married women the main product was the child, not just the newborn, but the child devel oped into a responsible adult person. Just as the dabbler (No. fu sker, Ger. Pf'uscher) was a threat to the guild members, irresponsible offspring producing illegitimate children upset not only the individual household to which he or she belonged, but the whole community of neigh bours, who were depending on each other in the daily toil and on social occasions. It was a social convention that children belonged within the setting of marriage.
Resource management and behaviour ac cording to rules were of vital importance for a community of neighbours. For men and women alike marriage was the entrance ticket to fu ll membership in the community. To give birth was a privilege for married women, or at any rate, a community of married women decided whether an illegitimate child was a shame or not.
Forums fo r setting standards and giving evaluations are my concern here. For decades women have been told that they are the manag ers of soft values, and the virtuous virgin and the tender and loving mother have been hailed in literature and promoted by presentations of the ideal fa mily life in school readers. Tradi tional notions of womanhood have yielded to doctrines of woman's nature, especially since the 18th century when Rousseau's Sophie and Richardson's Pamela entered the minds of the novel reading public. The virtuous Lotte of Goethe's Dif• Leiden desjungen We rt hers should also be mentioned in this connection. These characters have become the new dream women for men, !ig-urel:l they might want their women to emulate. These fe males were creations by and for the needs and wishes of male fancy, perhaps women dreamed up as a contrast to those they knew fr om real life. We may see ideal patterns ati wishful interpretations of the Nat ural Law (naturrett): "A petty bourgeois family pattern implying an amenable and mild home wife ach ieves the status of being a natural, sensible and good arrangement", writes Jon Hellesnes (1974:70) and claims this as a deficit of Rousseau's thinking and writing.
My presentation is based on a search for arenas of women's authority, and especially on findings suggesting the way married women have set standards and carried them out. I am searching for a "wife-power" (koneuelde), dis cussed by law historian Gudmund Sandvik (1978). It is especially in Norwegian circum stantial evidence that I have begun my search, but field work experience fr om Greek Macedo nia has provided me with new perspectives and the courage to set my discussion within a larger European fr amework. My presentation is ten tative, based on work in progress.

Strict mothers, kind fathers
To day it is acceptable to talk about both a fe male and a male part of the same person. "The fe male part of me wants to embrace the audi ence, the male part of me wants to conquer it" , I heard a fe male opera singer say in a radio interview. The same day a male film-maker talked about "letting out the fe male part of himself ". The present Stand der Forschung is turbulent and the socially hermaphroditic man or woman is becoming accepted. This is complex territory. Still I venture into it, turning my back to the present. The pre-modern is my concern.
Let me first tum to the topic of being afraid of one's mother. The shrew, hanging out the window, loudly scolding her own offspring and even those of others, demanding good behav iour, has been expelled fr om good company, just as the wife with the rolling-pin has been ban ished to the cartoons. In the mid 1970s Anne Louise Gj esdal Christensen started her search for the soft mothers among working-class and lower middle-class people, but what her inform ants said, thinking back on their childhood wal:l this: "Father was kind, but mother was strict.." A fa ir amount of this must have to do with women's strength, authority and power as her husband's partner, earning his respect and th e respect of others. This authority was exercised within her domain. Such domains have more often than not been overlooked. Within Norwe gian cultural historical research, however, there has been a long-term research program going on fr om ca 1940 until the 1970s on peasant/ farm communities and rural neighbourhoods (Gards-og grannesamfunn. The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture in Oslo). The material is largely unpublished, but the fo rmer director Rigmor Frimannslund, lec tured for a generation ofEuropean ethnologists at the University of Oslo on the basis of this material, spreading the message of equality between husband and wife as administrative heads of separate spheres. This should be men tioned, even if here is not the place to present the material nor to list Norwegian titles dealing with the topics.

The significance of marriage
There is an anecdote circulating about the Swed ish author Selma LagerlOf after she had become world fa mous as a novelist and a Nobel Prize winner: She was at a dinner party, and b e ing a most celebrated woman she fo und it reasonable to begin to move towards the table when the party was asked to take their seats. But the hostess stopped her with the words: "The wives first, Selma dear." Whether true or not it illustrates a main topic in this presentation, namely the dividing line between married and unmarried women. This has become so blurred in our contemporary culture that there is rea son to remember the fo rmer aspect of marriage as the precondition for fu ll membership of the adult peasant society, in this case for both women and men. The differences in privileges (and obligations) ranging from the young mar ried woman, the established wife, the widow or the retired old woman in traditional societies, such us among Norwegian peasants, is some th ing we today mu::;t be reminded of because we no longer have the same system of responsibil ity, dependence, rights and duties a::; before. Their rank was mirrored in the elaboration of their dress.
"Before" here means especially the time be fo re ca 1850, but with offshoots into our own day::;. Limits in time are hard to set because attitudes continue to exist and appear unex pectedly even when they are believed to have disappeared. My methodological strategy is above all to seek situations where (married) women act with confidence, and see themselves as respectable wives who observe the codes of their peers and manage their time and resourc es in interplay with others, according to peer standards. There is a special word denoting this, namely kone;;ere , which literally means "wife's honour". The legal concept of "key pow er" (Ger. Schlilsselgewalt), is another term to consider. This term belongs within Germanic law as has been discussed by Danish law histo rian Inger Diibeck (1978). I shall refer to some well-known Norwegian fo lklore, and then to a women's fe stival in Greek Macedonia, where I have taken part for two consecutive years and otherwise observed at second-hand.

Folklore
One of the better known Norwegian popular ballads is about "Paul and his hens" ("Pal sine h�ner" ) .1 It is now categorized as a children's song with Pal seen as a small boy fe aring his mother's wrath, after a fox has taken the hen he should look after. It would not be of much consequence ifthis were a matter between a son and his mother, but a closer study reveals that Pal is the husband, afraid to come home to his wife, mor (No. matmor, literally "food-mother").
In one version of the ballad his fe ar is so strong that he considers emigrating to America rather than confront "mother" .
We do not need much insight into housewife rationality to put the loss of a hen into an irritating context ofloss of time and resources. Let us play a little with the everyday issues behind the fo x-takes-hen situation. Egg-money was a cash income for women, and even when the eggs were not sold, they were valuable items in the household diet. A hen that had stopped laying eggs might at least be made into a soup. To replace a hen meant either the expense of buying another one, or time consumed in hatch ing and feeding a chicken till it became an egg laying hen. All hens are not good egg-layers, so the original hen was not necessarily compen sated. In addition to her loss, the wife most likely was disappointed and cross because Pal had not paid attention. His fa ilure in turn is a strike against the reputation of the household: Mother has a careless man in her economic sphere. We should remember that in the song there is also an allusion to his having lost the flour the day before when he was at the mill to have the grain grinded.
A luckier man in the world of fo lk tales was Gudbrand iLia, also known fr om the stories of Hans Christian Andersen ("Father is always right"). Gudbrand started out to sell a horse and continued bartering until he returned home empty-handed. The ironic element in this story, what makes it appear beyond reality, is that his wife is not only understanding, she positively applauds his stupidities as he confesses them.
In the first narrative we have a wife who becomes angry, in the second, one who surprises us by miraculously not becoming angry. The structural basis of dumb man and authoritative wife is present in each of these pieces offolklore.
The main issue, then, is not whether men are afraid of their wives or ifboys are afraid of their mothers. I shall take one more step and ask: Whom is mother afraid of? It is well-known that the neighbours directed behaviour mutually in close-knit societies. "What will the neighbours say ?" was a question that had to be asked. In these circumstances my question concerning whom mother fe ars may be seen as only rheth orical. We know that women were standard setters, or perhaps rather keepers of respecta bility, keeping an eye upon each other and upon each others' offspring. We know that there was a hierarchy of women. Her attire would show her status, not only as married or unmarried, but also as a newly-wed or an established mar ried woman. The young wife was attired differ ently fr om the established wife, and the old wife had yet another form of dress.2 I have had the opportunity of be ing involved first-hand with an organized community of married women th rough participation in the celebration of the midwife in the village of Monokl issia in the administrative district of Serres in Greek Macedonia. There are many unanswered questions concerning this fe stival, and much guesswork as to its age and origin (Berggreen 1995). Thus 1 shall state only what the women themsclve::; claim. They told me that when their fo remothers came as refugees in 1922 fr om Eastern Thrace in Turkey, they brought the custom with th em. The general version of this practice is, that each year on January 8th they gave themselves the liberties of men. They took over the village cafe and sent the men home to cook and clean and look after the children and the elderly sick while they granted themselves a delightful day for fe stival and fun open to women. They played tauli (backgammon), smoked tobacco, played cards and drank alcoholic beverages, danced in the streets and ended the day with a gigantic fe ast with orgiastic elements. lt was a celebration for married women only, until unmarried women were allowed in fr om 1990 on. In the centre of the celebrations was the midwife. At some stage the women in this village had begun to call their celebration the Women's Rule or Gynaecocracy day. In a neighbouring village the women cele brated under the name of The Midwife's Day.
When I participated in the 1990 fe stival in Monoklissia unmarried women were allowed in for the first time. This particular year the cele bration was such: The day before the actual fe stival there was a collecting of victuals or money to buy provisions for the evening meal and the premises were prepared for the celebra tions. The women had had their own assembly house since 1962 when the women's organisa tion, the Ly sistrate (Lysistrata), had it built.
Since then they were independent of the men's village cafe. In the assembly house textiles were arranged to decorate the shelves and a low oriental table set in fr ont of the fireplace. Also a miniature of an ox cart was taken down fr om the top of a cabinet and put on exhibit in a more prominent place. This cart should remind them that they were peasants. (Some years earl ier a real horse cart was used and driven around in the village, filled with jolly women. Now there were only tractors in the village.) On the actual day of the festival there is a gathering of women, dressed in regional cos tumes and male musicians in women's clothes, those which were originally used in the village, and much plainer than the gaudy garments the women now wear. The musicians are not fr om the village. "Gypsies", the women explained, and at least one ofthem looked like one. These men take part during the whole day's celebra tion. The younger women carry victuals to the kitchen gang of older women, who are in plain clothes. One of the most prestigeous tasks is to manage the cooking. The younger helpers dance their way to the kitchen premises with bread baskets and vegetables.
Next comes a dance through the village, the women fo llowing the musicians or vice versa, to every house. There they claim tributes fr om those who are at home, and they visit the eldest women, who appear in their black widows' gar ments, fo llowed by a daughter or daughter in law. These eldest are warmly greeted and hugged. Men who are encountered are chased and splashed with water fr om a little tin bucket with a basil twig.
After the tour through the village the women go back to the assembly house fo r a meal. Then it is time for the main procession. This takes place to honour the midwife, babo, mammi or maia, which she is alternately called. On a tray there is water, olive oil, soap and a towel, and some kind of a phallic symbol (leeks are quite common). The babo receives the procession and entertains the most prominent women on her balcony, where a low table and cushions are set out. A lot of joking and laughter goes with the encounter. Afterwards the babo leads the danc ing and joyful procession back to the assembly house. (In 1991 one woman simulated a birth with a plastic doll that was "born" , fu lly clothed, then later undressed and "baptized" in a plastic tub at the square outside the assembly house, the women sang and performed all the ceremo nies otherwise belonging to the church liturgy. ) The next and most serious session was a fo rmal lunch for invited representatives of the local ad ministration , the muyor and other::;. D uri ng th is politicul segment of the fe stivul the women give und receive i nibrmut i on on th e impo rtance of women in ::;ociety; the pre::;ident ofthe Wo men'::; Assnciutinn i::; the main h nstes::;.
The even i n g celebration is the plenary gath ering. The eldest women ::;it as gue::;ts ofhunour while the younger ones dance. Here there is space ibr any whim, and the women have great fu n simulating the behaviour of men, especially through slapping bottoms, or lifting skirts to peep undern eath . The cl i max is a skiUtablcau with sexual-orgiastic clements, which the male musicians must not see. They have been play ing the whole night. Now the curtains are drawn for the first time, blocking their visual contact with the celebration. Sexuality is referred to in a lively manner throughout the celebration. Sometimes, th e women explain, men have tried to sneak into the celebration, dressed as wom en. Such an occurrence belongs to the great happenings which the women relate over and over again. To chase such men and drag the clothes off them belongs to the burly-burly, and is retold with intense, delighted and malicious pleasure. At around 11 p.m. the party is over. The last participants dance with their coats on before leaving, reluctantly.
I took part again in 1991. During a summer visit in the village the fo llowing year I watched a fu ll and unedited video-recording of the cele bration of 1992. There were no obvious or signif icant deviations fr om the schedule I had per sonally been part of the two previous years, but we should keep in mind the "revolution" of letting unmarried women in, beginning in 1990, and the improvisations and alterations which the celebration patterns have undergone (cf. Berggreen 1995). The celebration, neverthe less, is hard to maintain, with the possible exception ofthe evening gathering when friends and relatives come up fr om the district capital of Salonika and the town Serres. The popula tion of the village is aging. There are few chil dren for the husbands to look after on the women's day, and the most active women in the day celebration had matured into grandmoth ers. Instead of being a village celebration, for mal organizations had adapted the custom to secure its continuation. The organizers of the " Gyn aecocracy" or M onok li ssia were members of a pol itical women'::; organizatio n giving prior ities to women's rights, whereas in the neigh houri ng vi II age ofAno Kamilla female mom bers oft he historical association were the organizers of "The Midwife's Day", thus stressing tradi tion.
Some attention has been paid to such cele brations, mostly by men who have been barred fr om direct participation. Uno Harva (1944) wrote an article on "societies of married women with their attached inauguration rituals" dem onstrating a vast amount of evidence of such closed societies of married women with recur ring annual celebrations, including writte n records tracing the custom back to the 16th century. I read this article with renewed inter est after having taken part in the women's fe stival in Monoklissia. Harva refers especially to conditions in Germany and East European regions, fr om which I am led to suspect that the celebration of Greek women has a connection with corresponding celebrations among (Bul garian) Slavs, and that the subject ought to be approached fr om such a point of view as an alternative to seeking direct connections with antiquity which is a popular suggestion.
The women's right to an annual celebration, usually held in a tavern, has often been ex plained by the people themselves in the same way as legendary myths with origins lost in darkness, writes Harva (1944:279). The ingre dients of the annual fe stival he describes con sist of a procession, transgressions of bounda ries of decency, and the prohibition of men's participation, even of their simply making an appearance, for "if women got hold of a fe llow, they undressed him, removing his hat, coat or boots, which should later be returned through ransom either in cash or some bottles of wine". 3 Now there was also a more serious purpose attached to the celebrations, namely to set up courts to judge women who fa iled to keep the accepted standards of the village. A well-re garded woman held the chair, and through her guidance sentence was passed on women who did not keep appropriate standards of cleanli ness, or fa iled to discipline her children proper ly (Harva 1944:279).4 They all had to pledge secrecy. A woman who did not restrain herself but told ihe secrets of'ihc initiated or consecrat ed, "mul:li l:l ii with her winemug in ihe chimney corner, or sull'cr worse punishmentl:l still". li should pe rhapl:l be added thai social exclul:lion or ostracism (bci ng "sent io Coventry" ) was ih e most severe pu n i sh m ent in traditional socie ties.
Harva's reconstructed society of married women is built upon elements from many areas and sources where there arc variations both regarding ihe date and ihe details ofihc obser vation of ihe day. The purpose of ihe societies, however, seems obvious: 1.b aflirm and strength en their community throughout ihe annual cycle of work, struggle and conflicts with an unbridled celebration, but also io create a closed circle of initiated and married women versus the unmarried and uninitiated. "Not even the old spinsters -those who were over 25 years old were seen worthy of being partakers of these mysteries", whereas those who had married since the last celebration were admitted into the society of the married women. They had to go through an initiation ritual. New initiates should bring gifts to those who were more established and pay them respect. Thereafter the newcomers were acclaimed with a hurrah. They were thrown thrice up into the air and wished childluck and prosperity. Now they were admitted into the wives' league.
Harva writes about a suggestion that the origins of the right the women had once a year to be "made the equals of men (. .. ) were a fa ded memory of the Germanic woman's past promi nent position in society ... " He then adds: ''There is, however, to be noticed that such a women's society or women's guild, as far as is known, has not taken place in the N orth, where traces ofthe ancient Germanic popular culture ought to have been better kept than at other locations" (p. 280).
So Harva thinks that such fe stivals may be traces of an ancient Germanic culture in which the position of women traditionally was strong, and he had expected to find such traces in the North. He does not, but he finds to his surprise a similar tradition among the mordvines of Russia.
What does not fit in well with Harva's per spectives, fits remarkably well into the position of present day researchers. When women in ihc Monokl isl:lia hurly-burly made fi.t n ofihe men's ways and styles, some would claim thai this belongl:l io ihe category of cul:lioms thai make fun of one's superiors.
Researchers who work with such rituals of reversion, in which the normal world i s topsy turvy, interpret them as outlets of energies thai might otherwise become dangerously explo sive. In a paradigm that views women as sup pressed, this may be a viable interpretation. An alternative interpretation, however, is thai these rituals are a means for women to strenghien their mutual ties and to set up continued stand ards for fu ture village life. My central argu ment is that married women have had a kind of guild -the word league should also be suggest ed -and an annual court of justice, all being fo cused through one annual day of celebrations, rituals and togetherness.5 If we take for granted that such rituals are expressions of inequality and power hierarchies, shall the absence of such customs suggest some degree of equality and mutual respect between the sexes?

Norwegian fo lk life
In order to get closer to a conclusion, we move back to Norway and the issue of standard setting among married women. For illumina tion of the subject it may be worthwhile to read the school-teacher K.L. Huus's complaints about (western) Norwegian women in 1872: "She commands the household's economy ac cording to the old custom that has conveyed this right to her. She manages the fa mily's property where management is important to live well and happily, and not only in the living room, but in kitchen, cellar, barn and animal buildings almost everything is placed under her direc tion, as nobody stands in that order in the fa mily that they may surpass her or keep any kind of control with her and her management" (Huus 1872:4).
This particular school-teacher was eager to enact reforms, and to please contemporary civil authorities and he wrote with disgust about the strong women, and men who were powerless in their relatio ns with their wives. He gave evi dence of' powerfu l a nd h ead:;tronl:( women who did not tolerate interference fr om thei r hus band:; i ndome:;ti c affair:;.11 Throughuut the 19th century men were :;uppo rted by strong ideolo gies in the bcliefthat they had more wits than women and the right to take preceden ce ove r them in deci sion make-up. Th i s attitude oc curred first in the upper cla:;ses. We see through the autobiography of Gustava Ki elland (born in 1800) how she struggles to bend her awe under the strong correction and admoni shments of' her husband, the theologian and priest Gabriel. (She is renowned becau:;c she started the fi rst women's missionary society.) In his history of the Norwegian (state) church , Heggtveit (1905:119) mentions a lay preacher in south west Norway, who was active in the mid 1800s: "Both by the clergy and the parishioners he was generally held in high esteem, it was :;aid, however, that he to some extent lived in a less harmonious relationship with his wile, without it being easy to decide who bore the real guilt. There is the possibility that he was somewhat strict with her, too particular in trifles and somewhat authoritative as he demanded un conditioned obedience and submission in all matters, and she did not always put up with this. This caused struggle and a tense relation ship between them." There is certainly much to be read between the lines in this quote, which presents an image of militant and very conservative men of the cler gy in the history of the Norwegian church dur ing the 19th century. Such men were to be fo und in most sectors. By and by women accepted the new doctrines and "took to their senses" , but as we may learn fr om Huus (1872), the males within the peasantry in west Norway were still subjugated by self-willed women who accepted no interference, that is of course within the women's own fields of authority.
Does this imply that because Nordic women have not had a role reversal fe stival as the Greek and Slavic women have, they have not fe lt a need to give vent to suppressed fe elings accumulated during the year? The question must be left open. There are, however, indica-tions of' married women's authority and liJru rns liJr its maintenance within the structure uf' th.e so-ca lled "old peasant society".
The key power -"Schliisselgewalt" H u us (1872) wrote about women's au thority over the economic afli1i rs of the household ac cording to "an old custom" that had entitled her to this right. He says nothing about the nature of this old custom . It may be connected with the old law term Schlassel,.;ewalt: the rightful au thority of one spouse to step in for the other in matters concerning the household".7 This Ger man word Schlasselgewa.lt covers what in Swed ish is named as a wife's disposal over lds och nyckel: "lock and key". The Danish scholar Ing er Diibeck (1978:106) has dealt with this phe nomenon in her juridical dissertation . With regard to the well-being of family and kin, and to general business management as well, it was imporant that a wife be able to carry out jurid ical acts in fa vour ofthe general housekeeping. Gunvor Tn.etteberg (1951)has also written about the key power of women in traditional Norway, and explains: The women in Hordaland (a coun ty in west Norway) carried in fo rmer days a set of artifacts in their belts. "From a silver brooch hung knife, keys and needlecase in long rib bons" (Trretteberg 1951:41).
Trretteberg knew 25 such brooches fr om Hordaland, and in addition she knew some fr om same areas. 8 A vicar and fo lk life research er wrote as early as 177 4 that the custom was beginning to decline. Townswomen had stopped wearing the "belt-sets" (beltesaker) around 1700.
Approximately 100 years later the custom be gan to decline among country women.
What in legal terms are mere words, become concrete material in Trretteberg's study. She also refers to the SchlUsselrecht of women. But she stresses the keys as a symbol, and puts little stress upon the authority that went along with having fu ll administrative authority over silver cabinets and flatware chests, linen and provi sions. There were many keys to be in charge of. In the dowry alone there should be at least three keys: for a clothes-chest and for two chests of bed-clothes. It was a relief to distribute the keys with three at each side, she comments, with re ference to a picture of a sculpture, show ing a woman from F'ana ncar Bergen." This custom of wearing keys and other belt artifact� vani�;hed at approximately the �:>amc time as a cultural transformation took place fr om around 1830, with a regression in women's (informal) rights. Helga Hernes discusses the political theories predominant among 18th cen tury philosophers, and applies them to an ex planation of why women fa red so badly in the new nation states as these were established. In Norway the "intellectual and cultural" position of women was "seriously sapped" fr om ca 1820-30, when higher education was institutional ized and formalized. As late as 1832 the first law was passed that explicitly denied women the right to vote at elections, a right that was finally granted them in 1913 (Hernes 1982:21£).
Through the biography of Camilla Collett (1813-1896), the most prominent of women's rights activists throughout the 19th century, one gets the impression confirmed that there was a tightening of women's sphere after the rather liberal 18th century, when Camilla's mother and aunts had led a fr eer life when they were young. The curtains were drawn in the "dolls houses". Now began "the epoch of the lonely housewife", to use Biiij e Hanssen's words. Berndt Gustafsson (1956:161) has discussed the discrepancy between ideal and reality where reality was the woman "holding a dominating position within her own domestic sphere, a position which was undermined by industrial ization and the decay of personal housekeeping. Ideologically, she was subordinate to man, but, in reality, she was in many things his equal".
Natural law as a universal principle made obsolete all regional laws and conceptions of justice, and with reference to women, natural law decreed that it was "natural" that men were her superiors. This conception was so strong during the 19th century that when law yers then and later were confronted with the strength and authority that women were grant ed through the Schlilsselgewalt, they did not, or would not believe it, and interpreted the laws in women's disfavour. 10 A guild model for women's community I began by referring to popular culture and it�; ::;uggestions that a wife and mother wa::; an authoritative figure, respected and even feared by spouse and offspring. Next I referred to the annual celebration of the married wives' day off throughout (especially) Eastern and Middle Europe. Then I suggested that the lack of such a celebration in the North rather affirms the strong position of women than contradicts it. Finally I pointed at the conspicuous use of belt keys through a custom that finally disappeared around 1840. I also point to the social, economic processes that led to a total cultural change after ca 1830.
Gudmund Sandvik (1878) used the word koneuelde -"wife's power" with reference to a stipulation fo und in medieval Borgarting Jaw. It concerns the situation in which a husband has so strong a "wife's power" over him that she will not bend to his will. The actual case given stated that when he says that she shall remove their child fr om her breast after she has nursed it through two lents and into the third, she refuses. He then is subjected to koneuelde ac cording to the law. Now, there must be some authority to support a woman who resists her husband, some consensus among women about a reasonable length of nursing time. I bring this matter in here to link the commu nities of married women to women's authority and management over birth and child rearing, and also to suggest a view of married women as a professional group and a judicial authority in issues that touch upon women's affairs.
I suggest the guild as a model for the socie ties of married women. When laws are unwrit ten they are subject to change in a more flexible way than when statutes are proclaimed in par agraphs and signed by the members of a group. They are nonetheless prerogatives, often as authoritative as fo rmal laws. Unwritten codes are more difficult to relate to because even leadership may be subtle and pursued collec tively by the demizens -those who set the standards of local good taste. I shall only sug gest the analogy with fo rmal guilds, referring to evidence that ordinary guilds have been within the reach of women. Angeliki Lai:ou ( 1986) writes in her article "The fe stival of 'A g uihe' " about women'�:� gu i ld�:� in Byzantine Con�:�ianiinople.
The guilds were made up by cloth makers, spinner�:�, weaver�:� and wool carder�:�, all honor able professi ons fo r women. D uri n g an annual fe stival in May, besides the celebration itself, there were older women to preside over the younger. The fo rmer had the au thority to pun ish those who had not kepi standards of expect ed quality. At the arsenal in Ve nice during late Middle Ages and early Renaissance (13th-15th century) , there was a craftsmen's guild of sail makers made up entirely by women (Lane 1934, Berggreen 1973. Granted that g iving birth is a matter for the married woman only, one may see how both individual "workshops" (i.e. households) and "guilds" (i.e. the community of married women) are upset and disturbed by non -guild produc tions . Jonas Frykman (1977) has analyzed re actions against the "whores" of rural society, mainly in rural Scania. Through the position of "whores" one may gain some understanding for the "cruel" stands taken by collectives of mar ried women towards extra-marital pregnan cies. I take the point of view that the community of wives as a body were bound together by loyalty to household standards and codes of social (and sexual) behaviour. As mistresses of the housewives' craft they could not tolerate dabblers or anything else that would upset the order in their houses, or their reputation as housekeepers. They have had their housewives' honour and pride, their husmor::ere, to keep and defend.