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Premarital Sexual Permissiveness and Illegitimacy in the Nordic Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Richard F. Tomasson
Affiliation:
The University of New Mexico

Extract

The Nordic countries differ from other Western societies in their long histories of premarital sexual permissiveness. Yet, in spite of this general permissiveness, there are enormous variations in the frequency of illegitimacy and in the tolerance of it, both among the five Nordic countries and within each of them. Iceland is an exception; here the rate of illegitimacy is high throughout the country, and so is tolerance of it. Sweden appears to be moving in this direction, but the historical situation is more complex.

Type
Social Attitudes Toward Fertility
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1976

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References

1 All illegitimacy percentages in this paper are calculated from the official statistics of the respective countries. For recent years, see the statistical yearbooks of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden; for Iceland, see the monthly Hagtiðindi (July number) which gives vital statistics for the previous year. The Yearbook of Nordic Statistics (Stockholm: Nordic Council and the Nordic Statistical Secretariat, annual) gives recent data on legitimate and illegitimate births for all five of the countries. All of the countries except Denmark have published statistical series on annual number of legitimate and illegitimate live births from the beginnings of national data. Denmark has done so only from 1900; the illegitimacy percentages for the years 1801–1900 were calculated from unpublished data in The Statistical Department in Copenhagen.

2 I am particularly interested at present in studying continuities in Icelandic culture patterns and social structure of which the language and the high level of illegitimacy are only two manifestations.

3 This is asserted by Thomas, Dorothy Swaine in a footnote on p. 12 of Social and Economic Aspects of Swedish Population Movements (New York: Macmillan, 1941).Google Scholar

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18 The whole history of Iceland from the pragmatic conversion to Christianity in 1000 A.D. to the modern indifference to formal religion supports this contention.

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29 Among well-known Icelandic clergymen who have been sacked for their sexual activities may be named Magnús Ólafsson í Laufási (1573–1636), Magnús Jónsson á Kvennabrekku (1635–84), and Jón Thorláksson (1744–1819).

30 For a survey of some of these accounts, see Tomasson, Richard F., ‘Iceland on the Brain’, American-Scandinavian Review, LX (No. 4, 12 1972), pp. 380–91.Google Scholar

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43 Björn Björnsson, op. cit., p. 178.Google Scholar

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