1 The Åland Islands are included in the Finnish data. The Faroe Islands and Greenland are kept separate from Danish statistics, and are not included here.

2 See Johansson, Sheila Ryan and Kasakoff, Alice Bee, ‘Mortality history and the misleading mean’, Historical Methods 33:2 (2000), 105–14CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

3 William H. Hubbard et al. eds., Making a historical culture: historiography in Norway (Oslo, 1995).

4 Peter Sköld, The two faces of smallpox: a disease and its prevention in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sweden (Umeå, 1996), 389–99.

5 Guttormsson, Loftur, ‘The development of popular religious literacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Scandinavian Journal of History 15 (1990), 7–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Egil Johansson, The history of literacy in Sweden, in comparison with some other countries (Umeå, 1977).

6 Ståle Dyrvik et al., Norsk økonomisk historie 1500–1850 (Bergen, 1979); Hans-Christian Johansen, Danish population history (Odense, 2002); Susanna Hedenborg and Mats Morell eds., Sverige – en social och ekonomisk historia (Stockholm, 2006).

7 Age at first marriage:

^a Includes the remarried.

Sources: Denmark: Statistisk Aarbog, Statistics Denmark, 7de Aargang (Copenhagen, 1902), http://www.dst.dk/upload/aarbog1902.pdf, Table XII, 15; Iceland: Guðmundur Jónsson and Magnús S. Magnússon eds., Hagskinna, Icelandic Historical Statistics (Reykjavik, 1997), Table 2.23, 156; Norway: Historisk statistikk 1994 (Oslo, 1994), Table 3.27, 92; Finland: Anneli Miettinen, ‘Population Data on Finland 1900–2004’, Yearbook of Population Research in Finland 41 (Åbo, 2005), 194, http://www.vaestoliitto.fi/mp/db/file_library/x/IMG/75240/file/YB05_117–198.pdf; Sweden: Statistics Sweden, Befolkningsutvecklingen under 250 år: Demografiska rapporter, 1999:2 (Stockholm, 1999), Table 4.4, 100.

^a Includes the remarried.

Sources: Denmark: Statistisk Aarbog, Statistics Denmark, 7de Aargang (Copenhagen, 1902), http://www.dst.dk/upload/aarbog1902.pdf, Table XII, 15; Iceland: Guðmundur Jónsson and Magnús S. Magnússon eds., Hagskinna, Icelandic Historical Statistics (Reykjavik, 1997), Table 2.23, 156; Norway: Historisk statistikk 1994 (Oslo, 1994), Table 3.27, 92; Finland: Anneli Miettinen, ‘Population Data on Finland 1900–2004’, Yearbook of Population Research in Finland 41 (Åbo, 2005), 194, http://www.vaestoliitto.fi/mp/db/file_library/x/IMG/75240/file/YB05_117–198.pdf; Sweden: Statistics Sweden, Befolkningsutvecklingen under 250 år: Demografiska rapporter, 1999:2 (Stockholm, 1999), Table 4.4, 100.

8 Ansley J. Coale and Susan Cotts Watkins eds., The decline of fertility in Europe (Princeton, 1986).

9 Gerry W. Kearns, Robert Lee and John Rogers, ‘The interaction of political and economic factors in the management of urban public health’, in Marie C. Nelson and John Rogers eds., Urbanisation and the epidemiologic transition (Uppsala, 1989); Ole G. Moseng, Ansvaret for undersåttenes helse 1603–1850 (Oslo, 2003), 109; Grethe Banggaard, Befolkningsfremmende foranstaltninger og faldende börnedödelighet: Danmark ca. 1750–1850 (Odense, 2004), 127.

10 Anne Løkke, Døden i barndommen: spædbørnsdødelighed og moderniseringsprocesser i Danmark 1800 til 1920 (Copenhagen, 1998).

11 Edvinsson, Sören, Nelson, Marie C. and Rogers, John, ‘Dying young: Swedish infant and childhood mortality in review’, Hygiea Internationalis 3:1 (2002)Google Scholar; http://www.ep.liu.se/ej/hygiea/.

12 See Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child, 122–50; Loftur Guttormsson, ‘Barnaeldi, ungbarnadauði og viðkoma á Íslandi 1750–1850’, in Sigurjón Björnsson ed., Athöfn og orð: afmælisrit helgað Matthíasi Jónassyni (Reykjavík, 1983), 137–69.

13 B. R. Mitchell, International historical statistics: Europe 1750–2000 (New York, 2003); Hagskinna, 54–63; Statistics Sweden, Befolkningsutvecklingen under 250 år, Table 1.11; Statistics Norway, Historical Statistics 1994 (Oslo, 1994), Table 3.1; Aarno Strömmer, Västöllinen muuntuminen suomessa (Tornio, 1969), Appendix 1. For Sweden in 1801 formal urban status rather than population-size criteria for ‘urban’ was used.

14 Kari Pitkänen, Deprivation and disease: mortality during the great Finnish famine in the 1860s, Publications of the Finnish Demographic Society, 14 (Helsinki, 1993), and ‘Infant mortality decline in a changing society’, Yearbook of Population Research in Finland XXI (Helsinki, 1983), 47–74; Marie C. Nelson, Bitter bread: the famine in Norrbotten 1867–1868 (Uppsala, 1988).

15 Ólöf Garðarsdóttir, ‘The effects of measles and other epidemics in virgin soil populations: the case of Iceland and the Faroe islands during the 19th century’, paper presented at the Sixth European Social Science History Association Conference, 2006, and Saving the child, 65–81.

16 Godelieve Masuy-Stroobant, ‘Infant health and infant mortality in Europe: lessons from the past and challenges for the future’, in Carlo Corsini and Pier P. Viazzo eds., The decline of infant and child mortality: the European experience, 1750–1990 (The Hague, 1997), 29–30.

17 The provinces (sometimes called counties) are sub-national administrative entities called län in Sweden and Finland, sýslur in Iceland and amt or fylker in Denmark and Norway. A region is a more loosely defined area made up of contiguous parishes. (Note that Iceland is placed too far east on the map.)

18 Pearson's correlation between infant mortality rate and population density in the Swedish provinces during the 1850s was .051 and far from significant (=.812).

19 Turpeinen, Oiva, ‘Infant mortality in Finland 1749–1865’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 27:1 (1979), 1–21CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Moring, Beatrice, ‘Motherhood, milk and money: infant mortality in pre-industrial Finland’, Social History of Medicine 11:2 (1998), 177–96CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

20 Sølvi Sogner and Gunnar Thorvaldsen, ‘Differential infant mortality in rural Norway: a comparison of a high and a low mortality region’, paper presented at the Social Science History Association Conference, Fort Worth, 1999; Anders Brändström, ‘De kärlekslösa mödrarna’: spädbarnsdödligheten i Sverige under 1800-talet med särskild hänsyn till Nedertorneå (Umeå, 1984).

21 Because of different projections and coordinate systems, many entities and numerous changes over time, local-level maps are not as easy to combine across national borders as the province-level map. The Norwegian municipality maps are available online in Thorvaldsen, ‘Rural infant mortality in nineteenth century Norway’ at http://www.ep.liu.se/ej/hygiea. The Danish municipality maps can be found in Løkke, Døden i barndommen, Figures 2.9–2.15; for Swedish maps of parishes, see Brändström, Anders, Edvinsson, Sören and Rogers, John, ‘Illegitimacy, infant feeding practises and infant survival in Sweden 1750–1950: a regional analysis’, Hygiea Internationalis 3:1 (2002), 13–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Icelandic maps are in Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child, 82–91.

22 Brändström, Anders, Edvinsson, Sören and Rogers, John, ‘Infant mortality in Sweden: creating regions from nineteenth century parish data’, Historical Methods 33:2 (2000), 105–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Løkke, Døden i barndommen, Figure 2.10; Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child, 82–121.

24 Thorvaldsen, ‘Rural infant mortality in nineteenth century Norway’, 88.

25 Williams, Naomi, ‘Death in its season: class, environment and the mortality of infants in nineteenth-century Sheffield’, Social History of Medicine 5:1 (1992), 71–94CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Robert Woods and Nicola Shelton, An atlas of Victorian mortality (Liverpool, 1997), 56–9; Jörg Vögele, ‘Urbanization, infant mortality and public health in imperial Germany’, in Corsini and Viazzo eds., The decline of infant and child mortality, 418–21; Reher, David, ‘Wasted investments: some economic implications of childhood mortality patterns’, Population Studies 49:3 (1995), 527–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breschi, Marco and Bacci, Massimo Livi, ‘Le mois de naissance comme facteur de survie des enfants’, Annales de Démographie Historique (1994), 169–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woods, Robert, Watterson, P. A. and Woodward, J. H., ‘The causes of rapid infant mortality decline in England and Wales 1861–1921, Part I’, Population Studies 42 (1988), 354CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Robert Woods, Naomi Williams and Chris Galley, ‘Infant mortality in England 1550–1950: problems in identification of long-term trends and geographical and social variations’, in Carlo A. Corsini and Pier Paolo Viazzo eds., The decline of infant mortality in Europe 1800–1950: four national case studies (The Hague, 1993), 41.

26 Nelson and Rogers eds., Urbanisation and the epidemiologic transition.

27 Johan Söderberg, Ulf Jonsson and Christer Persson, A stagnating metropolis: the economy and demography of Stockholm (Cambridge, 1991).

28 Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child, 122–42; Nina Planting Mølmann, Spedbarnsdødeligheten i en ishavsby: Hammerfest 1801–1900 (Oslo, 2004).

29 Brändström, ‘De kärlekslösa mödrarna’; Ulla-Britt Lithell, Breast-feeding and reproduction: studies in marital fertility and infant mortality in 19th century Finland and Sweden (Uppsala, 1981) and ‘Childcare – a mirror of women's living conditions: a community study representing 18th and 19th century ostrobothnia in Finland’, is Anders Brändström and Lars-Göran Tedebrand eds., Society, health and population during the demographic transition (Umeå, 1988), 91–108; Moring, B., ‘Infant mortality in pre-industrial Finland’, Social History of Medicine 11:2 (1998), 177–96CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child, 122–47.

30 Hubbard, William H., ‘The urban penalty: towns and mortality in nineteenth-century Norway’, Continuity and Change 15:2 (2000), 331–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marie C. Nelson, ‘Disease, dirt and demography’, in Anders Brändström and Lars-Göran Tedebrand eds., Swedish urban demography during industrialization (Umeå, 1995), 121.

31 Sören Edvinsson, Den osunda staden: Sociala skillnader i dödlighet i 1800-talets Sundsvall (Umeå, 1992); Edvinsson, Sören and Rogers, John, ‘Hälsa och hälsoreformer i svenska städer kring sekelskiftet 1900’, Historisk Tidskrift 4 (2001), 541–64Google Scholar; Hubbard, ‘The urban penalty’.

32 Samuel H. Preston, ‘Child mortality differences by ethnicity and race in the United States 1900–1910’, in Susan Cotts Watkins ed., Ellis Island: newcomers and natives in the 1910 census (New York, 1994); 35–82; Woods, Robert, ‘Disease environments in Victorian England and Wales’, Historical Methods 33:2 (2000), 73–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vögele, ‘Urbanization, infant mortality and public health in imperial Germany’; Josef Kytir and Rainer Münz, ‘Infant mortality in Austria 1820–1950’, in Corsini and Viazzo eds., The decline of infant mortality in Europe, 75–85.

33 Løkke, Døden i barndommen, 127ff.

34 Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil (Berkeley, 1992).

35 Sören Edvinsson, ‘Social differences in infant and child mortality in nineteenth century Sweden’, in Marco Breschi and Lucia Pozzi eds., The determinants of infant and child mortality in past European populations (Udine, 2004), 67–87; Brändström et al., ‘Illegitimacy’, Appendix 3.

36 Rolf Engelsen, Sosiale skilnader i mortalitet på landsbygda i Norge i åra 1802 og 1803 (Bergen, 1982), 167.

37 Fure, Eli, ‘Spedbarndødelighet og sosiale forskjeller i Asker og Bærum 1814–1878: en metode for studier på individnivå’, Heimen 37:4 (2000), 293–304Google Scholar.

38 Turpeinen, ‘Infant mortality in Finland 1749–1865’; Løkke, Døden i barndommen, 170, 231.

39 Brändström, ‘De kärlekslösa mödrarna’.

40 Alice Reid, ‘Locality or class? Spatial and social differentials in infant and child mortality in England and Wales, 1895–1911’, in Corsini and Viazzo eds., The decline of infant and child mortality, 129–54.

41 Edvinsson, Den osunda staden, Chapter 9; Magdalena Bengtsson, Det hotade barnet: tre generationers spädbarns- och barnadödlighet i 1800-talet Linköping (Linköping, 1996); Burström, Bo and Bernhardt, Eva, ‘Social differentials in the decline of child mortality in nineteenth century Stockholm’, European Journal of Public Health 11 (2001), 29–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Edvinsson, Den osunda staden.

43 Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child.

44 Brändström, Anders, ‘Life histories of single parents and illegitimate infants in nineteenth-century Sweden’, History of the Family 1:2 (1996), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Løkke, Døden i barndommen, 142–4.

45 Garðarsdóttir, Ólöf, ‘The implications of illegitimacy in late-nineteenth-century Iceland: the relationship between infant mortality and the household position of mothers giving birth to illegitimate children’, Continuity and Change 15:3 (2000), 435–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Anders Brändström, ‘Utomäktenskaplighet och sociala nätverk: Sundsvall 1800–1895’, in Tom Ericsson and Agnetha Guillemot eds., Individ och struktur i historisk belysning: festskrift till Sune Åkerman (Umeå, 1997), 3–30; Anders Brändström, ‘Kinship and mortality: illegitimate children in Sundsvall, Sweden, 1808–1900’, paper presented at the 22nd Social Science History Association Conference, Washington, 1997.

47 Margareta Matovič, Stockholmsäktenskap: familjebildning och partnerval i Stockholm 1850–1890 (Stockholm, 1984), Chapter 13; Margareta Matovič, ‘Migration, family formation, and choice of marriage partners in Stockholm, 1860–1890’, in Ad van der Woude, Jan de Vries and Akira Haymi eds., Urbanization in history: a process of dynamic interactions (Oxford, 1990), 220–42.

48 Garðarsdóttir, ‘The implications of illegitimacy’.

49 Brändström, ‘Utomäktenskaplighet och sociala nätverk’ and ‘Kinship and mortality’.

50 Sølvi Sogner et al., ‘The rural reward’, in William Hubbard et al. eds., Historical studies in mortality decline (Oslo, 2002), 3–42.

51 Løkke, Døden i barndommen; Bengtsson, Det hotade barnet, 122–30, 176–83, 228–35; Susanna Hedenborg, Reproduktionens resurser: spädbarnsvård i Stockholm 1750–1850 (Stockholm, 2004), 120–3.

52 Brändström, ‘De kärlekslösa mödrarna’; Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child; Løkke, Døden i barndommen, 229.

53 W. Cadogan, An essay upon nursing and the management of children, from their birth to three years of age. By a physician (London, 1749); R. Conyers, De morbis infantum (London, 1749).

54 Brändström, ‘De kärlekslösa mödrarna’; Hedenborg, Reproduktionens resurser.

55 Page 2 (our translation).

56 These almanacs were common in households all over Sweden and were frequently used; see Per Sörbom, Läsning för folket, Studier i tidig svensk folkbildningstradition (Stockholm, 1971), 23.

57 Anders Brändström, ‘Infant mortality in Sweden 1750–1950: past and present research into its decline’, in Corsini and Viazzo eds., The decline of infant mortality in Europe; M. Jägervall, Nils Rosén von Rosenstein och hans lärobok i pediatrik (Lund, 1990).

58 Sören Edvinsson, Anders Brändström and John Rogers, ‘Did midwives make a difference? A study of infant mortality in nineteenth-century Sweden’, unpublished conference paper presented at the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health Conference, Oslo, 2003.

59 Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child; Brändström, ‘De kärlekslösa mödrarna’; Lithell, Breast-feeding and reproduction.

60 Pitkänen, ‘Infant mortality decline’, 46–74; Beatrice Moring, ‘Allmogens barnsyn i det agrara Finlands och överhetens vantalolkningar av densamma’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland (1993), 26.

61 Løkke, Døden i barndomme, 107ff.

62 Jón Pétursson, Lækninga-Bók fyrir almúga (Copenhagen, 1834).

63 Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child, 191–3.

64 M. S. Knudtsen, Fra frelse til helse: spedbarnsdødelighet og omsorgssyn i Norge ca 1700–1830 med særlig vekt på forholdene i Vår Frue sokn, Trondheim (Trondheim, 1997); G. Banggaard, Befolkningsfremmende.

65 Knudtsen, Fra frelse til helse; Guttormsson, ‘The development of popular religious literacy’; Garðarsdóttir. Saving the child; Banggaard, Befolkningsfremmende, 90–102.

66 John C. Caldwell, ‘Routes to low mortality in poor countries’, in John C. Caldwell and Gigi Santow eds., Selected readings in the cultural, social and behavioral determinants of health (Camberra, 1986); Monica Das Gupta, ‘Death clustering, mother's education and the determinants of child mortality in rural Punjab, India’, What Do We Know about Health Transition? The cultural, social and behavioural determinants of health (Canberra, 2001), 441–61.

67 Caldwell, John C., ‘Education as a factor in mortality decline: an examination of Nigerian data’, Population Studies 33:2 (1993), 395–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 John Rogers, Sören Edvinsson and Anders Brändström, ‘Inequalities within the family, infant mortality in nineteenth century Sundsvall’, paper presented at the 14th Nordic Demographic Symposium in Tjöme, Norway, 2001; Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal years: child mortality in late nineteenth-century America (Princeton, 1991), 150 and 198–207.

69 Rogers, Edvinsson and Brändström, ‘Inequalities within the family’, 23.

70 Garðarsdóttir, Saving the child, 25–6, 151–64.

71 Løkke, Døden i barndommen, 437f.