One Sunday afternoon, when everyone was in church, Marit and Lijsbet were sitting, chatting and ingesting a bottle of brandy in the kitchen within the flat above the inn. Marit and Lijsbet were additionally supposed to go to church, but they had managed to keep away from this duty and loved having the home to themselves.
As they usually did on Sundays, they had been ingesting brandy in secret and sitting collectively saying nasty things about their employers. If Marit could ensure that a small fire broke out in the home, within the confusion which would arise, she could steal some cash and different valuables. While everyone was busy putting out the hearth, she would sneak out of the home with the money, find a boat in the port and journey straight again to Bergen.
Norwegian women typically maintained social networks with different Norwegians, both in Amsterdam and in Norway, and in the event that they funds have been sufficient, they often helped different relations to emigrate to the Netherlands. Life in Amsterdam was not as easy as most emigrants had expected, but the giant Norwegian network in the city should have given them a sense of group and belonging.
The People Of Norway Don’t Complain
We have seen that many ladies labored as maids and often had long days of exhausting work with little free time and low pay. In addition, maids were solely allowed to terminate their contract on one occasion per year. We have also seen that emigrants in Amsterdam lived in a poor district close to the harbour within the east of the city. This was an overpopulated area with a lot crime and avenue prostitution, and other people residing right here typically had no alternative however to share a small room with many others. They worked close by, married other Norwegians and Germans residing in the identical immigrant quarter, and it was troublesome to study the language and climb the social ladder.
Although she had solely discovered a couple of phrases and phrases of Dutch, she found a job as a maid in an inn and within the flat above in one of many side streets off Dam Square. But one Sunday night, a couple of months after she started the job, the entire house burnt down. Immediately after the fireplace, it became clear that 25 12 months old Marit had began it.
After Lijsbet had gone residence that Sunday afternoon, Marit set hearth to some dry kindling wood within the attic, but to her nice surprise, the hearth unfold so quickly that she had no time to steal anything. Marit was sentenced to demise, never to see Bergen or her family again.
The tragic story of Marit Roelofs from Bergen illustrates different elements of the life of a maid in Amsterdam. In the summer season of 1668, Marit arrived on the busy port of Amsterdam. She had travelled alone from Bergen, with out family or associates, but could have identified individuals in Amsterdam, with whom she may keep for a while and who may help her find work. She most likely shared a room with a number of different Norwegian women within the immigrant quarter, and life was tough to start with.
You like men who have authority and make decisions without asking in your opinion. These tales illustrate the varied fates of Norwegian women in Amsterdam. Thousands of Norwegian women left Norway for Amsterdam in early fashionable times. In this text, interrogations of Norwegian female criminals are used as the main supply to acquire extra information and to boost our understanding of working conditions, dwelling circumstances and social networks. Although these women usually are not necessarily representative of all Norwegian emigrants in Amsterdam, their personal histories can provide us with useful information about immigrant life in Amsterdam within the early modern interval.
After a number of days of robust interrogation, she admitted her guilt and explained why she had done it. She acknowledged that she was on their own in Amsterdam and that the city had not lived as much as her expectations.
The wrestle for the right to vote was for a very long time extra about class than gender, notes the exhibtion’s Senior Curator Thomas Walle. He believes that working-class women at the flip of the century felt more solidarity with working-class men, than with higher https://confettiskies.com/norwegian-brides/-class women. For a very long time, men without property have been additionally denied the vote, and the right to vote was solely granted to all grownup men in 1898, 15 years earlier than it was extended to women.
The work she had to do was much more durable, and the wages decrease, than she had anticipated. She also sorely missed her family and pals in Norway and was desperate to return house as rapidly as potential. Because her contract stated that there was just one time of the year when she may resign, she had to think about some other method to return home. Marit had a good friend in Amsterdam, a maid known as Lijsbet, who worked at a hairdresser’s in a neighbourhood where Marit’s employer usually went.