Making iron, producing space! How coerced work defined a Swedish early modern ironmaking region

ABSTRACT Swedish ironmaking took place in mines, forests and rationally structured ironmaking communities (bruk), merging different forms of labour and coercion, wage labour, household labour and corvée labour often in the form of transport duties, as well as leases paid in kind. The aim is to analyse this diverse structure from an angle of motion, movement and mobility, and see how subordinated ironmaking artisanal and peasant households set the limits for the regions in which they were living while undertaking that work. It is essential to link this work to the owners’ ambition to control production, the workers and the tasks they were set to do. It meant to supervise production at the workshops, but more importantly, it meant to monitor the movement of raw material, grain and commodities, between these sites and markets outside the region. I use an extensive accounting material from one region to unravel patterns of work, and the owners’ ambitions to keep track of subordinated artisans and peasants. These patterns of work and supervision were, together with legal structures, a crucial element in the making of the spatial structuring of Swedish ironmaking.

extraction of ore and the making of metals, while lag could mean 'law', but it also implies a corporation of people working together.The word bergslag indicates a region where people made metals but also a district with its own legislation on metal-making.Dannemora Bergslag was thus a region with people making iron, but also a district with its particular legislation; it was a spatial entity within the Swedish realm with a specific legal and social structure (Seebass, 1928).
Dannemora was a large workplace, possibly one of the largest in the entire early modern Sweden.In the eighteenth century, 300 miners extracted the ore, but it was not a community where people lived.The miners had small cottages in surrounding villages, and early every morning, they walked several kilometres to the mine, and in the evenings they trotted back home again.It was only the staff at the mining administration that lived in Dannemora.The miners were attached to specific mines, where they worked in turns for the different owners.If a mine had three owners, then work was organised in weeks according to how many shares each owner possessed.The workforce could toil for one owner for two weeks, then one week for the next and lastly three weeks for a third owner, before the cycle started again throughout the year.Working patterns and ownership thus overlapped in a complicated structure (Lindqvist, 1984).Dannemora was a large workplace, and it grew significantly during the winter when snow and ice made it possible to transport the ore.With more than a thousand peasants undertaking 13,000 journeys, a thousand equipages arrived at the mine every week during the winter months, and the size of the workplace might have doubled, from 300 to 600 men every day, along with the many horses.
The aim of this article is to sketch the contours of Dannemora Bergslag from an angle of motion and movement to see how the subordinated households of the leaseholding peasants through their work not only carted ore, but also upheld the boundaries of the region in which they lived and toiled.In doing that, it is crucial to remember that this work was essentially a coerced work, and that the peasants were monitored by the owners of the bruk.The latter controlled production, the workers and the tasks they were set to do, and they did so by supervising the movements of people, raw material and iron.I will use the extensive accounts from Gimo bruk, as a tool to unravel this complex pattern of work, and its spatial and social configurations.These were, together with the legal structures, a crucial element in the making of Swedish ironmaking.The first section gives an overview of the region, followed by an analysis of the amount of work undertaken by the Gimo peasants.A concluding section deals with accounting and supervision.

Dannemora Bergslag
Before the year 1700, the surveyor Jacob Braun was busy working in the northern parts of the county of Uppland.He produced a set of maps of different parts of the region, and its small communities.In 1701, he finished his masterpiece, a topographical map of Dannemora Bergslag.At its centre was Dannemora mine, supplying the region with high-quality iron ore, and scattered around were the small ironmaking communities, the bruk, producing a bar iron much sought after in Europe; as much as ninety percent of the region's output was exported.Around the bruk, the map positioned the small villages, inhabited by both free-and leaseholders.The document was accompanied by a comprehensive volume describing these villages. 8Dannemora Bergslag was a sizable region, with some twenty parishes, and inhabited by just over 20,000 people.Most of these were peasants, and even the freeholders were subordinated to the bruk as a kind of tax farming existed.For a fee to the Crown, the bruk could collect the tax, and they did so in kind or as labour duties (Kuylenstierna,  1916).
Dannemora Bergslag was just one of a number of similar regions in early modern Sweden, all inserted in a regulated and hierarchically organised metal-making.Two of these supported silver-and copper-making, but the majority were, like the Dannemora region, focused on ironmaking.Even today, we acknowledge the importance of the metal industry by labelling a large part of central Sweden as 'Bergslagen'.At the top of this structure, we find the central administrative unit Bergskollegium, founded in the 1630s and located in Stockholm, as a crucial unit within the early modern Swedish state.The 'bureau' was a small institution measured in numbers, but with the large ambition of making sure that metal-making was to benefit Swedish society.In the eighteenth century, about ten senior civil servants were put in charge of metal production, and, as stated in a new legislation from 1723, this meant to have 'insight and administration . . . to improve . . . the wealth and blessing that God has placed in the earth', so that it would not remain 'idle' in the ground.Bergskollegium had been given the role of making sure that much iron was produced within the realm (Ericsson  et al., 1985, p. 274). 9he overarching ideology that governed Swedish economic policy, including the metal sector, should be labelled cameralism, and especially the heralding of its Aristotelian roots of an economy seen in terms of a domestic household.In Sweden, like in Central Europe, both the domestic sphere and the state economy was viewed as a patriarchal ordered 'oikos', and the guiding concept within all levels of society was hushållning ('householding').The highest level of this model was governed by a benevolent God, who had created a generous world in which man could make his living.Swedish writers, such as Linnaeus, labelled this level the Oeconomia Divina.One level below, we find the 'general householding', in which the king reigned supreme, and the entire country was viewed as his own 'oikos'.Its organising principle was that all citizens had their specific place and task, set according to a strict division of labour.The lowest layer in this way of seeing the world was made up by individual households in their pursuit of making a living; this was the 'individual householding' placed under the Hausvater's rule.Some writers also inserted other levels into the frame, such as the oeconomia of different towns, regions or trades.Some also elaborated ideas about a specific brukshushållning, the householding of a bruk (Rydén, 2017).
There were two essential parts to this way of thinking.On the one hand, there was a foundation of what might be seen as an organic, or even ecological, approach, and, on the other hand, there was a profound emphasis on work and labour.God had in his creation, designed a world with a generous nature and that governed the division of labour and directed the tasks set to do by his subjects.People living in regions with fertile soils should cultivate the land, while people in areas with rich mineral deposits should mine the mountains.One Swedish writer stated that the 'Almighty Creator has accommodated so that each place on Earth has been given its particular gifts and benefits in Nature.The one is not like the other.'It is the duty of all men to make these benefits into a foundation on which to make a living; it was a duty to first get to know nature, and then to make a living (Rydén,  2017; Salvius, 1741).
It was with labour, 'diligent labour', that man made his living, and it was with labour that the different levels of the grand oeconomia were kept together.At the bottom, within the 'individual householding', man was supposed to 'cultivate, employ and use (bruka)' the resources that the Creator had made available.The more people who undertook 'diligent labour' the happier a country became, and it also created a link between the inhabitants and God, and it was through labour that man became aware of his creation; work was the tool with which man understood to appreciate the 'gifts and benefits' of nature (Berch, 1747, pp.6, 10 & 25; Genesis, 1703, 3:19).
There was a regional organisation attached to Bergskollegium, as the bureau was divided into twelve different districts.Each of these incorporated one or more different bergslagar.Dannemora, for instance, was part of a district also stretching further up along the Baltic coast.At the helm of these districts was a regional servant, a Bergmästare, which together with a few others had the responsibility to oversee what took place in their districts.Each district had its special court (Bergsting), dealing with matters related to metal-making (Ericsson et al., pp.254f.).
Returning to Braun's map, we find not only Dannemora encircled by large bruk, but also a few communities with only a blast furnace.The ore was, as we have seen, transported from the mine to these furnaces, and from them, pig iron was sent to the bar iron making bruk.If we scrutinise the map we also find small wharves and warehouses at the coast, from which these bars left the region, shipped to Stockholm and the subsequent exportation.This was a commodity chain well-known to the readers of the map.Braun noted that a map was a suitable tool to show the relationship between different units of production.The map also displays lakes, dams and streams, indicating the importance of waterpower giving energy to the mine, furnaces and forges.What the map does not show with any accuracy is the presence of the forests, and sites where charcoal making took place, but that was given a prominent placement in the attached description, devoted as it was to the 'smallholdings for the benefit of bergslagen'. 10Map 1. Dannemora Bergslag, 1765 (1701).Sources: Gimo Bruksarkiv, Leufsta Bruksarkiv, kartor, R65.Also available at https://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/attachment/document/alvin-record:372638/ATTACHMENT-0002.pdfNote: I have decided to use a redrawn copy of Braun's 1701 map, as it is clearer than the older original.
The striking feature in Braun's description of the villages is the almost complete concentration on the forests.Each village was treated individually, with a separation between the individual farms, and the focus was on their two main parts, the fields and the forests.The latter was more important than the former, with the forests used for grazing and hay-making but foremost for firewood and making charcoal.According to Braun, it was crucial that 'the peasant could move firewood to the mine', but some villages could not do this any longer, as the forests had been 'badly used'.Further from the mine, the villages supplied charcoal to furnaces and bruk; some villages possessed 'a beautiful forest', while others only had an old forest already exploited for charcoal making.
There was thus a clear organic foundation to the concept of a bergslag, As seen in figure 1 as local supply of firewood and charcoal was essential to ironmaking, and that the villages were seen as a 'benefit' for the region.Braun's map and description of Dannemora Bergslag portrayed a pronounced hierarchical structure, with the needs of the ironmaking in a pivotal position and with the right to exploit available resources.The ore was crucial, with the mine at the centre of the region, but in circles around, we find blast furnaces and forges.Scattered in between were villages with subordinated peasants; a bruk was a landed estate with access to natural resources, in combination with (proto-)industrial sites with furnaces and forges where the iron was made.
What is striking with both Braun's depiction, and the state's approach to the organisation of metalmaking, is the almost complete omission of a discussion about labour, the workforce, and the peasants.The organic structure of their thinking only included the access to raw material, but not the way in which it arrived at the furnaces and bruk, and very little on how the ore and charcoal was made into pig iron or how the pigs were transformed into bars.Braun's map hides the fact that the region was populated with some 20,000 inhabitants and that most of these were subsumed into the hierarchical structure aiming at producing iron.Hundreds of miners worked the mine, and numerous artisans and day-labourers toiled in the ironmaking communities, but it was in the small villages we would have found most of the subordinated inhabitants.These villages were populated with peasants, leaseholders as well as freeholders, delivering firewood and charcoal to the mine and bruk, and undertaking the necessary transport work as a way of paying rents, fees and taxes.
It is interesting to note that the lack of a thorough treatment of labor and work in these eighteenth century texts is mirrored in much contemporary writings on the Swedish metal trades.Ironmaking is one of the most studied parts of early modern Sweden, but most enquiries have been undertaken from a traditional business history perspective, with no place for a discussion about concrete labour and coercion (Hildebrand, 1992).There are a few exceptions (Evans & Rydén, 2017; Lindström & Mispelaere,  2017), but we still lack a substantial knowledge about the organisation of work in the process of making iron.A similar story can be told in relation of Swedish agriculture, with numerous studies about its development prior the agricultural revolution, but without a comprehensive analysis of work undertaken on fields, in forests etc., and related aspects of oppression (For an overview see Gadd, 2000).One exception dealing with both work in forges and workshops as well as by peasants is Iron-Making Societies (Ågren,  1998), and another recent exemption is Uppenberg (2023).In the following, I intend to reinstate the aspect of coerced labour into the organic structure described by Braun, but also to views common in contemporary Swedish history writings.In doing so, I will concentrate on human mobility within the highly static frame set by Bergskollegium and the owners of the bruk.My analysis is foremost based on the extensive archive from Gimo bruk.

Gimo bruk, Anno 1763
Gimo bruk was one of the major iron producers in Dannemora Bergslag, but still substantially smaller than Leufstabruk and Österby bruk.About 260 people lived in Gimo, while the other two sites held 1300 and 900 inhabitants.It was founded in the early seventeenth century, and from the 1620s, it belonged to the important 'collection' of bruk that the Dutch merchant Louis de Geer had acquired from the Swedish Crown (Dahlgren, 1923).It remained in the hands of the family well into the eighteenth century.A descendant sold Gimo in 1756, and in the following years, it changed hands a few times.In 1764, it was purchased by the Lefebure family, who consolidated and expanded the community with a new imposing manor house and a new layout of the community.The eighteenth century was a period in which the different owners strengthened the foundation of the bruk by purchasing additional smallholdings, and thereby adding resources from which to extract more coerced labour in the form of delivered charcoal or transport work.In 1763, Gimo had developed into a large but also quite complicated structure.As a landed estate, it dominated three parishes, with a combined population of about 3000 people, but its power reached other parts of the region as well.The estate comprised of more than 150 smallholdings.The ore was taken from Dannemora, but the production of iron was split into two distinct sites in the 1730s.As we have seen, ore was brought to Vällnora where pig iron was produced while the making of bar iron was concentrated to Gimo.This created a need for a large and diverse transport organisation, with ore from the mine, pigs from Vällnora and bars from the bruk to the wharf at the coast.Ships then sailed to Stockholm with the bars. 11ar iron production at Gimo, in 1763, amounted to 15,127 bars, weighing 400 tons.It was made at two forges, each with ten skilled forgemen working for nine months.Together they undertook about 4000 days' work.However, the work in the forges only represented a part of the entire production process.To start, there was the mine and the blast furnace, with ore extraction and pig iron-making.It is difficult to calculate the amount of work done in relation to the ore used by Gimo, but we know that mining at Dannemora took place throughout the year, and 300 miners performed more than 80,000 days' work.Gimo received less than a tenth of the ore, and perhaps 6000 days' work of these were spent at the expense of Gimo.At Vällnora, pig iron was made during a couple of months in early spring by less than ten workers, and 750 days' work would be a fair estimate.The miners, blast furnace workers and forgemen were all wage-labourers tied to long contracts, and their work was inserted in a complex structure with payments in kind, remuneration, allowances, etc.When the men made iron, their wives toiled on petty farms, included in the employments, cultivating turnips and cabbage, as well as keeping a few cattle.They also brewed beer, baked bread and prepared food to be delivered to their husbands' workplaces. 12s important as this work was, most of the work related to making bar iron was conducted by the peasants, leaseholders as well as freeholders, making charcoal in the forests and transporting raw material and iron.When following the commodity chain, we should start with the ore and the 1645 loads brought to the furnace and with peasants from the whole estate involved.With the same calculation as above, it would have taken the peasants about 2700 days' work to move the ore to Vällnora.Transporting the pig iron from the furnace to the bruk was an easier task, as it required fewer journeys, as much iron was rowed across a long lake in the summer.Fifty boat trips took the iron a part of the distance, but there was still a need for land transportation.Once again, peasants from the whole estate were involved, 186 carriages took pig iron the whole distance from Vällnora during the winter and another 200 journeys moved the iron from the lake to the bruk.The latter took place in the summer, and the sledges were replaced with small wagons.Recalculated into time, the peasants, and their horses, spent about 800 days' work to fulfill this task.
When the forgemen at Gimo had made the bars, these had to be transported to the sea as soon as possible.Once again, it would have been good if the snow could be used, but the bars left the bruk as soon as they were finished, and there had to be alternatives.Until March, the ground was covered with snow, and sledges were used.For a short while in the early summer, boats transported bars to the sea on the river; 88 boat trips were made by the peasants.After that, Gimo had to resort to land transport with carts.All in all, 500 carriages departed the bruk.The distance to the sea was about 30 kilometres, so we should assume that the length of these trips lasted at least two days.The boat trips took a longer time, but a heavier load could be transported on water.About 1500 days' work was spent on bringing the iron to the sea.
Charcoal, in large volumes, was needed at both the furnace and the two forges.Ironmaking was a voracious consumer, and large volumes of charcoal were transported everywhere where iron was made.It was a delicate material and could not be taken over longer distances, and only on winter roads.It has been stated that fifteen kilometres was the limit for how long charcoal could be transported, but sources from Dannemora Bergslag tell a slightly different story, as some charcoal within the Gimo estate was carted more than twenty kilometres.However, even with these longer distances it must be emphasised that charcoal was a locally made product and always arrived from within the region.Braun's description from 1701 stressed this fact, as did Bergskollegium's attempts to control the output of bar iron.Ever since the seventeenth century there had been a cap on every bruk's output, with a few exceptions, and the state gave rights on how much iron each site could produce, based on the size of the estate.No bruk could, in the long run, make more iron than a sustainable charcoal production allowed, creating an organic foundation for the entire Swedish iron production, totally in agreement with the ideas of a rational hushållning (Hildebrand, 1957).
In 1763, as much as 7000 cubic metres of charcoal were delivered at Vällnora and Gimo, during a short season.From December to late March, the bruk was a congested site, when more than twenty carts, on average, could arrive on the same day.Day-workers awaited the carts and made sure that the charcoal was taken into the large sheds that sheltered it from getting wet.About 1750 carts arrived at the two sites, each carrying four cubic meters, but each peasant sometimes drove more than one horse.As each of these journeys was shorter than for ore or iron, they could probably be done within one day's work; my estimate is that carting charcoal amounted to 1500 day's work.These deliveries were the endpoint to a process that had begun many months before, as the peasants also made the charcoal in the forests belonging to their villages; leaseholders produced charcoal in forests belonging to the estate, while freeholders used their own forests.Making charcoal was a labour consuming task.Trees had to be cut and transported to the place where the kilns were built.Then it took three weeks to build and burn a kiln, before the charcoal could be transported to the bruk.According to contemporary literature, it took eighty days' work to make and fire a kiln, and as it took 70 kilns to supply Gimo and Vällnora, charcoal-making took the peasants almost 6000 days' work.
As the table 1 shows, the subordinated peasants undertook a heavy load of work, approaching 14,000 days' work.This could be compared with the work undertaken in the mine, furnace and forges, amounting to 11,000 days' work.The number of peasants performing this work was about 150, so one can assume that every peasant household had to spend at least 100 days working for the bruk.Most of them did so with a combination of charcoal-making and transporting ore and iron across the region.Eric Mattsson, a leaseholder from the small village of Roddarne, just north of the bruk, could serve as a suitable example of how this work was allocated.Roddarne was a small but normal village.It contained seven smallholdings, all occupied by leaseholding households, and between 40 and 50 inhabitants lived in the village.In 1763, Eric Mattsson was 56 years old, and he occupied a farm together with his wife Maja, 53 years old, and three sons, Mats 23, Anders 21 and Jean 11 years old, as well as the 17 year-old daughter Stina. 13attsson occupied a small farm with a dwelling house and a few outbuildings.They had arable land on which they cultivated rye, but as noted, access to the forests was the most important asset.They kept six cows, two oxen, a couple of sheep, and pigs, but the horses were most crucial.In the stable stood seven horses, but only three of these were used.It was with these 'resources' in the form of people, animals and material goods that the household fulfilled their obligations towards the owner of Gimo bruk; they paid an annual lease but also taxes to the Crown.The latter was administered by the bruk, so they were clearly subordinated to Gimo, and paid both the lease and taxes as labour duties.There are no formal contracts left from the eighteenth century, revealing any agreements on how much labour the master demanded, but the Gimo accounts reveal the size of both leases and taxes.The same accounts also show the extent of the work done by the Mattsson household, and additional material indicate when this work was done.We do not know who performed the actual tasks, but it was rare that women made charcoal or carted, so it is likely that Eric and his eldest sons worked the forests and undertook the long-distance transports (Jansson et al., 2017).
Mattsson's household moved different goods.Ore was brought to Vällnora, and the men took pig iron from the lake to the bruk, brought bar iron to the wharf and sometimes took provisions on their return journeys from the sea.They also took lime to the blast furnace and transported firewood.They were also involved in rowing bar iron in June, and in the winter, they delivered charcoal from the two kilns they had burned.It is likely that their workload was toughest during the winter months and in early summer.The winter was the period when charcoal was made and delivered.It was also the best time to transport heavy goods.In the first months of the year, ore, pig iron and bars were moved within the system.The sources indicate that the men could be away for longer periods.Early summer was another intense period, as bar iron was rowed to the sea, but it was also the time for felling trees to make charcoal.
When comparing Mattsson's workload with the average figures for subordinated peasants, it is clear that they performed more than the average household did.The men in the household spent at least 250 days working for the bruk, with half of their workload was making charcoal in the forest.During the rest of the year, they worked on the land they leased, trying to make ends meet, with rye as their main staple.They also took care of their domestic animals, a task that included working in the forest, as the animals grazed there and much of their hay was fetched there.This work was not only the domain of the adult men but was shared with the women and smaller children.Their leases also stipulated how they should maintain their farms, and they had to spend time in making necessary repairs on buildings and fences. 14annemora Bergslag was thus a region in central Sweden designed for ironmaking.At its centre was the large mine, circumscribed by vast forests supplying firewood and charcoal for the mine and the surrounding bruk.It was a region with a designated place in the hierarchy of Swedish hushållning, subordinated to Bergskollegium; it had both rights and obligations to produce iron, and with clear boundaries and regulations on how to organise the production.The crucial agent within the structure was the bruk, possessing most arable land in the region, and the necessary forests.The actual ironmaking took place in the bruk itself, by artisans and day labourers, and the estates owned shares in Dannemora; a bruk contained large tracts of land, shares in the mine and ironmaking communities, and should be understood as entities combining agrarian and industrial production.
In this organic structure, with its rational allocation of resources, there was one feature that was conspicuously absent, namely the presence of working people and labour.When Braun made his extensive description of Dannemora Bergslag, he had nothing to say about the people who inhabited the region, and the legislation on iron production only sparsely dealt with that.Above, I have sketched the contours of the two spatial entities, bergslag and bruk, but foremost highlighted the labour and work undertaken by subordinated peasants.I have stressed that it was their work, crisscrossing the region together with their horses and loads of ore, charcoal and iron between the sites of production, which made it possible to produce iron, but also to export the iron bars to foreign markets via Stockholm.It was these movements, the steady motion of people and goods, which kept the region together, from its centre at Dannemora to the wharfs along the coast.A leaseholder, like Eric Mattsson, was in many aspects unifying Gimo bruk, keeping the estate together by transporting ore from Dannemora, pig iron from Vällnora, and bar iron to the sea.He also produced charcoal for the forges.He was hardly alone in his venture, as another 150 peasants undertook the same tasks, and an even larger assemblage of peasants did the same for Leufsta, Österby and the other bruk in the region.It can be estimated that at least two-thirds of the entire population living in the region encircled by Braun's map, were subordinated to one of the region's bruk.There was a steady stream of sledges departing Dannemora as soon as winter covered the region in snow, and thousands more took pigs from the furnaces to the forges or bars to the sea.If 70 kilns were required for Gimo alone, then a thousand kilns would have been lit every year in the region, supervised by peasants working during the cold winter nights.

Accounting and supervision
In the previous section, I established that Dannemora Bergslag was more or less shaped by the practice of working peasants, carting goods between different sites; it was subordinated peasants, in their thousands and in their everyday life, who kept the region together.Having stated that, however, we must return to the question of organisation of labour and the matter of coercion.The basic structure was that most of these peasants were leaseholders, paying a lease to the bruk, in order to make a living.They did so by performing labour duties, delivering charcoal and transporting ore or iron, and in so doing, they were in the hands of their masters.It was the brukspatron, the owner of a bruk, who decided what they should do and who also kept track of what his subordinated peasants did.
The concept of hushållning was ubiquitous among Swedish authors in the eighteenth century.Society was seen as a hierarchy with a divine oeconomia, encapsulating the 'general' and 'individual' householding, but writers also dealt with brukshushållning within that structure.One of those was Isaac Gustaf Uhr, who in 1750 published En Bruks-Patrons Egenskaper (The Properties of an Ironmaster).He was influenced by the professor of economics at Uppsala, Anders Berch, and his thoughts about a layered society.A works-owner should be a good 'householder' and take care of his bruk.In doing so, he should be well-read in all sciences related to metal-making, such as chemistry, mechanics, mineralogy, etc., but he should foremost be trained in hushållning, and its essential quality of 'pushing the actual labour'.He should have a 'tireless desire' to lead and instruct his subordinates, and be 'a faithful supervisor' for tasks related to carting and charcoal making.This meant to utilise 'Arithmetic', and with quantitative methods keeping track of artisans, peasants and their tasks (Uhr, 1750). 15ccounting was an essential part of this arithmetic knowledge, and bookkeeping was crucial to running a bruk.During the eighteenth century, authors began to publish manuals on how to keep books at a bruk.In 1740, Carl Gustaf Gyllenhöök published 'A Shortcut to Bookkeeping at Bruk', with the overarching motto that 'Bookkeeping is an Art to keep our accounts, so that they show the state of affairs in a correct way'.This was followed by ideas that 'order' and a rational structure was essential for controlling the estate, and Gyllenhöök preferred the Italian double-entry system.In Dannemora Bergslag elaborate bookkeeping procedures had been used ever since the seventeenth century and a few large collections are preserved, and one of these was used in the previous section (Gyllenhöök, 1741).According to Gyllenhöök, accounting began with two balance sheets dealing with the material wealth of the estate and the situation for the workers, whether they were indebted or not.From that foundation, the accounts proceeded to monitor the making of iron in furnaces and forges, and then to the exportation of bar iron.The crucial aspect was that 'the people work diligently', but also that the owners used an appropriate division of labour and avoided unnecessary work.It was the task of clerks to follow the work, making 'sure that it advanced according to plans'. 16hree different account books were used; the main ledger, a book for individual accounts for workers and peasants and a journal dealing with what everyone withdrew from the storehouse.From mideighteenth century, there was an important development strengthening the control over work, with a number of additional ledgers keeping track of what everybody did. 17he new system established at Gimo, made it possible for the owner, his inspector and bookkeeper to improve the overview of what the different categories of workers and peasants did on a daily basis.From the 1760s, a new journal was established, called 'Diarium', in which the bookkeeper made notes of what everybody did.For the workers living in the community, this was easier, as their work took place in the surroundings.Clerks could watch what took place and make notes in the new account book.When it came to the peasants, this was more difficult, as much of their work was done outside the community, and work was in itself always on the move.Their activities had to be monitored in a different way, and could only be 'measured' when the peasant arrived at different sites, be it the mine, furnace, bruk, or the wharf.At Leufsta, the largest bruk, there were two main gates, decorated according to the latest rococo fashion.Outside each of these, there was a small house, and before the peasants entered the site, they had to stop and let a bookkeeper check their cargo.Still today, the house at the southern gate is called 'tally stick hut', as the inspection ended with the clerk making a stripe with his knife at the two ends of a tally stick; one kept by the peasant and the other by the bruk.These stripes later ended up as notes in the 'Diarium', as a sign that the estate owner had control over what the peasant had done.Delivered charcoal, ore or iron were transformed into a knowledge of performed work and duties in the accounts.Eventually these notes were transferred into the ledger and compared with the obligations to pay leases and taxes. 18

Conclusion
I started this article by following the tracks of Eric Persson, a peasant carting ore from Dannemora to Vällnora in February 1775.He was a leaseholder to the ironmaking estate of Gimo bruk, and carting was part of his lease.He was not alone in undertaking this arduous task in the middle of the cold winter, as thousands of other peasants followed the same winter roads from the mine to all furnaces in the region.They also carted iron and produced charcoal.At Gimo, these peasants on average spent hundred days' work toiling in the forests and driving their horses, but some undertook an even heavier workload.These peasants, like the miners and the artisans, were making a living out of the duties they performed for the bruk.In return, they could use the land.The peasants in Dannemora Bergslag lived on smallholdings with houses, outhouses, a few cattle and horses, and they grew rye on small fields.The work for the estates created a foundation for their existence, but it also constituted a basis for the region's iron trade.
Ironmaking was essential to early modern Sweden, something shown by the elevated position of Bergskollegium.The ambition of the state was to encourage iron production, and this was to be achieved by a rational division of labour based on what a generous nature prescribed.Around mines, other resources, such as the forests, were to be claimed for a vital iron production.This structure is evident in sources describing Dannemora Bergslag.In 1701, the surveyor Jacob Braun presented his map of the region with the mine at the centre, and with furnaces and bruk in circles around.An attached description underlined the importance of the forests for firewood and charcoal making; the villages in the region were seen as a 'benefit for bergslagen'.Braun depicted a region designated for iron production with an organic foundation.He painted a static picture without a place for artisans, miners or peasants.This text has presented a different view, stressing the movements and motions of people, horses and natural resources, and it has argued that it was the work of the peasants, crisscrossing between different sites, that created the foundation for ironmaking, and, in doing so, also setting the boundaries for Dannemora Bergslag.
The omission of peasants and labour, by Braun, Bergskollegium and others, might be seen as strange, but perhaps it can be explained by the overarching ideology of hushållning and ideas of a layered society.Its essential features were the organic foundation and the emphasis on labour and work, but of equal importance was the hierarchical structure, where man should be humble in front of the Creator.Peasants, artisans and miners were making a living, inserted in their individual householding, but they were also subordinated to both a general householding and the Oeconomia Divina, and here one must include brukshushållning.This meant that the peasants and workers in Dannemora Bergslag were in an inferior position vis-a-vie the king, the brukspatron and of course God, and in such a position they were expected to work and toil on the organic foundation on which they were placed.They were trapped inside a structure where their masters organised and controlled their work, and thus most of their everyday life.Subordinated peasants, like Eric Mattsson, were tied to the bruk and it was their duty to make charcoal and undertake tedious transportation during the long winter nights and days.Mattsson, together with his wife and children, performed more than 250 days' work for Gimo bruk, and they did so under the watchful eyes of its owner and clerks, and in this way, Dannemora Bergslag became constituted by the practice of powerful brukspatroner, who directed the life of their subordinates.