As in many countries, the inter-war years in Sweden were a turbulent period involving economic crisis, ensuing depression, unemployment and political instability, but also cultural change, emancipation, the granting of the right to vote for women, increased social rights and social welfare. During this period of change, legal remnants from the Middle Ages, such as vagrancy legislation, were in place to control specific parts of society. The legislation stated that people without means of sustenance who lived in a ‘manner … that is hazardous to public security, order and decency’ could be arrested and sentenced to forced labour. Although they generally decreased in number, sentences of forced labour continued to be enforced, and women were almost exclusively sentenced on suspicion of prostitution. When women’s labour was discussed during the inter-war period prostitution was discussed as moral contagion, rather than as a way to support oneself. In practice, in the Stockholm area, vagrancy legislation was used as an arbitrary method to partly uphold the regulation of prostitution, which was abolished in 1919. Sentences to forced labour decreased over time, partly through legislative changes. Still, when Europe was on the verge of war, there were still a handful of women and men who were sentenced to forced labour specifically because of their way of life.

The economic-historic art of reading novels has the potential to generate more complex images of social and economic contexts than what the analysis of more traditional source material sometimes can. Studying novels can also give ideas of researching other circumstances than are perhaps common within economic history. The novel’s perspective makes it possible to observe overlooked circumstances. Finally, the reading of novels can make a search for the everyday perceptions of economic and social circumstances easier. This is how the reading of novels can contribute to economic historic research.

At the heart of our reading are the economic and social processes and contexts against which the main plot is usually told. Three novels from the first half of the twentieth century have been used. They all depict life in the countryside and by using these we try to uncover ideas about reactions to the technical and organizational development in farming, the migration from the countryside, especially by young women, and the economic inequalities between the urban life and the countryside.