Drawing inspiration from the new social history of livelihood, this article examines how rural nineteenth-century teachers made a living by engaging in livelihood diversification. By using a wide variety of source materials from nineteenth-century Sweden, this article shows that, far from specialising exclusively in teaching, teachers were often engaged in multiple occupations as late as the year 1900, and that teachers' work ranged from activities that were encouraged to those that were frowned upon or even illegal. As a result, this article sheds new light on teaching as an occupation in the nineteenth century and contributes to the discussion of the social and economic positions of teachers. By investigating how teachers earned their livelihoods, this article also addresses the role of teachers' multiple occupations in the expansion of mass schooling during the nineteenth century. ARTICLE HISTORY

Through an extensive study of 12 parishes in the Sundsvall region, this article, informed by studies in the economic history of education, examines changes and continuities in local school politics during the period of 1840-1900. Using the Sundsvall region in the northern part of Sweden as its point of departure, this article shows how basic political conflicts shifted when political franchise, tax regulations and the social structure of the region changed during the second half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the investigated period, the basic conflict of school politics was no longer between those who owned land and those who did not but rather between high-and low-income groups. Judging from local school politics, the local elites of the Sundsvall region, in contrast to local elites in the USA, England, Spain and Prussia, focused their attention on school funding. The main conflicts between the social groups not only concerned the distribution of school expenditures but also included issues, such as the location of schools.

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This chapter examines the preconditions, content, and consequences of the school act of 1842, which was the main primary school legislation in nineteenth-century Sweden. This chapter shows that the school act defined a school system that placed the main responsibility for funding and organizing schools in the hands of Sweden’s parishes. Although the school act did not make schooling mandatory for all children, it required all parishes to establish at least one school. As a result, schools were soon distributed throughout Sweden, although the teaching that children received remained limited in terms of attendance, content, and the length of the school year.

The sports sciences are an exception, for they indeed have historical interest. Interestingly enough, this particular historical research is somewhat isolated from mainstream history of education. Another exception is research conducted in the field of gender studies. 2 Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, 3rd ed., trans. Peter Green (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 86.