ABSTRACT
Mikkel Nightman’s various jobs brought him into contact with those of both high and low standing in the town and surrounding villages. People came to the nightman’s house to engage Mikkel to do a job for them, and he visited their houses when the chimney needed sweeping or when the pit was full of excrement and need emptying. In spite of the nightman family’s detailed description and Niels Lind’s pressure on him, Morten Tailor wobbled only slightly in his denials that day in court. Morten had, then, over a number of years secretly cultivated social relations with the nightman’s family. Social interaction was clearly the worst infringement of norms, but the description also suggests that both Morten himself and Niels Lind felt that the business relations Morten had been cultivating had been suspicious.
