ABSTRACT
It is necessary at this point to consider what the formal education discussed in Chapter 5 actually meant in a wider context. We want to explore how it performed with the informal, vernacular aspects of literacy practices and the material and sociocultural conditions of the late nineteenth century. While it is undisputed that literacy rates did go up in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the question is whether we can give all the credit to the church and state. The success of the campaign, according to Loftur Guttormsson, rested on the wide distribution of religious publications along with steady social pressure from the local clergy and parents, as we discussed earlier in the book. Loftur further points out that reformers who advocated Enlightenment ideas at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century made an enormous difference in terms of availability of secular literature and, through their ideology, laid a solid foundation for universal literacy. Loftur maintains that these forces “from above” had an obvious agenda. According to him, “they saw a clear benefit in spreading this skill, so that as many subjects as possible would be susceptible to the official rhetoric.” 1
But, again, we need to ask, “Do these forces which we have discussed really explain the fact that children in Iceland became literate at a relatively early age in the nineteenth century and that all kinds of literary activity were thriving among the public?” Scholars all over the world have had to address similar questions in relation to literacy in the past. We can accept this argument up to a point: a formal system made every parish responsible for the mental and spiritual development of its members; the pastor had a supervisory role, the parents and guardians carried the educational role, and children were not accepted into secular or spiritual society without attaining the required level of learning. The system appears both effective and functional. In both Iceland and Sweden, children could be removed from the family and transferred to another home, at the parents’ expense, if the parents neglected these obligations. 2 But this alone cannot explain the high level of literacy in Iceland and Sweden, nor does an environmental argument,
based on the long, dark winters mentioned in the last chapter. Throughout history, rulers have issued ordinances and laws that few obeyed and that were largely ineffective. Even though social pressures in Iceland and Sweden supported these policies, there was no guarantee that people would adhere to them. Neither Egil Johansson nor Loftur Guttormsson explains what circumstances prevailed to make the campaign by church and state during the eighteenth century so successful.
