ABSTRACT

Trondheim – a brief introduction The Norwegian town of Trondheim was and is a small town in a small country. This presents both handicaps and advantages when trying to understand how towns were generally governed in the eighteenth century. The mechanisms of government may be more transparent and easier to trace in a small town, but they are also formed by local and often unique conditions and therefore of less general interest. In the case of eighteenthcentury Trondheim local conditions may have been important, but the promulgation of both uniform and individual decrees to all towns in the country by the absolutist king in Copenhagen provided a framework that shaped powerfully urban political life.