ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the culture of conflict among maritime workers in early modern Denmark-Norway. It uses the admiralty court archives as well as ship’s journals to show the myriad conflicts sailors were embroiled in, both on ships and in port. The most extreme form of these was outright shipboard insurrection. However, the social logic behind such acts has often been overlooked by historians, and on appearing in court, maritime workers themselves would also efface it. Yet echoing oral traditions of yarning and storytelling on the decks, the writings of maritime lower-class subjects from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showcases how they often conceived of transgressions as justified responses to the abusive conditions they faced.
