ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a schematic picture of agrarian development in Northern Europe by using Finland as an illustrative case and adding comparative information on the other Northern countries. The most important factor in the agrarian development of the Scandinavian kingdoms, Sweden and Denmark was the state. It could be argued that Scandinavia represented a case of the more general European phenomenon of Bauernshuzt conservation of peasantry. As Eric Hobsbawn has remarked, post-war capitalism was a kind of mixture between economic liberalism and social democracy, which in many respects followed the example of the planned economy in the Soviet Union. In this mixture, agricultural policy gave priority to planning instead of free markets. The chapter highlights the administrative innovations in Finland and thereafter return to the role of peasantry and rural civil society in shaping the countryside. In Finland, the end of the post-war period of regulated de-peasantisation was marked by two major political changes.
