Cattle tending in the ‘good old times’

This chapter discusses intensive production issue by investigating human-cow relationships on small-scale farms in Finland in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It analyses diverse materials such as ethnographic descriptions, folklore, cattle tending guidebooks, and articles in newspapers. The analysis of materials written from different perspectives casts light on the perceptions of uneducated rural people as well as their educators. Regarding folklore, the chapter focuses on descriptions of magic rites used in cattle husbandry. Folklore, especially the descriptions of magic rites used in cattle husbandry, provides a different kind of view on human-animal relationships. From the 1870s onwards, farming was modernized by shifting production away from grain growing towards milk production, since the former had become unprofitable due to foreign imports and years of crop failure throughout the 1860s. In the Nordic countries, a relatively strict gendered division of labour was in place in peasant culture.