Marjatta Rahikainen, ‘Urban opportunities: Women in the restaurant business in Swedish and Finnish cities, c. 1800–1850’

This chapter discusses enterprising women whose skills as innkeepers and restaurant keepers stemmed from their professional ambitions. Urban women’s opportunities to maintain themselves in the restaurant business in early nineteenth-century Sweden are discussed in terms of formal and informal institutions. The empirical cases include three women who were remarkably successful in the restaurant business in early nineteenth-century Finland. They took a professional approach when managing their inns and restaurants; thus, they were the antecedent to modern female entrepreneurs. It is suggested that respectable women in the restaurant business paralleled bourgeois men engaged in service businesses.