The Piga (Single Female Maid)

Pig or Piga was the profession of many peasant girls in Sweden during pre-industrial times. In the countryside, many young girls would start serving as maids as soon as they were old enough, which was after their confirmation at a minimum age of 15. Some girls, if there was enough work, food, and room for them at home, would stay put for a few more years before they entered another household.

Working as a maid was initially seen as a transitional profession, a way for daughters of common people to learn skills, earn money, and prepare to run their own households. However, from the 19th century onward, the rural population grew so rapidly that it became very difficult for maids and servants to ever set up their own households, relegating many of them to servitude throughout their lives.

The work of a maid was carefully regulated by law well into the 20th century. The first general service charter was drafted in 1664. It contained a set of rules for the duties and obligations of the master and the servants respectively. In 1723 a special tariff system was introduced which set a maximum annual salary a maid could be paid. As time went on, rules and restrictions only became tighter and most often favored the master. According to the 1833 service charter, employment began on October 24th and ran for one year. If a maid was not happy in her current situation, she had to notify her current master of her intended termination between July 26 and August 24 or her contract would be automatically extended for another year.

A paragraph in the service charter read, “The servant must be godly, faithful, obedient, sober and moral, and not shy away from the work and chores that the master reasonably requires. If the servant is negligent, stubborn, or indecent and does not take correction or proves to be unfaithful, ignorant, or otherwise incompetent in the service, the servant may be separated from employment.” Any compensation they were to receive in the way of cash was payable at the very end of the service contract, and if a girl left her employment or was let go before the contract was up she would forfeit her entire salary. By 1830, when the patriarchal system began to dismantle and a new social structure began to gain momentum, approximately two-thirds of those working in service left after one year seeking better working conditions.

The week of October 24th was the only week of the year that maids had off work, but at the same time they had no income and had to arrange for their own food and accommodations. Sometimes girls would advertise themselves in newspapers in their own parish or in nearby parishes, highlighting their skills and preferences for work. Employers would also advertise to replace maids who had given notice.

Compulsory labor was introduced in the 18th century, a measure aimed at “traitors and vagrants” and other people without full-time employment. According to the law on compulsory service, those who did not have their own farm or croft would be forced into maid or farm service to limit dependence on public assistance. Able-bodied men and women who did not work risked imprisonment.

Compensation was given in several forms. Stipulated in the service contract was that maids would be provided daily food and housing. Accommodations were often meager, though. Sometimes the family table would double as the bed upon which more than one maid would sleep. If there was a sleeping loft in the attic it could often be infested with lice. Maids could also negotiate for shoes, clothing, and a little extra time off work as part of their compensation. Their annual wages, payable at the end of the contractual year, was about one-half of what male farmhands were paid even though maids were required to work much longer hours. Sometimes it could even be a third of a farmhand’s salary. Because rural families were, for the most part, self-sustaining, a couple would need to have quite a bit of money saved to set up a household. Most girls could not afford to even think about marriage before the age of 27 or 28 (and for men it was much older) because their wages were so meager.

There was never a shortage of work for maids employed on a rural farm. They often worked 16 hours per day with only a couple hours off on Sunday. They were the first ones up every morning making coffee and preparing breakfast for the family and all the farmhands. All of the food would have to be prepared completely from scratch which included such daily tasks as baking bread, churning butter, gathering eggs, plucking chickens, slaughtering animals, cleaning fish, and milking cows. Milking cows, by the way, was often referred to as the “white hell” for a maid on a large farm with 10-20 or more cows which had to be milked 3 times per day. Calves, pigs, and chickens would have to be fed and their pens cleaned. Dishes would have to be washed and the house cleaned. Water would have to be hauled from its source multiple times per day in order to accomplish many of these tasks. In between food preparation, maids would spin wool, weave fabric, sew and repair clothing, do laundry, make candles…the list is almost endless.

Gender roles were very clearly defined. Men were never expected nor asked to do what was considered to be “women’s” work. As mentioned previously, maids would have to have breakfast prepared before the farmhands were even awake. Following a day in the fields, farmhands often had free time to rest or even nap while the maids worked to prepare the evening meal. And farmhands generally had the evenings off while maids washed dishes, cleaned up, and made preparations for the next day.

During the planting and the harvest all hands, male and female, were needed, which put even more work on the backs of the maids and all the womenfolk in the household. While all of this work was being accomplished, it was often said that the master himself spent considerable time on the sofa.

Unfortunately, it also happened that masters took sexual liberties with the maids in their employ. It would be difficult for the master’s wife to not know what was going on, but divorces were hard to obtain and would only leave an embittered wife destitute, homeless, and socially shamed. Should the maid become pregnant, it was the master’s word against hers. He could half her salary or terminate her employment with no obligation to pay any of her already-earned salary. Because of the shame piled on unmarried mothers, not to mention the financial, mental, and emotional burden of being a single parent, infanticide was too often practiced.

As perpetuated from old provincial laws from the Middle Ages, the master had the right to beat his maids and farmhands (as well as his wife and children) should they not perform to his expectations, as long as it was done in moderation. “Moderation,” of course, was open to interpretation. In 1858, a new law was passed that stipulated only boys under 18 and girls under 16 could legally be beaten, as if beating children was somehow still OK. It wasn’t until 1920 that legal beatings by a master was completely abolished. The master did have contractual responsibilities as well. He had to provide care for everyone in his household should they become ill, he was responsible for their continued religious training, and he was liable should anyone cause any damages to a neighbor or their property.

Servants, both maids and farmhands, came to be considered as low class, and, as such, made it easy for those in positions of power to exploit them. The work of maids was absolutely essential to household survival, yet they, themselves, have been described as invisible. The laws supported the farming industry first and foremost to keep the country fed. It also supported the power and privilege of the land-owning men. The servants, however, were seen only as the labor they could provide. Their human need for autonomy, visibility, and independence was poorly supported by the laws as well as the culture.

It was estimated that there were approximately 140,000 maids in Sweden in 1900. More and more girls had already moved from rural farms to the cities to work as maids since wages were slightly higher and the work day a little shorter. As industrialization increased, it drew them into the factories where wages were much more competitive and fair. Many land-owning farmers were forced to modernize through technology and automation as cheap human labor became less plentiful.

Many Swedish girls who emigrated to the US still found themselves employed as maids, but they enjoyed higher wages, fewer hours, much better living conditions, and they could negotiate their own business dealings without government limitations.

https://popularhistoria.se/vardagsliv/arbetsliv/pigornas-slit

https://anforskning.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/att-tjana-som-piga-och-drang/

https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/1914074

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A563457/FULLTEXT01.pdf