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17 The districts chosen are the same ones previously studied by myself and Guttormsson. Parishes from these districts are also dealt with in my book Family and household in Iceland.

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21 Ibid. The population development of Iceland during the period was greatly affected by the emigration of around 15,000 Icelanders to Canada and the USA between 1870 and 1900.

22 See Gunnlaugsson, Family and household in Iceland, chapter V, and Magnússon, Iceland in transition, chapter 4.

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27 See, for instance, Briem, Páll, ‘Nokkur landsmál, einkum fátækramálið og skattamálið’, Andvari (1889), 16.Google Scholar

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30 Ibid., 71–80.

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33 These figures are calculated on basis of the censuses of 1880 and 1930 preserved in the National Archives of Iceland, Reykjavik (hereafter NAI).

34 Ibid.

35 Statistique de l'lslande 92. Recensement de la population de l'lslande le 2 décembre 1930 (Reykjavik, 1937), 18*.Google Scholar

36 Statistics of Iceland II, 82, 56Google Scholar. Between 1890 and 1901 males at the age of 50 could on average expect to live 18.2 more years, while the average expected lifetime of this age group had risen to 24.1 more years between 1931 and 1940. The corresponding averages for women at the age of 50 were 22.4 years in 1890–1901, and 27 years in 1931–40.

37 See Smith, Daniel Scott, ‘Historical change in the household structure of the elderly in economically developed societies’, in Fogel, et al. eds., Aging: stability and change, 95.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 96.

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41 It is important to note that one cannot presuppose - at least as regards the data for 1880 - that residence within a household of an offspring meant that the parent in question enjoyed ‘retirement’ in the modern sense of the term. It is more likely that he, or she, constituted part of the household's work-force as far as his, or her, health and capabilities permitted.

42 The illegitimacy ratio (the percentage of all births that were illegitimate) was high in Iceland during the latter part of the nineteenth century, around 20 per cent during the period 1880–1900. See Statistics of Iceland II, 82, 12–13.Google Scholar

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48 Gunnlaugsson, Family and household in Iceland, chapter V. The pressure brought on children to remain on the family farm is a common theme in Icelandic literature dealing with the socio-psychological conflicts resulting from the emergence of the urban society during the 1920s and 1930s. See, for instance, Laxness, Halldór, Independent people (London, 1945).Google Scholar

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51 Gunnlaugsson, , Family and household in Iceland, 166–7Google Scholar. The functions of kinship networks in the fishing town of Keflavik in the jurisdictional district of Gullbringu- and Kjósarsýsla during the 1930s are well described in Lena, and Bergmann, Árni, Blátt og rautt. Bernska og unglingsár i tveimur heimum (Reykjavik, 1986), 11–21.Google Scholar

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