On the basis of a transcription and analysis of a collection of more or less brief hand-written annotations in a printed almanac from 1799, a picture emerges in this article of the everyday life of a farmer and miner in the Dala-Bergslagen region of Sweden at the end of the 18th century.
The annotations, which are mainly written on interleaved sheets, provide information about farms and villages, arable farming and livestock rearing, mining and smelting, the weather and its effects, the villagers' duties in the form of labour service, provision of post-horses and attendance at parish meetings, and living conditions generally. The particulars recorded have been analysed from both a linguistic and a cultural point of view, and supplemented with information from sources such as parish registers, catechetical examination records, court records, and published genealogies and parish descriptions. The result is a considerably more detailed overall picture.
The article contributes to our understanding of what life could be like in a maning and farming village in the late 18th century, as well as shedding further ligtht on modes of expression and living conditions during that period.