LAUSR

The rise of the new social history (‘sosialhistorie’ in Norwegian) in Norway from around 1970 was more of an evolution than a revolution. The social aspect of Norwegian history writing had been important for decades, a trait which also may explain its success. What was unusual, however, was the conscious application of new terms, theories and methods, partly borrowed from the social sciences, and the introduction of ‘social history’ as a rallying point. This article tries to show that processes of professionalisation – characterised by specialisation and with increasing emphasis on originality – were an important element of this new social history. In a lecture in 1964 the prominent Norwegian historian Andreas Holmsen (1906–89) commented on the state of the country’s historiography. Holmsen was a historian of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, known for his structural approach to economic and settlement history, not unlike what was published in the Annales at the time. In the lecture he compared his way of doing history with that of another prominent historian, his contemporary and adversary Jens Arup Seip (1905–92). Seip was trained as a historian of the Middle Ages, but later turned to studying the nineteenth century. Previously sympathetic to the social sciences, he had turned against it (at least as an inspiration to history), and now favoured studying political history and the struggle for power. In the 1960s Holmsen thought Seip to be by far the most influential of the two, or indeed compared to anyone, in the Norwegian history discipline. Political history was dominant. Seip had won, Holmsen wrote, and he had lost. Only a few years later, the tables had turned. From the early 1970s, social history – also known as the ‘new social history’ or simply the ‘new history’ – was on nearly everybody’s lips. Books, articles, PhD theses and master’s dissertations poured out, many declaring explicitly their genre as ‘social history’, which was the preferred term in Norway. Interestingly, the chronological centre of attention was the century of Seip’s research, the nineteenth, with its far-reaching social changes. Perhaps equally interesting was Seip’s own reaction. He found much of the new work on