This open access book uncovers one important, yet forgotten, form of itinerant livelihoods, namely petty trade, more specifically how it was practiced in Northern Europe during the period 1820–1960. It investigates how traders and customers interacted in different spaces and approaches ambulatory trade as an arena of encounters by looking at everyday social practices. Petty traders often belonged to subjugated social groups, like ethnic minorities and migrants, whereas their customers belonged to the resident population. How were these mobile traders perceived and described? What goods did they peddle? How did these commodities enable and shape trading encounters? What kind of narratives can be found, and whose? These questions pertaining to daily practices on a grass-root level have not been addressed in previous research. Encounters and Practices embarks on hidden histories of survival, vulnerability, and conflict, but also discloses reciprocal relations, even friendships.

“This book is an exciting and welcomed contribution to the study of social and economic history of the Nordic countries. It provides a broad, yet empirically precise, interdisciplinary insight into the understudied topic of petty trade, which in turn offers a valuable entry to exploring the livelihoods, trading practices, and encounters of mobile and often marginalised social groups (e.g. Sámi, Jews, and Roma people) in Finland, Sweden and its neighbouring countries. The book is therefore a must-read for anyone interested in not only petty trade, but also economic activities and everyday lives of ethnic, religious and/or linguistic minorities in the Nordic countries.” (Fia Sundevall, Stockholm University, Sweden)
“The volume assembles case studies on practices of petty trade – often regarded as marginal – and highlights just how common they were throughout Europe. The book shows how such highly ambiguous and diverse activities or trades served the needs of consumption, bartering and entertainment. By reading sources against the grain, the individual chapters depict everyday routines and encounters of sellers and residents, while also reconstructing sellers’ agency and tactics. Overall, this book opens up new perspectives while drawing a highly differentiated and multifaceted picture of practices often neglected by historians because they do not fit neatly into traditional categories of work or trades.” (Sigrid Wadauer, University of Vienna, Austria)

Illuminates how mobile traders were perceived and described Shows how commodities enable and shape trading encounters Examines how the availability of certain narratives in the archive delimits historical understanding This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.