Death in a 19th-Century Peasant Society – Analysed by Means of a Peasant’s Diaries from a Rural Community on the Western Coast of Sweden

Diaries can provide a micro-perspective on people’s way of life andthe world of conceptualization in a local society, and also on the changes that took place in the years that the diaries were written. This can be considered micro-history. While conducting fieldwork for the research project “Cultural contacts in Bohusl n’s coastal rural communities” in the 1970s, I came across some detailed handwritten diaries. These had been written by Jakob Jonsson (21 July 1795 – 15 March 1879), owner of Pr stbacka farm in R ra parish on Orust Island, Bohusl n province, and the preserved material covers a period from 1866 to a few weeks prior to Jonsson’s death in 1879. In this paper, I have chosen to present a special study and analysis of Jakob Jonsson’s notes with reference to death and funerals in R ra parish, and also to investigate if and how the general world outside this district manifested itself in Jonsson’s world of ideas.