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Skriv ut sidan - SV: Help translating word from tax registry
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Titel: SV: Help translating word from tax registry
Skrivet av: Jörgen Tollesson skrivet 2021-02-26, 20:19
Backstugusittare = "hill cottage sitter", as Wikipedia says, looks like a Google translation to me... :) Backe can mean hill, but in this context it means ground.
Both a backstuga and a torp were located on land that belonged to a farm or a village. A torp had some small farming land attached to it, a backstuga did not. However, even if they didn't own the land, both a torpare and backstugesittare could own the buildings.
I would call a backstugesittare (or backsittare as it's usually called in Båhuslän) a crofter without land, and a torpare a crofter with land.
Many backsittare were poor and had to live on charity, but not all of them.
I can add that on Tjörn, as on the rest of the coast of Båhuslän, you can find a lot of strandsittare. Which is an equivalent to backsittare, but they lived on the shore (strand). Many of them, or probably most of them, where fishermen.