Danish Workers' Memoirs, 1880-1914

The Danish National Museum's (Nationalmuseet) collection of workers' memoirs is probably the best available source of information on the lives of skilled workers, and possibly unskilled workers as well, from 1880 to World War I. The primary interest of this survey was the relation of international labour mobility in skilled trades to a variety of socio-economic and cultural characteristics. However, the material coded may also prove useful to studies of the Danish working class (and particularly skilled workers) in that period. In addition to the quantitative analysis which can be done, the data provide access through the Danish National Museum's identification numbers to qualitative material: the individual memoirs themselves