Singing out loud: Selling Skillingstrykk in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Norway

In the golden age of Norwegian “skillingstrykk”, the 1800s and early 1900s, thousands of traders travelled around every nook and cranny, touting all kinds of oddities, and amongst these, also printed songs. This article will explore the different groups of vendors, from the street boys and beggars to the better off publishers and book sellers. The title “Singing out loud?” refers to the diversity of contexts requiring different ways of singing and selling, depending if the recipient was sitting on the other side of a kitchen table or just passing by in the street. It also refers to the fact that a popular, and for some annoying, widespread culture as the trading of skillingstrykk and singing of “skillingsviser”, is hardly traceable in contemporary sources, except for the prints themselves.