«ud for at lære husholdningsfag». Om etableringen av husstellundervisning i Norge

Abstract

The chapter shows how a new ideal of the housewife emerged during the nineteenth century, and how many actors worked to strengthen the knowledge base for the Norwegian food scene. During the second half of the nineteenth century, science became an increasingly more central provider of knowledge and authority in dietary matters, and this led to claims that housekeeping education and schools should be established for young Norwegian women. The authorities also had to be persuaded to include housekeeping education in the primary school curricula. Pioneers used several channels to mission for the cause and mediated it in various ways: as a nutritional issue and question regarding the national economy, as women’s liberation, and as modernization and scientification. The establishment of schools for housewives-to-be, a teacher-training school in household science, and the emergence of school kitchens in primary schools in 1908 were milestones in the professionalization of the housewife’s role and led to improvements in household cooking and the scientification of teaching.