Skulehaldarar i det førmoderne Noreg – mellom barken og veden?

This article attempts to analyze the position of the teachers in ambulatory schools in rural districts in Norway before the middle of the 19th century, in relation to the alleged cultural division into an official culture and a peasant culture. Is it fair to say that the rural schoolmaster occupied an intermediate position between these two cultures? Through the analysis of a conflict between peasants and the government in the parish of Vågå in the early 1800s, the power aspects of the position of the teachers in the ambulatory school are discussed. Although one may regard the rural schoolmaster as in an intermediate position by virtue of being in a formal relationship with the vicar, anchored in official ideology of the government, this position was not necessarily confirmed within self-governing institutions based on communal-egalitarian principles within the peasant society itself. The existence of different ideologies and principles of power within rural communities thus means that the position of the schoolmaster was not an unambig-uous middle position. For most schoolteachers in rural ambulatory school, moreover, the occupation as teacher