Together - Exhibition 2025

TOGETHER

One way or another, people have always lived together. Throughout history, we have cohabitated for a variety of reasons. There have also always been those who lived differently from the majority, and views on such people have varied through the ages as well.

In the older rural society, a boundary was drawn in the social community between “us” at the farm and the village, and the “others”, strangers and people from the outside world. Each individual household was a productive unit consisting of the farmer, the farmer’s wife, children, retirees and dependents, and labourers, each with their own duties. Within the village, fixed forms of cooperation and interaction such as volunteer work and feasts would tie the households together.

In the 19th century, the boundary between the village and the outside world was increasingly replaced by the boundary between the home and the outside world. The nuclear family, consisting of the parents and their children, was now the central focus. The family became more of a consumer unit than a productive one, and family members were bound together by emotions rather than their work cooperation.

Courtship and the need for love were key aspects of the new family ideology. Love did exist in the old rural communities, but not courtship. Marriage was far too serious an affair to be left to anything as fleeting as love. Reason was needed to guide such decisions.

At the start of the 20th century, the new view of the family took root in the rural communities and the working class as well. The community of women and the community of men were largely replaced by the community of couples. Today, too, we are concerned with our feelings deciding how we choose to lead our lives. Families are more compounded, while about 40 percent of households in Norway consist of one person.