Resingebonden

Resingebonden is a Norwegian term that appears in historical and regional sources to describe itinerant or seasonal farm laborers. The word is formed from elements meaning travel or migration combined with the word for farmer, signaling a social role rather than a fixed occupation on a single estate.

Historically, resingebonden referred to groups or families who moved between farms to offer labor during peak agricultural periods, such as harvest or planting. Mobility allowed landowners to access flexible labor and helped smallholdings cope with variable workloads. In many regions, these laborers lived temporary or semi-permanent arrangements on or near the farms that hired them, often receiving food, shelter, or a portion of the harvest as compensation.

The social and economic position of resingebonden was ambivalent. They provided valuable labor for rural economies but operated outside permanent wage labor structures, which could lead to marginalization or legal restrictions in some periods. Local customs, parish regulations, and manor rules could regulate their movement, hours, and terms of work.

In modern usage, resingebonden is primarily of interest to historians, ethnographers, and dialect scholars as a historical phenomenon. The term may also appear in regional dialect dictionaries or in discussions of rural labor history. In some cases, it is encountered as a place-name element or, more rarely, as a family surname, but such uses are not standardized.

See also: itinerant labor, seasonal migration, rural history.