Moderna tider : modernitet i Visbys bouppteckningar och press 1880-1910

It is a difficult task to define the little word “modernity”. One may argue quite a lot about what modernity is as well as when modernity breaks trough. The burgess class was the group who initiated modernity in most cases. Since these people mainly dwelled in the cities it was in the cities were modernity started. The creation of an industry demanded new methods of working. Discipline, rationality and a new conscience of time followed as consequences of the industry. Modernity reached small towns and countryside slowly and the old structures were hard to break down. There are of course different aspects of modernity as the modernity of material life, the modernity of ideas and the modernity of culture. The modernity of material life tends to reach people before that of ideas or culture. In the small city of Visby existed many parts of modernity in the material life between 1880-1910. Telephones reached the city very early just like sewing machines or bicycles. Electricity lighted streets and homes just a few years after the turn of the century. Modern things seem to have reached the shopkeepers first, even before the upper class. The paper “Gotlands Allehanda” held a liberal view towards new ideas or writers and seems to have supported the enlightenment of the commons. The modern drama gained slowly ground among the many comedies on the local stage. But through the papers can we find many articles that indicate that Visby was a bit backward in many ways. Hogs were still housed in the streets and there were problems with clean water as well as public sanitary. So in many ways Visby before 1910 was modern on the surface and the old structures gave way only with difficulty