Ella Viitaniemi is a project leader and researcher at Tampere University in Finland. Her research explores eighteenth-century political culture, the development of administration, and social history.Sofia Gustafsson is a researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Her work primarily focuses on the economic and social aspects of military history, and relations between armies and civilians in the eighteenth century.

• 1. Introduction: The meanings of short-term labour and precarious work in northern Europe, c. 1620–1870. Sofia Gustafsson, Petri Talvitie, and Ella Viitaniemi.- Part 1. Short-term Labour.- 2. Work activities of people with physical and mental disabilities in early modern rural Sweden.- 3. Conflicts between men servants and masters in Ekenäs town in 1623–1696.- 4. Female household servants in the seventeenth-century town of Turku in south-west Finland.- 5. Fixed-term work on manors in southern Finland, 1600–1800: Servants, crofters, and landless labourers in Qvidja and Esbogård.- 6. Rural worker households and seasonal underemployment in eastern Finland in 1820–1880.- Part 2. Precarious work.- 7. Enlisted soldiers’ multiple and synchronic labour relations in Helsinki in the 1750s.- 8. At a dead end? The working lives of military provosts in the eastern part of the Swedish Kingdom, from the 1670s to 1809.- 9. Scribes in the service of the Swedish provincial administration, 1730–1808.- 10. A man without bread: Precarious clergy and struggling career-paths.

Ella Viitaniemi is a project leader and researcher at Tampere University in Finland. Her research explores eighteenth-century political culture, the development of administration, and social history.Sofia Gustafsson is a researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Her work primarily focuses on the economic and social aspects of military history, and relations between armies and civilians in the eighteenth century.

• 1. Introduction: The meanings of short-term labour and precarious work in northern Europe, c. 1620–1870. Sofia Gustafsson, Petri Talvitie, and Ella Viitaniemi.- Part 1. Short-term Labour.- 2. Work activities of people with physical and mental disabilities in early modern rural Sweden.- 3. Conflicts between men servants and masters in Ekenäs town in 1623–1696.- 4. Female household servants in the seventeenth-century town of Turku in south-west Finland.- 5. Fixed-term work on manors in southern Finland, 1600–1800: Servants, crofters, and landless labourers in Qvidja and Esbogård.- 6. Rural worker households and seasonal underemployment in eastern Finland in 1820–1880.- Part 2. Precarious work.- 7. Enlisted soldiers’ multiple and synchronic labour relations in Helsinki in the 1750s.- 8. At a dead end? The working lives of military provosts in the eastern part of the Swedish Kingdom, from the 1670s to 1809.- 9. Scribes in the service of the Swedish provincial administration, 1730–1808.- 10. A man without bread: Precarious clergy and struggling career-paths.