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The present study shows that physical attraction played an important role for marriage. Pockmarked persons married about two years later than persons without disfigured faces. Pockmarked men experienced similar disadvantages to women at the marriage market. It is the birth cohorts between the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century that are of most interest for the study. During the period when these cohorts were acting at the marriage market there was a fairly equal balance between persons who had a previous experience of smallpox and persons without facial pockmarks. This - historically unique - situation created a marriage pattern where previously infected persons married much later than 'healthy'. Pockmarked persons also faced a considerably greater risk of never marrying and when they did so, they almost always chose a partner with a similar experience of smallpox. Correspondingly 'healthy' persons chose to marry each other.

Smallpox was one of the great killers during the eighteenth century. This essay studies the impact of the disease in the mortality decline and provides an demographie structure of smallpox mortality. However, for a better understanding of epidemie diseases we must also consider cultural and social aspects and answer the question how the causes of smallpox were explained and understood by the public. Smallpox did not only concern mortality, it will be concluded that also nuptiality and marriage stratégies were affected. The appearance of the disease changed when vaccination was introduced in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The important factors for the implementation of this preventive measure will be analyzed and in a concluding discussion will stress vaccination as being most important for the décliné of smallpox mortality, thereby criticizing theories which prefer to see a changing virulence as the decisive factor.

This article, which deals with the Saami's experience with smallpox in the three northern Swedish parishes of Jokkmokk, Gällivare, and Enontekis during the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, focuses on these epidemiologic questions: (1) Why were the Saami—a native people living in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia—not affected by smallpox until this period? (2) What happened once smallpox was introduced into the area? (3) Did the Saami's experience with smallpox differ from that of the rest of the Swedish population? (4) If so, what were the most important differences? (5) And how are they to be explained? Finding the answers to these questions requires considering whether smallpox inevitably resulted from the number of susceptible people and whether the disease affected other aspects of demography besides mortality (Figure 1).

"Many sparsely populated resource peripheries in developed countries are perceived to suffer from periods of demographic decline due to loss of employment opportunities and services, youth out-migration and population ageing. While these trends tend to apply at broad regional scales and for particular time periods, diverse patterns of demographic change may be apparent if different spatial, temporal and social scales of analysis are taken into consideration. Comparing the experiences of two case study regions in northern Sweden and inland South Australia, this paper proposes an alternative conceptual framework to the 'discourse of decline', which could be used to examine the nuances of demographic change within resource peripheries. The framework includes spatial scale considerations that contrast broader regional demographic patterns with the experiences of sub-regions and individual settlements. It also includes temporal scale aspects, examining demographic change over different time periods to understand the pace, duration and frequency of population growth and decline. The framework finally includes social unit considerations, emphasising that demographic change affects different social groups in different ways. The results of the case studies suggest that considering demographic change as adaptation or transformation rather than decline may be more useful for identifying new - and qualitatively different - demographic pathways that emerge over time." (author's abstract)

When researchers want to study indigenous populations they are dependent upon the highly variable way in which states or territories enumerate, categorise and differentiate indigenous people. In this volume, anthropologists, historians, demographers and sociologists have come together for the first time to examine the historical and contemporary construct of indigenous people in a number of fascinating geographical contexts around the world, including Canada, the United States, Colombia, Russia, Scandinavia, the Balkans and Australia. Using historical and demographical evidence, the contributors explore the creation and validity of categories for enumerating indigenous populations, the use and misuse of ethnic markers, micro-demographic investigations, and demographic databases, and thereby show how the situation varies substantially between countries