In the wake of a major reform period, 1788–1807, Danish landlords
voluntarily sold off about half of their agricultural land to their tenants
and thus transformed tenure from primarily leasehold to a dominance of
freehold. One explanation could be that nominal rents were rigid when
grain prices boomed. Quantitative and qualitative evidence presented here
suggests that real rents were in fact declining although there was a large
surviving element of rents paid in kind. Moreover, it is demonstrated that
tenants, despite their declining real payments, were equally interested in
buying. Essentially, land sales represented a gain to both buyers
and sellers. The main reason for this was the lingering of labor services,
so-called boon works, as an important element of rent. According to a
contemporary estimate, the landlords’ benefit from this labour was one
half and even sometimes one third of the tenant’s opportunity cost. Hence
boon works represented a major cause in the difference in efficiency
between peasant production under leasehold and that under freehold.