In the rural Europe, attendance at church on Sundays was more or less socially or even legally obligatory even among the agrarian majority, but distances from f

In the rural Europe, attendance at church on Sundays was more or less socially or even legally obligatory even among the agrarian majority, but distances from farms to parish churches were sometimes so vast that the journey to church and back could take all day (in the Nordic countries it could even take two). Therefore, the idea of Sunday as a “rest day” might not have been so well-entrenched, but it was already a “no work” day for many farmers.