 When that classification became obsolete, a "torp" became a leased farm (with short lease times typically of one or two years), paid for with manual work on the owner's fields.Since the mid 20th century, most of the surviving "torp" cottages in Scandinavia have come to serve as summer homes for city dwellers.Before that, being brought up in a "torp" was a sign of relatively modest ancestry, with lower status than that of lifelong tenants—and very much lower than that of freeholding farmers, however small their farm—although "torp" dwellers were higher on the social scale than farmhands, maids and those who lived in paupers' cottages ("backstugusittare").