Holding down the back button is seen as a "kill this app" kind of command by maemo, so that i think is a no-go.

And now you reminded me that lately i have found that tear have a habit of jumping multiple pages back when one have one of those pesky double-taps (the threshold for a tap is driving me nuts sometimes), resulting in quite a bit of back and forth...

Maybe have tear ignore taps on the back and forward button when its trying to load a page? If one wants to go far back in history there is the long tap now, so...