240 in principle everyone can make a claimon all land. In order that property rights should be meaningful they have to be limited. Interest is then directed at the legal provisions on limitation. There already exist provisions in several provincial laws regarding the threeyear limitation period of the same type that appears in later common law. But as has been shown m Chapter 5 the word of the law meant very little. More-thanone-hundred-year-old claims from relatives who had not been bought out could succeed in the courts and the conditions were certainly not different during the early Middle Ages. Land disputes were decided according to the provincial laws usually by the parties bringing with them large numbers of “oathhelpers” who vouched for them in the local court. With regard to the conditions of land ownership older Swedish society hypothetically could well have been a cognatic lineage society. This gives a further possible explanation to the early history of bördsrätt. It is then a remnant of an earlier undifferentiated bördsrätt which covered all the claims which the descendants of a person could make on the land which he once had held. Already the provincial laws contained attempts to make the systemmore manageable, partly through a three-year limitation period in certain laws and partly through a differentiation of undivided bördsrätt into inheritance right and bördsrätt in the narrower sense, i.e. the relatives’ right to redeem inherited land that was for sale. This hypothesis is perhaps somewhat more credible than the acceptance of what was originally purely individual land ownership which was transformed over the centuries into the difficult-to-manage cognatic descent system which we meet during the 16th and 17th century. Now it is also easy to understand the significance of the discussion of bördsrätt during the 17th century. The right of ownership to land can be described as a zero-sum game. The stronger the rights of the relatives and those heirs not bought out the weaker were those of the holder. Thus, a strengthening of individual land ownership must override a reduction in the limitation periods and a weakening of birth right. The change in the law of 1720 only left a very much weakened bördsrätt and meant also that the circle of relatives with the right of redemption was changed frc'im a cognatic descent group to a sort of kindred (see figure 11, A diagram of the group of relatives entitled to redeem before and after 1720). The question of the limitation period was also discussed during the 17th century but here the law of 1734 became so unclear that the lawyers of the 18th century and the courts were uncertain as to whether the confirmation of the purchase before the court at the same time meant the limitation of all claims or if such claims could be brought up at a later date (and applying as far back as could be remembered). The matter was discussed, among other places, in Parliament in 1778 but it was only in 1805 that a special decree regarding limitation come. did
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