243 which is often included as part of a stage theory or an evolutionary society theory - it has, at some time during the early modern period, met a fundamental break in the development, from Gemcinschaft to Gcsellschaft, from status to contract, from tr,tditional to modern society, from feudalism to capitalism or from collectivism to individualism. According to the second interpretation, the elementarv constituents of society - the family, the household, kin — were unchanged as were people’s emotional life and passions despite all the technical, economic and political revolutions. The most noticeable upholder of this interpretation is Alan Macfarlane in The Origins of English Individualism. Both these main interpretations can be easily connected to the interpretations of the older Swedish society as presented in Chapter 2. Against the stage or development theories is the opinion that the kin group during the older time is a patrilineage and against the theory of fundamental continuity is the understanding that the kin group is, like today, a kindred. The study of the conditions of land ownership in Sweden makes it possible to set out a middle path. On the one hand it is clear that Sweden (just as northwest Europe and certain other areas in the world, Japan, for example) for a long time had a bilateral kinship systemwhich gave thema much more flexible structure of society than the unilinear systems. The individual always belongs to several kin groups and has, to a certain extent, the possibility of choosing between different groups. On the other hand, the older Swedish land ownership system contains strong overtones of collectivism; during the 16th and 17th century one can hardly talk of any individual ownership of land but rather of a doubleinterpreted börd. This had to do with a descent system where land belonged to the descendants of the one who had at one time held it. Blood ties plaved an extremely important role in land disputes. Efere, during the course of some centuries, there was a clear individualization. It is difficult to supply any exact time limits; there already existed certain provisions in the provincial laws from the 13th centurv which can be seen as an attempt to tidy up hördsrätt but it was not finally abolished until 1863. However, the 17th and 18th centuries seem to have been especially important in the change-over to individual land ownership from a systemwhere land was claimed on the grounds of blood ties to one where land was bought as a commoditv. (Translated by Patrick O'Malley) 17
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