286 Summary an uncommon phenomenon. In such situations, neighbours in the same hamlet or fromadjacent hamlets would take the opportunity to usurp the free land; such occupation was facilitated by the fact that most hamlets were not yet enclosed, but had open fields. Third, under the medieval legal code (the section dealing with the rights and duties of peasants living in hamlets, Byggningabalken), Swedish hamlets were undivided units of property and remained so until the enclosure movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Each member of the hamlet thus owned a stated share of the total, and the amount of land he was entitled to was supposed to be proportional to this share. But mthe early modern period, long before enclosure, people obviously started to question this view. Many landholders regarded the plots which they actually held, and in which they and their ancestors had invested labour, as their property. Consequently, they clung to these plots, even if their neighbours maintained that they held more land than their due share and even if Byggningabalken required a redistribution. If someone had acquired land by a transaction which had never been duly overseen and registered, if he had trespassed on abandoned land, or if (for whatever reason) the proportion of the hamlet land which he possessed simply did not correspond to his rightful share, then the medieval legal code contained rules applicable to such situations. But the crux was that the legal code also contained the aforementioned provision (in the section dealing with landed estates. Jordabalken) that if ancient usage had arisen, then it was no longer possible to question the legitimacy of possession. Thus, ancient usage could be claimed in order to defend a landholding which might have arisen on dubious grounds and to override other legal provisions. This was a problemnot only for individual members of society, but also for the Crown. It could lose land, and hence the associated revenue, as a result of furtive invasions, and if the land was not claimed in time rights of ancient usage would arise for the new holder. The section of the legal code dealing with Crown matters did give monarchs a right to take back property which had been given away by previous monarchs {Konungabalken J), but this provision could not be invoked, either, if rights of ancient usage had arisen.
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