Summary 291 land by generations (since usage normally had to go beyond one generation to qualify as ancient or immemorial). It is obvious that this was something very important in seventeenth-century Sweden: if those who laboured were not duly rewarded, how could the nation prosper? Invested labour would be likely to be acknowledged by local communities, since diligent workers were good for the community as a whole, but it was also something which the Crown favoured, since taxes and other revenues would accrue from land that was used—not from abandoned land. Therefore, these coinciding interests made usurpations of abandoned land seem less criminal, indeed, even commendable. Ancient usage was looked upon as a legal entitlement not because of the number of years that had elapsed, but because of the long silence of those who possibly had a better claim to the land. By remaining silent, by not clearly showing that they regarded the land as theirs, these hypothetical individuals were considered to have renounced their previous claims. It is clear that by reckoning on the possibility of silent owners the legal system had divested itself of the ultimate responsibility for preventing ancient usage from arising. It is also clear that this choice was based on the assumption that people normally did defend their rights in an obvious manner. But this assumption also put members of society under strong social pressure: they must never allow the impression to arise that they had in fact given up their claims. This idea, which can loosely be described as a form of mentality, is epitomised by the fifth meaning of the word hävda. But there were other, more practical reasons, too, for this marked respect for ancient usage. Although written documents and maps were becoming increasingly common during the seventeenth century, we have to regard the period as one characterised by a mixture of written and oral, or memory-based, culture (cf. Walter Ong). Documents and maps did not always suffice as guidelines for judges. Written title deeds normally spoke about entire farmsteads, defining them as parts of a hamlet or as a cadastral unit; only rarely did they explicitly describe boundaries. In disputes over smaller plots of land (as were normally involved when the ancient usage argument was applied), written deeds would leave judges in the lurch, forcing them to rely on oral statements from old and supposedly initiated members of the local community. Finally, the fact that ancient usage was described in the legal
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