various kinds of transactions, be several limitations that affected the personal bond between the parties: for example, institutionalised constraints such as the right to inherit, pre-emptive rights, or the prohibition against the taking of interest.The starting point I have taken in my investigation is that people who had possibilities to choose, chose a transaction form according to the circumstances. In Sweden, for example, it was more expedient (easier) to exchange land that one had no pre-emptive right to than to buy it since, with purchase, one could lose the land to the person who had the pre-emptive right. Exchanges, on the other hand, were completely free from inheritance- and pre-emptive rights and could therefore be completely accomplished without such hindrances.The person who needed to pledge the land could formulate the agreement in such a way as to avoid the prohibition on interest etc. The European researchers within the land market project have principally studied how the relationships between the parties looked in connection with different types of transaction.They consider that the stronger the personal relationships were between the parties, the more likely it was that the transaction was a non-commercial transaction.The more equal and free the parties were in relation to one another, the more likely it was that market relations could arise (see Chapter 1). The social anthropologist Florence Weber considers that the prerequisite necessary for the existence of some form of market relationship was that the land had been valued by a neutral party ie not by the parties themselves, as occurred when exchanging non-commercial gifts.This condition is fulfilled already from the beginning of my period of investigation in relation to the four legal acquisitions studied, and consequently also for certain kinds of gifts. In my investigation, I have examined when it was that some form of service in return was expressed at all, and in which way it was valued over time. I have come to the conclusion that legacies, bequests to religious houses or parish churches for bodily care, and maintenance agreements with relatives were almost genuine purchases of services, but only almost, p a r t v i 1 275
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