results is that the gift was the most common form of transaction that spouses carried out together in Finnveden. In Jämtland, the exchange was the most usual transaction spouses carried out together. The not unexpected principal result is, however, that the men totally dominated the market, either alone or jointly with others. Even when spouses drew up charters together, the man’s name was the first-mentioned name in all charters with the exception of one.When spouses sold, exchanged or gave away land jointly it was, in principle, always the woman’s land that was used in the transaction. The solitary man stood as executor of sales in 59 per cent of charters, irrespective of whether we look at the Jämtland charters or those from Finnveden. The man not only sold his own land but also the woman’s (wife’s, sister’s or mother’s) land. An overwhelming majority of purchasers were men, either men acting alone (88.5 per cent in Finnveden; 86.5 per cent in Jämtland) or men in groups (10 per cent where the parties comprised “several heirs” in Jämtland; and10percent of Nydala Monastery’s purchases were made of land in Finnveden). So when women sold land, it was generally a man who bought it, even if this man’s wife was the person who really had a pre-emptive right to the land. Men administered not only women’s property but also safeguarded the wife’s inheritance- and pre-emptive rights by representing her as purchaser of the land she had a pre-emptive right to, or by representing her in inheritance disputes. Behind the high percentages of male purchases, those purchases made on behalf of the wife are concealed. I would have been able to come much further than I did in this investigation through in-depth studies of how individual noblemen managed women’s property and how they safeguarded their women’s rights in the game of rights to inheritance and pre-emptive rights to land, but I will have to return to this in another study. The woman in Finnveden sold land in18 per cent of the preserved sales, and she gave away land in25 per cent of all documented p a r t v i 1 293
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