den.With remarriage, the keeping apart of property functioned as a guarantee that the deceased husband’s relatives would have insight into what the remarried widow did with the property she received through him. In other words, the present husband did not have such a right over her land from an earlier marriage. As regards dowries, land was transferred from one kin group to another kin group.The dowry was to be the children’s maternal inheritance although the land came from the father’s side. In the third chapter we saw that trouble could arise concerning the woman’s right to this land (in spite of the fact that it was prescribed by law and fell to the person who lived the longest) when the woman did not have any living children remaining. Sometimes, the deceased husband’s relatives attempted to get access to the land; that is to say, that the division in relation to the mother’s side and the father’s side was threatened. Here, the keeping apart of male and female land was not definite. In Jämtland, the woman sold land in only9per cent of the transactions documented.Often, these sales were carried out by women who did not come from the peasantry. It was the same with those who purchased in Jämtland: they were the province’s wealthiest women and matched the level of the lesser nobility in Finnveden.The pattern for these female sellers and purchasers was therefore the same as for the women in Finnveden. In Jämtland, however, the female sellers and buyers were to a much greater extent widows than in Finnveden.We only come across peasant women acting as parties together with brothers in relation to certain sales where several heirs participated jointly as one party. However, the women did not participate in purchases where several heirs acted jointly as one party; these were carried out only by men. For the woman in Jämtland, my results indicate that it was extremely rare that she administered her property herself. This was done by her husband, or when she was young, by her brother. The party that was made up of several heirs in Jämtland was very often acting with sales and exchanges when compared with p a r t v i 1 295
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