summary. the open window burgher distinction was used in Stockholm at this time for both craftsmen and merchants. The burghers discussed in this study owned property in some form. People from the merchant and the metal craftsman groups often married with each other and most guilds of Stockholm were open to both craftsmen and merchants, while only a few crafts had private guilds. Both men and women were welcome to participate in the guild’s social and religious activities as well as its cultural events. The disparity between merchants and craftsmen that one can observe in other cities at the time was not discernable in Stockholm. Some studies conducted on late medieval cities in northern Europe have found that the wife’s economic opportunities to independently use the household’s property increased when a city was in an expansion phase. The same studies also show that when the city entered an economic downturn, opportunities for women and wives decreased. Either the proportions of held property between spouses could be altered to benefit the husband, which led to changes in inheritance rights between the sexes, or equal inheritance rights were retained, but the woman received a greater share of her inheritance in movable property. If the distribution of property between the couple was not disrupted, men could instead limit a woman’s right to dispose of property, both during marriage and when she became a widow. Since Stockholm was in an expansion phase during the period 1479–1530, it is important to study the extent to which wives in Stockholm managed or actively disposed of the property held in marriage. It has long been known that when Swedish town law came into use in the second half of the 14th century, it gave widows the right 283
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