summary. the open window “bloody massacre” that occurred in Stockholm in 1520 in which many burghers lost their lives. The high mortality rate created a continuous need for merchants and craftsmen. For these burghers to be able to work in Stockholm, the city council long ago demanded that anyone who wanted to pursue a burgher’s occupation in the city should have their home in Stadsholmen. Joint ownership favored spouses who for some reason either brought less property to the marriage or the spouses who admittedly contributed with property of equally high value but through movable property. Movable property did not have the legal protection that surrounded immovable property. In Europe during the late Middle Ages, it was generally the woman who brought movable property to the marriage. In Stockholm, the situation was the opposite. It was the man who brought movable property to the marriage both prior to and during the period investigated in the study. Therefore, it is very likely that it was indeed foreign merchants who initiated the trend towards joint ownership. They also had the political power to drive such a process because until 1471, they had the legal right to hold up to half of the city’s council membership, which included one of the two mayors. Merchants wanted to achieve this because it was the men from the continent who brought with themmovable property assets and did not have access to the immovable property. City burghership came with marriage to a burgher’s daughter who had access to immovable property in Stadsholmen. In subsequent decades, of course, men also came to own immovable property, and there are many examples of the fact that both the woman and the man brought immovable property into the marriage, both among merchant and craftsmen households. Seen from a European city perspective, the joint ownership that prevailed throughout the period studied has benefited women, both wives and widows, in the burgher households of Stockholm. Despite the limited knowledge we have today, one can venture to say that wives in Stockholm generally had more opportunities to utilize the marital economy’s movable property than many of their European counterparts around the Baltic Sea. The wife in Stockholm seems to have been as economically 303
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