the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 134 Using a couple of inheritance disputes between noble families as an example, I will analyse the property strategies and power relations associated with disputes, as well as the arguments and legal grounds presented by the contending parties. First, I will consider two cases filed by Joen (Joensson) Planting (d. 1645)367 to defend the rights of his wife, Anna Johansdotter (Boga, d. 1647). As evidence for their claims, the opposing parties presented plenty of old documents written from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth. Especially in the latter case, accusations of witchcraft, fornication, misalliance and murder, presented as early as in the 1550s against Anna’s grandmother, were used in the late 1610s to question the inheritance rights of the offspring. Second, I will analyse an inheritance dispute in which the rental income and the chattels of the opposing parties were discussed at length. This dispute also had its origins in the decades before the establishment of the Svea Court of Appeal, starting from an unfortunate case of guardianship relations of the 1560s and 1570s. The cases studied in this chapter thus belong to the category of prolonged cases that had been at a standstill over a long period.368 To conclude, I will compare my cases in terms of the process, strategies and the legal knowledge of the parties involved.369 Simultaneously, I will discuss the significance of the archives of the Svea Court of Appeal as a source for historical studies, especially relating to the property and inheritance strategies of the nobility. In addition, the cases will help to understand the prehistory of the Svea Court of Appeal as well. As Korpiola has observed, the establishment of this court was the result of a lengthy process, and other instances such as the räfsteting, the Stockholm Town Court and the High Council of King ErikXIVhad previously served a similar function.370 The cases that I have 367 On Joen Planting and his family, see Planting-Gyllenbåga,Wilhelm 1900 and PlantingGyllenbåga, Wilhelm 1901. For families discussed in this article, see Elgenstierna, Gustaf 1925 –1936. 368 For the various categories of cases in the early years of Svea Court of Appeal, see Mia Korpiola’s article in this volume. 369 In addition to expressing my thanks to the Svea Court of Appeal project and the support provided by it, I would like to thank the research assistant Maija Väätämöinen, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (HCAS), for her invaluable help in cataloguing and transcribing pages related to the three cases my article is on. 370 For the prehistory and early years of the Svea Court of Appeal, see the articles by Mia
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