the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 168 There is not much written about the judicial privileges or forum privilegiatumin the Svea Court of Appeal of the Swedish nobility. The subject was touched on by the legal historian Stig Jägerskiöld in the Festschrift in honour of the Svea Court of Appeal’s three hundred fifty year anniversary. But Jägerskiöld made neither a qualitative nor a quantitative survey of the noble disputes in the seventeenth century.450 The Swedish nobility in general has been the subject of two quite recent books by Jan von Konow, former State Herald of Sweden, and the Swedish historian Bo Eriksson.451 The early modern European nobilities have been studied in two anthologies from 1995, both edited by Hamish M. Scott. The contributions give a good grasp of the nobility’s conditions in various countries, but the studies do not specifically focus on the nobility’s judicial privileges.452 The European noble privileges in general have been described by Michael L. Bush in 1983. Bush studies fiscal, political and honorific privileges as well as judicial.453 The first document which organized the Swedish nobility, the Statute of Alsnö (Sw. Alsnö stadga), dates from 1280. In this year, King Magnus I, also known as Barn-lock (r. 1275 –1290, Sw. Magnus Ladulås), granted exemption from land taxation to those men who undertook knight-service and were ready to assist the king with men, horses and weapons in the army. The Statute of Alsnö established the so-calledfrälse, the tax-exempt nobility in Sweden.454 As mentioned above, the nobility was one of the four Estates in the Swedish parliament. In other European countries, there were often political struggles between the king and the parliament, as well the opportunities for a creditor to pursue his claims (Schmedeman, Johan p. 577). The forum privilege for noble probate inventories was abolished in 1916. 450 Jägerskiöld, Stig 1964 pp. 226-238. 451 von Konow, Jan 2005 and Eriksson, Bo 2011. 452 The European nobilities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, vol. 1: Western Europe 1995; The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, vol. 2: Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, 1995. 453 Bush, Michael L. 1983. 454 Eriksson, Bo 2011 pp. 63-69. Who Was to Be Considered a Swedish Noble? Historiographic Framework
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