servants in medieval swedish testaments research based on Swedish testaments has sometimes been limited to the time periods where full transcripts have been published (see above), thus neglecting testaments from the late medieval period. To determine the share of testaments mentioning servants, I therefore examined the full text of all testaments, including those not yet published. Determining what is a written testament and what is not may actually be rather difficult.23 In Sweden, medieval testaments were not registered by a notarius publicus or in courts, so no such registers are available. My basic criteria for determining if a charter is a testament are based on the following characterisation: a document (in original or copy) stating a person’s last will concerning his or her personal belongings, and where all or most of the content is available. As indicated above, theSDHKsummaries are often short, and all charters that actually are testaments cannot be found merely by searching for the word “testament” in the summaries. When I searched theSDHKfor “testament*”, 1574 charters24 appeared, of which many were not actual testaments. Rather, the 1574 charters include also for example confirmations of testaments and receipts of received testament gifts. These documents were excluded. I have also searched for other terms commonly used in testaments: “på sitt yttersta”, “dödsbädd”, and“in extremis” in the contents field,25 adding those charters which are testaments to my database. In the full text field in theSDHKIhavealso searched for “testamentum”. For charters not yet published I have searched for“skänker”,“lägerstad”, “giver”and“ger” in the content field.26 Through 332 gaard 2009 on the Black Death; Myrdal 2003 on the Black Death; Myrdal 2008 on cows as bequests to female servants; Myrdal 2014 on large testaments and social relations; Bjarne Larsson 2010 on land ownership in Sweden; Korpiola & Lahtinen (eds) 2013 on various aspects of wills and arrangements of land-ownership in Europe; Wysmulek 2021 on testators and wills in Krakow, Poland. 23 See the discussion in Myrdal 2003, pp. 125ff. 24 This search was made in August 2023. In January 2024 the number of documents that appear has increased to 1577 documents. This shows that the database is ‘alive’ and constantly updated. 25 Sw. på sitt yttersta: Eng. at one’s uttermost. Sw. dödsbädd: Eng. deathbed. Latinin extremis: Eng. at one’s end. 26 Sw. skänker: Eng. giving. Sw. lägerstad: where one wants to be buried. Sw. giver/ger: Eng. giving.
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