annika björklund women on behalf of someone already dead.32 Furthermore, it was not uncommon to help a dying person write a will – testaments notes were sometimes taken from the deathbed.33 The categories of testators varied over time, according to Figure 5. In the 1200s the number of testaments issued by men, priests, or women were fairly equal. Very few were shared testaments, and that applies to later periods as well; see Figure 5. In the 1300s there were barely half as many female testaments as male. In the 1400s the numbers were more equal, while there were quite few testaments by priests (marked in purple). In addition, the trends applying to women, men, or priests are not identical. Nearly 40% of female testaments in the 1200s and 30% in the 1300s (pink line in Figure 6) mention servants. A clear decreasing trend over time results in less than 10% of female testaments in the 1400s mentioning servants. For male testators about 60% in the 1200s (blue line in Figure6) mention servants, the share decreasing substantially already in the 1300s to 20% and even less in the 1400s. For priests there was a different trend: about 20% of the ecclesiastic testators in the 1200s (purple line in Figure 6) mention servants; the share increases to as much as 50% in the 1300s, and decreases again in the 1400s to about 30%. Still, the share of priests’ testaments mentioning servants is substantially higher than the other two groups in the 1400s. These statistics indicate that, apart from a clearly decreasing general trend of giving testamentary gifts to servants and a significant drop of this practice in the 1380s, there are also large differences depending on whether the testator was a woman, man, or priest. In terms of servant relations, this result probably indicates that the close and personal relationships of secular persons to their servants, if it did not break down entirely, at least became considerably less common in the 1380s. This feature might mirror the societal consequences of the Black Death and confirms perhaps in a way previous research about the lack of labourers in 339 32 See e.g. SDHK2626 (in 1314): a man for his deceased wife; SDHK13443 (in 1388): a mother for her deceased son; SDHK13914 (in 1391): a woman for her deceased husband; SDHK38333 (in 1520): a woman for her deceased husband. 33 See Korpiola & Trolle Önnerfors 2013; alsoSDHK791 (in 1260); SDHK1903 (in 1299); SDHK6765 (in 1354); SDHK38462 (in 1521).
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