servants in medieval swedish testaments tjänare/tjänarinna.49 Thus, these terms encompassed domestic servants as well as other servants. Some terms indicate the age of the servant, such as the Latinpuella andpuer, or the Swedishsmåmö andpilt.50 According to Jeremy Goldberg, famulus was in a British context sometimes an overarching expression for a variety of farm workers and crafters employed on yearly basis in an aristocratic household.51 This designation resembles to some extent the ‘servants in husbandry’ mentioned by Martin Andersson.52 Another category often mentioned in the testaments arevillica andvillicus. Such were often, as will be shown below, highly trusted. But they did not live in the testator’s household, but on a lease farm where they functioned as stewards. These servants could be seen as a form of ‘career servants’, similar to those mentioned by Whittle.53 Most of the servants mentioned in the testaments were men – about 400 male servants as compared to circa 200 female servants. In the 1200s and 1300s male servants mentioned by testators were twice as many or more compared to female servants; see Figure 9 (p.342). The gap is a bit smaller in the 1400s. This result is in line with Goldberg’s research, where male servants were preferred in aristocratic households in the countryside.54 In rural households in England with only one servant, however, 55% of the servants were female.55 I have not investigated household types in detail in this paper, but circa 80% of the testaments mentioning servants were issued by gentry or nobility living in the countryside. From the graphs in Figure 9 it is also obvious how the 1300s differed from the 1200s and 1400s in terms of number of servants mentioned in testaments. 344 49 See also Laumonier 2022, p. 324, where famulus is interpreted as an overarching term for various types of services. 50 Puella (Eng. girl), puer (Eng. boy), Sw. småmö (Eng. little girl), Sw. pilt (Eng. little boy). 51 Goldberg 2000, p. 3. 52 Andersson 2023. 53 Whittle 2005b. 54 Goldberg 2022, p. 377, 379. 55 The period in focus was 1439–1661; see Whittle 2005b. Male and female servants
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