servants in medieval swedish testaments The description of long and faithful service was usually not included in testaments as regards servants, so these examples probably express a closer relationship than the ordinary. Many of the items given are valuable and indicate a special relationship.66 The fact that these servants had served for a long time also make it less likely that being a servant was something one did for just a few years when young. According to Paul Baur, servants living in urban burgher households in Konstanz, Germany, probably worked as servants their entire lives.67 Similar situations were common in many European households, and women sometimes returned to domestic service as widows.68 But in Montpellier, France, young girls could be contracted as servants for a number of years with a dowry as salary at the end of the employment.69 In only one Swedish testament is something like a dowry mentioned: a female testator grants a large sum of money to a female servant who had been in her service for many years, ‘whether she [the servant] wanted to get married or enter a monastery’.70 Drawing conclusions based on this single Swedish example, however, is too uncertain. Some servants had been in the testator’s household since childhood: In 1405 Jösse Johansson’s servant (Sw. sven) and his ‘boy servant’ (Sw. pilt) had both faithfully served him since childhood. Jösse also pleads to the archbishop in Uppsala to take care of his servants after his death.71 Another example where the testator asks others to take care of his servants is the knight Svarte Sigge Jönsson, who in 1464 asks his brother “for the sake of God” to take care of his servants by employing them.72 The wish to make arrangements, i.e. to help servants continue to earn a living, was common.73 346 66 See e.g. Myrdal 2014. 67 Baur 1989, p. 205. 68 Ward 2016, p. 89. 69 Laumonier 2022, pp. 337ff. 70 SDHK11313. 71 SDHK16611. 72 SDHK28236; Olov Lund has pointed out how the servants in Svarte Sigge Jönsson’s testament have a prominent position and how this testament reflects a patriarchal concern for the servants (Lund 2022, p. 254–256). 73 Baur 1989, p. 204.
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