servants in medieval swedish testaments Free servants belonged to a variety of hierarchical social levels. They ranged from young or very young girls and boys, to general household servants of various kinds, to more specialized servants, like chefs and wetnurses, and to higher-ranking servants, such as stewards living on lease farms on the testator’s estate. There is no evidence in the Swedish material of ‘life cycle servants’. The few examples where a testator mentions former servants are all related to Danish material, although we do not know why these servants had ceased working. Thus, the Swedish medieval society apparently differed from that of England and the north-western European continent, since servants of various ages, male and female, seem to have worked in the same household for long periods of time. As mentioned above, stewards might fit into the category of ‘specialist or career servants’.86 But for Swedish servants at large this category seems inappropriate, since most servants were not specialized, but rather general servants. Future research might shed light on this situation. The testaments mention twice as many male servants as female servants, similar to Goldberg’s results about aristocratic estates.87 Also a substantial number of ‘child servants’, apparently part of the servant staff, are remembered in the Swedish testaments. Both male and female servants were trusted as testament witnesses. For male and female testators the sources show a clearly decreasing trend of testamentary gifts to servants over time, in particular after circa 1380. This decrease may be related to fewer servants after the Black Death, but could also be explained by a general change in the way testaments were written. As shown by this study, around the year 1380 testaments generally became shorter, including fewer items than before, and also resulting in fewer gifts to friends and family. For servants this may have resulted in less support and perhaps a growing distance between servant 352 86 Whittle 2005b. 87 Goldberg 2022. Male and female servants
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