Charlotte Cederbom - Married Women in Legal Practice

This book describes the ways in which married women appeared in legal practice in the medieval Swedish realm, 13501450, through both the agency of women and the norms that surrounded their actions. Since there were no court protocols kept, legal practice must be studied through other sources. For this book, more than six thousand original charters have been researched, and a database has been created of all the charters pertaining to women. This enables new findings from an area that has previously not been studied on a larger scale and reveals trends and tendencies regarding aspects considered central to married womens agency, such as networks, criminal liability, and procedural capacity.

Charlotte Cederbom is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki.

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Married Women in Legal Practice

Agency and Norms in the Swedish Realm, 13501450

Charlotte Cederbom

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-Gender-and-History/book-series/SE0422

Charlotte Cederbom

First published 2020

by Routledge

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2020 Taylor & Francis

The right of Charlotte Cederbom to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cederbom, Charlotte, 1982 author.

Title: Married women in legal practice : agency and norms in the Swedish realm, 13501450 / Charlotte Cederbom.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge 2020 | Series: Routledge research in gender and history ; volume 38 | Based on authors thesis (doctoral Helsingin yliopisto, 2017) issued under title: The legal guardian and married women : norms and practice in the Swedish realm 13501450. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: This book describes the ways in which married women appeared in legal practice in the medieval Swedish realm 13501450, through both the agency of women, and through the norms that surrounded their actions. Since there were no court protocols kept, legal practice must be studied through other sources. For this book, more than 6,000 original charters have been researched, and a database of all the charters pertaining to women created. This enables new findings from an area that has previously not been studied on a larger scale, and reveals trends and tendencies regarding aspects considered central to married womens agency, such as networks, criminal liability, and procedural capacityProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019028236 (print) | LCCN 2019028237 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367363123 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429345234 (ebook) | ISBN 9781000692921 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781000693287 (epub) | ISBN 9781000693102 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Married womenLegal status, laws, etc.SwedenHistoryTo 1500.

Classification: LCC KKV550 .C43 2019 (print) | LCC KKV550 (ebook) | DDC 340.082/09485dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028236

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028237

ISBN: 978-0-367-36312-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-34523-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is a reworked version of my doctoral thesis from 2017, and it has been long in the making. What is now a book, started as a young girls love of shining knights and fancy dresses that made a swooshing sound when you walked slowly. A yearning to know more, to find out what it was really like, drove me to read and read and read. But the more I read, the more it seemed as if something were lacking, and that too many things rooted in modern, contemporary gendered structures were presumed to have shaped medieval thinking too. At the same time, several amazing women scholars voiced similar concerns, dressing my thoughts in researched words, encouraging me to pursue my dream to add to this knowledge. Sometimes, I think of it as a way of reclaiming a past, a history needed in order to move forward.

This project started out as an overambitious, straggly plan to do everything at once. Saving me from spending the next fifty or so years with this project were my excellent supervisors and mentors, Bjrn Forsn and Anu Lahtinen, who helped me transform this into a manageable whole. Reading more than six thousand original charters has been, to say the least, time-consuming, and I am forever indebted to the staff at Riksarkivet (the National Archives of Sweden, in Stockholm), not only for digitizing and thereby making the charters available to anyone but also replying quickly to my endless questions. Sara Risberg, Associate Professor and Editor at the Riksarkivet, is a treasure. Maria Sjberg, my opponent for my doctoral thesis defense, provided comments that have vastly improved this manuscript, and Cara Hjelt and Daniel Roth are heroes for reading and commenting on the manuscript in its entirety. In unpredictable and challenging times, the calm encouragement of my editor, Max Novick, has been invaluable. Through seminars and conferences, more colleagues and friends than I can possibly name have given their views on my research through the years, and for this, I am incredibly grateful. Research grows only in company. In working on this manuscript, Ylva Grufstedt has provided me with the most formidable, coffee-infused, chocolate-driven company.

Though one might think that children, because of their tender age, would not be able to contribute much to a manuscript such as this, it may never have seen the light of day were it not for my childrenVilho, Tilda, and baby Gabriel. They are the light of my life, my source of inspiration, and the reason for everything I do. The way they ask questions, never tire of learning, and always keep an open mind, even to the most extraordinary ideas, is truly inspirational. They are, in the best sense of the word, researchers.