Caring for the widowed spouse: the use of wills in northern Sweden during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

This article discusses how widows and widowers were provided for in early modern Sweden, focussing in particular on the use of wills. The investigated area is the parish of Undersåker in Jämtland, northern Sweden, and the period c. 1750 to 1915. The point of departure is the fact that Swedish medieval and early modern law did give quite strong property rights to widows and widowers. Therefore, if these rights were respected by family members and enforced by the courts, it was hard to see any good reason for taking extra precautions, like making a will to the benefit of the spouse who lived longest. In view of this, the fact that wills were nevertheless set up, albeit rarely, needs explaining. During the period 475 wills were set up, according to the archives. Of these 240 were mutual wills; approximately 3 per cent of all couples set up a mutual will, with the intention of letting the surviving spouse retain the estate undivided. Often, there was a connection between the decision to set up a will and lack of children and/or remarriage. Will-makers came from all social strata, the affluent as well as the quite poor. Sometimes, a series of wills from the same couple has been preserved, indicating that will-making could be part of a long-term strategy of planning for old age and adapting to new circumstances. The general conclusion is that wills can often be seen as a sign of fear: fear that the legal rights with which widows and widowers were invested would not, after all, be respected. This fear appears to have been particularly strong if the couple lacked offspring.