ABSTRACT

Donations, Inheritance and Property in the Nordic and Western World from Late Antiquity until Today presents an examination of Nordic donation and gift-giving practices in the Nordic and Western world, beginning in late Antiquity and extending through to the present day. Through chapters contributed by leading international researchers, this book explores the changing legal, social and religious frameworks that shape how donations and gifts are given.

In addition to donations to ecclesiastical, charitable and cultural institutions, this books also highlights the sociolegal challenges and the tensions that can occur as a result of transferring property, including answering key questions such as who has a right to what. It also presents, for the first time, an insight into the dynamics of donations and the interplay between individual motivations, strategic behaviour and the legal setting of inheritance law.

Offering a broad chronological and European perspective and including a wide range of illuminating case studies Donations, Inheritance and Property in the Nordic and Western World from Late Antiquity until Today is ideal for students of Nordic and European legal and social history.

chapter 2|36 pages

The jurisprudence of the forced share in the ancient world

Cicero to Justinian

chapter 3|51 pages

The jurisprudence of the forced share

The high and late Middle Ages

chapter 4|15 pages

Inheritance in the lands of the Loire, 1050–1200

A contrast to Nordic and Roman practice

chapter 5|16 pages

Protecting the individual, the kin and the soul

Donation regulations in Danish and Norwegian medieval legislation

chapter 6|19 pages

By love and by law

Choices of female donors in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Sweden

chapter 9|21 pages

Pious donations

The act of giving in the Lutheran Church and its spatial implications

chapter 10|17 pages

The business of charity and the charity of business

Donations in the Norwegian merchant town of Bergen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

chapter 11|18 pages

“Immortal mother and benefactor”

Honorable dwellings for unmarried noblewomen and the dynamics of donations among the Danish elite from 1699 to 1745

chapter 13|15 pages

How to exchange with the dead

The significance of heirlooms in contemporary Danish inheritance practices

chapter 14|16 pages

Gifts to, from, and between spouses

Present regulation in the Nordic countries