ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the legal, economic and social consequences of remarriages in late medieval and early modern Sweden. It focuses on the problems and processes related to the division of inheritance, the rights of the family of the deceased spouse and the relations between the step-parents and stepchildren. Protecting proprietary rights and compulsory proportions also played an important part when remarriages took place and stepfamilies were formed. The best-documented stepfamilies tend to come from the elite, because literate property holders such as merchants and nobles were more likely to leave traces of their financial activities and social networks. The chapter analyzes the general conditions of male and female widowhood and remarriage. It discusses the potentially vulnerable position of stepchildren and describes factors that helped to keep the stepfamily together, as a unit of its own. The chapter deals with conclusive observations on the formation and dynamics of stepfamilies in Sweden from the early fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century.
