ABSTRACT
All the Nordic countries have detailed inheritance laws. The process of writing of these down took place over a period of c. 150 years. In Iceland, it started at the beginning of the twelfth century, moving to Norway in the middle of the century, taking place in the latter part of the century in Denmark, and in Sweden it happened from the mid-thirteenth century. The legal provisions themselves not only illustrate how property should be divided, but they also reveal how the social elite—kings and magnates, secular as well as ecclesiastical—to a certain degree had something to say in the lawmaking process. The family structure in Scandinavia was bilateral, i.e., a person could trace kin though both the male and female lines, and, because of the power game, conflicts could easily arise within families regarding inheritance. Besides that, e.g., in Iceland, fathers could, if they thought their oldest legitimate son was unfit to take over the chieftaincy and the estate, choose younger and more capable sons for the task. The passed-over sons were kept in the household, while the younger and more promising ones were given farms to run, in order to prepare them for their future tasks. In so doing, they became householders, and being in a charge of a household gave them the rights to participate in assembly activity.
