Istället för äktenskap

"The 20th century is sometimes said to be the century of the family farm. Although the countryside changed fundamentally, the farming family - consisting of husband, wife and children - is often seen as intact. However, all farms were not driven by families of the traditional type. One alternative was that two or more of the children took over the farm together, continued to live in the same household and remained unmarried. But how common were such sibling farms? How did they work and what were the motives behind the siblings' choice to live together? Based on household analyzes, government reports and interviews, historian Martin Dackling in Instead of marriage sketches the history of the sibling farms. He shows that they were neither unusual nor remains of an older peasant society. From the beginning of the 19th century, it became increasingly common for brothers and sisters to take over the farm together and in the 1930s and 1940s sibling farms were a common feature of Swedish countryside. However, after 1950 they became increasingly unusual. The book discusses why the sibling farms arose and Dackling points to cultural, social and economic explanations. An important circumstance was also that most of the siblings remained unmarried. Love relations were not missing, but marriage was difficult to combine with siblings living in the same household. Love relations and sibling relations were in a complicated correlation with each other, and on many farms, living with siblings became an alternative to marriage.

Från arvejord till släktklenod - jord och släkt i Sverige under hundra år

Sverige var länge ett bondesamhälle där de flesta bönder själva ägde sin jord och där lagstiftning säkerställde att jord i så stor utsträckning som möjligt fördes vidare inom släkten. Under 1800- och 1900-talen ändrades förutsättningarna för detta. Vilka följder denna förändring fick undersöks i det pågående avhandlingsprojektet ”Från arvejord till släktklenod”. I denna artikel presenteras kortfattat avhandlingsprojektet och några preliminära resultat

Familjejordbruk utan familjer? Syskonjordbruk på svensk landsbygd

This article analyses sibling farms in Sweden during the 20th century. The term sibling farm refers to a farm that two or more adult siblings have taken over from their parents. Although varied research themes have focused on a rangeof topics, this form of extended family constellation is traditionally associated with the past, whereas the smaller, nuclear family is characterized as modern. When researching modern family farming, the nuclear family invariablyforms the starting point. However, a couple of Swedish studies have included examples of siblings who took over their parents’ farm in the early 20th century, which does not fit with the accepted pattern. This article therefore aims todiscuss the prevalence of sibling farms, what characterized them, and how they can be explained. The study draws on three sources – inheritance questionnaires from the first decades of the 20th century; various agricultural statistical reports from the 1950s; and an analysis of households in five rural parishes between 1870 and 1990. The questionnaires record the nature of inheritance in various parts of Sweden between 1907 and 1935. At this time it became increasingly common for siblings, following the death of their parents, to take joint control of the family farm, a phenomenon recorded throughout thecountry. This change seems to relate to evolving marriage patterns: many heirs remained single, which questionnaires sometimes cite as the reason why heirs continued to live together under the same roof. In the 1950s statistical reports asimilar pattern emerges. At this time more than ten per cent of farms were owned by the estates of deceased persons or had been partitionedbetween various unmarried siblings, which was described as a growing problem for the State rationalization policy.To deepen the analysis, households in five parishes were studied using census data. A clear chronology emerged: sibling farms were unknown in 1870, increased in number until the 1940s, but gradually declined in the latter partof the century. Until c.1945 a farm of this kind usually comprised two to four siblings; nearly all were unmarried and female and male siblingswere equally common. In the latter part of the century sisters tended to disappear and a different pattern emerged wherein two brothers took joint control of a farm, and marriage became more common. The results suggests that the sibling farm was not a past relic but a modern phenomenon with a clear chronology: an emergence, a heyday – by c.1930 numbering as many as one in five farms, and a gradual decline. One explanation for this sequence is that sibling farms provided a vital labour reserve in a phase of agricultural development when employees were becoming expensive and mechanization was not yet fully developed. The prevalence of sisters before 1950 relates tothe numerous unmarried men: sisters seem to have adopted the role of the traditional housewife, becoming a form of surrogate wife. Finally, elderly parents who continued to live with their children probably exerted an influence too