In early modern Eastern and Western Finland we are looking one society as against
another in the questions of marriage, property transmission, inheritance rules and the
importance of women's civil status to the female ownership. The aim is to define these
concepts in both Western Finnish stem-family as well as in Eastern Finnish joint-family
contexts. Between Eastern and Western cultures there were a whole set of contrasts in
social organisations and family hierarchies. We will focus and compare, what was the
marriage and it's gendered role in property transmission?
We need to be very careful in defining the concepts of marriage, while in other
societies it was a goal for itself and formed a basic unit, in another ones the main bond
were between brothers or father and son and marriage should not ever worsen the actual
situation of household, which formed a primary unit.
We will also bring light into, how crucial were daughter's out-marrying, their non-
inheritance of land and universal and early marriage of females to the function of the
joint family society. The timing, when Eastern Finnish women started to turn against their
traditional norms and go to the courts to request their legal proportion of the land
according to Swedish law is highly interesting and it reflects the shift from Eastern to
Western Finnish marriage and inheritance practice.
The sources in which the research is based on are: court and taxation records, the
communion books and the marriage registers. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are
used.