Ancestors in Specific Locations:
Skåne, Sweden: Useful Sources and Links for Skane

The list of books here provides a bibliography for the information included on the Skåne pages. It also makes a great a place to start for doing your own research about the context of your ancestors’ lives. As of now, I haven’t included books focusing on the how-to side of Swedish genealogy. Books that mostly contain information about Western Europe in general are included in the Useful Source and Links for Western Europe page.

The websites section below provides links to further information, including how-to instructions for this area (and for all of Sweden). Be sure to try the Records section for help on how to get the most out of the records in this region.

Books

Dribe, Martin. Leaving Home in a Peasant Society: Economic Fluctuations, Household Dynamics and Youth Migration in Southern Sweden, 1829-1866. Almqvist and Wiksell International: Sweden, 2000.
He explains the mantal, its evolution, and the social divisions of Swedish society stem. He also includes information about the rise of the landless people.

Eriksson, Ingrid and John Rogers. “Mobility in an Agrarian Community: Practical and Methodological Considerations.” In Aristocrats, Farmers, Proletarians: Essays in Swedish Demographic History. Stockholm : Esselte studium, 1973, p. 60-87.
This essay describes the many moves made by agrarian peasants, although within a small radius. Geographic movement, though, was rarely associated with social movement, which was very rare.

Frost, Robert I. The Northern Wars, 1558-1721. New York: Longman, 2000.
This book provides a detailed history of the wars fought in Scandinavia during this time period, including information useful to this chapter about the Thirty Years’ War, the Skånian War, and the Great Northern War.

Gaunt, David. “Family Planning and the Pre-industrial Society: Some Swedish Evidence.” In Aristocrats, Farmers, Proletarians: Essays in Swedish Demographic History. Stockholm : Esselte studium, 1973, p. 28-59.
This essay discusses female fertility and how it was limited in the late 1700s. It also provides the figure for the infant mortality rate in Sweden and discusses the regular famines and disease outbreaks that plagued the countryside.

Lindqvist, Herman. Translated by Alan Tapsell. A Journey Through Swedish History. Statens Historiska Museum: Stockholm, 1994.
This book has some information on general Swedish history.

Löfgren, Orvar. “The Potato People: The Household Economy and Family Patterns Among the Rural Proletariat in Nineteenth Century Sweden,” in Chance and Change: Social and Economic Studies in Historical Demography in the Baltic Area. Ed. Sune Åkerman, Hans Chr. Johansen, and David Gaunt. Odense: Odense University Press, 1978.
This essay describes class structure and about how the landless people survived.

Lundh, Christer. “Marriage and Economic Change in Sweden during the 18th and 19th Century,” in Marriage and Rural Economy: Western Europe Since 1400. ed. Isabelle Devos and Liam Kennedy. CORN publication series 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 223. (217-241)
His essay gives the average ages at marriage and the breakdown of what percentages of marriages included people of different ages.

Lundh, Christer. “Servant Migration in Sweden in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 23 (Jan 1999): 66.
He tells about migration patterns among the young leaving home and gives the average ages that the children of landed and landless families left home.

Pred, Allan. Place, Practice and Structure: Social and Spacial Transformation in Southern Sweden, 1750-1850. Polity Press: Cambridge, 1986.
This book contains all kinds of detailed information about a particular part of Skåne including descriptions of village councils, festivities, chores, household roles, and the effects of enskifte.

Scott, Franklin. Sweden: The Nation’s History. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988.
This great book gives a complete and easy to read general history of all of Sweden.

Sogner, Sølvi. “Illegitimacy in Old Rural Society: Some Reflections on the Problem Arising from Two Norwegian Family-Reconstruction Studies.” In Chance and Change: Social and Economic Studies in Historical Demography in the Baltic Area. Ed. Sune Åkerman, Hans Chr. Johansen, and David Gaunt. Odense: Odense University Press, 1978, pp. 61-68.
This essay provides the information about how common and accepted illegitimacy was as well as its historical background.

Winberg, Christer. “Population Growth and Proletarianization.” In Chance and Change: Social and Economic Studies in Historical Demography in the Baltic Area. Ed. Sune Åkerman, Hans Chr. Johansen, and David Gaunt. Odense: Odense University Press, 1978, pp. 170-184.
He discusses the growth of the landless group in society and the concern about the proletarianization of the countryside.

Websites

There is little on the internet that focuses specifically on Skåne (Scania in English).

http://www.scania.org/ - This is a really interesting site with concise information about Skåne history and other topics in English and Swedish.

http://www.scania.net/home.htm - This site has some basic information about Skåne.

There is a genealogy email list for people with ancestors from here: http://www.algonet.se/~anderzb/genea/scangene.htm

In fact, even information about genealogy research in all of Sweden is much more sparse than that for Germany. However, here is one useful site: (Check back for more information)

http://genealogy.about.com/od/sweden/ - This site has a collection of useful links for helping you get started researching your Swedish family.