"En brav soldat ska jag ha" : Uppvaktning och äktenskapsmönster i det tidigmoderna Sverige

This thesis explores the customs of courtship and marriage patterns in early modern Sweden. Earlier research has largely been divided on how much power the women had in deciding who they should marry. The main aim of the thesis is to analyse how much power the early modern women in Sweden had to pick their husbands out of free choice and secondly to analyse the different courtship rituals that were in effect at the time.The main theories used is the theory of a gender system that consists of a number of gender contracts, formulated by Yvonne Hirdman, which decides how men and women are supposed to interact on one another. The main method used is to analyse dairies and autobiographys by women from 1600-1800. The material has been selected from a bibliography by Christina Sjöblad and Eva Haettner from the early 1990s.One of the main findings of this thesis is that during the early-modern period, there was a huge gap in what women had the legal right to do and what was considered acceptable behaviourby the society. The material shows that women had the legal right to marry almost whoever the pleased including noblewomen marrying a priest. However the material also shows that women were often pressed by their families and relatives to get married. Sometimes to a specific man and other times just to anyone suitable. Families and relatives could even go so far as to use emotional blackmail to get the marriage done. However at the same some families seem to generally have wanted their daughter to marry for love, just as long as it was to a suitable man. The courtship rituals seem to have been somewhat different. Some engagements were taking place shortly after the two spouses met. Others had a period of a few month of courting before engagement and a few were even courting in secret. Contrary to a lot of earlier research women and men were often able to meet in private without any supervision even as early as in the 17thcentury. It is not clear though how common practise that was and how easy it was todo.The women in the source material tell us a lot of things they wanted from a man. Some wanted a man that was a soldier, others simply wanted somebody who did not make a fool out of himself, somebody good looking or somebody who loved them back, but the reason most mentioned is the man’s religious awakening. Clearly, a religious woman was firstly looking for somebody who shared her religious awakening and that wish could go so far as to them actually going against their whole family or marrying a mucholder stranger compared to a younger friend just to marry a man with the same religious conviction