Accounts of Lease Entrance Fees for Jämtland and Härjedalen 1601–1645. Edited by Georg Hansson and Olof Holm. With an index of place-names by Karl Göran Eriksson.

This is an edition, with commentary, of a series of accounts of lease entrance fees for the provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen, dating from 1601 to 1645. Jämtland and Härjedalen are today parts of Sweden, but belonged to Norway until 1645. During the period in question, Norway was part of the Danish-Norwegian state.

The present accounts were made by the bailiffs serving in Jämtland and Härje­dalen. They report an entrance fee called bygsel collected by the bailiffs when they let out crown land and so-called avradsland, i.e. divided parts of the com­mon land, on lease to individuals. The quantity of crown land in Jämtland dramatically increased from about 4% to 69% of all land after the Kalmar War of 1611–13, when most of the farmers in this province lost their land to the Danish-Norwegian King Kristian IV. The bailiffs were subordinate to the feudal lord residing in Trondheim, who had the right to a share of the entrance fees collected. The rest of the entrance fees went, together with the accounts and other revenues and records as well, to the King’s treasury in Copenhagen. Today all these records are kept in the national archives of Sweden and Norway.

In the introduction, Olof Holm describes and discusses the contents of the accounts, the lease agreements they deal with, the conditions for the lease­holders, the vast growth of crown land in Jämtland during the period, along with other subjects. In the main part of the edition all text of the bygsel accounts is transcribed. Two appendices are included: 1) excerpts from preserved letters de­scribing leasehold agreements from the period, and 2) testimonies concerning the bailiffs’ collecting of bygsel fees. The book ends with indices of place-names and officials, and a word list.

Dalåsen in Berg and Dalarna as an alternative name for Härjedalen

This article examines the village name Dalåsen in Berg parish in Jämtland, which is documented in sources going back to the end of the 15th century. The author argues that the village was named after a Johan Dale, recorded in 1410, who lived in this area. His byname Dale can probably be explained as a designation of origin, meaning ‘man from Härjedalen’. The author points out in this context that, in Jämtland, people from the neighbouring province of Härjedalen could be referred to in earlier times as dalamän, and that the province itself could be called Dalarna.

This article deals with a medieval register known from a 16th-century copy, recording the individuals who had donated a meadow to the parsonage of Alfta in Hälsingland. Originally, the register was probably inscribed in one of the liturgical books of Alfta Church. Thirty-eight individuals, including 14 or 15 women, are named in the text. According to the copy, the donation was made in 1276, but the naming custom reflected in the register suggests a considerably later dating, c.1400–1450 (1426?). The erroneous year ‘1276’ probably goes back to a misreading of the Roman numerals Mcd- as Mccl‑.

In this paper a hitherto obscure Baroque artist’s monogram is deciphered. It turns out that it belongs to a master named Set Knutsson, who has used his full name as a signature on at least one preserved painting. He worked in Mid-Norway and in Jämtland in present-day Sweden from the 1630s and died in Trondheim in 1682. An attribution method important to this study is comparative style analysis based on painted script.

This article deals with a number of prominent types of settlement names in the province of Jämtland, from the Viking period to the 16th century. More specifically, it looks at names in -gård, -by (By) and ‑böle (Böle), and at two special categories of names with first elements containing a personal name or a common noun referring to a person. The aim is to elucidate in broad terms both the history of these name types and the settlement history of the central Scandinavian interior. The author analyses the settlement-historical context of the names, the content of their first elements, the overall chronology of the different name types, and the meaning of the place-name elements in question. The 15th century and the first half of the 16th emerge as a time of dynamic growth in the region – in contrast to the way this period has been portrayed in earlier research.