Meadow land use has been the object of very limited historical research in Sweden, as most studies have focused on ecological or functional aspects. Research on the economy of meadows is rare. This paper addresses this issue by studying the investment in and management of meadows in 17th century Sweden considering landesque capital, a concept referring to long-term investments in land through labour. We also examine the local economic institutions developed to handle this type of capital. By analysing 17th century court records from the districts of Östra, Redväg and Kind, a more complete picture emerges of the processes and contexts in which meadows were created, managed and devalued/revalued over time. Meadow capital was constantly under threat of degeneration due to biophysical processes, and this paper explores the different strategies used to handle this problem. Outlying meadows were often more flexible in terms of ownership and were often used by others when abandoned, either by agreement or surreptitiously, which frequently led to future ownership conflicts. The comparatively limited number of cases relating to meadows nonetheless emphasises the fairly low transaction costs incurred by institutions related to meadow land use at this time. It was often the outlying meadows that appeared in court proceedings, most likely related to these meadows not being contiguous to the rest of the land of the person using them as well as these meadows having a more dynamic owner/usership history compared to infield meadows.

This paper presents a systematic study of floodplain meadows along the rivers Ätran and Emån in Southern Sweden based on geometric maps from 1690-1750. The study examines the relationship between the meadowland descriptions in historical maps and the underlying physical-geographic context in terms of soil types and depth. It also investigates the impact of the character of floodplain meadows on the local agricultural economy. The results suggest that the soil depth determines whether a flood meadow is dry or wet, with dry floodplain meadows often found on soils with greater depth than wet meadows. There is also a tendency for dry floodplain meadows to be located on floodplains with coarser sediment. The higher infiltration capacity of deeper, coarser soils leads to shorter incoming floods and reduced wet conditions. In terms of production capacity, there are small differences in yield between Ätran's dry and wet meadows, while wet meadows along the Emån river show higher yields. Detailed studies show that flood meadows along Ätran have similar or slightly lower yields per acre than meadows outside the floodplain, while flood meadows along Emån have higher yields due to the production-enhancing effect of floods on the meadows

This paper analyses the development of flood related problems in two parishes in southeast-ern Sweden—Högsby and Mörlunda—during the period 1500–1800. The questions asked concern the role of the larger development of the agricultural production in the expansion of flooding problems during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and also investi-gates how this relationship was perceived by the local inhabitants. This is done through an analysis of the development of agriculture in the area using historical maps, combined with a study of written source material such as parish records and court protocols. The river Emån which flows through these parishes had long been a vital resource in the cattle–based economy of the studied parishes. This relationship turned more problematic by the turn of the eighteenth century due to the introduction of autumn rye into the agricultural scheme, prolonging the period of flood risk exposure for the arable crops. Combined with arable field expansion during the eighteenth century, this increased the sensitivity of agriculture to flooding. This development was not apparent in the discourse of the local inhabitants by the end of the eighteenth century, who instead interpreted increasing flooding problems in relation to existing water rights principles. These emphasized the more direct effects of human and natural obstructions in the river channel. The limits of historical memory as well as the necessities of agricultural development colored the local interpretation. Such processes on a general level were also closely inter–linked with the large–scale institutional changes of the period.

Wetland reclamation was an intrinsic part of nineteenth century global agricultural transformations. In Swedish research, reclamation has mainly been situated in larger general processes of population rise, commercialization and societal/technological development. The intersection of reclamation, physical environments and local economies has seldom been studied in detail. This paper conducts a local analysis of nineteenth century wetland reclamation in two parishes in Sweden, Knätte and Mörlunda, through combining a study of specific reclamation processes with an analysis of local agrarian-economic development. The results show that these processes varied depending on specific historical-geographical circumstances. In Knätte, reclamation was not primarily related to population rise, but to increasing commercialization during the period. The case in Mörlunda instead shows how reclamation was first a response to increasing population but later developed into a project of agricultural market adaptation. In both cases, the physical environment led to varying degrees of geographic constraint in the process. In combination, these results point to the importance of detailed case studies in nuancing our understanding of nineteenth century wetland reclamation both in Sweden and internationally.