Knowing How: Estate Management, Practical Knowledge, and Agency among Aristocratic Women in Early Modern Sweden

Abstract

Seventeenth-century Sweden saw numerous women successfully acting as managers of landed estates, mills, and iron works, as well as exerting agency in politics. In making qualified decisions, overseeing complex enterprises, and promoting their families through networking and marriage negotiations, the actions of these women seem to contradict the patriarchal ideology of the time. Scholars have, nevertheless, been able to show that women could effectively run large households and businesses, arguing that a more flexible set of gender norms opened for a higher level of agency than the patriarchal ideology would theoretically admit. A yet unresolved question is, however, where were these women able to obtain the