The Name

Since there were so few first names in use, there often was a need to be more specific on which Lars or Anders or Sven you meant. And like in many cultures this was made by either mentioning the persons living place or his father. This was the same for men and women. And in most of Sweden the fathers name was to be most important. This was the origin of the paternal names, and in Swedish they are recognized by the suffix -son. Carl Larsson means of course "the Carl who is a son of Lars". And a woman may have been called Maria Larsdotter, meaning "the Maria who is a daughter of Lars". Dotter is Swedish for daughter. In church records the female paternal name is often abbreviated to, for instance, Larsd. When the first name was given they also followed strong traditions, meaning that the first four children, if two boys and two girls, probably had the names of their grandparents. Therefor you often can see Sven Larsson, son of Lars Svensson, son of Sven Larsson and so on.

From late 17th century till the beginning of the 20th century the Swedish army was organized in a certain way. The farmers held one soldier for a group of hamlets or villages, furnished him with a house and some little land and a certain amount of food. These soldiers were trained a few times every year, and of course if there was a war they could have go anywhere to participate. When the soldiers were gathered for exercise there was a problem that all of them were called Sven or Lars or Anders. To keep them apart they were given surnames. These names could be names of animals, names with a connection to the village they came from or names with a connection to military life. In the second case the names could either be the place name, or that name somewhat changed. Ekman is very typical, it starts with the name of a hamlet, Ek (meaning oak), and to it is put an end meaning "man".

Up till the beginning of the 20th century there was no clear regulations concerning taking names. Therefor you can in church records see surnames for one person changing from Ekman to Larsson and back to Ekman. The soldiers names were connected with their duty, if they left the army they often left their names, and the new soldier took the same name as the former one. But even so you can see that crofters that never served the army, took the name Ekman, probably just out of vain. And why not?

System of crofters

Normally land in Sweden was owned by farmers that together formed a hamlet or a village. Originally the landowning within the village was in common, one farmer could not point at a spot and say -That is mine!. But because of land reforms during the 18th and 19th century the land was divided in the hamlets, and each farmer came to own his own land. The land reforms was successful and made the population grow. And more and more land was cultivated. But when there was no more land to cultivate, and there were some bad years in the late 1800's with starvation, the great emigration begun.

One common way of cultivating new land was the crofters system. A landowner could allow a man to cultivate a piece of land and let him put up a cottage. In return the crofter often had to help the landowner in different ways, mostly being a hand in the farming. It was a sort of lease agreement. This duty could be very hard, and made it difficult for the crofter to take care of his own house and land. The crofters were often the second worse off people in the rural districts, their life was a tiny bit better than that for the ones that had nothing at all, that lived in a hut in the forest or in the Poor Peoples House. In Timmele there is a hut made of stone and soil and wood where people still lived in the beginning of the 20th century.

Some lucky crofters managed to buy the house and land. Thus they became their own, they did no longer have to do the duty to the landowner. To own the land was a major ambition for many. And in our family's history you can f ind one and another that managed to take the step to become a farmer, and lots who didn't.