South-Sweden Probate Inventory Database, 1570–1860

This new database of 3,250 probate inventories from both towns and countryside in southern Sweden investigates the development of household productive capacity and consumption from the late 1500s to the 1860s.

Both labourers and farmers improved their material living standards – as measured by the contents of probate inventories – but the labouring households’ ownership of means of production decreased over time. This indicates increasing market involvement and dependency on wage labour. For labourers’ and farmers’ households alike, textile production at home became more important; in the 1860s, half of the labouring households owned spinning wheels and weaving looms, and for farmer households, the shares were even higher. Our study reveals not only the dynamism of the rural pre-industrial Swedish economy but also the unequal nature of this dynamism.

If using the database, please cite Falk, Marcus, Erik Bengtsson, and Mats Olsson (2025), SouthSweden Probate Inventory Database, 1570–1860, Department of Economic History, Lund University, and date of access.