Läge, lån och lovord : Ekonomiska, sociala och rumsliga relationer i Sundborns socken åren 1820–1888

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to visualize and explain key dimensions of people’s economic and social relations in the Swedish parish of Sundborn, in the southeast of Dalarna, in the period 1820–1849. In addition, the thesis examines the determinants of total household assets, claims and debts during the period 1820–1888. The studies that comprise the thesis are based on records of claims, debts and assets held in estate inventories and parish registers. The private local credit market of Sundborn is reconstructed in the thesis. It shows that most participants in this market lived in the parish, and that while few people had formal loans issued by institutions, many had private loans issued on trust. Meanwhile, although few people were lenders, almost everyone was a borrower. The most common credit relationship was between people who lived near one another, and people who lived near one another or were related received higher average credit. The private local credit market consisted primarily of men. The thesis interprets these findings using social network theory, showing that people depended on their social network to obtain the necessary credit: that is, debt relations helped to constitute the social fabric in the parish of Sundborn insofar as such relations were a crucial mechanism of linkage between households. By using this method, it is also possible to identify significant persons and potential parish bankers. Through the use of regression and spatial analysis, the following additional conclusions are drawn.  People's indebtedness was greatest in the most active phase of life. Total household assets increased with age, until the point at which a new generation took over. It was mainly wealthy people who held claims, but their debts were also larger than those of the less affluent. The demographic attributes that most affected the household economy were marital status and having heirs. Furthermore, the results suggest that the physical landscape of the settlement influenced households assets, because households located at higher altitudes had lower total assets. Through combining a social network graph with maps of the physical landscape, connections between location, assets, economic relations and social relations are sketched out.