This essay is a study of the dental health and cranial pathologies of five individuals buried in Domkyrkoplan cemetery, Uppsala, in the 17th and 18th century. Domkyrkoplan was the only cemetery in Uppsala city during the 200-year time period. The cemetery was placed in the immediate surroundings of Uppsala cathedral. The 17th century is a breaking point between the late medieval society and the early modern era in Sweden as well as in Europe, and this was a period of change for the inhabitants of Uppsala city. The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper insight into the inhabitants’ health and life, as well as an overview of the town’s development over the course of the time period. The theoretical framework used in this essay is microarchaeology, and the results from the analysis apply only to the analyzed individuals. Although no attempt will be made to draw conclusions about the entire population of Uppsala during the early modern times, the results will be placed in a historical context. The historical context provided in this essay is the result of a literary analysis with three major focal points: demography and city planning, Uppsala cathedral and the cemetery, diet and health. The results of the osteological analysis have shown that the five individuals all suffered from malnutrition and/or iron deficiency at some point during their childhood. The individuals are believed to have belonged to the middle class in the early modern society, however, they seem to have lived through some sort of hardship which caused the malnutrition. The literary analysis concludes that Uppsala was subjected to a starvation catastrophe during the last years of the 17th century, as well as the plague shortly thereafter, in 1710. The osteological material analyzed in this essay is part of an ongoing archaeological investigation, which means that the dating and results used or concluded in this essay is preliminary and may differ from the final archaeological report, which will be released in 2021.

The present dissertation focuses on the appointment of clergy in the rural areas of Swedish province of Hälsingland during the period 1650-1800. The aim has been to analyse the practical process of clergy appointments as well as to discuss the development of the political culture of the said period in the way that it was reflected through the actions of the actors involved. The discussion concentrates on two aspects of the political culture, firstly on what kind of influence the parishes had in regard to the clergy appointments, secondly what the actions of the various actors in this context tell us about the local political culture. The study shows that the parishes did indeed assert their rights in connection with the clergy appointments. It is also shown that the parishes exerted a certain influence in terms of which clergyman to promote, but that this influence seems to have been limited to conditions dictated by the authorities. The clergy election reforms effected in the 1730's brought a significant change to the local political culture. Whereas the earlier legislation assumed that decisions were made unanimously, the elective reforms of the 1730's inaugurated the majority principle as election method, with the result that each voting parish member was now regarded as an independent actor. The investigation of the practice of clergy appointment in Hälsingland shows that the opinions reflected in the unanimous parish demands raised prior to the 1730's reforms primarily belonged to the most leading actors of the community. However, through the formalising of the decision-making procedure, the reforms made way for a broader participation in that process. All farm owners were entitled to vote in the clergy elections, which means that also women farm owners - primarily widows - had the right to vote. Nevertheless, as shown in the present study, the political culture was not as gender neutral as the legislation, seeing that, relatively speaking, the widows voted through proxies to a considerably larger extent than did the men. / <p>Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2003</p> / digitalisering@umu