In this essay court cases from Öland in the period of 1635-1649 which were later subjected to the scrutiny of Göta hovrätt are examined. The point being to investigate differences in how crimes and criminals were treated in the local häradsrätt versus the regional hovrätt. The study is limited to cases found in the collection På häradsting by Lennart Landin. Furthermore, the results are compared to the theoretical model of the civilization process in early modern Sweden, as laid out by Johan Söderberg and Arne Jarrick, based on the earlier theory of Norbert Elias.      The essay concludes that while the ingredients of the theoretical model can be seen in the material at hand, they are far too jumbled to be categorized simply as a matter of "the state" versus "the local." Instead, rather than the process of civilizing society stemming from above or below, the evidence seems to indicate that the above and below, at least within the boundaries of the legal system and legal practices in the given period, shared many of the civilizing traits with each other.      Additionally, the essay concludes that the material and results of the study have applicability in the context of teaching history in the Swedish upper secondary school system. The conclusion is based upon the personal stories made available by the material being useful for building empathy for historical people, its potential for intersubject teaching with respect to language history and the historical process of change highlighted by the analysis.

This essay focuses on crime history and gender. It is a study of female crimes in the beginning of the 19th century in a small parish (Askeryd Socken) in Småland in the south part of Sweden. The method I have used is to study the records of Municipal Court regarding the citizens of the parish of Askeryd. I have then tried to find out whether the female offenders have been treated different than the male offenders, if there is a certain kind of gender-related crimes and in those cases where comparison is possible, I have examined if the females are treated in a lighter way. (”female discount”), or if they were treated as mentally unstable.The essay shows that in this particular parish during the years 1825 to 1830, female offenders were not treated in a lighter manner. There were certain gender-related crimes, which women were more exposed to than men, but women offenders were not treated as mentally disturbed.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the court narratives of serious crimes in the district courts of Jämtland-Härjedalen in the latter half of 17th century. This is done by studying the negotiated aspects of criminal court proceedings; how did stories of crime, guilt and character come together in the records to form narratives that became accepted truths by the local community and the authorities? Investigations of serious crime have been sampled from the collected records of five district courts in the period 1649–1700. These records have been analysed by identifying the different actors and voices of the narratives, the social stratification of the participants, their speech acts and how they were depicted by the court and by other participants. The analysis of the social stratification of accusers, defendants and witnesses shows evidence of a deeply hierarchical and patriarchal society: men and women of lower social status were not only grossly overrepresented as defendants in criminal investigations, they were also mostly excluded from participating as a witness. The inverse could be said about local elites and landed peasantry. Women were more often accused of crime, and while they were allowed to testify as witnesses, they were less so than men. The negotiation of the truth took place in three parallel and intersecting spheres of discourse, differing in what kind of questions were asked and what problems were being discussed between different categories of participants. The nature of crime was negotiated when accusers, defendants and witnesses debated the presented narratives; the accepted narrative of the crime was found by the assessment of the honesty of the individual participants, by considering their reputation and standing in the local community. While the word of the law was unrelenting and impossible to legally negotiate at the district court level, a kind of negotiation was done by the local community and sometimes also the district court taking the side of the defendant, pleading and petitioning the Royal High Court to find mercy for the convicted criminal.