Timmermansämbetet i Stockholm före 1700

• This dissertation provides a descriptive account of the organization and activities of the carpenters' guild, as well as of the carpenter's trade, itself. Two problems are highlighted. A set of guild rules revised in 1454 was printed in 1604. It presupposed the existence of a normal, welldeveloped guild. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, the carpenters’ guild consisted of a number of carpenters without any real training. They worked alone, in pairs, or in groups. By the end of the seventeenth century, the guild had been transformed into an organization not only presenting the usual system of master craftsmen, journeymen, and apprentices, but distinguishing itself from most other guilds by having only a few masters, each of whom had a large number of employees, thus making it possible to conduct a certain form of largescale operations. With these conditions as a point of departure, the first part of this dissertation investigates what the revision of the guild rules in 1454 involved and, especially, whether the rules were actually observed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The second part of this study examines the reasons for the reorganization of the guild during the seventeenth century. In view of the scarcity of sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it has only been possible to answer the questions posed in the first section of this dissertation in part. The picture of the guild during these centuries that emerges from an examination of the older municipal records does, however, reveal that the guild rules cannot have been observed very widely in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that the guild previously had had a position which was in closer agreement with the guild rules as revised in 1454. The emphasis in this dissertation, however, is on the seventeenth century, for which period it has been possible to make use not only of the extensive archives of the Stockholm magistracy, but also of such things as the minutes of the guild, fiscal records, and private archives. With the help of these sources, it has been possible to study the size and composition of the guild, the genesis and significance of the sets of guild rules, the internal activities of the guild, the working conditions and wages, as well as the social and economic situation of the carpenters. In this way, it has been possible to study, step by step, the restructuring of the guild and the factors influencing that process. Among these factors were the quantitative and qualitative rise in building activities; the change in the organization of the guild brought about by that rise, which, for example, led to the foremen forming the first group of master carpenters; the city’s and the crown’s need for carpenters, which led to a regulation of the guild’s activities via guild rules; and, not least of all, the influence of foreign carpenters and builders, most of whom remained outside of the guild. 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Timmermän

historia

Sverige

Stockholm

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

dok (ämneskategori)