Knowing how: Estate Management, Practical Knowledge, and Agency among Aristocratic Women in Early Modern Sweden

In the seventeenth Century, Swedish aristocratic women successfully acted as managers of landed estates, mills and iron works, and exerted agency in politics. Making qualified decisions and overseeing complex enterprises, their actions in many ways contradicted the prevailing patriarchal ideology. While explanations for this agency have stressed several intersecting factors, the role of learning and practical knowledge has been less developed. In this article, we argue that the interaction between female landowners and male estate managers was an arena for informal learning – in many ways resembling apprenticeship – which underpinned agency for female members of the early modern Swedish aristocracy. Taking the conditions of their aristocratic upbringing and education into consideration, we claim that this interaction furthered female agency and created opportunities as well as expectations. The article highlights that agentic gender norms must be taken into consideration when assessing the competencies of early modern, female land- and estate owners.