This clause may very possibly represent an extension of the rights of a childless widow beyond what tribal custom may have originally given her. But certainly the fact that under Scanian law the childless widow was entitled to half of what by compact at the time of the marriage had become the joint property of husband and wife, while the other half went to the husband’s next heirs, is good evidence that marriage was by no means a surrender of the wife and her property once for all into the power of the husband and his family. And evidence of the accord of Scandinavian with other tribal custom on this point is not without value.
It may be observed, however, that in the case mentioned there had been something like a compact or valuation of the property brought under the marriage arrangement at the time of the marriage. The result might therefore have been different if no special compact had been made. The inference might well be that the childless widow in that case would not have been allowed to take her half share with her away from her husband’s kindred.
Family holding vested in the grandfather as paterfamilias.
Chapter III. refers again to a wife’s property and adds important information. It brings before us a family group with something like a family holding. And it becomes intelligible only, I think, when approached from this point of view.
Into this family group a wife has been brought apparently without the special ‘definition’ or arrangement. There are also children of the marriage. And the question asked in the heading of the Latin text is, what shares the grandchildren take on their father’s death, not in their parent’s property, but in the property of the grandfather.
The grandfather is the head of the family group. In the Latin version he is elsewhere styled the paterfamilias and in this clause his sons are filiifamilias.
In the Danish version the family group is simply that of an ordinary bonde and the family character of the holding is taken for granted as not needing special mention or explanation.
The chapter is as follows (divided into sections for convenience in comparison of the Latin and Danish texts):—
De bonis avitis que portio contingat nepotes post obitum filiifamilias.