| Summary: | This dissertation is concerned with brewers and the practice of beer brewing in late medieval Stockholm. It considers the operational aspects of production and sale, the ways in which the practice was licensed and regulated by the city authorities, and the nature of the people who acted as brewers, in terms of their gender and social background. A key area of interest is the character of brewing as a regulated professional occupation within the city rather than as an unregulated domestic activity as was its character outside of the city borders. Particular attention is paid to the under-researched role played by brewing in the working lives of women. In order to analyse Stockholm’s brewing practices during the period 1460–1525, the study draws upon a range of source materials, such as city rolls, tax rolls, city ordinances, and court records. Evidence of women’s roles in the brewing trade is traced in the scarce amount of source material available and pieced together by using an investigative method. The main results show that strict local regulations divided the brewing trade into two branches, the production and the selling of beer, both in which women played a significant role. The brewing itself was female-dominated for several consecutive years. These women were the professionals of the trade, who were hired to brew batches of beer by the owners of brew houses or by persons who hired the brew houses for a small sum. Although the brewsters themselves did not take part in the legal sale of beer, other women had access to this part of the trade. They were however restricted to the domestic and local type of beer, while their male counterparts had access to imported and more valuable drinks. The difference in pay, to the brewer per finished brew or to the beer-seller per barrel, shows that profit was reserved to those who had the means to sell beer, rather than the local professionals who produced it. Local regulations limited the access to brewing and the selling of beer within the city, where one group in particular was deemed an undesirable presence; the loose women. This implies an earlier connection between alcohol and decency, in Sweden having previously been researched mainly regarding its early-modern history, as these so-called loose women were considered to be morally inferior and were blamed for the moral and social problems associated with alcohol. Brewing and beer-selling appear to have been trades that were available to women, during a time in history when women were seriously restricted in terms of the professional occupations they were permitted to engage in, and the significance of brewing as a vital means of support for these precarious individuals has, arguably, not hitherto been fully appreciated.
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