Genealogy, gender, and memory culture in late medieval Sweden: the chronicle of Anna Fickesdotter Bülow

ABSTRACT Anna Fickesdotter Bülow (1440s–1519), abbess of the Birgittine Vadstena Abbey in Sweden, was also the author of Chronicon Genealogicum (c. 1515), a genealogical narrative of aristocratic families in late medieval Sweden. Anna Fickesdotter’s chronicle is one of the earliest examples of women writing genealogy in Sweden. It sheds light on the roles of women in the transmission and commemoration of family history, genealogy as a gendered imagination and practice, but also the scripting of self as a subjective voice and a woman remembering the past. The account is analysed as an expression of medieval memory culture, where genealogy as a gendered phenomenon had a fundamental impact on the mental, material, and social dimensions of memory.


Introduction
In the early sixteenth century, Anna Fickesdotter Bülow (1440s-1519), the abbess of Vadstena Abbey in Sweden, wrote a genealogical account of her family that was printed two hundred years later as Chronicon Genealogicum. 1 Her account was used by contemporary aristocrats, but also by modern-day genealogists and historians, to trace the lineage of aristocratic families in medieval Sweden.Here, I will examine the text both as an expression of a sense of self, and of a medieval memory culture, where genealogy had a fundamental impact on mental, material, and social aspects of remembering.Together with some other genealogical texts produced in Vadstena Abbey, Anna Fickesdotter's chronicle also represents a beginning of women writing genealogy as one of the earliest examples of women recording, discussing, and processing genealogical knowledge in Sweden. 2 The framework of the analysis is Astrid Erll's concept of memory culture, with a focus on genealogical imagination as part of the mental dimension of memory culture, and family as a site of memory in late medieval Sweden. 3The study throws light on the question of how the genealogical knowledge necessary to navigate medieval society was retained and transferred within families, and how family ties remained important and were cultivated also behind the walls of a monastery.It also focuses attention on the chronicle as an articulation of self, memory, and identity -on the ways in which it constitutes a 'scripting of self' 4 -as an articulation of Anna Fickesdotter's own memories and reflections on time.How are her own experiences reflected in the chronicle?

Anna Fickesdotter Bülow and the Chronicon Genealogicum
Anna Fickesdotter Bülow was probably born in the 1440s.She came from an aristocratic family with German and Danish roots, as the daughter of Ficke Bülow and his wife Hebbla Albrektsdotter Bydelsbach.Her father had acquired the estate Ettak in the Swedish province of Västergötland, where she probably grew up. 5 Anna Fickesdotter entered Vadstena Abbey in 1462, and was elected abbess in 1501 after having served as prioress for fifteen years.As the head of the monastery, Anna Fickesdotter was responsible for one of the largest landowning institutions in medieval Sweden, and issued charters on behalf of the abbey. 6After her death in 1519, Anna Fickesdotter was described as an exceptionally learned lady in the monastery's memorial book: In the year of our Lord 1519, the honourable lady, our Mother [and] Abbess, Sister Anna Fickesdotter, died in the 56th year after her inauguration.She was most learned after the conditions of her sex.She was in charge of and managed the monastery as abbess during eighteen years and prior to that she had held the office as prioress for fifteen years.May she rest in God! 7 As this quotation indicates, Anna Fickesdotter took an active part in the abbey's literary work.She initiated, translated, and supervised the production of texts for the use of the monastery, including the legend of Saint Joachim, and texts for the nuns' table reading.She was evidently competent in Latin, as indicated also by the occasional Latin sentences in Chronicon genealogicum.
Around 1515 she wrote her genealogical account at the request of the Linköping bishop, Hans Brask (1464-1538), who would later compile his own genealogical survey of prominent aristocratic families in Sweden. 8This is apparent from the beginning of the text, where she refers to his request that she should write down everything that she knows about the family history of her stepfather, Arend Bengtsson (Ulv), but her narrative does not end with his ancestry.According to Swedish historian Gottfrid Carlsson, her work encompasses a large part of the Swedish, and to some extent also Danish, high aristocracy in the late medieval era. 9 The original version of Anna Fickesdotter's text has not survived, but it exists in manuscripts from the sixteenth century. 10A copy that once was owned by Lars Siggesson (Sparre) (1492-1554), and which included his own genealogical and historical account, was printed as Chronicon Genealogicum in 1718 by the Swedish antiquarian Johan Peringskiöld. 11The printed text consists of 23 pages.A few interpolations in her text must have been added after her death. 12Such interpolations as well as the later copies of the text can be taken as a sign of the practical uses of the text as a repository of genealogical knowledge. 13As argued in this article, the text also sheds light on a late medieval memory culture, and the importance of family, gender, and monastic life for practices of remembering.

Genealogy and memory
Throughout history, genealogy has constituted an important model for the organization and visualization of temporal and spatial relationships. 14According to Joan A. Holladay, genealogical imagery was a particularly prominent strategy in the representation of the past in the Middle Ages, because it promised continuity in the present and into the future, based on a highly selective, and therefore persuasive organization of history. 15Genealogy comprises several elements: kinship as a dynamic strategy and as a social and biological factor; memory as a cognitive processing of temporal and spatial connections; and conceptions of origin, succession, and tradition.Genealogy can be used as a tool for the visualization of the common ancestral roots of a group, or conversely, the ramifications of an individual person's lineage in time. 16ith the group or the individual person as a point of departure, genealogies and the genealogical imagination contribute to the formation of individual and collective selfimages.As a historical phenomenon, genealogy reflects changing sociocultural ideas and conceptions about kinship and birth, not least in connection with the shifting emphases of the bilateral and patrilineal kinship systems in the transition between the medieval and early modern periods in Sweden and other parts of Europe.Chronicon Genealogicum consistently represents both maternal and paternal ancestry, showing that for Anna Fickesdotter and her audience, ancestry was conceived of as structurally bilateral.
In recent years, family memory has been identified as a memory system of particular, cognitive and social, importance for the individual and social sense of identity.Despite this, researchers argue that it has not been sufficiently conceptualized within the field of memory studies. 17Even if the family has long been recognized as a fundamental social framework for the construction of collective memory, to use the terminology of Maurice Halbwachs, the defining traits of family memory as a subtype of memory need to be further elaborated. 18Family constitutes a crucial and formative intersection between the individual and her sociocultural context.The role of family memory for the formation of identity and a sense of self has been stressed, but also the links between the family as a generational, temporal unit and broader social, political, cultural, and economical institutions and contexts.

Social and temporal aspects of memory
In the Middle Ages, kinship was fundamental for the ownership of property, inheritance, social status, and for remembering the dead, as well as for the organization and maintenance of dynastical political power.Canon law prohibited people from marrying within certain degrees of kinship. 19This dependence on genealogical knowledge can also be understood in terms of cognitive patterns and memory practices.As a faculty of the mind, memory is crucial for how an individual person understands and interprets the world of the present, but it also affects how she envisions the future.Moreover, memory is a social phenomenon, both in terms of shared, collective experiences and in how memories are constructed, narrated, and transferred to others.According to Judith Pollmann, 'memory is a form of cognition that interacts with social processes'. 20Genealogy can be seen as a perceptual grid at the intersection between memory and social processes.Family history and lineage link together ancestors and descendants; the position of individual family members shifts with each new generation, sometimes accompanied by a sense of loss, or the necessity to adapt to a different role or function within the family.(Halbwachs has referred to this as a sometimes conflicting family logic, compelling a son to shift his identity to that of husband or father, and as a consequence, creating a rupture between two generations that is also a precondition of a dynamic family memory. 21) Family memory can be seen as characterized by a sense of the transient, perhaps also repetitive and cyclical nature of time. 22an Assman used the concept of cultural memory as a way of joining together memory, culture, and community.He has described genealogy as one of the earliest forms of cultural mnemotechnics; 'a form that bridges the gap between the present and the time of origin, legitimizing a current order or aspiration by providing an unbroken link with the very beginning'. 23Assman distinguishes between cultural memory and what he refers to as communicative memory: living memory, or experiences that are shared in everyday communication between people.The communicative memory can therefore extend over a few generations -which is the temporal range of Anna Fickesdotter's account.

The analysis of memory cultures
Collective or cultural memory can be studied empirically through analyses of concrete memory cultures in well-defined historical contexts.Astrid Erll has created a model for analysing memory culture as a phenomenon characterized by three overlapping dimensions. 24The material dimension refers to media and other artefacts that express or transfer memory, including landscapes and imagery.The social dimension describes social practices, institutions, and carriers of memory.The mental dimension refers to the codes, expressions, and formulas used in the symbolic representation of memory, for example genealogical conceptions.These dimensions also capture what has been seen as salient features of early modern memory as a gendered nexus of introverted and intersubjective, emotional, and material aspects. 25To examine family as a site of memory, I have looked for elements in Anna Fickesdotter's account that illustrate mental, social, or material dimensions of remembrance, and how they are related to the scripting of self, identity, and the genealogical imagination.

Genealogy and gender
Genealogy is fundamentally gendered as a scheme through which biological, social, and cultural conceptions of family and birth are represented and reproduced.Researchers have discussed the extent to which genealogy also can be described as a gendered practice in premodern societies. 26Scholars have emphasized the role of women in guarding and transmitting family memory, in commemorating family members and events, and in processes pertaining to premodern aristocratic memory culture. 27Elite women, not least royal women, have been ascribed a particular role in the representation and commemoration of family and dynasty, for example through the production of genealogical or biographical literature, commissioning of monuments or heraldic imagery. 28Such mnemonic practices overlapped with spiritual concerns and intercession on behalf of family members.Women were active benefactors of Birgittine monasteries, for the sake of their own spiritual well-being as well as for the memory of, and prayers for their relatives.Considerations of kinship and family were important in determining support for religious orders. 29n an analysis of memory processes where women commissioned objects but also became objects of commemoration, the Danish scholar Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen writes about a premodern female memory culture ('kvindelig erindringskultur'), describing it as women's staging of themselves and their circle through visual expressions.Part of the reason that aristocratic women devoted their time to the pursuit of genealogical knowledge is that it was a task that did not necessarily require academic studies or other resources than those available to the women. 30Not only married women or widows, but also women belonging to religious communities sustained this female memory culture.In the late sixteenth century, Sophie Gyldenstierne, the abbess of Maribo Abbey in Denmark, a Birgittine monastery that became a Lutheran community after the reformation, commissioned memorials for Margrethe Urne, her predecessor as abbess, and for her sister Ermegard. 31For Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen, these memorials are expressions of a memory culture that also manifested sisterly solidarity, kinship and affinity beyond death.
Knowledge about kinship bonds served very pragmatic purposes as genealogical 'knowhow'; the reproduction, economical position and social status of a family depended on attention to family relationships that could bolster claims to inheritance, privileges, or favourable connections. 32Genealogical knowledge was also instrumental in the exercise of (informal) power.Canonical law ascribed some expertise to women as witnesses within a limited sphere of reproduction and kinship.Memory and genealogical imagination thus also intersect with gender.In the patriarchal medieval society, women were actively involved in the shaping of a cohesive aristocratic identity and sense of the past.However, the degree to which lineage was represented bilaterally would change with the gradually increasing emphasis on paternal ancestry in the early modern era.In the text studied here, both men and women are named and defined as integral parts of the family history.Paternal as well as maternal ancestors could provide important links to the past, adding status, and a sense of identity and belonging.Examples of such bilateral genealogical representations can be found also in other parts of Europe. 33

Vadstena Abbey and early genealogical writing by women in Sweden
The establishment of the Birgittine order and Vadstena Abbey in the late fourteenth century was followed by the foundation of other Birgittine monasteries in Scandinavia and elsewhere in the fifteenth century.From the beginning, members of the aristocracy and royalty endorsed and sponsored the order.The foundation and expansion of the Birgittine order coincided with the establishment of the Kalmar Union that joined together the Scandinavian realms under a common king.According to Jens Olesen, the Birgittine culture, with Vadstena Abbey as a centre, helped sustain an aristocratic culture that united the Scandinavian nobility. 34Vadstena Abbey became a popular site for royal and aristocratic burials and manifestations of religious devotion that could have political implications. 35While many of the sisters belonged to aristocratic families, others came from more diverse social backgrounds. 36Even after the reformation in Sweden, prominent aristocratic women continued to support Vadstena Abbey -a sign of the longlasting relationship between the monastery and its aristocratic donor networks. 37s a learned milieu that encouraged female literacy, Vadstena Abbey was exceptional in medieval Sweden, and seems to have been particularly productive in literary terms during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, even if this may be a result of the difficulties in ascertaining the extent of the literary activities in the earlier period. 38ifferent forms of literacy were an important aspect of life in the Birgittine monastery. 39any of the sisters were involved in the production of devotional, edifying books.A few of them also wrote genealogical texts.A circumstance that may have contributed to a more specific genealogical interest in Vadstena in the late fifteenth century involved the proceedings related to the canonization process of Katarina, the daughter of Saint Birgitta, in the 1470s.As part of these proceedings, witnesses, both convent members and secular aristocracy, were interrogated about what they knew about Katarina, including her pedigree and the claim that she and her mother had royal ancestors. 40One of the witnesses in these proceedings was one of Anna Fickesdotter's predecessors as abbess, Margareta Clausdotter (−1486), who later wrote a chronicle of Saint Birgitta and her family. 41Subsequently, this chronicle was revised and its focus on relationships within Swedish aristocracy was enhanced.The revision was probably made in Vadstena in the sixteenth century. 42The Vadstena nun Birgitta Andersdotter (−1532) wrote an account about the family of the Swedish regent Sten Sture the Younger (r.1512-1520), at the request of his widow, the noblewoman Kristina Nilsdotter Gyllenstierna, in which she included a part from Margareta Clausdotter's chronicle. 43It is worth noticing here, that even if their texts dealt with aristocratic kinship, only Anna Fickesdotter belonged to the aristocracy.Birgitta Andersdotter and Margareta Clausdotter were commoners, but contributed to the memorization of secular aristocratic ancestry and to the family history of Saint Birgitta.
While the Birgittine Rule stipulated strict enclosure for its members as a distinctive mark, the sisters did not live a life of total seclusion from the world. 44The sisters could stay in contact with their birth families and people outside of the monastery. 45Two letters from Birgitta Andersdotter to the Swedish regent Svante Nilsson (Sture) (r.1503-1511), asking him for favours, are particularly interesting.Before she became a nun, Birgitta had been in the service of Svante Nilsson's mother, the grandmother of Sten Sture the Younger, who provided her with the means to enter the monastery in the early 1490s.This can explain her expertise in the Sture family history and her evident loyalty to the Sture family.When she writes to Svante Nilsson, she uses a language of kinship, referring to him as her honourable, dearest father, whom she greets with daughterly regard and humility, insisting that she will never forget him. 46s the texts written by Anna Fickesdotter and Birgitta Andersdotter show, people outside the monastery contacted the sisters, asking for genealogical information related to the aristocracy.They testify to the overlapping worlds of secular aristocracy and convent culture, and in this case, how family, ancestry and kinship constituted an important part of monastic life.As one of the primary social, emotional, and temporal forces in the Middle Ages, kinship was a significant part of female convent culture.Familial terminology described relationships within what can be seen as a monastic family, albeit not in the sense of cognatio spiritualis, the spiritual kinship established primarily through acting as the godparent at the baptism of a child. 47As will be mentioned below, however, professing as a Birgittine nun also required the women to forget about their parents as a preparation for monastic life.In addition, the rule forbade the sisters and brothers to become godparents with reference to their spiritual wellbeing. 48hile a certain principal ambivalence thus marked the relationship with the external world in terms of kinship and memory, women fulfilled roles as guardians of family memory in medieval Sweden also as cloistered members of a convent.The reciprocal relations and interaction between the sisters and the outside world have been described in terms of a spiritual economy, where gifts and donations of lay family members and others to the monastery were made in exchange for spiritual acts such as prayers and intercession. 49For the individual, investing in this spiritual economy was a means to prepare for the life after death. 50In the words of Virginia R. Bainbridge, monasteries 'acted as a vast turbine engine.The prayers of the inmates generated supernatural power for founders and benefactors', and they also provided commemorative acts in a society where such commemoration of the dead was obligatory. 51Donations to the monastery could be given as a proventa for a nun, either for the donator herself, or for another woman, who would then pray for the souls of the donator and her kin. 52he obligation and exhortations to remember and pray for living and dead relatives, within and outside of the monastery were also expressed by the sisters themselves. 53irgitta Andersdotter left a plea for remembrance in a manuscript: 'Oc glømis ekke tha mik S[yster] b[irgitta] a[ndersdotter] som taessa bok kostwaerdhe' (And do not forget me S b a who paid for this book). 54Such brief references to scribes or owners of books, with requests for remembrance and prayers, may reveal an anxiety of being forgotten, of passing into oblivion, in their references to spiritual and mnemonic practices that were significant parts of a material and social memory culture; praying for the dead and investing in material, devotional objects.They show how deeply devotional and mnemonic practices were intertwined. 55here are other examples of women documenting or providing genealogical knowledge from this period.The wealthy widow Birgitta Magnusdotter (Porse) was a benefactress of the Birgittines. 56In 1444, six years before her death, she wrote a brief declaration of her paternal and maternal ancestry.Birgitta Magnusdotter lived in Vadstena towards the end of her life and was buried in the Abbey.Her written account is expressly linked to her last will; since God had provided her with a great fortune and many estates, she wants to make sure that her family and heirs know about her maternal and paternal ancestry. 57The letter and genealogical account thus had a practical function that was connected to the division of her estate upon her death, but the formulaic statement also constitutes a scripting of a self: 'Jak Birgitta född af fru Elini i Faldanaes som för er sakt.AE hvem laghin giffwa at mit goss oc aeghor skulu arfva, tha aer min faedhernisslaekt och modhernis sua som nu aer opsakt' (I Birgitta, born of Lady Elin of Fållnäs as mentioned before.Whomever the law lays down as heirs to my estate and property, my paternal and maternal family is as hereby stated). 58On her father's side, she briefly accounts for five generations including herself, beginning with her great-great grandmother, Lady Estrid of Helgamo.On her mother's side, she accounts for three generations: her uncle and aunt and their respective children -her cousins -and their respective children and spouses.
Another example indicates how the genealogical knowledge of women could be asked for in legal matters.In a letter, probably written towards the end of the fifteenth century, which has survived as part of a manuscript, the anonymous letter writer describes the relationships between the aristocratic Bonde and Bielke families during almost a century. 59he writer mentions the complex legal situation that had arisen when the noblewoman Margareta Stensdotter (Bielke) died together with her child without anyone being able to ascertain who had died first, the mother or the child.The recipient of the letter is advised to contact another noblewoman, Ingeborg Filipsdotter (Tott), the wife of Erik Trolle, for information that may be of help: 'kere brodher skal tw talä medh Fru jngeborgh Her erik trolläs hon weth ythermer göre tik redhe badhe oppa thenne schriffth ok andra flera som os kan komma til hiälp' (Dear brother, you should talk to Lady Ingeborg, [the wife of] Lord Erik Trolle, she will be able to give you more information both about this piece of writing and many other that can be of help to us). 60 Chronicon Genealogicum, Vadstena Abbey, and family memory Anna Fickesdotter's genealogical account reflects a memory culture that had a visible presence in the monastery itself.Vadstena was not only Anna Fickesdotter's home: it was also a place with palpable connections to her family history and, as described by Jens Olesen, an arena where monastic and aristocratic culture overlapped. 61The significance and power of Bülow family was emphasized through material objects such as tombs, coats of arms, and glass windows, which the abbess mentions in her narrative.She writes that her paternal grandfather, Johan Bülow, donated a glass window placed above the southern entry to the abbey, decorated with his coat of arms.There is an evident sense of pride in her remark that all her paternal relatives in Germany and France still carried this coat of arms, and that the Bülow coat of arms is the only one on the window. 62er grandfather was probably also buried in the abbey.For his descendants, the coats of arms and tombs marked the family's continuity in time, as well as the connections to a contemporaneous, horizontal family network that stretched over large geographical territories and realms.Anna Fickesdotter mentions the spreading and presence of her family in the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and the German origin of her mother's and her father's families.She concludes: 'är nu ingen slächt i wart rijke större och wijdare förökat ähn mine modhers mödherne' (there is now no family in our realm that is larger and more widely multiplied than my mother's maternal kin). 63The statement echoes the blessing inherent in the multiplication of a family, based on the injunctions to procreate and the genealogies of Genesis that became important themes in the genealogical imagination in the late medieval and early modern era. 64hile she repeatedly refers to the Swedish realm as the common native land of herself and her interlocutor, the bishop, the identification with her kin is not contingent on a shared geographical or political space, even if the past migration of family members across such spaces seems to require an explanation in her narrative.Past places of settlement and belonging provide additional layers to the sense of identity that the narrative conveys.Designations as German, Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian carry meaning as signs of the family history; of genealogical origin, spreading, and connections.The prestige of her family is further emphasized through its connection to the family of Saint Birgitta: 'Saa är och ingen slächt i wart rijke ther yttermer är sammanbunden med magskap än mine slächt och Sanchte Birgitte slächt hwilka jac skulle hafwa först nämpna' (thus there is no family in our realm that is more connected through marriage than my family and Saint Birgitta's family, which I ought to have mentioned first). 65n the abbey, Anna Fickesdotter was in fact surrounded by material symbols that reminded her of her family and origin.She was part of a community of dead and living relatives, which also included close relatives who had lived with her in the convent. 66Her aunt Anna Johansdotter Bülow had entered Vadstena Abbey in 1418 and died in 1465, a few years after Anna Fickesdotter had become a nun.Anna also had an older cousin, Ermegard, and a younger sister, Beata, in the monastery.The brief commemorative descriptions of deceased members of the monastery in the memorial book of Vadstena Abbey sometimes mention details about the family of the deceased, and if they had had relatives within the convent. 67The convent community was also one of affinity and blood ties.As research has shown, countless examples of mothers-daughters or aunts-nieces within the same convents can be found for both the medieval and post-reformation period, and thus a co-existence of different forms of relatedness that also affected the memory culture. 68

A subjective voice
Anna Fickesdotter's voice is present and tangible in her narrative.The text is a testimony of her knowledge and remembrance, but she also clearly defines the boundaries of her memory by noting what she does not know or remember: 'Och hawfer jac med Gudz hielp intet annat skrifwet än thet jac weet sant wara, och thet jac icke för sanning weet, will jac inchte af sighia' (And I have, with the help of God, written nothing other than what I know to be true, and that which I do not know to be true, I will say nothing about). 69As a declaration of her intentions of recounting the truth, the statement can be seen as a conventional trope of history writing.It should not be taken as an indication of the truth value of her survey as such, but particularly for the later period, her survey has been described as remarkably accurate.It should be emphasized however, that modern-day genealogists have pointed out inaccuracies in her chronicle. 70he chronicle can be read as an ego-document, in which Anna Fickesdotter serves as a node, the 'I' in her account of her family and its ramifications. 71She addresses the Linköping bishop, her interlocutor, directly and through references to things they have in common, such as our realm, and this probably adds to the prominence of her own voice.When Bishop Brask asked Anna Fickesdotter to document her family, she was probably in her seventies.Her age is something that she emphasizes: 'af alla mina slächt badhe pa Fädherne och Möderne i wårt rijke är jac nw älst' (of all my paternal and maternal relatives in our realm, I am now the oldest). 72Her view of the past is imbued with a sense of loss: 'min Fadher och Moder hadhe tillsamman fyra döttrar och war jac theras förste barn och hafwer så när all min sysken utlifwat att af XIII lifwa icke med mic mehr än 2 bröder och en syster' (my father and mother had four daughters and I was their first child: and [I] have outlived almost all of my siblings: of 13 siblings only two brothers and one sister remain with me). 73She counts both her full sisters and her half sisters and brothers as her siblings.There is a notion of nostalgia in this remark, in the early modern sense of this concept that associates it with the complex emotions, including loss and regret that can arise through an awareness of time passing.Such an awareness of time as a subjective experience can be found also in premodern narratives, as argued by Kate Chedgzoy et al.; for the individual, 'the interplay of continuity and change is crucial to the formation of subjectivity in that memory shapes our sense of having or being a self that persists over time but is not self-identical at every moment of its existence'. 74The realization that time has deprived her of family members while she still remains alive, conveys the experience of such an interplay of continuity and change that makes up the subjective self.
What Anna Fickesdotter implies in her remark about her age and seniority is in fact an astonishing time perspective.Her father and uncle appear as adults in Swedish records around the year 1400. 75This means that Anna and her father may have shared a living, communicative memory that spanned across more than a century, from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries.The age difference between her parents was considerable as she points out; her father was a very old man and her mother a very young woman when they were married. 76Based on her text, however, women seem to have been more important for the abbess's genealogical knowledge, perhaps also due to the death of her father in the 1450s.
Anna Fickesdotter explicitly articulates a sense of frustration for the loss of potential opportunities to gain knowledge about her family's past.She impresses the fluid nature of memory on the reader in metaphorical terms -knowledge about the past can be as transient and difficult to acquire as the traces of a ship in the open sea. 77More than once in the text, she brings up the theme of lost opportunities to learn from older relatives, and she specifically refers to the women in her family such as her mother and her aunt.Youthful ignorance is blamed in a reference to a prototypical opposition between young and old. 78owever, the young generation is not the only one to blame.Anna Fickesdotter describes how her mother's strict discipline long hampered her learning of the family's past: för dy min modher opfödde mik med storan aga så att jac tordhe henne aldrog annat sporia uthan thet hon sielf williandes wille mik sighia besyndherlegha för ähn jac kom her in och sidhan sporde jac henne badhe om Fädhernis och Mödhernis slächt hwilket hon mic wisserliga och skähliga berättade (for my mother brought me up with such strict discipline that I never dared to ask her anything but that which she herself wanted to tell me, particularly before I came here, and then I asked her both about [my] paternal and maternal families, which she told me about in a well-informed and clear way). 79r testimony can be seen as an example of an oral memory culture involving a practice of transferring knowledge between the generations in a family, particularly through the women.In this case it appears as a more purposeful quest for knowledge than the tacit forms of teaching family members about what is memorable and not, which Eviatar Zerubavel describes as 'mnemonic socialization'. 80Age, or seniority, also conferred authority.In the genealogical account written by the Vadstena nun Birgitta Andersdotter, she refers her interlocutor, Kristina Nilsdotter, to the senior sisters of Skänninge monastery for verification of information about the ownership of certain properties; 81 an example both of women's roles as curators of memory and knowledge, and of the interaction between convent sisters and the external world.
Convent life of enclosure and communal practices involved a repudiation of worldly life and her family of origin, and an embracing of a new family of sisters, brothers, and even mothers in Christ.In practice, the Vadstena nuns were allowed supervised contact with their families, but they were expected only to speak of spiritual matters.However, meeting relatives on other days than the allowed day was one of the most common complaints in the visitation protocols. 82The cultivation of contacts with, or memories of, the birth family and friends outside the monastery was in principle a matter of surveillance and control.According to the rule, postulants were obliged to consign their families to oblivion (oblivio parentum) as a preparation for taking the veil. 83When she was young, God helped her to abstain from thoughts about her family, but the injunction to oblivion is something that Anna Fickesdotter identifies as a paradox in relation to her own active pursuit of genealogical knowledge and memory. 84For her, oblivion and memory were concurrent elements in convent culture.
Despite her recognition of this paradox, and as a mark of obedience, the abbess accepts the bishop's request to document her kin.For her, it is a moral obligation.By writing down her knowledge she helps to counteract what she considers to be the consequences of genealogical ignorance and forgetfulness -marriages that violate the regulations of canon law -and thus the erring of people in general, but also her own relatives, who do not keep track of their own next of kin and therefore sin against God by mixing their blood: och kan jac första att thet edher wärdighet will sadana slächter opskrifwa giörs i eena godha acht och manga till rättilse som eij witha huru när the äro skyll för hwilket manga syndha nw mothe Gudh blandades sig med sitt egit blod hwilket thywär min slächt mäst giör (and I can understand that Your Grace wishes that such families are documented for a good purpose and for the correction of many [people] who do not know how closely related they are and thus sin against God and mix their blood, something that is done frequently in my own family). 85nnubial unions ('hionalagz bandh') between close kin were a violation of God's law, she states, but nevertheless a common occurrence in her time. 86Anna Fickesdotter's family had become so numerous that its members no longer were aware of their family ties, which was their excuse when the abbess admonished them.Such forgetfulness -she adds -may reverberate badly on their descendants in the genealogical chain.To illustrate her point, she mentions how, in the time of Saint Birgitta, some families had become full of conceitedness and therefore brought about God's anger.The succeeding generations were to pay for the sin of conceit, instead of being elevated due to the success of righteous parents. 87This is not intended as a didactic example only -she adds that she can provide the bishop with the names of these families if he wishes.

Generations
Generations are an implicit structural device in the entirely textual narrative of Chronicon genealogicum.No tables or diagrams are included in the extant versions, in contrast to the genealogical book that was later produced by Bishop Hans Brask, and that represented the aristocratic families in diagrams of medallions linked by lines. 88Anna Fickesdotter begins with the earliest ancestors of her stepfather's family that she knows of, then continues with her father's and her mother's families, and their connections to other families through marriage.With some exceptions, such as references to the Trolle family, she does not use any family names; they were not commonly used in Sweden until the end of the sixteenth century when patrilinear lineage became increasingly important. 89he refers to men through their first names and patronyms, to women mainly through their first names only, but frequently together with the name of the woman's father.Each individual is thus linked to two generations through name and/or explicit mention of paternity.Both men and women are primarily identified through their fathers, which emphasizes the patriarchal bias inherent also in this bilateral kinship system.The genealogical account makes certain name-giving practices within the aristocracy apparent, such as the tendency to name children after deceased relatives or patrons. 90The significance of first names for family memory was argued by Maurice Halbwachs, who ascribed to names a particular capacity to evoke memories of both individual persons and kinship links as 'a sense of familiarity' -a recognition of both the individual and his/her position within the family. 91But Anna Fickesdotter also indicates social status by titles such as herr (indicating a knight), fru (the wife of a knight), and hustru (wife) and thus the relative position of a person within a wider social hierarchy.She records approximately 270 individuals, including 113 women, whom she identifies in relationship to parents, husband/wife (including multiple marriages), and children.The male dominance is to a large extend linked to her practice of naming fathers to identify women who marry into a family.
The genealogical information given in her chronicle represents a circulation of knowledge within a communicative memory -the kind of living, collective memory described by Jan Assmann as having a temporal horizon of three to four generations back in time.As mentioned above, Anna's own temporal outlook was considerable, given the age of her father, even if we cannot know to what extent he transmitted information to her.She traces six generations of her stepfather's family to an ancestor whom she describes as pagan.Previous scholars have noted that this remark reveals an odd sense of chronology, considering that it would indicate a more recent conversion to Christianity than presumably was acknowledged even in her time. 92A different interpretation is to see this detail as mnemonic support and as something that also suggested the long, even pre-Christian ancestry of her stepfather.
She traces her paternal Bülow family to her great-great-grandfather: four generations, herself included.But it is not a narrow vertical patriarchal lineage that she maps out.Both vertical and horizontal, paternal and maternal kinship relations are depicted, which indicates the chronicle's bearing on legal and marital practices.References to multiple kinship bonds illustrate the complex reality of kinship.She explains her own relationship to Nils Bosson Grip in two ways that clearly serve to emphasize both the maternal and the paternal links; he is her father's sister's daughter's grandson, and also her mother's mother's sister's daughter's son (in other words, he is her cousin's grandson as well as the son of a second cousin). 93The familial definition of a person in this genealogical system naturally depends on who the ego is (in many cases herself).Such genealogical conclusions indicate an agile mind, not least in terms of memory, but as will be seen below, Anna Fickesdotter also relied on oral and written sources.

Family and politics
The successive, interwoven generations accounted for in Chronicon Genealogicum constitute the family ('slächt') as a continuous, temporal entity.However, the changing circumstances of individual members and the uncertainties of procreation could also make the social and economic status of a family fragile.More specific chronological details are absent from the narrative.Generational and political time, with rulers and events, provides a temporal framework.This is particularly apparent when Anna Fickesdotter describes her paternal ancestors, the Bülow family, and their decision to settle down in the Swedish realm.She admits to her imperfect knowledge about her father's early life, which may indicate that he was not a primary source of information about the family's past.She knows that he was in Sweden in the reign of King Erik (r.1396-1439) and his consort, Queen Philippa, but she believes that he may have been in the realm even in the time of King Albrecht of Mecklenburg (r.1364-1389), when there was war and rebellion. 94The political unrest and the king's lack of money provided opportunities for noblemen.Her father acquired the fiefs Vartofta and Ettak in the Swedish province of Västergötland as security for a loan to the king.But, as she also notes, political power may shift; what was once given as security to her father, was taken back by Sten Sture the Elder, one of the later Swedish regents. 95According to the abbess, no compensation was offered to her widowed mother or siblings.In her narrative, family history is interlinked with the political history of the Swedish realm, on both a genealogical and structural level.The Sture family that produced two regents of the realm in the early sixteenth century -was in fact part of her own genealogical tree.Svante Nilsson Sture was married to Iliana Erengisledotter (Gädda), the daughter of one of Anna Fickesdotter's cousins, and Iliana's son, Sten Sture the Younger, also regent of the realm, was therefore related to the abbess. 96he political connections were important on her mother's side as well.Anna Fickesdotter emphasizes the close bonds between her maternal grandparents and King Erik and Queen Philippa.According to what she had been told, her maternal great-grandmother Beata [von Thienen] had been born in German lands, and was related to King Erik.According to the abbess, the love that the royal couple showed Beata's children validated this claim.The king and queen took care of some of the young women of the family and married them off in Sweden. 97There were important political connections on her father's side as well.It is likely that Anna Fickesdotter's cousin, Filippa Hansdotter was named after Queen Philippa.The queen was an important benefactress of the Birgittines in Vadstena and was buried there in 1430. 98Recollections of the early history of the family in Sweden are thus intimately linked to the political history and successive regimes of the time.
In addition to royal reigns, battlefields such as Brunkeberg and Ditmarsken were part of the family history, representing the loss of male members.From Anna Fickesdotter's point of view, the Brunkeberg battle of 1471 in Sweden occurred more than forty years ago, while the Danes' battle against the peasant community in Ditmarsken in 1500 was a more recent event that had caused the Danish king a huge loss of men and prestige.Criticism against the king can be detected in one of her comments; despite the death of knights in his service and the sufferings of their family, he withdrew estates and inheritance from them. 99amily memory exists at a junction between the past and the future, remembering ancestors while anticipating the future. 100Anna Fickesdotter expresses hope for the future of one family: 'edher nadhe weet wähl att the hade månge barn badhe söner och döttrar tillsamma ther ma och komma en stor slächt uthaf om Gudh så täkkes' (Your Honour knows well that they had many children, both sons and daughters together/a large family [of descendants] may issue from this, God willing). 101However, a concerned sense of foreboding -or wry sense of humour -can also be detected in the abbess's hope that the children of the Danish aristocrat and regnal councillor Jens Holgersson (Ulfstand) must not take after their father or grandfather, who both stemmed from 'een hard root' (a harsh root). 102The metaphor is reminiscent not only of Biblical root imagery, but also of the Swedish proverb 'ond rooth bär elack frucht' (bad root bears bad fruit), recorded in a seventeenth-century collection. 103Family and kinship had long been visualized and represented through horticultural, arboreal metaphors as something that grows organically and cohesively, most famously in the form of family trees -a genealogical image that became even more significant in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 104

Memory, knowledge, and identity
In her text, Anna Fickesdotter inscribes herself as the recollecting self, probing the outskirts of her memory in her attempt to identify and name all the children of a particular marriage, their respective marriage partners, and in turn, the parents of these partners.She identifies gaps in her recollection and knowledge, and in the acknowledgement of these gaps, she also reveals sources that she has used for her account in addition to her own memory.She mentions documents that she has in front of her, but which she is doubtful about. 105She refers to pieces of information known to both herself and the bishop.She refers him to other persons who can provide him with information or who own documents that may contain useful details; for information about the children of her cousin Katarina Knutsdotter, in her second marriage to Ragvald Gustafsson she refers the bishop to Nils Bosson, who will find the details in his land deeds. 106She has also written letters to people, asking for information and expecting answers from them.It is clear from these remarks that her account is both the result of her own memory and of efforts to find out more through written and oral sources.
In her narrative, it is also clear that memories help to sustain, or even trigger, other memories.Anecdotes and personal recollections, possibly part of an oral, familial, communicative memory, are interspersed with the genealogical details of the narrative.She emphasizes how her father, uncle, and grandfather were all dubbed knights at the Holy Sepulchre. 107The abbess also tells the story of the cruel death of Count Hans von Everstein [Eberstein], mentioned above, who was married to her paternal aunt, Ermegård Johansdotter Bülow.Count Hans was a prominent figure in the political arena of the Kalmar Union; a member of both the Swedish and the Danish councils of the realm, and in the service of the successive union kings Erik and Christopher.In 1446, the count was on a sea voyage with King Christopher when their ship foundered.The disastrous event and the king's loss of gold and silver was noted in contemporary chronicles, but Anna Fickesdotter's account shows how the memory of Count Hans's death apparently also had survived within the Bülow family for decades in elaborate detail. 108According to Anna Fickesdotter, the count was on a sea voyage with King Erik (sic) when the ship foundered. 109The king was rescued into a boat.When he saw Count Hans in the water, he ordered that the count should be rescued as well, since the king loved him.An envious enemy cut off Hans's hands, stole his golden chain, and pushed him back into the sea, only to immediately be killed himself.She mentions how her aunt arranged for her husband to be buried in Vadstena, displaying his armour and valuable horses, which she then donated to the monastery.She concludes by lauding the count's donations to Vadstena.Count Hans himself had paid for one of the abbey's glass windows and his coat of arms, featuring a lion, was displayed in the abbey, as a mnemonic fixture for posterity.Anna's aunt died as early as 1421, so she cannot have been involved in his burial in Vadstena, but the dramatic circumstances of her husband's death evidently gave him a place in the family history.
The abbess relates a similarly tragic story concerning her two maternal uncles, Ohlred and Gewärt, who were devoted students and 'kosteliga wällärde' (very learned). 110ccording to her, they were the only sons of her grandfather (who also had three daughters), and therefore, he did not want both of them to pursue careers within the church.He only allowed one of the brothers to return to his studies.When the young man was about to board the ship, he fell into the water and drowned.The remaining brother grieved so hard for the loss of his brother that he also died.The veracity of the story is difficult to establish.Genealogical tables mention only the daughters of Albrekt Bydelsbach and his wife, Anna Eriksdotter Krummedige, and no sons. 111amily memory was not only about death and sorrow.Anna Fickesdotter also tells a story about her maternal grandfather, Albrekt Bydelsbach, commander of the Bohus castle.The anecdote is interesting since it brings to mind the well-known apple-shot motif associated with Wilhelm Tell, and also present in the thirteenth-century chronicle Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. 112According to her story, Albrekt Bydelsbach once put a marksman to the test by asking him to try to hit the marten fur hat on his own head.Her grandmother cried and protested against such a godless idea that could make his children fatherless, but to no avail.It is a brief anecdote; one that it is easy to imagine being told on countless family occasions and thus surviving as a shared family memory.

Conclusion
Chronicon Genealogicum by Anna Fickesdotter Bülow, together with some other written texts by Vadstena nuns, are the first, but not the last examples of systematic genealogies written by women in medieval and early modern Sweden.The tradition of women writing family books continued in Sweden, as in many other areas in the early modern period.They reflect the role of women in the transmission and commemoration of family history, and genealogy as a gendered imagination and practice.Anna Fickesdotter's narrative has been analysed as an expression of memory culture; a concrete instance of cultural memory that can be studied in terms of its social, mental, and material dimensions, involving space, social interactions, norms and ideals.The narrative reflects an aristocratic memory culture, actively upheld in a monastic setting that encouraged female literacy and learning.Despite a strict enclosure, convent members were not isolated from the surrounding world; the sisters evidently learned about and recorded familial events and the genealogical ramifications of aristocratic families.The narrative also reflects a genealogical imagination where kinship was construed as bilateral relationships, albeit with a patriarchal bias, and family history as a genealogical chain of generations within a temporal framework governed by political events.
Material artefacts within the abbey commemorated donors and patrons of the monastery; among them family members of Anna Fickesdotter.Dead and living members of her family were present in the abbey.The sisters formed a community that was held together by spiritual, affinal, and sometimes also blood bonds.Memory culture as a mental dimension is expressed through the genealogical imagination, the sense of self, family and history, and the moral duty of imprinting the fundamental importance of knowing one's kin in order to avoid sin.Anna Fickesdotter also reveals the awareness of the transience of time, the precarious nature of memories, and the sense of loss inherent in remembering the past in old age.