Simone Abram ‘Inheriting Kinship: Norwegian Holdiay Property as Relational Practice’. In Nordic Inheritance Law through the Ages: Spaces of action and legal strategies (edited by Marianne Holdgaard, Au∂ur Magnúsdóttir and Bodil Selmer). Brill|Nihoff 2020 (pp251-271).
This book chapter approaches inheritance as a form of intergenerational gift, with reference to anthropological theories of exchange and kinship. It considers a particular kind of property, the Norwegian holiday home, and the distinctive practices attached to its use and inheritance. The chapter shows how the holiday home attracts a particularly acute role in family relations during the process of inheritance from parents to children, and illustrates how legal concepts are adopted from one arena and applied to another.
It features in a book that explores the significance of inheritance law from medieval times to the present through topical and in-depth studies that bring life to historical and contemporary inheritance practices. The contributions cover three themes: status of persons and options in the process of property devolution; wills, gift-giving and legal disputes as means to shape the working of the law; processes of inheritance legislation.
The authors focus on instances where legal strategies of various actors particularly reveal inheritance law as a contested and yet constrained space of action, and somewhat surprisingly show similar solutions to family law issues dealt with in other Western European countries.
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