an exception. By law, both sons and daughters could inherit properties but the sons would get double the amount that of the daughter. The Swedish law protected women from the authority of their husbands by transferring the authority to their male relatives. A wife's property and land also could not be taken by the husband without her family's consent but neither could the wife. This meant a woman could not transfer her property to her husband without her family or kinsman's consent either. Under the Civil Code of Christian V from 1683, the law of Denmark-Norway defined and unmarried female under the guardianship of her closest male relative regardless of her age, while a married woman was under the couverture of her husband. The same law terms was applied in Sweden-Finland in accordance with the Civil Code of 1734. Both the Civil Code of 1683 in the case of Denmark-Norway, and the Civil Code of 1734 in the case of Sweden-Finland, remained in place more or less unaltered until the mid 19th-century. Ireland Ancient Irish laws generally portray a patriarchal and patrilineal society in which the rules of inheritance were based on agnatic descent. The Brehon law excepted women from the ordinary course of the law. They could distrain or contract only in certain named cases, and distress upon their property was regulated by special rules. In general, every woman had to have a male guardian. Women seem not to have been entitled to the slightest possession of land under the Brehon law, but rather had assigned to them a certain number of their father's cattle as their marriage-portion. However, their legal status was not as low as in some other cultures; and it seems that the status of Irish women improved somewhat with time, especially after the introduction of Christianity. For instance, beginning in the eighth century, female heirs inherited real estate if they had no brothers. These women became known as "heiresses" and, while only a small minority of women living at this time, they could exercise a considerable amount of political and legal influence. If an heiress married a landless husband, she was seen as his legal guardian, leading to a very unusual case of complete gender role reversal. However, most women did not own land and remained more or less dependent on their husbands; under the ancient Brehon laws one could not be counted as a