The purpose of this thesis in Archival Science is to examine what standard of living the civil servants who worked for the Swedish National Archives had in the 1610- and 1620s. The examination is based on Pierre Bourdieus theory of society. The theory views society as a field with distinct social rooms and in each room the agents act to create one’s own capital. Every agent aims to create economical, material, social and cultural capital. Previous research within the field has primarly been about the Swedish state and the secretariat’s progress but the examined agents have been examined to a lesser extent. During the examined period the state chancellor Axel Oxenstierna was a key figure and patron in the Swedish state’s progress and employment of civil servants. The examined agents were born commons thus the oppurtunities were limited and they reached the civil servant employment through the patron-client relationship. Thus the examination aimed to answer two questions, what standard of living the civil servants had and if they were a part of the patron-client relationship. The methodology employed is qualitative. A literature review has been undertaken and qualitative hermeneutics method has been used to examine the texts about the civil servants standard of living.

The examination’s first part is a historical background which has showed that the Swedish state and secreterait had an unstable progess during the 1600th-century. When Gustavus Adoplhus became king in 1611 and Axel Oxenstierna state chancellor in 1612 the prerequisites for a stable state and secretariat were founded. As the state became stable the centralization to Stockholm began as well. It is in this historical context the examined civil servants are examined, as the first urban civil servants centralized to Stockholm. As the source material was surveyed typical problems with material preserved about commoners of this time were found. Only one civil servant had enough source material to give enough scientific credibility. His name was Andreas Olai Gerslinus and was employed in the secretariat in 1614 and the Swedish National Archives 1618. The examination has showed that he throughout the whole examined period had a high social and cultural capital. He had relationships with both scholars and men of high nobility. His role as a civil servant of the Swedish National Archives gave him a natural high cultural capital due to the information he possessed. His economical and material capital was low in the 1610s but during the same time he had enough capital to buy two homesteads. The low capital was the results of war and the debt for Älvsborg. During the 1620s his economical capital became reliable and he moved to Åbo in 1623 to pursue a more reputable employment until his death in 1628. This was also common for the civil servants to constantly change social room to be able to build more capital. The second question regarding the patron-client relationship has shown that Andreas Olai Gerslinus was a client for the patron Axel Oxenstierna. The last part of the essay is a concluding discussion about the results gathered during the examination.