skiftes

Skiftes is a term used in several Scandinavian languages with related meanings tied to division, exchange, or distribution. The common root verb skifta (Swedish), skifte (Norwegian/Danish), or similar forms means to move, split, or swap, and skiftes appears in various grammatical forms depending on language and tense.

In legal use, skifte refers to the settlement and distribution of a deceased person’s estate. In Norwegian and Danish legal language, the process of distributing assets, paying debts, and transferring property to heirs is described as boets/skiftet eller boets skifte. A court or estate administrator oversees the procedure, which typically includes inventory, valuation, and debt settlement before final distribution.

In historical agricultural contexts, especially in Sweden, skifte denotes land reforms that reorganized open-field farming into individually owned plots. These reforms, known as enskifte (also called enfolded or single-field shifts) and storskifte (great shift), aimed to improve productivity by redefining land boundaries and dissolving communal strips. The term survives in historical and geographical references to the former land division system.

Beyond these uses, skifte and its related forms also function as common verb forms meaning to switch, exchange, or alternate, with the precise meaning dictated by context and the specific language (Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish) in which it appears.

See also: skrift, skift, and the historical concepts of land reform in Scandinavian agrarian history.