Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050-1250, Volume I

Material Resources

Bjørn Poulsen, Helle Vogt, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429557286
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book, first in a series of three, examines the social elites in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, and which social, political, and cultural resources went into their creation. The elite controlled enormous economic resources and exercised power over people. Power over agrarian production was essential to the elites during this period, although mobile capital was becoming increasingly important. The book focuses on the material resources of the elites, through questions such as: Which types of resources were at play? How did the elites acquire and exchange resources?

1 Changes in the Nordic Elites’ Way of Extracting a Surplus from Landed Resources

Tore Iversen and John Ragnar Myking

A substantial part of the Nordic elites’ income came from landed resources. However, the way they extracted a surplus from these resources changed fundamentally between the beginning of the twelfth and the end of the thirteenth century. At the beginning of this period, the elite economy was based on control over the people who worked the land. By the end of the same period, the primary income was rent from land leased out to tenants, combined in Sweden and Denmark with demesne farming. This transformation from controlling people to controlling land took different forms and occurred at different speeds in the Nordic countries, depending on topographical factors as well as the strength of the different countries’ elites. The aim of this contribution is to throw new light on this transformation and its implications for the economic base of the Nordic elites.

The idea that controlling people was an essential part of the elites’ way of appropriating a surplus from landed resources has been around for almost a century in the continental European historical tradition, represented by historians like Mark Bloch.¹ For a long time. Nordic historians clung to the view, inspired by the Germanistic nineteenth-century tradition, that the Nordic countries represented a Nordic Sonderweg, with a majority of free, allodial bændr (householders (singular bóndi)), in contrast to the western European medieval manorial system.² Since the 1990s, the concept of a Nordic Sonderweg has given way to a new dominant concept, most clearly formulated in Norway and Sweden. According to this view, magnates around 1050 controlled a number of unfree persons (slaves and descendants of slaves) as well as a population of dependent free bændr from their bases on multiple estates. Unlike many continental estates, these multiple estates were made up of diversified resources encircling the central settlement.³ Such a system conforms well with the idea of a tributary society, in which persons owed loyalty and various duties to their lord.⁴ The existence of a considerable number of allodial bændr, documented in all Nordic countries,⁵ may have been incorporated into such a system as well.

While there seems to be a growing consensus about the way the Nordic elites managed to draw an economic surplus from people working the land in the eleventh century, the actual transformation from tributary contributions, as tokens of acknowledgment and assurance of peace and protection, to a rent-based tenant system has been much less studied. Before addressing this problem in detail within each of the Nordic countries, a sketch of the general development of these societies in two stages between the end of the eleventh century and the end of the thirteenth may serve as an introduction to the problem. We must, however, be aware that, due to topographical as well as other factors, the structures of the various Nordic agrarian societies can be quite dissimilar and that comparing individual Nordic societies with selected western European ones may, in some cases, be more productive than inter-Nordic comparative studies.

Stage I: Around 1050, the Nordic countries were quite stratified. At the bottom of this agrarian society we find a large unfree population, while a stratified group of bændr, including a fairly independent top segment, constituted the majority. Furthermore, a small group of unfree men played an important role in the service of kings and lords.⁶ At the top, a class of local magnates received contributions from the peasant society. These types of contributions cannot be classified as “tax” or “land rent.” They were rather a form of undefined “tribute” belonging to what Rosamond Faith characterizes as “extensive lordship” on multiple estates in a prefeudal period. The social relations on a multiple estate can be characterized as tributary relations between patrons and clients. Services and usually modest tributes were perceived as gifts of honor rather than rent. Examples of “extensive lordship” along the Norwegian coast and in Iceland, much the same as those described by Faith for England, are well-known from the Icelandic sagas.⁷

The origins of lordship can thus be found in execution of power (dominion) rather than in purely economic exploitation. A magnate received contributions of different kinds because he ruled over a territory, not because he owned the land. These magnates of well-known families had long been competing with one another or building temporary alliances. In time, some of them managed to establish supremacy over other chieftains, as manifested in the establishment of the three Nordic kingdoms, of which the Danish kingdom was the first. During this process, the Church came to play an important role.

Stage II: In western Europe and the Nordic countries, especially in Denmark and Norway, we witness, from the end of the twelfth century, a gradual growth of princely states in which a sovereign gains supremacy through an alliance with the Church. In this process, magnates involved in constant conflicts sought protection in binding relations with their king. This triggered a transformation from a local or regional class of magnates to a territorial aristocracy with close ties to the sovereign. At the same time, the royal power became increasingly bureaucratized, with a more formal administration and a clearer distinction between man and office.⁸

Most importantly, this marks the beginning of an ecclesiastical and royal jurisdiction inspired by a common European legal background. In this period, the Nordic societies became more clearly divided between an upper layer of society, consisting of the royal power, the Church, and the aristocracy, and a stratified peasant society. In the Nordic countries, an increase in population, the clearing of new land, and, by the thirteenth century, the slowly fading distinction between free and unfree men were all important factors contributing to the reorganization (Denmark and Sweden) or dissolution (Norway) of the large magnate manors, as well as the gradual formation of rental-based tenant systems in all three countries, in Norway based on ideal parts of scattered possessions.

In the transition from stage I to stage II, new and clearly defined concepts of secular authority, possession, and ownership developed, concepts that facilitated the nonpersonal transfer of assets from the people working the land to the landowning elites. The Swedish historian Johan Berg has named this process the “territorializing of power.” This shift is seen from the point of view of the emerging state based on control over territory rather than over people. From the perspective of local elites, this development actually resulted in a deterritorialization, in which control no longer relied on the physical presence of a local magnate—his place of residence did not matter, as control was now exercised through territorial power.⁹

In the following we will try to trace the development toward a tenant-based system separately in each of the Nordic countries before turning to a comparative discussion of this development in a pan-Nordic setting.

Norway

The case of Norway is especially well suited to a study of this transition because its provincial laws reveal the development in the concepts of landed property and land leasing. We will therefore start with and focus especially on the development in this country, which may also shed light on the development in the other Nordic kingdoms.

Three laws influenced or issued by the Norwegian king, the Gulathing Law, the Frostathing Law, and the Norwegian National Law, can be dated to a period stretching over more than one hundred years.¹⁰ The oldest preserved law in the Nordic countries is the Gulathing Law, a law covering western Norway. The oldest edition, which is only fragmentarily preserved, was finished sometime around the year 1100. The next, almost fully preserved edition was put into writing in the 1160s. The Gulathing Law can be seen as representative of the twelfth century around 1160–70. Another law, the Frostathing Law, covering Trøndelag in central Norway, exists in several editions. The most important one is believed to be representative of the period before the 1220s. In the redactions of the Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law, previous royal amendments (réttarbætr) showing agreements between the king and the bændr were also included. Finally, the Norwegian National Law was issued by King Magnus VI lagabœtir (“Lawmender”) in 1274.

These laws offer insight into the development of the concept of landed property. They also show how land leasing evolved and was administered by the elites. Two other sources, charters and cadasters, also throw light on this development. Several charters, containing tenure contracts from the end of the thirteenth to the first half of the fourteenth century, document the character of a rental-based tenant system. This development can also be traced through medieval cadasters. We will first look at the oldest sources, the laws, and then turn to the later sources, the charters and cadasters. The Norwegian laws can shed light on the development of land rent in a qualitative sense. These laws are, of course, normative sources, expressing only the lawmakers’ intentions, but their intentions were rooted in the real issues they wanted to regulate. Charters can primarily be used to give a quantitative estimate of the length of tenant contracts, while cadasters may be used retrospectively to show how large systems of scattered possessions were accumulated.

Concepts of Secular Authority and Possession

In a comparative European and Nordic perspective, it is evident that property was not clearly separated from secular authority before the end of the twelfth century, primarily because there was no clear distinction between private and public domains. The historian Susan Reynolds maintains that there existed in the early Middle Ages neither social conditions for such a distinction as authority over and rights to land nor a market for land—and hardly any royal bureaucracy.¹¹ In contrast to later laws, the Gulathing Law from around 1160 does not use the noun eign to represent a concept for landed property, nor does it distinguish between the two meanings of the verb eiga: “to own landed property” and “to have authority and control over people.” In the Gulathing Law, as in other early medieval European sources, we find that the verb eiga (to own) bears a variety of connotations. In connection with landed property, it can mean everything from “full” ownership/authority (allodium) to all sorts of partial ownership or control, for instance the right to use land.

Eiga could also be used when the owner of the right to use the land had a commitment to pay rent. Different rights for several owners could thus be connected to one and the same thing.¹² It may thus be argued that the concept of eiga did not have a fixed definition when used in relation to landed property. On the other hand, the verb eiga reflects a wide range of concrete relations to authority. That the same verb, eiga, is used to denote both concrete property, like land and physical items, and abstract concepts, like authority, privileges, and claims, must mean that the Gulathing Law distinguished between these separate connotations of eiga to a lesser degree than later laws.¹³

In the Gulathing Law, there are only rudiments of contrasting concepts dealing with land leasing and landownership, while they are common in the Frostathing Law and the Norwegian National Law. Before the end of the twelfth century, we find relatively large multiple estates in Norway belonging to the aristocratic elites as well as royal demesnes run by administrators (ármenn) with a wide range of duties. Except for their control over the unfree workforce, the elites’ authority over people and the income from their multiple estates was rather loose, built on a patron–client relationship involving tribute. This began to change, especially during the twelfth century. Through negotiations with bændr, probably led by the most prominent among them, the king managed to start a transition from tribute/“gifts” (from the verb veita, to give) toward a fixed tax, the leiðangr, to the king.

The lack of distinction between secular authority and property can also be traced in the wide range of responsibi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Changes in the Nordic Elites’ Way of Extracting a Surplus from Landed Resources
• 2 From Slavery to Tenant Farming: Elite Economies in the Nordic Area c. 1050–1250
• 3 The Early Introduction of the Moldboard Plow in Denmark: Agrarian Technology and the Medieval Elites
• 4 Inheritance and Transfer of Landed Property: The Material Fundament of the Elites
• 5 Silver, Land, Towns, and the Elites: Social and Legal Aspects of Silver in Scandinavia c. 850–1150
• 6 The Elites and Money
• 7 Customs and Toll in the Nordic Area c. 800–1300
• 8 Holding Royal Office and the Creation and Consolidation of the Elites in Scandinavia c. 1050–1250
• 9 The Social Elites and Incomes from Churches c. 1050–1250
• 10 The Icelandic Chieftains and Their Economic Foundation c. 1050–1250
• 11 Afterword
• Contributors
• Index