Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 2 (2012), p. 326

Compared to the enormous influence of authors such as Bloch, Duby and Ladurie in bringing studies of medieval feudalism and the western European peasantry to an international audience, Scandinavian writing on medieval lordship and landed culture has so far had less impact. This is not because the field is devoid of useful, exciting research because, as this book shows, there is plenty of that. This handsome edited volume arises from an interdisciplinary conference at Aarhus in 2008, and includes contributions from the Scandinavian countries and the UK. Historical analyses are accompanied by contributions on settlement archaeology, burials, poetry, architecture and runic inscriptions. A core theme of the volume is in debating the transition between lordship in the Viking period and into the middle ages, characterized as one moving from a society based on warfare, paganism, tribute and personal relationships between lords and free peasants, to one based on serfdom, alienable land rights, Christianity, kingship and legal status. A recurrent contention throughout this collection of papers concerns the debate between those (termed ‘primordialists’) who believe that medieval estates in Scandinavia are direct successors of Iron Age and Viking practices of landholding, and ‘modernists’ who perceive a major step-change in landholding culture, coincident with religious conversion and economic changes, in about 1000 ad. Indeed, some may even feel that this collection conveys a hint of how landholding could have developed in England, had not the Normans invaded and eclipsed the legacies of Cnut and his successors.

Judith Jesch, Anne Pedersen and Lars Hermanson bring evidence from runic inscriptions (particularly those which contain references to land ownership), burial finds, and military organization, to bear upon the perceived ideological transition, where Christianity and its ideology of divine ordination of kingship eclipsed earlier reciprocal social bonds, to the extent that by the twelfth century churches were being built over high-status tenth-century pagan graves with no respect for, or even knowledge of, their presence. Inevitably in this context, the concept of status in rural settlement archaeology is explored in detail. Excavations of hall-houses and major medieval magnate farms in Jutland are explored in relation to their Viking Age antecedents by Morten Sovsø, and the archaeological evidence for the insertion of churches into these settlement complexes is explored by Jens Jeppesen. Landscape and architectural expressions of aristocratic status are discussed by Martin Hansson. These papers are accompanied by historical and toponymic studies of demesne farms, manors and parish formation in (Danish) Sjaelland and (Swedish) Östergötland by Erik Ulsig, J. G. G. Jakobsen and Clas Tollin. Further analysis of the impact of Roman Catholic institutions on land is provided by Nils Hybel, while Carsten Porskrog Rasmussen provides an overview of related secular developments in Danish crown lands before and after 1230 ad. Bjørn Poulsen speculates on the types and impacts of taxes, rent and render, which may have existed in Denmark in the Viking Age to medieval transition.

Dagfinn Skre debates the changing role of Viking Age royal power in relation to trade and markets, testing concepts such as central place theory, and situates nascent urbanization in places such as Birka and his own excavation site at Kaupang in relation to magnate politics, local assembly governance, craft production and the development of central tribute-gathering estates. Søren Sindbæk contributes a historical and toponymic study of outfield development and the opening up of new lands and resources to agriculture, which keys with two other contributions later in the volume. These, by Frode Iversen and Janken Myrdal respectively, focus on the role of slavery and freedmen, and the daily grind of agricultural production in the landscape, the latter adding a down-to-earth agrarian flavour to the synthetic and thematic overviews of several of the other papers.

The volume is a relatively dense collection of papers, well-freighted in research detail, and it also benefits from a useful and clear introduction which sets out its stall well. The illustrations are few and not of particularly high quality of reproduction, although the cover is attractively designed. It is by no means a cheap purchase. To active researchers in this particular field it will be an indispensable acquisition but many other interested scholars may decide to wait for their library to acquire it.