Frode Iversen

This article discusses the centralisation of religious ritual practices in Scandinavia in the second half of the first millennium. This is explored through detailed investigation of the courtyard sites at Skei and Heggstad, Inner Trøndelag, Norway, set in relation to Mære, a nearby pre-Christian cult site, as well as early 11th century county churches established by the king. This study establishes that the number of houses in the courtyard sites correspond with the number of local administrative district within the shires (fylkir) of Verdal and Sparbyggja. This raises the question whether these sites were ‘shire level’ cult sites, subordinate to Mære, which served all four fylkir of Inner Trøndelag. Both Skei and Heggstad are surrounded by several large burial mounds, and exhibit traces of feasting. It is concluded that the courtyard sites were places where local politics were acted out, together with cultic and religious matters, as politics, religion and law were closely interwoven, and ancestor worship was also important. The last Earl of Lade was exiled from Trøndelag and Norway in ca. 1015 and the town of Nidaros was becoming increasingly important. During this period the king may have taken control of Mære, and other centres associated with the earldom and elites of Trøndelag. The two courtyard sites of Skei and Heggstad fell into disuse in this turbulent period. It is proposed that the pre-Christian cultic and legal system driven by the regional elite was transformed into a royal, Christian, system supporting larger polities and emerging kingship.

In Scandinavia, large scale abandonment of farms and farmlands is recorded in the 6th century. Most scholars today argue that this was linked to contemporary plague epidemics and climate change. The different social strategies for adapting to this crisis are, however, poorly understood. This paper investigates some of the largest, excavated, elite settlements in eastern Norway, and how these developed throughout this period. One strategy to counteract the crisis seems to have been to divide old estates into smaller production units. The lack of labourers may have led to problems maintaining production levels on the estates. The fact that more than 70% of the larger settlements abandoned during the Migration Period are located on the boundaries of later historic farms, supports this theory. This is further strengthened by an in-depth analysis of five larger settlements in eastern Norway, which were abandoned or reorganised in the mid-6th century.

This article argues that the functions of the huseby farms in the early Scandinavian kingdoms were primarily of an economic nature, and that these farms served as centres for collection of royal fees and fines. This is further investigated in Norway.The huseby system was probably established in the 10th century. There were many regional variations within the huseby system. Along the coast of Northern Norway and outside Trøndelag the huseby farms correspond well with the historic shires/counties (historical taxation units). In the heart of Trøndelag the organisation was different. Western Norway, Agder and Grenland show an interesting and shifting structure. In Eastern Norway the situation was more complex: east of the Oslo fjord the huseby farms correspond with the shires, but on the west side the huseby farms seem more closely related to supposedly older ship districts. For Bohuslän, the connections are more unclear.  In the 13th and 14th centuries, the royal castles in towns took over the role as stores for the taxes and fees and the Huseby-system vanished.

This article addresses the question of how vast societies were created by increased interaction among smaller communities through judicial cooperation. This process is explored through two case studies of the law provinces of (1) Gulathing and (2) Hålogaland, Norway, covering a time span of nearly a millennium, from the 3rd to 13th century. Central to the discussion of the early phase, during the 3rd–10th centuries, are the courtyard sites of Åse and Bjarkøy, Hålogaland, providing key materials to these developments in a northern European context. This material is supplemented by a case study of the Gulathing law area, which is one of only a few Scandinavian cases where the development can be more securely traced from the 11th to the 13th centuries. In addition, population size and the number of delegates present at the representative thing are considered.

This article discusses the relationship between the development of lawparishes in Eastern Norway and urban hinterlands, in particular the case for Oslo. New trade monopoly regions developed across old provinciallaw areas in the 13th and 14th centuries. The mountain areas in inland Norway gradually became integrated in the urban economy in the coastal towns of Skien, Tønsberg, and Oslo. This integration represents a significant change in patterns of interaction in Southern Norway and shouldbe seen in connection with the towns’ increased importance. The development of a common law man (judge) for urban and rural areas, combined with the relocation of rural law things to urban centers, were keyfactors in the development.

Hålogaland becomes a law area: Prior to the mid-12th century Hålogaland, Northern Norway became a law area. This article discussed the process leading up to this, examining the 12–13 known courtyard sites (AD 200–900) of Hålogaland. A courtyard site is essentially a collection of houses or booths situated around an oval semi-circular open space (yard), and have recently been interpreted as representational thing-sites. It is demonstrated that the number of houses at the sites corresponds with the number of local thing district within shires and half-shires, recorded in the late Middle Ages, suggesting a system where communities had their own booth at the assembly site. It is argued that the former administrative landscape consisted of three shires, six half-shires and 44 local units, which were replaced by a single law area, 13 ship-districts and 44 local units.

Prior to the 7th century, several small sites existed, which gradually became obsolete, until only three large sites were left, each central in a shire. A major shift occurred in the 10th century when the naval defence system known as the leiðangr was introduced, and later a new law thing for Hålogaland was established at Steigen, Engeløya in the mid-region.

This article discusses the archaeologically excavated settlement sites in South-Eastern Norway in relation to three hypotheses under discussion in Scandinavian archaeology. It is suggested that also processes of inheritance and landownership is important to understand the changing settlement pattern on the threshold of the Merovingian period. Changes of hereditary rights may then have been a strategy that was motivated by and stimulated to this desired development of both larger estates and split up settlements and farm land.

This article argues that changes in property structures, from clustered estate systems in the Early Middle Ages to more scattered systems in the Late Middle Ages are an indication of the reduced importance of hunting for the royal household economy in Norway during the Middle Ages. Place-name evidence close to royal manors is seen as a possible indication of tributes or dues paid in-kind to the king during the Early Middle Ages, and is compared to commodities and land rent of royal land in the Late Middle Ages.

This article deals with the geographical organization of the thing system of Northern Europe prior to the processes of supra-regional kingdoms in the 8th to 10th centuries, re-evaluating the early written evidence. It is argued that at least three interrelated geographical judicial units (referred to as civitas, pagus, and centena) existed prior to the 6th century within the historic areas of Austrasia, Frisia, and Saxony. Parallels to such a tripartite system are found in Scandinavia and Iceland in the 10–12 th centuries.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the present archaeo-logical excavation practice in Norway in regards to research and the pro-duction of knowledge? In this article, an overview of the historic develop-ment of the cultural heritage management will be given and how it has come to shape the current legislation.

This article argues that the development of the so-called bona regalia represent a key to understanding the growth of supra-regional power in Northern Europe. Bona regalia were royal property and farms belonging to royal office – to the crown, and not the king in person. Bona patrimonialia was on the other hand, the kings dynastic property. I will also highlight the fact that these two types of royal manors/estates/ rights had uneven distribution within the states of northern Europe. The hypothesis is that bona regalia were closely associated with the establishment of the supra-regional royal power in submitted regions.

This paper concerns royal villas and state formation in Northern Europe c. 500–1200 AD, comparing Carolingian, Anglosaxon and Scandinavian developments. In the mainly rural society in the Middle Ages, political and economic power rested on control over land and people. The king and his followers travelled between a limited numbers of royal villas, located in the coastal areas or by important route-ways and rivers. Due to urbanisation and supra-regional state formation, this system gradually changed. Around 900–1100 AD, new urban centres gradually became the king’s residences and powerbase. During the High Middle Ages, many of the old rural royal manors and estates were split up and donated to secular allies and ecclesiastical institutions such as bishops, monasteries, and churches.

The uploaded version has not been proofread. At the end of the document, I have added the figures in higher resolution.

Recent Norwegian research on landed property in the Early Medieval Period seen in the light of contemporary research in other North West European countries. The existence and extent of landed aristocracy in the Early Middle Ages has been a hot research topic in northern Europe during the last decade. This paper claims that in spite of differing research traditions and empirical outsets, the basic organization and development of the Early Medieval societies followed very much the same lines everywhere in the region, though perhaps not strictly simultaneously. This is a relatively new recognition inrelation to the traditionalistic Norwegian
stress on the otherness of the country.

Keywords: research traditions, medieval, manor houses, settlement organisation, state formation

During the Viking Age, raids took place from Western Norway towards The British Isles. 146 sites containing insular objects ("Viking loot") are known in Western Norway. In this article, the sites are studied in context of the landscape of power. It is argued that insular objects were important resources for returned Viking-warriors. Typically, such objects have been found in graves in the inner areas of Western Norway. Traditionally, these areas have been dominated by free landownership. On the other side, royal power had a strong presence in the coastal areas characterised by large scale ownership and slave economy. Only a few insular objects are known from the coastal areas. It is argued that behind the Viking raids lay an alliance between the "coastal kings" and "inland farmers".

The article discusses the representation and presentation of burial mounds in western Norway, and the effects caused by legal precautions, with special reference to the rural district of Etne, in the southern part of Hordaland. The legislation protecting ancient monuments, approved by the Parliament in 1905, had an unintended negative effect on people’s willingness to report new archaeological finds. Monuments older than the Reformation (1536/37) obtained automatically legal protection, and the State declared ownership to older finds. Earlier farmers could sell their finds on a «free» antique-market, with museums as buyers. Between 1860–1950, reorganisation and major changes took place in the Norwegian countryside, in terms of enclosure, new cultivation techniques, and extensive clearance of new land. Around 40% of the infields in western Norway in 1948 were enclosed after 1905. This development, in combination with the new law, generated a practice where monuments were removed secretly, as well as to avoid legal protection. Such newly cleared and enclosed areas might therefore be heavily underrepresented in the archaeological record, since systematic recording started at a much later stage, around 1950. This insight of the indirect and negative side effects of the law should be taken into consideration when dealing with patterns of distribution of burial monuments in particular, for instance in analyses of prehistoric settlements.

In September 2000 and May 2001, a group of archaeologists from Hordaland County Council and the Department of Archaeology, University of Bergen, carried out some minor excavations at the farm Seim, north of Bergen. Traditionally Seim is regarded as the main farm in the estate of King Harold Hairfair (c. 865-933) in the present district of Lindås. Parts of the habitation area of the farm were abandoned in 1897. Cultural layers from a site centrally located in the old habitation area were radiocarbon dated to the 13th century. The excavations also included fossilised lynchets and fields close to the farmyard, including parts of the main field «Storåkeren». Stratigraphy and several radiocarbon datings showed that an intensive cultivation took place near the settlement in the 10th century, while the area earlier was used for grazing. The process of cultivation probably reflects the establishment of a new habitation area, and indicates indirectly a division of an earlier larger farm. An older farm might have included the areas of the present farms Votno and Hopland in its neighbourhood, and its inner territory seems to be demarcated by several upright stones – bautas. The former settlement area of a larger farm might be located near a cluster of grave mounds close to the present border between Seim and the farm Hopland, but cannot be fully proved. The changes in the settlement at Seim should probably be seen in connection with a destabilisation in royal power in the 10th century.

Review of an important work by Professor Inger Storli on legal assembly sites in Northern Norway 200-900 AD. Title in Norwegian: Hålogaland før rikssamlingen
politiske prosesser i perioden 200
-900 e. Kr. (= Hålogaland before the Unification
Political Processes in the Period AD 200-
900). Inger Storli: Oslo, Novus forlag: Institutt for sammenlignende kulturforskning, 2006, 224 pages.