The Social Context of Settlement in Norway in the First Millennium AD

Abstract

A comparative approach towards understanding the character of the Scandinavian societies in the First Millennium AD is argued for in this article. A comparison with the other Germanic cultures north of the Alps, with their more diverse source material, allows for a thematically broader and more developed understanding of the specific and varying social formations in Scandinavia. The challenge of involving the archaeological record in this kind of analysis is more readily overcome if the Scandinavian written sources from the 11th century onwards are also included. A study along these lines, an analysis of the social context of settlement history in the region of Romerike, central eastern Norway, is presented. The settlement expansion in the First Millennium AD seems to have taken place in two main waves, one in the Late Roman Iron Age and one in the Viking Age, both of them brought about by the aristocracy whose control of the land was one component in their dominion. The aristocracy set their men, some of whom were slaves, to cultivate new farms on the land that was in their dominion. The rapid growth in the number of these unfree, half-free and free men made manpower abundant, while good arable land at that time was scarce. This situation reduced the need for forced labour, which is probably one of the main reasons why serfdom of the Continental type never developed in Norway.