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The Structure of the Peasant Society
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ABOUT DENMARK
History
The Viking Age
The Unification of the Country & Royal Power
Centralised Power Structure
The King's Income & the Size of the Kingdom
The Viking Expeditions
The Frankish Empire, England & Ireland
Trade & Towns
The Introduction of Christianity
The Structure of the Peasant Society
Farming
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The Structure of the Peasant Society
It was previously thought that society was made up of farmers who were all free and equal, who owned smallholdings and who sat on district and national things and had their say in the affairs of their society.
It has become clear, however, that the distribution of wealth was very unevenand that only a small percentage of the population enjoyed full civic rights.
Great landowners owned huge properties and the land was to a large extent divided up into large farms which were far bigger than smallholdings, and were often grouped in villages.
We often meet the leading men of the local communities in the runic inscriptions. Alle on the Glavendrup stone was a gode, a chieftain with both religious and secular duties, like Roulv on the Helnæs stone.
These chieftains would have had their own lith, their own troop of warriors, as did the chieftains long after the Viking Age.
The ordinary men and women appear only rarely in the historical sources. Prisoners of war often became thralls, and thralls have been found at burial sites, but nothing is known about the thralls themselves or the effect which this practice of bondage had on society.
Some craftsmen were thralls, others were clearly free and travelled round between the towns and markets, working also on the farms.
It used to be commonly believed that the Viking Age brought about a wave of emigration and domestic colonisation within Denmark. It was therefore thought that the population increased at a rapid rate, and that the country was overpopulated.
The internal expansion of settlements which had been thought to have occurred during the Viking Age did not, however, take place until later.
Niels Lund, Gyldendal Leksikon
Farming
Farming during the Viking Age was predominantly based on animal husbandry, and the villages moved within their surrounding area at intervals of some hundreds of years.
