Page:A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law (OBP.0188, 2020).pdf/532



A landowner during the time of the Nordic provincial laws (c. 1240–1350) would have his share in the cultivated land, the non-cultivated land used for hay harvest and grazing, the woods and forests, which constituted an important economic asset, as well as in other common resources such as fishing waters, hunting and wells. His rights and commitments were regulated by the provincial laws. The details might differ with each law and likewise the terminology. The Middle Ages in the Nordic countries lasted from c. 1000 to 1500–30.

The diagram above shows roughly how all these assets were interdependent and intertwined.

The cultivated land was the most valuable asset. In all Nordic countries there was a vast expansion in the Early Middle Ages of arable land through cultivating part of the meadow-land or through slash and burn clearance of moors, woodlands and forests.

The non-cultivated land used for hay harvest and grazing was almost equally important, as the area available for hay harvesting and grazing determined the number of cattle a farmer was able to feed during the winter-stalling, and thus how much fertilizer he had access to for use on the cultivated land.

The woods and forests were important for providing grazing, timber and firewood and not least, land for future cultivation. In the south of Scandinavia they also provided food for pigs, i.e. acorns, beechnuts and hazelnuts.

Common resources were assets for the common use of all landowners or tenants such as fishing-waters, streams, pastures, woodlands or forests. The right of use to these assets was regulated and differed between laws, and misuse was punished.

Ingierþis (OSw) and utgierþis (OSw), literally ‘within enclosure’, i.e. within the village arable land, and ‘outside the enclosure’, is a contemporary dichotomy of land of crucial importance in the laws and in society.

The following is an effort to give an overview of the most frequent terms/words used in the laws and their meaning and relations to each other.

© 2020 Jeffrey Love, Inger Larsson, Ulrika Djärv, Christine Peel, and Erik Simensen, CC BY 4.0�