by Desconhecido
This picture remained unchallenged for two decades during which the Black Death and the late-medieval crisis gained little attention in Swedish research. Renewed interest started with a publication by Janken Myrdal in 1999, in which he argued that Sweden was hit hard by the plague.35 It was followed by publications on the Black Death by Dick Harrison and Lennart Andersson Palm, which were much in line with Myrdal’s argument.36 Palm presented a study of medieval population numbers in present-day Sweden and concluded that the late-medieval population drop, from a maximum in the early fourteenth century to a low stand in the early fifteenth century, was at the same level as in Norway, approximately 60–70%.37 He based his study on two provinces in particular, Halland and Uppland, from which there are unusually detailed household and tax registers.38 Two years later Janken Myrdal presented a study based on a broader spectrum of documentary sources: charters and letters (including wills and donations), death registers, Peter’s Pence and other tax registers, annals, chronicles, etc.39 Similar to Palm he concluded that Sweden was hit hard by the Black Death, maybe not as hard as Norway, but with a population drop at the same level as in much of Western Europe. Peter’s Pence indicates a population drop of 50% between 1350 and 1370, and based on several different sources Myrdal concluded that the average drop within medieval Sweden was about 40–50%.40 Because of the scarcity of documentary sources all estimations of the late-medieval population drop in Sweden have to be tentative. It is most difficult to establish the size of the pre-Black Death population, but also population numbers during the presumed low stand in the fifteenth century are uncertain. It is not until 1571 that we have detailed population numbers on a national level. However, the important conclusion from these later studies is that the Black Death was a disaster also in Sweden, with major consequences for society, and that earlier conclusions of a more modest crisis seem to reflect a paucity of sources rather than the true picture.
In Sweden like elsewhere the Black Death (Sw: digerdöden) was succeeded by several outbreaks.41 The first strike in 1350 was followed by two severe outbreaks in 1359–60 and 1368–69. Together the first three outbreaks were probably a demographic and social catastrophe. Later outbreaks by the end of the fourteenth century had less impact until a series of new major outbreaks occurred in the fifteenth century. Years of major outbreaks were 1413, 1420–21, 1439–40, 1455, 1464–65 and 1495. Plague continued to haunt the population also during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but outbreaks were often more of a regional character and did not lead to overall population drop (although the force of the plague increased again during the war-torn seventeenth century). The last outbreak of plague in Sweden was as late as in 1710–13.42
Thus people of the fifteenth to early eighteenth centuries were familiar with plague, by own experience, from eyewitnesses or by hearsay. In spite of this the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century was to be remembered. For example, the Swedish king Gustav Vasa wrote in a letter in 1555, two centuries after the Black Death, that it affected the people badly and that two-thirds of the population died.43 Gustav Vasa, together with several other writers, connected it with the remains of abandoned farms that could be found in forests and other marginal areas. A general opinion that prevailed for a long time was that the population was larger before the Black Death. Carl Linnaeus, for example, the famous botanist, wrote on his travels through southern Sweden in 1749 that the ancient clearance cairns that he found in the forests were reminders of a larger population before the Black Death.44
The sudden population decline due to the Black Death resulted in the abandonment of farms. Abandoned (or deserted) farms are frequently and specifically mentioned in early records, such as cadastral registers and other documents.45 Some historians have raised doubts about what the term “abandoned farm” in the old records really stands for, i.e. if such a farm was uninhabited or only declared exempt from tax. However, this may be a problem connected to registers from the sixteenth century onwards, but not to medieval ones in which the word abandoned (Sw: öde) really stands for uninhabited.46 Abandoned farms are also identified on maps. Sweden has a wealth of detailed maps from the early seventeenth century onwards that may be used for retrogressive analyses of late-medieval farm abandonment.47 In addition to written documents and maps, sometimes the physical remains of abandoned farms are found in the field, in particular in forest or heathland outside modern cultivation areas. In Sweden such remains are found in different parts of the country and some of them have been investigated archaeologically (see Chap. 5 for a discussion on the archaeological evidence).48
Fig. 3. Map of Scandinavia showing the first strike of the plague, the Black Death (based on Benedictow 2004, 173 and Myrdal 2009, 82)
At present little is known about the spatial pattern of farm abandonment and its regional distribution. However, two maps attempting to show regional variations in farm abandonment in Scandinavia have been published, one by The Scandinavian Research Project on Deserted Farms and Villages and one later by Janken Myrdal.49 According to Myrdal, in much of Sweden as well as in parts of Finland, Norway and Demark, between one-third and two- thirds of the farms were abandoned. In the most fertile agricultural plains, situated in the provinces of Uppland, Östergötland and Scania in Sweden and on the Danish islands, the extent of abandonment was less than this and in the most marginal areas it was larger. Areas with an extent of farm abandonment greater than two- thirds were the uplands of southern Sweden, the uplands and mountains of Norway and the sandy heathlands of Jutland. The map from the earlier study differs from Myrdal’s map by showing generally lower desertion frequency for Sweden. However, similar to his map, it suggests that within Sweden farm abandonment was most extensive in the southern uplands, and on a Scandinavian level it was most extensive in Norway. Hence, despite the controversy on the extent of farm abandonment in Sweden, both agree that it was most extensive in marginal upland areas. This conclusion is in line with observations from other countries, like England, Germany and Austria, where farm abandonment was most widespread in upland areas and on sandy soil.50
A somewhat different view on marginal uplands have been put forward based on studies in the forest regions of middle and northern Sweden, in particular within the Ängersjö Project,51 but also in some other studies.52 Even though these studies have found evidence of farm desertion, they argue that societies in forested regions may have escaped the crisis better than those on the agricultural plains. This is because they were based on a more diverse economy, which enabled flexible strategies of resource utilisation and land use.53 In particular iron production seems to have expanded in some areas during the crisis.54 However, if the more diverse economy of uplands should be regarded as more resilient than the agrarian economy of lowlands is debated.55 For the time being most evidence on late-medieval farm abandonment – from documentary sources as well as from archaeology and pollen analysis – comes from uplands and other agriculturally marginal areas. Even though non-agricultural economies typical of uplands (iron production, coaling, tar production, logging, etc.) may have expanded in the wake of the crisis, most evidence indicate that there was extensive abandonment of farms in upland areas and probably more extensive than in the lowlands.
The fact that farms on marginal land, where poor soils or climate made agriculture troublesome or at least less productive than elsewhere, were the first to be deserted also seems logical at first. This is particularly so if the underlying cause was the kind of overpopulation and unsustainable land use that Michael Postan suggested for marginal areas in early-fourteenth-century England. According to him the hunger for new land lead to reclamation of poor soils, which after a few decades of cultivation were depleted of nutrients and eventually abandoned.56 However, the model is not directly applicable for Sweden, which had a much lower population density than England. Furthermore, the soils of the South-Swedish Uplands were poor in relation to those of the fertile plains, but due to the still large extent of pastures and access to manure, they proba
bly gave decent yields.57
Also if the underlying cause was climatic deterioration, abandonment of marginal uplands would perhaps be expected. Climate deterioration as a cause of abandonment has been suggested elsewhere, and cannot be entirely ruled out for upland areas also in Sweden.58 Based on a reconstruction of average temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere the peak of the so-called Medieval Warm Period was reached during the tenth to twelfth centuries, while the lowest temperatures of the Little Ice Age were reached in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.59 The transition from warm climate to colder was gradual, and in the absence of local palaeoclimate data it is difficult to identify any specific period of dramatic climate deterioration, even though such periods may have existed. Short periods of bad weather during the fourteenth century may have been troublesome enough, but it was not until the fifteenth century that climatic deterioration became significant and long lasting. Therefore, at the present state of knowledge, it is unlikely that farm abandonment during the midfourteenth century was due to climate. Furthermore, an interesting fact that speaks against a simple relationship between the extent of upland agriculture and climate is that during the sixteenth century – when the Little Ice Age reached its lowest temperatures – there was a strong movement of colonisation and agricultural expansion in the South-Swedish Uplands.
If farm abandonment was not due to soil deterioration or a shift to colder climate, but actually to the Black Death, it is more difficult to understand why upland societies suffered particularly badly. Even though the plague seems to have spread effectively in the countryside we may expect it to have spread faster and more severely in towns and on the densely populated agricultural plains than in sparsely settled uplands. This paradox of plague-ridden lowlands and abandoned uplands is usually explained as an effect of migration.60 The plague may very well have hit the population of fertile lowlands harder than upland societies, but farms on good soil were not allowed to stay abandoned for long. Survivors of the Black Death adapted to the new situation of a smaller population and were concentrated in fertile areas where better conditions for agriculture made living easier. The details of this process are not known but it is likely that succession rights were followed, even when one or several heirs in line were swept away by the plague. In this way an upland farmer may suddenly and unexpectedly have inherited a farm in a better setting, and probably did not hesitate to take the opportunity. In the case of large landowners, they could redirect their tenants to better farms, leaving less productive units abandoned.
Extensive farm abandonment in upland areas and other marginal areas in the wake of the Black Death could thus be an effect of migration. Still, the possibility that the plague itself also reached remote settlement should not be excluded. People living on single farmsteads in the woods or in other sparsely settled areas were not socially isolated. They belonged to communities and gathered with their friends, neighbours and relatives at home, in church, at market places as did everybody else. Furthermore, many upland farmers were involved in trade with lowland societies, exporting timber, iron and animal products while importing grain. The latter may have been particularly fatal in a time of plague, because grain was usually accompanied by rats and their fleas.61
In addition to the geographical variation in the spread of plague and in the extension of farm desertion, there were important differences in how social classes were affected. In contrast to tuberculosis, cholera and some other diseases, plague is not restricted to the poor and malnourished. It may infect also the healthy and wealthy leaving nobody safe. However, the plague of the mid-fourteenth century did hit the poor people harder than the upper classes.62 The major reason for this was probably different living conditions, where poor people lived in small and unhealthy houses, close to each other and closer to rats. However, poor people who survived the plague had good possibilities to improve their economic and social status. The sudden and dramatic population drop gave small-holders the possibility to move to better and larger holdings, crofters to become tenant farmers, and the poor and landless to gain possession of farms. Because vacant farms were taken over by the previously landless, the process of farm desertion may have been somewhat delayed in relation to the population drop. According to documentary evidence, farm abandonment became widespread not immediately after the Black Death but rather in connection with the following plague outbreaks and later, when society was running out of landless and thus the ‘reserve’ of the agricultural labour force was used up (see however new results on the suddenness of farm abandonment in Chap. 4).63
These two factors – the very high mortality from the plague among poor people and the opportunities for the survivors to improve their status – resulted in a general decrease in the number of poor. Another factor that contributed to a higher standard of living for common people, at least in the long run, was the shortage of manpower. The large landowners, the nobility, the church and the Crown, who depended on agricultural production, saw their incomes reduced when tenants died and farms and fields were abandoned. To keep their tenants on the land and to attract new ones to take over vacant farms, landowners had to offer better conditions. Tenants had a good negotiating position and landowners had to accept lower rents and less day labour. But they did so only reluctantly. Their immediate reaction was to increase rents to compensate for declining numbers of tenants, which lead to disputes and conflicts during which many tenants left their holdings, leading to further reduction of the incomes of the landowners. In desperation parts of the nobility turned to a robber economy, plundering the countryside, which lead to counter reactions and resistance. That the latter part of the fourteenth century was a time of conflicts and riots is evident from the building of castles. In spite of the shortage of manpower the building of castles and fortifications, both noble and royal, in southern Sweden increased significantly after the Black Death.64
After decades of conflicts and revolts the situation finally improved for tenant farmers and freeholders in the early fifteenth century. Tenant farmers got better conditions with lower rents, and slightly later – in particular after the major uprising of the 1430s – national taxes for free-holding peasants were significantly reduced. This line of development has for Sweden been most explicitly described by Janken Myrdal, who identifies the following phases: the catastrophe c. 1350–1370, the dysfunctional societal reaction c. 1350/60–1430/1440, and the social and economic recovery and reconstruction c. 1440/50–1520/30.65 More or less the same development has been identified also in other European countries after the Black Death.
When taxes and rents had finally settled on a lower level in the fifteenth century, living standards improved and consumption increased. In Sweden like elsewhere increased popular consumption stimulated non-agrarian production, craftsmanship and trade.66 Iron production increased and the price of iron fell, making iron tools readily available. Also the import of Flandrian textiles increased together with other commodities from abroad. Although the documentary sources do not provide any details on the consumption of food among ordinary people in medieval Sweden, it is likely that they were, on average, able to eat and drink more and better than before. According to Ole Benedictow, people in general in Western Europe after the Black Death ‘… ate more meat and butter, drank more beer and wine, socialized more and spent more time in taverns and inns.’67 (See Chap. 6 for further discussions on living conditions and possible dietary changes.)
Food and drink now lead us to the agricultural production – the economic basis for medieval society. It is obvious that total agricultural production decreased when population numbers were cut by half and farms were abandoned. However, there were probably also changes within the agricultural system that contributed to the rising economy and improved living standards after the Black Death. Many factors may have influenced agricultural development but there is one that seems to have been most decisive, namely the changed relationship between the amount of available land and the number of hands to cultivate it.
