Environment, Society and the Black Death

by Desconhecido

  Considering significant human responses to the crisis, some towns, surprisingly soon after the first catastrophic decades, experienced a phase of restructuring and expansion. The towns in question were well-established, episcopal centres like Linköping and Turku. In newly founded towns of the late fourteenth century and first half of the fifteenth, except for the pilgrimage centre of Vadstena, there are no such signs of ‘positive’ development.

  Concerning the countryside, the archaeological picture is more obscure, showing both continuity and discontinuity. A structural stability of settlement throughout the Middle Ages, characterising regions like Östergötland and Scania, stands out as rather different from the flexible and mobile pattern of Halland. A particular kind of change in the late-medieval countryside was the transformation of outland occupations like iron working and fishing to large scale, highly specialised activities.

  Focusing on regional variations, a fragmented pattern of late-medieval development is appearing. Regional differences are discernable in almost all aspects. Signs of urban dynamics in the later part of the fourteenth century were only seen in towns in the east of Sweden and in Finland. An opposite trend was visible in the western towns, showing decline and “demi-urbanisation”.

  Also, agrarian settlement was characterised by great regional variation. Showing a high degree of continuity and stability in the east, the opposite was seen in the west, i.e. mobility and instability. A relocation of agrarian settlement in late-medieval Halland is the most obvious expression of this structural mobility.

  Concerning churches and castles in the countryside, a great number of the former were reconstructed in the east and south, mostly employing vaulting. In the west, churches showed very little sign of such activities, most of them remaining not vaulted in the late Middle Ages. No distinct, regional differences in the building of castles are discernable except for the royal castles showing a certain concentration to the western part of the country.

  Large scale activities of proto industrial character were established in the east of Sweden in the late Middle Ages, for example in the mining districts. Something similar was not to be seen in the west except for the iron working in the south of Halland.

  Concluding this summarising picture of the late-medieval development it may be described in general as a complex process including elements both of decline and dynamic change as well as of great regional contrasts. With this in mind we will now continue with the second part of the investigation, studying the late-medieval crisis on a local level.

  Three case studies

  The previous section was an attempt to outline a late-medieval development from the perspective of the societal crisis, synthesising archaeological results of different kinds and from different contexts. Some crucial problems were discussed, however on a rather general level.

  This section will approach the late-medieval crisis from a somewhat different point of view. Earlier research has often focused on the negative aspects of the crisis, for example the degree of mortality and the process of desertion of settlement. Of course the crisis caused severe and pervasive disturbances of late-medieval society but, after all, this society endured. How did people, surviving the ravages of the plague, cope with the harsh realities of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in their everyday life? What strategies did they develop to withstand decline and collapse?

  Fig. 25. Map of Scandinavia showing the locations of the three farmsteads: A. Vålle; B. Stora Ullevi; C. Örja

  Hence, this study will focus primarily on survival rather than decline.80 It will take a point of departure at a social level most essential to a majority of the population, that is the level of the single farmstead. Thus, it will concentrate interest not on deserted settlement but on settlement that survived during the long era of late-medieval decline. How did the crisis affect the people on the single farmstead? In what way were the inhabitants of the farmsteads forced to change their way of living during this severe and transformative period?

  Concerning survival strategies in the time of the crisis, abandonment of the farmstead and moving to a more favourable place may of course have been a deliberate choice to avoid complete extinction, i.e. a kind of survival strategy.81 However, to determine whether a farmstead has been deliberately abandoned or if it has been deserted because of the death of its users will hardly be possible within an archaeological context. Therefore, this section will focus on settlement remaining in use as discernible units in the time of the crisis in the places where it once was established.

  The source material of the following case studies will include the archaeological results of three late-medieval farmsteads in the southern part of Sweden, all of them excavated during the last 15 years (Fig. 25). The scientific approach is a comparative one, based on farmsteads from different regional contexts. A main problem discussed in the following will be if unique regional characteristics have been of decisive importance for the choice of survival strategy of the single farmstead.

  Sweden includes a large part of the Scandinavian Peninsula where the regional variations concerning topography, vegetation, climate and soils are great. Vast areas of woodland and mountains in the northern part of the country were sparsely settled in the Middle Ages. In the south the geography is more varying, with fertile plain areas alternating with woodland. Characteristic of the territory of Sweden was further an extremely long coastal zone (2400 km), giving access to maritime resources.

  An optimal choice of farmsteads for the following case studies would have included examples from all the different regions of medieval Sweden. However, investigations of agrarian settlement, which almost exclusively originate from rescue excavations, are not evenly distributed over the country. In general, good examples of large-scale excavations are rare and moreover mainly to be found in the south, where modern development has been greatest. Thus, the selection of farmsteads has been restricted to this part of the country.

  A point of departure for the comparative study of the farmsteads is the cultural regionalisation of Sweden, described in the introduction of this chapter, starting in the thirteenth century. With a turning point around 1250, regional characteristics were developed of which the western and eastern parts of the country respectively were paid most attention to. In several aspects these two regions differed significantly from each other.

  The three places fulfil the following criteria. First, being established in the early Middle Ages, they endured the era of the crisis from the middle of the fourteenth century up to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Secondly, they represent three different regional contexts of medieval Sweden. Thirdly, the chosen farmsteads represent three different environmental contexts.

  One of the three farmsteads was located in the west of Sweden, in the northern part of the province of Bohuslän. It can be characterised as a typical woodland farmstead with small lots of crop land surrounded by forests and mountains, its agrarian economy primarily being oriented to animal husbandry. In these respects the farmstead has great similarities with the agrarian settlement of northern Sweden.

  The other two farmsteads were located in fertile plain areas, one in the province of Scania in the southernmost part of Sweden, the other in the province of Östergötland in the eastern part. The former was a typical coastal settlement near the strait of Öresund, a highly urbanised region of great mercantile importance in the Middle Ages. The latter was an inland settlement located in the neighbourhood of the bishop’s town of Linköping. The agrarian economy of these two farmsteads was oriented primarily towards crop cultivation.

  The question must be raised whether these three places may be considered as representative for their regions. Does their development show anything typical in the time of the crisis or were they just exceptions? Of course it is hardly possible to answer such a question properly. The extent and quality of the existing, archaeological source material is still too limited. However, this may not prevent us from using these examples in a discussion of surviva
l strategies in the time of the crisis. Exposing well-discernable, human action in the late Middle Ages, they are good examples.

  The farmstead Vålle in the province of Bohuslän

  The analysis of each farmstead begins with a brief characterisation of the historical and topographical context followed by an overview of the development of settlement. Finally the development of the farmstead in a wider historical context during the era of the crisis, 1350–1530, will be especially discussed. The Swedish National Heritage Board investigated all the three farmsteads during the last 15 years.

  The farmstead called Vålle was located in Lur parish in the northern part of the province of Bohuslän. A sparsely settled landscape, characterised by minor rift valleys alternating with mountains and woodlands, surrounded the farmstead in the Middle Ages. The settlement of the region consisted primarily of single farmsteads and minor hamlets. No manors seem to have dominated the landscape but in the written source material of the fifteenth century Vålle is mentioned as a tenant farm. On the oldest maps of the nineteenth century Vålle is denominated as a single farm but divided into several households. The investigation of the farmstead that took place in 2007 included the southern part of the settlement (Fig. 26).82

  According to the archaeological results, the earliest settlement was established in the early Middle Ages (1000–1100), consisting of a major building probably with both residential and economic functions (Fig. 27). In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a significant expansion of the farmstead took place. Another large building was erected north of the existing one. The presence of a kitchen in this construction indicates a function of the building as a dwelling house. Between the two larger houses a minor agricultural building was erected.

  In the fourteenth century a smithy was built just northwest of the above-mentioned buildings. How long it existed was not possible to determine but according to the radiocarbon datings the activities of the smithy peaked in the period 1350–1450.83 The results of metallurgical analysis indicate a multifaceted working process including cleaning of iron lumps as well as forging of objects.84

  The described structure of the farmstead remained intact up to early modern times (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) except for the oldest building. In the eighteenth centuries all buildings were torn down and replaced with new ones.

  ***

  There are no signs of discontinuity or desertion of the farmstead during the era of the late-medieval crisis. However, northern Bohuslän was struck hard by the crisis. Current research has estimated the desertion frequency of farmsteads in this region to be as high as 50% in the late Middle Ages.85

  Probably the crisis caused extensive desertion in the surroundings of the investigated farmstead. However, this settlement does not reflect decline, rather dynamics through the creation of new constructions. Furthermore, one of these was the place of specialised forging, apparently a new activity in the region. An iron production site of the same date as the smithy at Vålle has been excavated further north in the province.86

  In the less feudalised and less regulated area of northern Bohuslän the access to the vast, forested and mountainous outlands most likely was less controlled. Probably the outlands had been used, for instance for wood pasture, long before the late-medieval crisis in this area. So, when the exploitation of the outland resources, wood and iron ore, for specialised ironworking started in the fourteenth century a cultural adjustment to these areas was already long-established.

  A crucial question is for what purpose were the completed iron objects produced – for sale, as items for taxation or only for use in the household of the farmstead? The activity of the smithy was of an advanced, specialised character, which probably means that forging was not intended exclusively for the household but for a wider distribution. This might have brought other revenues to the farmstead than what was possible through agriculture.

  The late-medieval crisis has likely contributed to the development of a multifaceted peasant economy in the province of Bohuslän. Such an economy with additional activities besides agriculture characterised the region in early modern times and might have had its origins in the changes of the late Middle Ages. One expression for such a diversified economy was a maritime peasant trade going on since the sixteenth century up to the nineteenth century along the coasts of western Sweden.87 Peasants from Bohuslän and other parts were also sailing tradesmen engaged in long distance trade with cargos like lime and timber to seaports in the northwest of Europe.

  The archaeological find material from Vålle included some indications of this mercantile activity. Although most of the finds were of an ordinary character some of the ceramics, fragments of imported vessels from the Netherlands and Flanders, reflected external contacts less typical for an agrarian settlement.88 Such vessels originate from the seventeenth century, i.e. rather long after the era of the crisis. However, it seems reasonable to assume that these finds reflect a long-distance trade of much earlier origin in the northern part of Bohuslän.

  The farmstead at Stora Ullevi in the province of Östergötland

  Stora Ullevi is a hamlet in the province of Östergötland located on a low ridge between the town of Linköping and Lake Roxen. Its hinterland is a plain area, during the Middle Ages characterised by large meadows and pastures. On the oldest map from 1764 Stora Ullevi is a geometrically regulated hamlet (Fig. 28). At the end of the Middle Ages there were 11 homesteads in the hamlet of which all but one were used by tenants under the monasteries of Askeby and Vadstena and also the diocese of Linköping. Stora Ullevi belonged to the parish of St Lars, which also included parts of the town of Linköping.

  Archaeological excavations in 1998 and 2003 included three building plots of the hamlet.89 The excavations showed that the earliest settlement here was built during the later Iron Age. The site was then continuously inhabited up to the Middle Ages. New construction elements like sills and fireplaces were introduced in the houses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

  In the following period, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the most important changes took place (Fig. 29). Of the three investigated building plots only one, plot A, was settled during this period. Here, four minor one-room buildings were erected, one dwelling house, one smithy and two agricultural buildings. It is obvious that this building activity was simultaneous with a regulation of the settlement in the beginning of the thirteenth century. The new houses were then adjusted to a geometrical plot system, which corresponds to a system still detectable on the oldest maps of the eighteenth century.90

  In the fourteenth century these houses were replaced by one single building consisting of two rooms, a bigger dwelling room with a fireplace and a smaller chamber. A new expansion started in the following period, the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, when all the investigated plots were settled. On plot A, showing continuity of the settlement, the house of the late Middle Ages was replaced by a so called double cottage, functioning as a dwelling house.

  ***

  There are no immediate signs of desertion or decline in the late-medieval settlement of Stora Ullevi. However, the settlement underwent a great and pervasive change during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

  Fig. 26. Cadastral map of Vålle from 1825 showing the settlement (brown squares) and its surroundings. Black line marks the excavation area

  Fig. 27. Change of settlement at Vålle AD 1000–1500. Settlement dated to a. 1000–1300 and b. 1300–1500, respectively

  Neither are there any signs of economic specialisation in the late Middle Ages of the kind seen at the site in Bohuslän. The smithy that was present in the thirteenth century disappeared after 1350 together with the other buildings of the early Middle Ages. Only one large building, a dwelling house, replaced them in the late Middle Ages.

  However, some finds of an unmistakable exclusive character from this building give a clue to the understanding of the late-medieval Stora Ullevi. The finds consist of some book clasps, a polished rock crystal
and some mountings, one with a picture of a heraldic lion (Fig. 30). Such finds are not typical of an ordinary agrarian settlement, rather of urban and ecclesiastical contexts. Similar objects have been found in residences in the town of Linköping and in the nearby monastery of Vreta.91 These finds raise questions on the social structure in Stora Ullevi in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Do they reflect the presence of some high status people and thus a major social change in the village during these centuries?

  The nearby town of Linköping was an important religious centre already in the early Middle Ages, long before it got its legal status as an episcopal town at the end of the thirteenth century.92 Most likely there must have been a close cultural connection between the town and the neighbouring villages and hamlets because of the special role Linköping played in this part of Östergötland. The fact that the hamlet of Stora Ullevi was included in one of the urban parishes might have been an expression of such a connection. Thus it seems rather logical that the formation of a survival strategy of the hamlet in the time of the crisis was highly influenced by the development of the neighbouring town.

  The late-medieval crisis seems to have caused an immediate interruption of the building activities in the town of Linköping already around 1350, which lasted some decades.93 After 1380 these activities started anew. In the last decades of the fourteenth century Linköping underwent a dynamic development characterised by expansion and densification of the urban settlement.94 The growth of the diocese town combined with an extensive building of stone houses was no doubt of importance in this development.

  Probably the town’s hinterland was affected by the urban dynamics and the finds from Stora Ullevi could be a material expression of this connection. Such an assumption is further supported by the analysis of animal bones from Stora Ullevi, which indicates an economic integration between the hamlet and the neighbouring town of Linköping in the late Middle Ages.95 A decreased consumption of beef in the hamlet can be explained by an increased distribution of cattle to the town. This trend is corresponded by an increasing consumption of mutton in the hamlet during the same period.