Utjordar och ödegårdar

The crisis of the Late Middle Ages is still an ongoing discussion. Desertion of small isolated settlements in woodlands is a well known fact. In villages and hamlets, however, desertion is hidden because holdings were merged (partial desertion). This problem has been discussed extensively, but the extent and character of desertion especially on the plains, remains uncertain. This thesis focuses on ”uninhabited cadastral units” (literally utjordar) in Sweden. A large amount of plots, both arable and meadow land, were registered as utjordar in the Swedish Crown’s cadastres in the mid-1500s. They also appear on the large-scale maps from the 1600s. At that time many had become divided into smaller parts, but a comparison of the two sources shows that the same plots of land persisted for over a century. The evidence suggests that they originated from farms that were abandoned during the Late Middle Ages, more precisely vacant and divided holdings. In this thesis about 1 500 of these units are identified and spatially examined, using a retrogressive method, focusing on the origin of such plots or units. The objects of study are plains and hamlets in east central Sweden. Here, the arable land was divided and strictly regulated by common law (known as solskifte), which had been carried out before the Late Middle Ages. The basic pattern of this medieval field pattern remained in many areas between the 1500s and the 1700s. This explains why late medieval abandoned holdings appear as separated units in later periods. In other parts of Sweden, there are few data on desertion in hamlets, due to less regulation and less control of the land. In conclusion, the abandonment of farms in Sweden during the Late Middle Ages affected the central plains significantly and more widely than previously known. The retrogressive approach, the inclusion of traces found in later sources, provides a more complete understanding of the changes during the late medieval period

Fenced open-fields in mixed-farming systems: spatial organisation and cooperation in southern Sweden during the seventeenth century

The organisation of fields and fences in agriculture that emerged during the Middle Ages and the early modern period was a complex system that combined individual ownership of and communal practices in arable land, meadows and pastures. It was adapted for small and mid-size family-based farming and was a different way to organise agriculture than the medieval estates (demesnes) and the larger coherent fields of the eighteenth century and onwards. The past decade of research in historical geography and economic history has highlighted the origin of this system, which is often referred to as the open-field system; it was open in the sense that it promoted communal farming of primarily arable land. This pre-modern farming system was, however, in many areas a physically closed landscape – a landscape where fences stood out as significant elements. This article investigates the use of fences in a part of early modern western Sweden. The empirical base is a reconstruction of fence-organisations from detailed large-scale maps dating from the mid-seventeenth century. Using historical maps, this study focuses on the collaboration and interaction among farms and settlements. We argue that the open-field system cannot be fully understood without regard to an in-depth analysis of the fences and the institutions holding the complex collaboration together. The occurrence or absence of fences in relation to open-fields involves several questions: What are the characteristics of the fences in the farming systems known as open-field? What can be said about the spatial distributions and connections between the settlements sharing the same open-field? Can agrarian landscapes where fences were prominent elements be considered open-field? The results show that fences appear to be a key factor in understanding settlement patterns and open-fields in Scandinavian regions. A large number of fences created small fenced open-fields. Moreover, the divisions of the arable plots had less importance in the creation of open-fields, which included arable land, meadows and pastures. Instead, cross-settlement collaborations and arrangements are central for the open-fields in the study region. The regional differences within the open-field system provide an understanding of the preconditions and organisation of mixed farming, which combined small-scale arable land cultivation and large-scale pastures