ABSTRACT
Scandinavian lay elites were powerful but not rich. They also found it relatively difficult to dominate the landowning peasantry, bœndr, around their estates, who had maintained their own protagonism thanks to the survival of local assemblies. However, they managed, using various strategies in different periods. Before 1100/1200 “magnate farms” were the core centers of elite settlement, as they had been since the seventh century and indeed often earlier. Bœndr, who recognized the “authority” of such magnates, probably paid them tribute to supplement the income from their central farms. By the thirteenth century, however, larger landowning elites were becoming more common, at different rates in different parts of the North. Peasant owners were losing ground (although this was only a strong trend in Denmark); conversely, tenants were more common everywhere, even in Iceland. Magnate farms (by now estate centers) were increasingly replaced by villages made up of different kinds of tenants. The way in which this change might have happened and the possible reasons why are discussed within this chapter, summing up the contributions of the previous contributions.
