ABSTRACT
The way the Nordic elites extracted a surplus from landed resources changed fundamentally between the beginning of the twelfth century and the end of the thirteenth. At the beginning of this period, the elites, from their bases on “multiple estates,” large and loosely organized units drawing on a wide range of resources, controlled the people who worked the land, ranging from slaves and freed slaves to independent bændr rendering tribute as part of a patron–client relationship. By the end of the period, however, the elites received their income primarily in the form of rent from land leased out to tenants (Norway) or from a combination of this and demesne farming (Sweden and Denmark). This transformation from control over people to control over land also reflects a change in the concept of property, clearly visible in the development of the Norwegian provincial laws of the same period. From a position where possession was blurred with secular authority, there developed a clear division between property and authority.
