ABSTRACT
Norwegian estates in the Middle Ages were distinctly different from their European counterparts, having large resources of outlying fields and owning parts of numerous small farms as opposed to consisting of large villages. The estates, both the manors and the surrounding farms, went through large-scale changes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a consequence of the end of slavery. By using the estate Gjerde in Etne, Sunnhordland, as a case study, this development is illuminated. Here the manor was divided after the monastery of Halsnøy became owners in the 1160s, and new farms were cleared around the main estate. This illustrates that the rental of farms contributed to growth in the agrarian economy, since it constituted a more effective mode of production than farms based on slave labor.
