Download PDF | (The Northern World 34) Nils Hybel, Bjørn Poulsen - The Danish Resources c. 1000-1550-BRILL (2007).
475 Pages
INTRODUCTION
This book studies Danish resources in the Middle Ages. A comprehensive study of this nature has never been published before, nor does a major economic history of medieval Denmark exist. A very brief account of the period lasting from the twelfth century to the mid-sixteenth century was published in 1933. In its own time it was an excellent contribution, but it is now dated, of course. It is characteristic of this situation that the most recent economic history of Denmark begins in 1500.' Nonetheless, the quantity of research carried out on economic and social aspects of medieval history is huge.
As in most European countries, economic and social history formed a cornerstone of Danish medieval studies in the twentieth century. This book puts data produced by more than a century of historical research into a new context and includes a multitude of information based on primary research into the medieval sources available. In accordance with long-standing historiographical traditions, a crucial focus of this study is the interaction between man and nature, including the impact of human society on the environment and vice versa.
The territory associated with a central power provides an appropriate delimitation for such a historical study. Central powers create a general backdrop for economic life quite distinct from the legal and institutional conditions prevailing within the domain of other central powers. The territory of a central power is the habitat of people expecting uniform conditions in life, i.e. those they are used to and aspire after. However, these conditions are not only set by the legal and institutional framework created by the central power, by politics, and by tradition: the basic conditions of life are set by nature, and the territories of central powers are geographical units of natural environments within more or less natural frontiers. Finally, central powers dispose of a substantial proportion of the resources of the realm and consequently impact, both intentionally and unintentionally, upon their use and distribution.
There are three questions we must now ask. When did a Danish central power arise? What form did it take during the period in question? How do we delimit it geographically? It is possible, of course, to undertake historical studies of the development of resources within the geographical boundaries of modern Denmark and take them as far back in history as we desire. However, to use the delimitation of modern Denmark as a basis for medieval studies is to serve an ideological purpose rather than satisfy an analytical one.
In that respect the delimitation of the modern national state is an anachronism. The existence of a central Danish power is not particularly old, and through time it has changed from a medieval kingdom to an absolutist state and then been transformed again into a modern democracy. These forms of central power have had a variable impact on the material and mental life of Danish society and their domain has also constantly changed. From a historical perspective, the geography of Denmark has been unsettled.
This book covers the period stretching from c. 1000 to 1550. The latter date forms an obvious termination for the study, as it can be argued that in the sixteenth century the central power completed its transformation from a medieval kingdom to a state. Furthermore, in 1536 the Reformation brought about a substantial redistribution of land and significant changes in administration. Land owned by the Church, i.e. about a third of the realm, was confiscated by the Crown and bishops were expelled from government. But when did the medieval Danish kingdom come into existence? And how did the domain of this kingdom develop, from its earliest beginnings to the sixteenth century? These questions underpin the geographical and time frames of this study.
The earliest known description of Denmark dates from the ninth century and records a journey from Norway to Hedeby in Schleswig made by a Norwegian, Ottar.? His description of Denmark evokes associations with a medieval Danish kingdom, but the Danish realm was not united at this point.? Frankish chronicles from the ninth cen-tury provide the earliest known reference to a political history of the Danes. These chronicles give the impression of a political structure based on aggressive warlords leading aristocratic clans or interest groups.’ Warlords unsuccessful at home could always find consolation in expeditions abroad, as sailing had gained impetus in the centuries before the Norsemen became a serious threat to the coasts of western Europe.”
The underlying motive for their expeditions was the possibility of appropriation. Besides the capture of slaves, the most common ways of appropriating work and property were commerce, robbery, and the levying of tribute. This we know from foreign sources describing the ravages of the Vikings and from their testimony of the way in which the Normans collected tribute and “gifts”, sometimes in return for leaving.® The potential for appropriation of this kind within the Danish homelands was limited. It is true that archaeological excavations testify to the existence of rich commercial centres in the Iron Age and Viking periods, but there are no indications of large-scale agricultural production before the twelfth century,’ nor were there any religious houses to plunder.
The gradual closing of wealthy western Europe to Viking raids and colonization, resulting from several factors including the strengthening of the central powers in England and Europe, was one of the external preconditions needed for the unification of a medieval Danish kingdom. When the geographical scope of their action contracted, warlords were obliged to turn to a more effective exploitation of the locality in which they lived. Increasingly, the control of Danish resources offered the road to power and riches. ‘This control was not achieved by territorial dominance alone: expertise was also essential.
To a large extent, knowhow was provided by foreign churchmen and transplanted into Danish soil through their institutions, 1.e. cathedrals and monasteries, although indigenous Danes also acquired expertise on travels around Europe. For this reason, the second external precondition for the establishment of the Danish realm was the progress of the Church in the north from the late eleventh century onwards: it is no coincidence that we can only follow the history of landownership in Denmark from this point.®
It is difficult to form a clear picture of the geo-political situation of the country in the eleventh century. Adam of Bremen’s primarily geographical account of the lands of the Danes is perhaps a fairly precise reflection of the situation. While Adam clearly believed that the Danes could be divided into several peoples, his description indicates that the unification of the realm had begun when he wrote his chronicle in the late eleventh century.’ Numismatic evidence suggests that at this point Cnut the Great already controlled the more important Danish towns.'®
The strengthening of kingship in the eleventh century manifested itself in the reform of coinage in Svend Estridsen’s reign.'! Moreover, kingship gained ground in St Cnut’s attempt at taxation, the so-called nefgjald,'* and by a tightening of the bonds between the Church and the Crown. Svend Estridsen was on good terms with the Church, and Adam of Bremen found him obedient to, indeed indulgent towards, the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, Adalbert, and considered him a reliable source for his chronicle.'* According to this chronicle the Church was reorganized in Denmark around 1060.'* Svend Estridsen even appears to have worked towards the establishment of an archbishopric in Denmark, and his son Svend joined the first crusade (1096—-1102).!° However, Svend Estridsen did not succeed entirely in his attempts to rule Denmark, nor did his descendants.
The assassination of St Cnut in 1086 is a dramatic manifestation of the fact that at this point the Danish kings did not exercise sovereignty over the whole of Denmark. Kings were prominent rulers but not autonomous. The country was controlled by a complicated network of alliances, with magnates constantly at war with each other. The powerful players in this game were all more or less engaged in the exercise of royal or ecclesiastical power. The Crown and the Church were essential tools in this process and were exploited wholeheartedly by the magnates, but power was also exercised in other ways.'®
The unification of the Danish realm was not linear. In the century and a half before 1157, when Valdemar I united the realm, the provinces sometimes appear to have been at least partially ruled by one king, but more typically were controlled by several. From the reign of Valdemar I, however, it can be argued that the Danish kingdom was permanently united. The 1330s saw the only exception to this rule, when Scania was subject to King Magnus of Sweden and the rest of the country was pawned to the Counts of Holstein. Nevertheless, Danish medieval kings often faced fierce opposition and sometimes rebellious subjects, hazarding the unity of the realm.’ The reigns of Cnut VI and Valdemar IT (1182-1241) witnessed an interim climax, during which power was centralized in the hands of the sovereign.'®
The earliest geo-political account of the Danish realm dates from the end of this great period of kingdom. It is to be found in the 15 inventories that form a heterogeneous collection of manuscripts dating from around 1230 and known collectively as King Valdemar’s Survey.'° This provides a comprehensive view of the geographical area that comprised the medieval kingdom of Denmark in the thirteenth century. The image of the realm matches in outline Adam of Bremen’s description of Denmark in the late eleventh century. The inventory covers the main provinces of Jutland, Funen, Sealand, Scania, and Halland. ‘There are also records of Lolland, Falster, and Langeland, plus the smaller islands, together with inventories of overseas possessions in Estonia and Fehmarn.’ Estonia and Fehmarn were the remnants of the Baltic dominions created between 1169 and 1219.
Of these dominions, Estonia was held by Denmark for the longest period, but even there the extent of Danish control is disputable. Vassals in Estonia were mainly German, and Danish invaders met massive local resistance, protracting attempts to gain hegemony. It was above all the dominion of Reval’! that mattered: this crucial port on the sea route to Novgorod was sold by Valdemar IV when he disposed of Estonia to the Teutonic Knights in 1346.” The Principality of Blekinge does not appear in the inventories of King Valdemar, nor does Schleswig feature as a principality, although this southernmost part of Jutland is carefully described. In the period lasting from the mid-twelfth century until at least the 1280s, the Principality of Schleswig was considered an incontestable part of the kingdom.
The year 1326 was a turning point in the history of the province, for it was then that the Duke of Schleswig, Valdemar Eriksen, was installed as King of Denmark by Gerhard, Count of Holstein. Soon after Gerhard was enfeofled with Schleswig. A supplement to Valdemar Eriksen’s coronation charter, the so-called Constitutio Valdemanana, stipulates that the Principality of Schleswig must never be joined with the kingdom of Denmark under the same ruler.*’ In the Late Middle Ages, influenced by yet closer links to Holstein, the principality gained autonomous status. Schleswig became a far more independent domain than any other Danish fief, but in a European perspective its status was not unique.
In other kingdoms, such as Poland, Hungary, Germany, France, and England, fiefs endowed with special and extensive privileges were common. The English palatine states of Chester, Lancaster, and Durham, for example, were—like Schleswig—excluded from the normal royal administration.” For this reason, it would be unreasonable to exclude Schleswig from a study of Danish resources in the Middle Ages, whereas Sweden and Norway must be omitted because, even though they formed a joint Scandinavian kingdom with Denmark, the so-called Calmar Union, from the end of the fourteenth century, they all three retained their separate identity and political structures.
In terms of practical politics the background to this vaguely constituted Nordic Union was a pragmatic organization centred round Queen Marerethe I as a bulwark against pressure put on the northern kingdoms by the House of Mecklenburg, the Hanseatic towns, and the Teutonic Order. Indeed, the Union soon eroded.” When the treaty was renegotiated following the Swedish rebellion of 1434, the concept of shared monarchy as a necessary element in the union of the three realms was abandoned, and in 1448 Karl Knutsson was elected King of Sweden.”° In 1457, when the Swedish Council broke with Knutsson, the three Nordic countries were again ruled by the same king, Christian I, but in reality his power in Sweden ended in 1464. His successors, Hans, Christian II, and Frederik I, ruled Norway and Denmark but not Sweden. During the 76 years beginning with Christian I’s accession to the Danish throne in 1448 and ending with Frederik I’s renunciation of his claim to Sweden, the three Scandinavian realms shared a monarch for only ten years.
This book therefore reflects the geographical delimitation of the medieval Danish kingdom, including, for the later part of the Middle Ages, the Duchy of Schleswig. The area covered therefore comprises: Jutland to the Eider, Scania, Halland, Blekinge, Sealand, Funen, Lolland, and Falster, as well as adjacent islets and the island of Bornholm. The period examined stretches from the eleventh century, when the first tentative beginnings of the Danish kingdom are seen, to the mid-sixteenth century, when the medieval kingdom had completed its transformation into a state.
In presenting an account of the fluctuation of resources from the eleventh to the mid-sixteenth centuries, this book places itself in a historiographical tradition. Around the time of the First World War the concept of varying levels of economic activity and commercialization became prominent in medieval research. ‘The commercial history of the Middle Ages was depicted in terms of a blocking of the Mediterranean trade in the Early Middle Ages, flourishing commercial development in the High Middle Ages, and setbacks in the Late Middle Ages.*” During the Great Depression of the 1930s this idea was refined in respect to the latter period. The works of several European historians revealed, more or less simultaneously, the concept of a late medieval crisis affecting all socio-economic areas of life.**
From the 1940s the dominant trend in economic history ascribed the fluctuations of economic activity and commercialization primarily to structural changes, especially demographic ones. In 1947 a ‘neo-Marxist’ theory appeared, while in the 1950s a ‘neo-Malthusian’ one was put forward.”’ At that time, these theories appeared as strongly marked, mutually incompatible bodies of thought, but from the 1960s there was a tendency for the ‘neo-Malthusian’ and ‘neo-Marxist’ positions to merge, and lead away from monocausal explanatory models.*°
As early as 1962 some of this learning was turned on its head. Based on indications of manufacturing, commercial, and urban developments, it was claimed that agricultural productivity increased after the great loss of population caused by the plague epidemics that marked the second half of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that there is no simple and unequivocal relationship between population development and economic and social change.*' Later, research proved that the empirical preconditions underpinning structuralist theories are dubious. ‘There is no documentation for the existence of a general ‘Malthusian’ situation in northern Europe in the first half of the fourteenth century. Documentation supporting the ‘neo-Marxist’ claims of overexploitation and a consequent deterioration in the reproduction of the peasants towards 1300 is equally doubtful, nor is there much support for a general population decline before 1348.
A new approach, or perhaps rather the revival of a popular approach dating from the nineteenth century, has developed in the years that witnessed the collapse of the Iron Curtain and what seems to be the global victory of a market economy, or globalization, as it is widely known. In recent decades, commercialization has again become a key topic in the social and economic history of the Middle Ages.** This focus on commerce has generated a new monocausal ‘Schumpeterian’ theory, explaining the demographic development of the High Middle Ages by means of the fluctuating commercial opportunities available to medieval families.**
There are two hypotheses underlying the present study. Firstly, that the development of resources in the Middle Ages cannot be described in terms of an overall increase from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries followed by a general recession covering the rest of the period. In this book the terms High and Late Middle Ages therefore do not have this denotation but are used only as conventional designations of the historical periods 1000 to 1350 and 1350 to 1550 respectively.
Secondly, we refute the point of view that monocausal theories can provide adequate explanations for changes in resources. On the contrary, the theoretical premise of this book is that we operate methodologically within the parameters of the resources themselves and study the interaction of these in the hope of uncovering and explaining fluctuations. ‘The five main parameters of this study are: natural resources, human resources, institutional resources, the utilization of resources, and the exchange of resources. Each of these categories consists of specific resources which are analysed in separate chapters. Our study concludes with a synthesis of the development of resources as examined in this work.
Bjorn Poulsen has contributed the following chapters: Woods and Moors, Marine Resources, Knowledge and Literacy, Rural Resources, Towns and Markets, Crafts, Rural Levies and Royal Finances, and Money. Nils Hybel wrote the Introduction, the chapters entitled Arable Land, Climate, Population, Villages, Manors, and Commodity ‘Trade, and the Synthesis: Growth and Recession. All parts of the book have been thoroughly discussed and revised and the authors are therefore jointly responsible for the entire work.
Several individuals have given us the benefit of their support and inspiration, and it is a pleasure to be able to acknowledge their contribute in this small way. In the initial phase of this project the Danish Research Council for the Humanities provided a five month research grant. We would like to thank this institution and Marion Fewell who has been a flexible and responsive linguistic reviser.
Arslev and Copenhagen June 2006
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