Village Communities - Scandinavia

Scandinavia

We must point out some facts from the range of Scandinavian customs. In the mountainous districts of Norway we notice the same tendency towards the unification of holdings as in the plains and hills of Schleswig and Holstein. The bonder of Gudbrandsdalen and Telemarken, the free peasantry tilling the soil and pasturing herds on the slopes of the hills since the days of Harold Hrfagr to our own times, sit in Odalgaards, or freehold estates, from which supernumerary heirs are removed on receiving some indemnity, and which are protected from alienation into strange hands by the privilege of pre-emption exercised by relatives of the seller.

Equally suggestive are some facts on the Danish side of the Straits. Here again we have to do with normal holdings independent of the number of coheirs, but dependent on the requirements of agricultureon the plough and oxen, on certain constant relations between the arable of an estate and its outlying commons, meadows and woods. The bl does not stand by itself like the Norwegian guard, but is fitted into a very close union with neighboring bids of the same kind. Practices of coaration, of open-field intermixture, of compulsory rotation of lot-meadows, of stinting the commons, arise of themselves in the villages of Denmark and Sweden. Laws compiled in the 13th century but based on even more ancient customs give us most interesting and definite information as to Scandinavian practices of allotment.