Thraldom : a history of slavery in the Viking age /
Brink, Stefan,author.
"Thraldom, the old Scandinavian word for slavery, is an elusive phenomenon characterized by different conditions of dependencies and with fluid transitions between being free and unfree; a person could be at once socially respected but still unfree; you could voluntarily go into a slavery; you could be sentenced to time-limit slavery for a criminal offence; you could give away your child to become a slave, but you could also buy yourself out of slavery. Hence, slavery was not a black-and-white social phenomenon. You could be a chattel thrall, living in the barn with the cows, but also a legally unfree steward, living on and running the king's estate. In this study all conceivable source materials are analyzed, such as archaeology, runic inscriptions, Icelandic sagas, early law, place names, personal names and not least etymological and semantic analyses of the terminology of slaves. Slavery was widespread all over Europe during the Early Middle Ages, and it seems the Scandinavians became a major player in the north European slave trade. However, the hypothesis is that the Scandinavian Vikings were not particularly interested in taking slaves to Scandinavia, instead their 'business model' seems to have been to raid, abduct and then sell of captured people at major slave markets. Their quest was not people, but silver. Scandinavian slavery eventually was abandoned, a process which is very obscure, and seems to have disappeared in society in the beginning of the fourteenth century"--
The result of my research was turned into a book published in Swedish in 2012. This present book is a revised translation and extensively extended version of that book.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Slavery in Europe during antiquity and the first millennium -- Scandinavian slavery -- Where did the slaves come from? -- Thralls in Old Norse poetry and sagas -- Thralls in runic inscriptions -- Terms for thralls and their meanings -- How were thralls used? -- Evidence for thralls in Scandinavian place-names -- How were thralls identified? -- Thralls' names in Scandinavia -- The special case of Älmeboda parish in southern Småland -- Thralls in the archaeological material -- Can we excavate slavery? -- The rise and fall of Scandinavian thraldom -- when did slavery appear in Scandinavia? -- The status of slaves in Prehistoric Scandinavian society.
"Thraldom, the old Scandinavian word for slavery, is an elusive phenomenon characterized by different conditions of dependencies and with fluid transitions between being free and unfree; a person could be at once socially respected but still unfree; you could voluntarily go into a slavery; you could be sentenced to time-limit slavery for a criminal offence; you could give away your child to become a slave, but you could also buy yourself out of slavery. Hence, slavery was not a black-and-white social phenomenon. You could be a chattel thrall, living in the barn with the cows, but also a legally unfree steward, living on and running the king's estate. In this study all conceivable source materials are analyzed, such as archaeology, runic inscriptions, Icelandic sagas, early law, place names, personal names and not least etymological and semantic analyses of the terminology of slaves. Slavery was widespread all over Europe during the Early Middle Ages, and it seems the Scandinavians became a major player in the north European slave trade. However, the hypothesis is that the Scandinavian Vikings were not particularly interested in taking slaves to Scandinavia, instead their 'business model' seems to have been to raid, abduct and then sell of captured people at major slave markets. Their quest was not people, but silver. Scandinavian slavery eventually was abandoned, a process which is very obscure, and seems to have disappeared in society in the beginning of the fourteenth century"--
Slavery
Vikings