Medieval History

A VISIT TO A 17th CENTURY VILLAGE part.2: Homesteads and Outfields

Today we are going to investigate the village of Stjärnholm once again, this time focusing on the homesteads themselves and the information we can find about them in Notarum explication. For more about this village, please read my earlier post!

The village of Stjärnholm, with the homesteads marked

Notarum explicatio

The first thing usually described on each homestead is the name of the farmer. These names are very common even today, and almost all of them have surnames ending with ?-son?. In this particular village we have two farmers (in homestead 1 and 3) surnamed ?Larsson?. We cannot be sure that these two are related to each other as this is a common surname, but as they inhabit the same village it is quite likely.

After the names comes the land owning nature of the homestead, such as ?krono?, ?skattekrono?, ?frälse? etc. If the land is ?frälse? (owned by a noble) sometimes the name of the nobleman/woman or the estate is noted.

The third thing described is the value of the farmers? land in the unit ?öresland?. Öresland is a unit that does not necessarily describe the amount of land; it can also be a description of the revenues. The exact meaning of this unit seems somewhat uncertain depending on what area you are investigating. In Uppland, there seems to be a quite clear correlation between öresland and tunnland. In the YGK-project we are converting all land values into the same unit, called penningland (1 öresland is the same as 24 penningland) which is more common in this period. This is done in order to make the statistics from various areas comparable with each other.

After this, the annual revenues of the homestead are described. Each homestead usually use the two field system and therefore the revenues are described for each year of farming.

Under the revenues, you can sometimes find information on areas used by the farmer which lie outside the village (in Swedish ?utjordar?), often in a neighbouring area. Sometimes the revenues for these patches of land can be found in the homesteads description, but most of times this is described in another map, if such exists. More on this below.

Another thing to note here is something found above the description of the homesteads. We can usually find information here about the outfields (though it is not really fields) of the village. The outfields or the ?outlands? (perhaps a better term) of a village are usually used for grazing, gathering of firewood, fishing and some hunting. Outlands are usually not described in detail, but the quality is defined by terms such as ?good fishing? or ?almost no firewood at all?. In this case we can read that the outland of Stjärnholm consists of bare ground which provides poor grazing.

Now we will investigate the homesteads:

Homestead number 1: This is a ?skattekrono? homestead inhabited by Erich Larsson. The farmers? land is worth 14 öresland (336 penningland). We can see that one year the revenues of the farmed field are 12 tunnor and 11, 19/87 cappor. Next year the revenues are 9 tunnor and 19, 3/87 cappor. The surveyor has calculated the mean value of the revenues from these two years and written down the result in the row to the right. To calculate the total area of the fields we simply have to multiply the mean value by 2 (as this is a two field system). The result is: 21.945 tunnland. The meadows bring in 15, 39/87 sommarlass of hay each year.

This farm also owns three patches of land in other areas. Specifically these areas are: ?Wreeta?, ?Fänsgiärde? and ?Fittja parish?. If these areas are mapped or not we cannot at the moment know. All that can be said is that they do not exist in the same volume of maps (named A16).

Homestead number 2: This is a ?frälse? homestead inhabited by Johan Mattzon. The farmers? land is worth 14, ¾ öresland (354 penningland). The mean value of the revenues is: 11 tunnor and 17, 163/174 cappor. This means that the farmed fields are 23.121 tunnland. The meadows bring in 16, 24/87 sommarlassof hay each year.

Homestead number 3: This is a ?frälse? homestead inhabited by Johan Larsson. The value, fields and meadows are the same as number 2. Here it is also noted that number 2 and 3 have common land in an area called ?Fänsgärde?.

In short:

Homestead Owning Fields(tunnland) Meadows(lass) Value(pen)

1 skattekrono 21.945 15.448 336

2 frälse 23.121 16.275 354

3 frälse 23.121 16.275 354

That was all for now. Hope you have enjoyed your visit to Stjärnholm village!

NOTE:
All maps taken from http://www.lantmateriet.se/

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