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Aron Ia. Gurevich

FEUDALISM ON TRIAL BY HISTORIANS OR

ON MEDIEVAL “PEASANT CIVILIZATION”

(Excerpts)1 Translated by Ildar H. Garipzanov

in collaboration with János M. Bak © 2006

What is feudalism from the point of view of a historian today? In contrast to what one may

expect from an article with such an opening sentence, it is not my intention to analyze various

concepts of feudalism, which had been emerging, coexisting or conflicting in historiography

in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a specific, and undoubtedly

interesting, topic; but I would like to focus on other issues, directly or indirectly connected to

the category “feudalism.”

Old wineskins with new wine?

Time after time while contemplating this subject, I stopped in dismay: How could—and still

can—historians, as well as sociologists and philosophers, continue to use long-established

historical categories, in spite of profound changes in the world and, in particular, in scholarly

thought in the last two centuries? It is obvious that the category “feudalism” has been slightly

changing its content, depending on the time it was used and on the philosophic approaches of

historians as well as their affiliation to one or another national school. Nonetheless, the long

epoch separating Antiquity from the early modern period or, allegorically speaking, “classics”

from “modernity”—regardless of the modifications of this epoch’s chronological borders—

remains to be closely connected to the notion of “feudalism,” which continues to be

considered the political, legal, economic, and social quintessence of the Middle Ages. The

Middle Ages were feudal in its essence, and feudalism is synonymous to the Middle Ages.

This equation seems to be so self-evident that doubts arise but rarely.

It is hardly necessary to recall that from the very beginning the category “feudalism”

had a pejorative meaning. It embodied the system of views opposite to the notion “civil

(bourgeois) society.” The latter, on the contrary, embodied the sum of positive qualities.

1 The Russian original was written in 2004 and published in A. Ia. Gurevich, Istorija – neskonchajemyj spor: Medievistika i skandianavistika: Statji raznyh let (History as an endless debate: The essays in medieval and Scandinavian studies) (Moscow, 2005), 843-89. For reasons of economy and also, because good parts of the

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Historical progress was seen to lead to the decay and overthrow of feudalism and thus

established a social system based on more civilized forms of human organization. Even after

the bourgeois revolutions were over and more-or-less finished feudalism, it continued to bear

the stigma of regress and stagnation.

Meanwhile, the accumulation of factual material and, most importantly, its deeper

analysis naturally and inevitably led researchers to the revision of many specific aspects. The

feudal Middle Ages, as a whole and its details, appear now, at the turn of the third millennium,

quite different from how previous generations saw it. Medievalists have undertaken an

enormous research work. New wine is constantly put into old wineskins, but strangely enough,

it does not burst them. However, I think that there is a serious contradiction between some of

the general notions, used by generations of historians, and the ever increasing amount of

empirical insight in our discipline. Starting approximately from the middle of the last century

this discipline experienced and, perhaps, continues to experience a real revolution. This

revolution affected both the subject matters of historical research and its practical

methodology. The perception of the historical past and those questions that we now address to

it have little in common with the inquiries of our academic grandfathers and great-

grandfathers. Therefore, it would be obvious that the new content of historical knowledge

demands new conceptualization and the rejection of the stereotypes inherited from the past.

I do not pretend to undertake or even to begin such a revision. I limit my task to

pointing to the cracks that have appeared in the building constructed by the efforts of

medievalists. I am encouraged to this “deed,” among other things, by the fact that some

scholars have already reconsidered the category “feudal Middle Ages.” Isn’t it symptomatic

and symbolic that, quite independently from each other, separate historians belonging to

different countries and academic branches increasingly doubt the further usefulness of the

concept of “feudalism” and the content which we fill into this category? I had just published

an article under the title which leaves no doubt about my revisionist intentions2—the article

which in addition to my own long-lasting interest was undoubtedly stimulated by the

discussion engendered by the book of Susan Reynolds3—when a quite voluminous book Die

Gegenwart des Feudalismus, presenting polemical articles of historians from various Western

article are addressed to a Russian audience and would appear redundant to a “Western” reader, we have decided to cut certain passages, marked, of course, by ellipsis [...]. Subtitles were added by us. (Transl.)

2 A. Ia. Gurevich, “’Feodal’noje Srednevekov’e”: Chto eto takoje? Razmyshlenija medievista na grani vekov (‘The Feudal Middle Ages’: What is it? The thoughts of a medievalist at the turn of a century),” Odissej: Chelovek v Istoriji 2002: 261-94. 3 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994). See its review by I. V. Dubrovsky in Odissej: Chelovek v Istoriji 1997: 313-9.

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countries, arrived.4 This volume collected the papers presented at the conference held at the

Max-Planck-Institute of History in Göttingen in 2000. Almost on the same day, I received a

message from Professor János Bak that an international conference on “The Use and Abuse of

the Middle Ages: 19th-21th Century” had been scheduled at Budapest in 2005.

Ludolf Kuchenbuch’s extensive article “’Feudalismus’: Versuch über die

Gebrauchsstrategien eines wissenspolitischen Reizwortes” can testify that the intellectual

ferment of the historians engaged in the issue of feudalism leads to undermining established

general categories.5 If one compares this article of Kuchenbuch with the collective volume

Feudalismus – Materialien zur Theorie und Geschichte, edited also by him,6 the obvious

conclusion is that, in a quarter of century separating these publications, the destruction of the

“Tower of Babel” built up by historians became irreversible. Isn’t it symptomatic that the term

“Feudalismus” is now set in Kuchenbuch’s article in meaningful inverted commas? Still, this

German historian is not inclined to deny a real meaning in the notion “feudalism”: “The

perception that feudalism could be excluded from the historical discipline is ... a

misconception. Feudalism is undeniably present there.”7 Regrettably, he mostly limits himself

to general statements and seems not to acknowledge the crucial significance of “the craft of

the historian” per se, i.e. concrete empirical research. However, it is known that “the devil

hides in the details,” and they should not be discarded.

As for contemporary Russian historians, the issue of the feudal Middle Ages as a

category and a problem of historical analysis troubles them very little. Many of them continue

to follow quite old-fashioned views and opinions. Extreme interest in theoretical issues of

medieval studies—which was very dogmatic and, from a scholarly perspective, rather

4 Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus – Présense du féodalisme et présent de la féodalité – The Presence of Feudalism, ed. N. Fryde, P. Monnet, and O.G. Oexle (Göttingen, 2002). 5 Ludolf Kuchenbuch, “’Feudalismus’: Versuch über die Gebrauchsstrategien eines wissenspolitischen Reizwortes,” in Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus, 293-323. Kuchenbuch in particular underlines the irrefutable fact that the definition “feudalism” acquired ideological and political negative connotations already from the time of the French Revolution, which officially abolish the “Old Regime.” As to modern historiography, some of its representatives prefer to avoid using “feudalism” at all. The evaluation of the present state of the problem is hindered by the constantly increasing number of studies. According to Kuchenbuch, five thousand medievalists working nowadays publish up to a thousand monographs and ten thousand articles per year ... Nonetheless, there are a few works, which draw true “scholarly attention” and are distinguishable in this ever-increasing “flood.” Reynold’s Fiefs and Vassals belongs to these, and in spite of the certain limitations of its arguments, it has questioned the approaches to the problem of feudalism that seemed to be stable and accepted by all. No matter how we judge Reynold’s contribution to the discussion on feudalism and vassalic relations, she, in my opinion, opens a new stage in this discussion. That I. S. Philippov, Sredizemnomorskaja Frantsija v ranneje srednevekovje: Problema stanovlenija feodalisma (Mediterranean France in the Early Middle Ages: The problem of the formation of feudalism) (Moscow, 2000), 72, passes her work with a few disparaging remarks does not seem to me an adequate reaction. 6 Feudalismus – Materialen zur Theorie und Geschichte, ed Ludolf Kuchenbuch and B. Michael (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna, 1973).

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sterile—has been replaced by an almost complete indifference to that kind of subjects.

Attention to socio-economic issues has also visibly faded away, and historians turned to new

topics. Yet precisely for this reason the general categories and definitions that are a hundred

years old are being uncritically reproduced again and again in scholarly literature and

textbooks. Isn’t it time for historians to revise the arsenal of general categories which they use

and look at how far they depart from the concrete observations accumulated from sources by

now?

In this respect, I was pleased to read I. V. Dubrovsky’s recent attempt—taking up

some of the issues of the recent debates of international scholarship—to clear up the stale

interpretations of the categories “feud,” “vassalage,” and “feudalism,” still uncritically used in

medieval studies in Russia.8 [...]

Ad fontes! But which ones?

I do not intend to reiterate those ideas that I expressed in the above-mentioned recent article.

Instead, I would like to approach this issue from another point of view. Theoretical

discussions frequently appear to be rather unsubstantiated and not very convincing. I still

believe—however old-fashioned this may sound—that a historian should build his argument

on the evidence of the sources. The task is to select from the endless number of various

monuments—texts as well as objects--those which appear important to be made into historical

documents. This selection of evidence, of course, already contains an interpretation: why do

some texts attract our attention, while many others are ignored?

Actually, selection and interpretation starts much earlier. The texts we have in front of

us are already the products of interpretation. The historian usually does not have “original,” or

“raw,” facts at his disposal, records “directly from life.” We deal with information that passed

the perception of the author of a source and therefore depicts for us not something “wie es

eigentlich gewesen ist,” but an image of reality, created in the mind of the author or composer

of a source and augmented by the following interpretations.

Therefore, it is quite natural that medievalists nowadays concentrate not on the

reconstruction of factual history, but attempt to reconstruct the world-view of the people of the

past or at least of those who created the surviving evidence. Thus, the “craft” of the

7 Kuchenbuch, “’Feudalismus’,” 322. 8 I. V. Dubrovsky, “Kak ja ponimaju feodalism? (How I understand feudalism),” in Konstruirovanije social’nogo: Evropa V-XVI vv (Moscow, 2001), 172. In a slightly modified form, he repeated his ideas in the article: “Feod,” in Slovar’ srednevekovoj kultury (Dictionary of medieval culture), ed. A. Ia. Gurevich (Moscow, 2003), 561-7.

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medievalist in fact is to offer a modern interpretation of medieval interpretations. Moreover, it

is obvious that through these multiple interpretations, significant aspects get suppressed. It is

precisely the context of such suppressions that I intend to consider in the present paper, such

evidence that, unfortunately, rarely attracts the attention of historians.

Therefore, instead of entering rather sterile theoretical discussion, let us leave the

“cursed” problem of feudalism aside for a while and, so to say, look behind its scenes. Thus,

in the following I will deal not with fiefs and vassals, but with some characteristics of the

agrarian system of the Middle Ages, even if this does not look very innovative. Innumerable

studies have been written about this subject and about the fate of the peasantry in particular.

The majority of these works are dated as they were written in the late nineteenth and the first

half of the twentieth century. In Russian scholarship, such historians as N. I. Karejev, I. V.

Luchitsky, P. G. Vinogradov, D. M. Petrushevsky, N. P. Gratsiansky, E. A. Kosminsky, A. I.

Neussykhin, and M. A. Barg9 made significant contributions to the agrarian history of the

West, but interest in this field sharply declined in the second half of the last century, Yet I

believe that the study of the history of peasantry should not be abandoned. Only, we should

reformulate the aim of our research and change its focus. This is exactly what I would like to

attempt.

I will present a few examples relevant for the interpretation of certain phenomena of

medieval spiritual and material life. These examples may appear to be disconnected; but I

intend to demonstrate that there are links between them. [...]

I remember the definition of feudalism given by George Duby half a century ago:

“What is feudalism? It is first of all the stage of mind,” it belongs to “medieval mentality.”10

There is no reason, of course, to accept the formula of Duby as an adequate and

comprehensive definition of feudalism. In fact he himself, as many other “Annalists,”

considered the social aspects of medieval history to be of primary significance. Yet, the

social, economic, legal, and political structures of the Middle Ages are incomprehensible if

we abstract from the emotionality of people constituting them and if we don’t consider their

world-view as an integral part of inquiry.

9 Unfortunately, not much of their publications—excepting, of course, those of Sir Pavel Gavrilovich Vinogradov—is available in languages other than Russian. An early summary was published by E. A. Kosminsky, “Russian Work on English Economic History,” Economic History Review 1 (1927-28): 208-33; see also his Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century, trans. Ruth Kisch and ed. R.H. Hilton (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956). – See also: A. I. Gurevich, “What Is the Perspective in Which a Medievalist from Russia Sees Social History at the End of the 80s?” Storia della Storiografia 17 (1990): 35-9. (Transl.) 10 George Duby, “’Qu’est-ce que la féodalité? Ce fut d’abord une disposition d’esprit’: La féodalité? Une mentalité médiévale,” in Hommes et structures du Moyen âge (Paris, 1973), 110.

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“Archaic individualism”

[...] Let me first refer to my recent study of two narratives on the conflicts between Icelandic

farmers (bonds).11 One of these narratives—a kind of “micro-saga”—tells how a servant of a

noble and rich master offended his neighbor, a single man of more moderate estate. This

incident, which seems to be negligible by itself, caused a series of violent actions and the

enmity between the rich Bjarni and Torstein who was offended by the neighbor’s servant. The

conflict led to a duel between them, in the course of which they demonstrated both bravery

and magnanimity. The “luck” of Bjarni overcame the “bad luck” of Torstein, and the latter

had to acknowledge the superiority of the more “lucky” rich man and become “his man.” The

narrative focuses on the comparison between the two valiant men; how each of them tries to

overcome the other in defending his own dignity. The attention of the author concentrates

precisely on the protagonists’ character, and it is reasonable to assume that the attention of his

audience—those who listened to, or read, this short saga—was also focused on their

magnanimity and nobility.

The testing of an individual’s virtue and the demonstration of his feelings and

behavior—adequate to his freedom and independence—are, in my opinion, the main motif of

the Icelandic “family sagas.” A free farmer, the head of a family, and a full-fledged

participant of a local legal assembly—who at certain times visits the Icelandic popular

assembly, althing, at which the law-speaker, the only official on the island, speaks out and

interprets popular law—is concerned most of all with maintaining his reputation among the

people around him. That is why he takes up so eagerly a sword or battle-axe in order to

defend his good name and secure glory for himself after death. The high self-consciousness of

a bond is the foundation upon which the legal order of independent Iceland was based; this

basis continued to exist up to the 1260s. This kind of “archaic individualism” (I speak of

“archaic individualism” to avoid any close connotation with the Humanist individualism of

the Renaissance) defines both the Icelandic narrative prose and the artistically fanciful poetry

of the skalds. The latter, while extolling the heroic deeds of Norwegian konungs, did not miss

an opportunity to glorify their own poetic skills. These are the defining features of old

Icelandic culture if expressed in a few phrases.

11 A. Ia. Gurevich, “Chelovecheskoje dostoinstvo i social’naja struktura: Opyt prochtenija dvukh islandskikh sag (Human dignity and social structure: The reading of two Icelandic sagas),” Odissej: Chelovek v Istoriji 1997: 5-30.

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Yet, while reading through The Tale of Torstein Staff-Struck12—the narrative in which

the “lucks” of both protagonists act almost as independent essences and in which all attention

therefore seems to concentrate on their human virtues, magnanimity, and nobleness—I could

not escape the feeling that another layer of meaning was present. It is there quite

unnoticeably, and a modern reader may easily miss it. By intentionally simplifying the subject

line of this story—that is, by leaving aside the demonstration of the spiritual height of Bjarni,

Torstein, and then the father of the latter—the student of social relations would have found

here the story of a house-owner with a limited income, who in the end became dependent

from a powerful and rich neighbor. This “lower,” material, layer is given here quite indirectly

so that this makes one doubt about how important it was for the author. Maybe, he intended to

talk not so much about how Torstein became a ”man” of Bjarni, but just “blabbed it out”

against his own intentions, because this was the everyday life of the time: Powerful leaders

collected quite large—in terms of Iceland, of course—possessions, while average free owners

lost, if not freedom, but at least independence. Yet to speak of feudalism or even of some

beginnings of its in Iceland is, as everyone agrees, entirely groundless. Differentiation is

inevitable in any agrarian society, and in my opinion, a less solemn, harsh side of reality

peeps out in the narrative on Torstein from behind the picture of the antagonism and later

reconciliation of the two virtuous men.

Even if we consider the rather special character of medieval Icelandic society, it is

reasonable to ask the question, to what extent mental aims and stimuli were among the

ingredients in the genesis of new socio-economic relations in other countries? I argue that a

medievalist not only has a right to allow such a possibility, but that he has no right to omit it!

Social and economic processes were accompanied by human dramas at which we can

unfortunately only guess. The veil hiding the human content of these conflicts from our look

is too rarely lifted.

In addition to this obvious deficit of the sources, it is well known that medievalists

have for a long time concentrated on legal texts, including narratives only marginally. The

students of the leges barbarorum usually trust the outline of social stratification fixed in all

these laws: nobiles, liberi, laeti, and servi. Attempts on the life or health, as well as

encroachments on the dignity or property, of a member of each of these legal orders—except

the “slaves”—are punished with special compensations and fines. […]

12 For the English translation see The Tale of Torstein Staff-Struck, trans. Anthony Maxwell, in The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection, ed. Jane Smiley and Robert Kellogg (London: Penguin, 1997), 677-84. (Transl.)

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I believe that the historians trusting in these legal precepts have been misguided

because of their concentration on normative sources. However, in fact, the attempts of the

lawgivers at unifying simplifications contradict the reality of disorder and complexity of life.

Let us turn again to Scandinavian monuments. In the Icelandic law Grágás,13 there are

the amounts of mannsgjǫld due for killing a free man: five marks of silver. But reading

numerous sagas, which narrate murders, feuds, and reconciliation, suggests that each time

when parties of conflict were able to reach an agreement on the vergeld to be paid, its size

was not set on the basis of a common legal norm. One paid as much as it seemed “to be

right.” The crucial criteria were the personal virtues of a victim, the respect he had and his

affiliation with a “good” kindred. In other words, at the focus was not the social order—

“noble,” free-born,” or freeman—but the character of a person and its evaluation by society. It

is difficult for me to imagine that it was different in those parts of Europe, in which the

Salian, Saxon, Langobard and other laws functioned. The “family sagas” of Icelanders shed

light on such sides of human relations that remain in dark shadow in those regions, where the

codification of law were made in Latin and where the oral traditions similar to sagas have not

been written down.

[...] Social reality in the Early Middle Ages was very rich, and we should not reduce it

to a simple class division. There are a great number of documents in ecclesiastical archives

confirming the transaction of land and other types of property. We often do not know the

economic and legal status of the people who made these grants. Poor peasants who gave their

plots to “the servants of God,” most likely became dependent of the new owner, while rich

men might have kept their independence. These transactions were written up in charters or

books of traditio, and usually corroborated by—often quite a number of—witnesses in some

kind of public assembly. These “mysterious strangers,” who participated in a legal assembly

and were considered worthy to witness property transactions must have had some legal rights.

It is reasonable to suggest that these people had both personal freedom and some property

which enabled them to become participants of a legal action.14

In majority of cases, these people do not show up in the sources elsewhere, and we

don’t know anything more of them. However, we have already learnt something about them:

they were inhabitants in the surrounding of the transaction, who had kept their personal and 13 For the English translation see Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins, 2 vols., University of Manitoba Icelandic Studies, nos. 3 and 5 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980-2000). (Transl.)

14 See L.T. Mil’skaja, Svetskaj votchina v Germaniji VIII-IX vv i eje rol’ v zakreposhcheniji krest’anstva (The lay manor in Germany in the 8th-9th centuries and its role in the enserfing of peasantry) (Moscow, 1957).

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economic independence and whose presence at the act was relevant for the landowning donor

and the receiving clerical institution.

The medievalist studying the genesis of feudalism and the transfer of property from

laymen to the ecclesiastical lords usually focuses on these two actors, while the great number

of the people showing up in documents as witnesses escape their attention. But their list

suggests that there was a wide layer of people, who belonged neither to an influential social

elite nor to those who came under its control. We don’t know how wide this “neutral” social

strata was, what its actual composition was, or how stable it was. Nonetheless, it is obvious

that there was a numerous group of owners with certain rights, and it is by no means certain

that all of them or their majority were doomed to become dependent from ecclesiastical or lay

lords. Therefore, it is rather simplistic to analyze the social processes of the Early Middle

Ages only from the perspective of “the genesis of feudalism.” In fact, the life was much more

diverse to fit the rigid schemes of a priori generalizations.

Hosting and gift-giving

While studying historical evidence related to the early period of English agrarian history

(from the sixth to tenth century), I found that precaria and similar legal transfers of property,

so important for students of Frankish history, are not present in English legal or narrative

sources. At the same time, I encountered a phenomenon, which is rarely recorded in

continental Europe. The relations between a king and his retinue, bodyguards, on the one

hand, and peasants, on the other, were expressed among other things in that the latter had to

host properly the king visiting their locality, that is, they had to feed him and his servants for

a definite period of time. Feorm (“entertainment,” “banquet,” or “feasting,” the precursors of

the French droit de gîte) is the key word for this custom. Here we see, in a concentrated form,

hospitality and the duty to materially support the authority, the representative of which

warrants law and order. This kind of hosting was not quite voluntary, but it was neither a

simple tribute nor tax. The relations between the king and his people were still patriarchal,

and people must have appreciated an opportunity to have close and direct contacts with their

leader time after time.15 In most countries, the king’s travelling around the land,

Reisekönigtum, was typical for many centuries. For the king to fulfill the functions of a ruler,

15 See A.ia. Gurevich, “Rol’ korolevskikh pozhalovanij v protsesse feodal’nogo podchinenija anglijskogo krest’anstva (The role of royal grants in the process of the feudal subjection of the English peasantry),” Srednije Veka 4 (1953): 49-73.

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he needed the material support of his subjects. At the same time, during his travels across the

country, he demonstrated and lived out his emotional connection to his people.

The hosting of the king and his retinue at banquets gave a specific character to these

relations: It was neither direct exploitation of peasants’ material resources nor a mere

imposition. It was joint participation in feasts, at which the chieftain and his warriors

communicated friendly with the local people, or at least with the most influential among

them. [...]

The importance of this aspect of social life in the functioning of early states—less

evident from Anglo-Saxon evidence—is confirmed by Norwegian sources. In Scandinavia,

the Anglo-Saxon feorm corresponded to the veizla, meaning “banquet” and “entertainment.”

Our evidence about the Norwegian veizla is much richer than the rather rare references to

“hosting” in the English sources. The konung’s estates were the centers of social life. They

were located at key strategic places and regularly visited by him in his itinerary across the

country, the so-called húsabýar. Banquets, which among other things were the most important

hubs of social information and cultural exchange, were organized in those estates or in the

estates of the most influential local people. Here, news was passed around, sagas were recited,

and the songs of skalds, extolling the chieftain, were performed. Yet at the same place justice

was administered, and most importantly, the connections between the leader and the local

people were tested. Customs regulated these relations, and in particular, the time limits were

set within which the king with his warriors could stay at the same húsabý. A long stay of this

voracious team could have ruined hospitable subjects.

The nature of these social relationships cannot be properly understood without

considering another institution, which played as significant role in the traditional society as

the banquets: the exchange of gifts. According to Marcel Mauss, this custom was one of the

most important universal forms of relations between individuals—the one that fostered

friendship and relations of mutual support. The nature of this institution can be especially

clearly seen in those cases when the transaction of gifts from hand to hand was obviously

lacking of any material aspect. The gesture was of primary concern, that is, the movement of

a material object from one individual to another or from one social group to another: the

object acquired a symbolical meaning because of the act of donation. It is not accidental that

giving and receiving a gift were usually conducted at feasts in front of numerous witnesses.16

16 See “Dary: Obmen darami (Gifts: The exchange of gifts),” in Slovar’ srednevekovoj kul’tury, 129-30.

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Until recently, social anthropologists and historians considered the institution of gift-

exchange one the most typical characteristic of archaic society. New studies show that this

custom had not lost its social significance up to the early modern period. Natalie Zemon

Davis has demonstrated that even in sixteenth-century France gift-exchange was still a crucial

ingredient of social life. The circulation of gifts was dependent on both an annual temporal

cycle and a more individualized cycle related to family and kinship, i.e., a birth, wedding,

funeral, etc. The value of a gift varied depending on a great variety of situations. In the

countryside, the circulation of gifts from lords to tenants and from tenants to lords, as well as

their circulation in a “horizontal” social level, could partly have a material, economic, role.

Yet this quite complicated and multifaceted practice gave a specific emotional tone to social

relations.17 Here we see elements of social relations that hardly fit the Marxist notion of

“extra-economic force.” Gifts, brought by free tenants to seigneurs—game or poultry, a pair

of spurs or gloves etc.—were the major tokens of dependence for those peasants who were

not subject to labor services or heavy dues.

But let us return to the institution of banquet. Norwegian texts not only introduce the

reader to the atmosphere at those banquets, these truly focal points of human interaction, but

also give an opportunity to see how the veizla developed over time. With the unification of

the country and the creation of permanent royal residences, the king had a capacity to reward

some of his servitors with feeding at one or another locality. A veizlumaðr could maintain

himself from the dues of the people of the territory which was given to him. However, let’s

not use such notions as “Lehen” or “fief’ to the institution of veizla. The king could award it

to his warrior or someone from his entourage, but he also could deprive him of it. In any case,

veizlumen and lendrmen did not have inheritance rights to the territory given them for their

maintenance. Even if one can argue—with much caution!—that veizla might have begun its

development toward Lehen, it did not move in that direction, as the Frankish beneficium

turned into feodum. In Norway, a grant for maintenance remained just that without turning

into an estate with a manor and regular rents paid by dependant tenants.18

I would argue that there were many such “undeveloped” Lehen in Europe, outside

Scandinavia. A modern Russian medievalist encountering the term feodum in his source

usually describes it as a land-holding, which was given by a seigneur to his vassal on certain 17 Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford, 2000). Unfortunately, the following collection has not been available to me: Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, ed. G. Algazi, V. Groebner and B. Jussen (Göttingen, 2003). 18 See A.Ia. Gurevich, Svobodnoje krest’anstvo feodal’noj Norvegiji (The free peasantry of feudal Norway),” (Moscow, 1967), 117-49.

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conditions and which was inhabited by dependant peasants, working hard on the land so that

the knight had material basis to fulfill his vassalic duties. Such a medievalist usually does not

ask the question: what is the basis for his assumption that in reality, every time he encounters

the term feodum in sources, it exactly matches the above-mentioned relations among seigneur,

vassal, and peasant tenants? We are accustomed that accepted legal terminology in the

modern world is more or less universal. Was it the same case in the Middle Ages, especially

in the beginning of that epoch? Can we take it for granted that one and the same term—

written in another language and therefore not quite comprehensible a priori—always had the

same meaning everywhere? Paul Hyams, analyzing the issue of homage has demonstrated

how the legal procedures described by the term homagium varied depending on time, place,

and—most importantly—situation.19 The ritual of homage, described in all textbooks, was not

so uniform in reality as we may believe. In addition, it was also used not only at the time of a

knight’s submission to the authority of his seigneur, but at completely different occasions

such as to end hostility between quarreling families. I think that Hyams’ idea about the

variability of medieval rituals deserves a special attention. I wonder whether it is useful, when

facing a social relationship that does not correspond to an “ideal type,” to label it right away

as “under-development” or even “bastardy” of the given institution.20

Social anthropologists have frequently written about feasts and the exchange of gifts

as phenomena widely present in culturally very different regions, in several corners of the

world, with social structures characterized by very specific systems of production and

consumption. Surplus, and partly even subsistence product, is used not as a means of

accumulation and exploitation but serve as the basis of communication among individuals and

groups.

[...] The key word to characterize such type of “economy” is “reciprocity.” As we

have seen, in certain situations that kind of relations could become the starting points for the

development of dependence of the “weak” from the “strong.” But it seems that this was only

one of the possibilities open for such a society. I suggest to consider the institutions of gift

and feast, which were no doubt widely practiced in the early medieval West, as not just

intermediary conditions, but as the basic principles of social and economic organization.

They were fundamental features of “peasant society,” that was the basis of a feudal,

seigniorial-vassal, system, which were hardly able to obliterate this basis.

19 Paul Hyams, “Homage and Feudalism: A Judicious Separation,” in Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus, 13-49.

13

Persons and properties

There are other cases where universal terms, used for various situations and in relation to

different social groups, can seriously misguide historians. The students of the English

agrarian history of the eleventh century spent much effort trying to find out the composition

of peasants. Domesday Book contains “statistical” material unique for that epoch. Researchers

have a rare opportunity to define the sizes of holdings and the quantities of various categories

of peasants, namely, villains, bordarii (smallholders), and cotarii (cottagers)—and slaves

(servi) are recorded together with them. The common opinion is that villani were peasants

with full plots, bordarii the tenants with smaller plots, and cotarii those without an arable

land or with one of a negligible size.

But there are some questions and doubts. First, do medievalists take into consideration

the fact that all medieval socio-legal terms were multifaceted and flexible, depending on

numerous circumstances? The person whom royal scribes of Domesday Book, qualified as

“villanus” at one estate, could have been defined as “bordarius” at another. Similarly, among

the cottagers there could have been people without any land and those with relatively small

plots. In Domesday Book, as well as in the Rotuli hundredorum of 1279 the land-holdings of

peasants are defined by the terms gaida, carucata, bovata, and virgata. Historians believe that

these numbers allow to define the size of a manor and the amount of land allocated to

peasants. These countless figures seem to be appropriate to be used in statistic tables. But, I

am afraid, researchers rarely consider to what degree the gaida, carucata or virgata, of one

estate corresponds to the same unit in the records of another estate, located in the same or

another county, registered, in all likelihood, by another scribe.

Don’t we overlook the fact that in that period there was no standard land measurement

and that the figures registered could vary widely depending on countless local circumstances?

I did not ask such a question from my late colleagues E. A. Kosminsky and M. A. Barg, thus I

could not predict their replies. Nevertheless I can assume that, if they had taken the above-

mentioned doubts into consideration, some of their observations and conclusions would have

become more conditional.

In this respect, it is useful to return to the issue of the socio-legal and economic

composition of English peasantry at the end of the eleventh century. Based on very high

percentage of cottagers, mentioned in Domesday Book, a hundred years ago I. N. Granat

suggested that the existence of a broad layer of landless people in the English countryside—

20 P. Coss, “From Feudalism to Bastard Feudalism,” in Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus, 79-107

14

that is, the existence of available labor—was not the result of the late medieval “enclosure,”

but the “original” characteristic of life in the countryside.21 By doing so, I. N. Granat breaks

the direct connection between the existence in the English countryside of a wide layer of

people ready to sell their labor and the process of “the original accumulation of capital.” In

any case, there is something to think about. The question of a degree of differentiation among

the peasants is of particular importance. Isn’t it likely that villagers without, or with a little,

land could have become dependent not only on the large landowners, but also on their better-

off peasant neighbors? If we contemplate the material analyzed above, we may see a blurry

silhouette of peasant society, which—even though surely not separate from those feudal

institutions which medievalists concentrate upon—lived according to its own principles and

rules? This “peasant society” was by no means that of the equals; it was divided into

economic and socio-legal groups and ranks. Medievalists frequently ignore this peculiar

social conglomerate and peasant society gets lost in the shadow of feudalism. [...]

Let us look at the nature of landed property in early medieval Europe. [...] The holding

of a peasant or anyone else is called in many sources allodium. In the context of the

Markgenossenschaftslehre and A. I. Neussykhin’s theories (which I am unable to accept), the

allod (or alod) was considered as an individual holding, originally controlled by the peasant

community and later turned into private property, or “commodity” according to Engels. In

any case, historians consider the allod the object of property rights, the subject of alienation

and more or less free disposal. Because of the lack of evidence, historians don’t have an

opportunity to penetrate its nature more deeply.

However, I think that the situation is not as hopeless as that. In order to approach the

issue from another side we have to turn again to the North. It has been my argument for some

time that medievalists should use ancient Scandinavia as a kind of research laboratory. If in

continental Europe, for a long period, Latin remained an official language, in the North, as

well as in pre-Norman England, records in a native vernacular dominated. The cultural and

historical importance of this fact is enormous indeed. Marc Bloch pointed out that when

persons making a deal related to land or something else turned to a literate clergyman—the

scribe who had to record the conditions of agreement—these persons expressed their

intentions in their native language, but the literate scribe fixed this agreement in Latin. As a

result, there was a transition from one system of categories into another. He said that the task

of the medievalist is to translate mentally the conditions of agreement from Latin—back, as it

21 I. N. Granat, K voprosy ob obezzemelivaniji krest’anstva v Angliji (To the issue of the land-dispossession of

15

were—into the language in which the contractors spoke and thought. This is an almost

impossible task: we have no possibility to overhear the conversations of those people.22

In Scandinavia, both the legal records and the narrative or poetic texts were mostly

written in Old Norse. This circumstance makes the work of a medievalist easier and opens a

window closer to approach the consciousness of people of the past. Another advantage is that

we do not have to deal with a few Germanic legal categories, showing up in Latin texts and

often remaining arcane because of their isolated use, but can study an enormous legal

vocabulary, the categories of which changed depending on context. We can discover how

these people imagined quite different aspects of social and legal reality, and furthermore, how

these aspects correspond to their general world-view.

Land property, which was defined among the Franks by the term “allod,” was called

among the Scandinavians óðal. There is no doubt that the term óðal is related to the term eðel.

Yet the latter characterizes not property, but the personality of an owner: nobleness, nobility,

and a good descent. Does this mean that the owner of the óðal had liberty, full legal rights,

and the dignity of a man descended from a “noble” family? Is it so that the qualities of a free

individual expanded onto his land-holding, and in turn the possession of inheritable land

property gave to odelman nobility and high dignity? The analysis of old Scandinavian sources

suggests that the rights of an individual “ennobled” his holding, and the fact that an individual

owned inheritable land implied not only his status of landowner, but also gave certain positive

features to his personality. In short, personal rights and the right of ownership blended here

into an organic unity. Thus, when the author of the Heimskringla mentioned the hypothetical

“taking away of odal” from the people of Norway by its first unifier, King Harald Fairhair, he

did not mean the completely impossible confiscation of land-holdings from eveyone, but

royal infringement on the freedoms of the bonds, free farmers and cattle-breeders.23

The relation of the owner of an odal to the inheritable plot of land was by no means

limited to the relationship between a subject and an object. The odalman and the odal were in

a tight, constant, and almost inseparable unity. This unity is an exclusive characteristic of

the English peasantry) (Moscow, 1907). 22 Marc Bloch, La societé féodale (Paris, 1968; first edition in 1939), 122-3. Cf. A. Ia. Gurevich, “Jazyk srednevekovogo istochnika i social’naja dejstvitel’nost’: bilingvism v srednevekovoj Evrope (The language of a medieval source and social reality: Bilingualism in medieval Europe),” in Sbornik statej po vtorichnym modelirujushchim sistemam, ed. Iu. M. Lotman (Tartu, 1973), 73-5. 23 See A. Ia. Gurevich, Svobodnoje krest’anstvo, 93-117.

16

ancient Scandinavia.24 However, one should also remember that in many old English texts,

both legal and poetic, inheritable land-holding is called eðel.

How is this goal reflected in Russian textbooks and studies about the process of

feudalization? Soviet historiography focused on the process leading to the formation of the

allod, private land property, a kind of a “commodity.” The masses of ruined peasants lost the

right of property to their plots and faced a harsh option of becoming tenants of large

landowners. A peasant, who lost his land-holding or, at least, the right to manage it, became

precarist, dependent person. An individual was forced to loose his property, and along with

this, he lost personal freedom and independence. This is the traditional theory.

However, as I have tried to point out, sources allow opposite conclusions. The

existence of a large number of “signatories,” witnesses of land transactions—that is, the

people with legal rights—leads to the conclusion that small landed property and probably a

quite wide layer of free commoners continued to exist. The essence of the institution of óðal

suggests close ties between householders and the land they worked on for generations. A plot

was not simply a source of material prosperity, but something more: it was an extension of the

holder’s subjectivity, and the embodiment of physical and emotional investment of the

ancestors. True, however, that [...] there was also a continuous threat to his property rights.

The balance of the two trends was, as far as one can gauge from the insufficient evidence,

different from place to place and from time to time. Yet it is obvious that to register only the

expropriation of small landowners is one-sided. [...]25

Old Scandinavian conditions were doubtless very specific and do not allow direct

extrapolation of insights from there to other regions. Yet, just as historical anthropologists

took over research results from ethnologists, new and highly useful and innovative for

medievalists, insights into Scandinavian history may also help in the renewal of the discipline

opening up hitherto neglected aspects.

Gods and lawsuits

By analyzing a few songs from the Elder Edda, I should like to demonstrate that well-studied

texts can yield new evidence if a historian looks at them from another point of view and

relates them to other sources with new connections of meaning. The search for the human 24 I do not have time to analyze here the issue of close interaction between the subject possessing property and the object of his right. The sources of that epoch show that the quality of an individual extended to his things, such as arms, treasures, military horses or dwellings. Inheritable land-holding, in turn, was included in the “force field” surrounding a men. 25 In the course of excerpting, it seemed more logical to move this paragraph from a place further down. (Transl.)

17

content [...] may unearth in those sources layers which were earlier either not seen or even

ignored.

Although the songs of the cycle of the Elder Edda are about pagan gods and ancient

heroes, an attentive reader can gain an insight into the world of ordinary people dealing with

everyday concerns far away from the poetic world of fantastic and legendary personages. But

are those two worlds as remote from each other as one might think? I asked this question

some time ago, and my conclusions were by no means unequivocal. It is enough to read

through the Hávamál (Sayings of the High One),26 one of the most famous songs of the cycle,

to understand that its central place is given to the parables of worldly wisdom, to principles

which have to be followed by a person, looking for the right path in the life. How shall one

behave in another man’s house or at a feast? As a guest, shall one be communicative and

talkative or remain silent and avoid inebriety? What role does the exchange of gifts play?

What is the meaning of friendship in the society of farmers living far away from each other?

And so on, and so forth. The study of these maxims of everyday life allows the historian to

get closer to the perception of the world of ancient Icelanders, whose lifestyle and deeds the

“family sagas” describe from a completely different perspective. There are no gods or heroes

in the Hávamál.

Let’s look at another song of the same cycle: Hyndluljóð (Song of Hyndla).27 It is rife

with names of legendary figures, ancient heroes known from other poetic texts, and of pagan

gods. But if we read it more closely, we can see a completely different context. It can be

summarized as following: A certain Ottar prepares for the trial with a certain Angantyr; the

object of the legal case being “the paternal inheritance,” namely, a land-holding (óðal). In

order to win his case in court, Ottar has to name the kinsmen who owned this property before

him. Yet he is not prepared to pass this legal procedure successfully because he does not

remember the required names.

Ottar turns for help to the goddess Freja, hoping for her support. Freja, in turn,

summons a certain fairy-tale being, Hyndla, a witch with an enormous memory. While

overcoming her resistance—since Hyndla does not like Ottar—Freja forces Hyndla to go with

her to Vallhalla, the hall of the supreme god Odin, and enlighten Ottar there by discovering

the names he needs. “The beer of memory” makes Hyndla talkative, and against her own will

26 For the English translation see The Poetic Edda, ed. Caroline Larrington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 14-38. (Transl.)

27 For the English translation see The Poetic Edda, ed. Larrington, 253-9.

18

she relinquishes a “waterfall” of names into the mind of “foolish” Ottar. However, there is a

certain structure and logic in this abundance of personal names.

First in this list are the names of five generation of kinsmen, the predecessors of Ottar

from the father’s side. But Hyndla does not stop here and continues to name noble ancestors

and glorious people, who lived in old times and who turned to be Ottar’s relatives. “All this is

your kin, foolish Ottar!” she adds. Following Hyndla, we reach legendary royal dynasties and

even pagan gods. Now Ottar is prepared for the trial and can expect a successful outcome. But

why are these genealogical data so important?

If we leave aside Hyndluljóð and turn to the old Norwegian law-book, The Laws of

Gulathing, we can find there the following precept: a person has an inviolate right to own an

óðal if he is able to list the names of the five generation of his predecessors-kinsmen, who

owned that land in an interrupted successive line. But it was exactly the names of the five

generations of Ottar’s ancestors that open the extensive list of his real and legendary kin,

which in fact includes all free and noble people inhabiting Norway form olden times.

The factual, real, register of Ottar’s legal predecessors is immediately continued in

Hyndla’s talk by the very long list of the names of heroes and gods. I repeat, Ottar is now

ready to a successful legal trial that will secure him his father’s óðal. But at the same time—I

would like to stress this—memories about countless “people of Mitgard” are revitalized in his

mind, in his “cultural memory.”28 The limitless list of the names, uttered by the intoxicated

Hyndla in the world of the dead, does not tell much to the modern reader. It was not the case

at the time when this song was composed and when it was finally written down. Each name

was a component of the epos and myth so that the mentioning of a name actualized the

memory of its bearer and his deeds. In other words, the list of names piled up by Hyndla was

a kind of shorthand, hiding a unique world for the Scandinavians of the twelfth or thirteenth

century. This world, with rare exceptions, is irrevocably lost for us, but a modern researcher

has to imagine the richness of memories and associations, which each of the names listed in

The Song of Hyndla must have generated in the minds of medieval Norwegians and

Icelanders.

It is obvious that The Song of Hyndla is one of the mythological songs of the Eddic

cycle. But at the same time, the study of it helps us understand that mytho-poetic mechanism,

which probably worked at things in the course of trials related to property claims and the

inheritance rights. When historians, studying land relations in the Frankish state, encounter in

19

sources the terms allodium haereditas, praecarium, dominium, or proprietas, they are

accustomed to think only of legal categories and nothing else. I’m afraid that the sphere of

emotions and mytho-poetic legends remains too remote for them, because the Latin

terminology and phraseology of legal records hardly can stimulate their epistemological

imagination. But maybe we should allow the possibility that in the spiritual universe of the

medieval people who litigated for land-holdings and other inheritance, these extremely

mundane legal cases also activated that mythological layer of mind that, I believe, opens up

for our view when reading The Song of Hyndla.29

It is difficult for me to imagine that such an actualization of the sphere of emotions,

myths and beliefs—which medievalists usually sum up in the notion of memoria—that took

place in the Scandinavian North did not occur at other latitudes. More likely, this is a gap

created by the specific nature of our sources. This specific nature or rather the silence is

remarkable indeed and needs an explanation and interpretation.

Christianization of the Germanic tribes in continental Europe took place half a

millennium earlier than in the Scandinavian North, and it was also much more intensive. As a

result, there were no conditions for the preservation of myths, songs, and popular legends and

customs in their ”original” form. The pull of legal custom and belief that the Christian Church

thought necessary to record in writing was expressed in texts in Latin. Due to the

“acculturation of the barbarians,” their accommodation to the late Roman civilization, many

texts, originating from their original oral culture, were not written down. The situation was

quite different in the North.

The “dialogue” in the Weistümer

So far I have discussed phenomena typical of the Early Middle Ages. Now I would like to

turn to later periods and, in particular, to the issue of the peasant commune. Nowadays,

medievalists see the peasant commune of the High and Late Middle Ages slightly differently

from earlier scholars. The relations between the peasant tenants and the landowning lords

appears to be quite complicated and multifaceted. The new reading of the Weistümer, records

of customary law on the estates (first published by the brothers Grimm), allows to ask new

questions about the relations between lords and peasants. These texts are based on local “bye-

laws,” established at the assemblies of peasants under the guidance of their lord. The latter

28 Miðgarðr is a “middle world,” that is, fenced, inhabited, and cultivated space opposite to Útgarðr (the space outside), the world of forces hostile to a man.

20

tried to strengthen his authority, while the peasant commune tried, albeit usually without a

direct obstruction to the lord’s demands, to defend traditions more or less limiting the lord’s

arbitrary rule. Two interests meet and relate to each other in these “customs”: which seems to

have led to a certain balance of power for a long period, roughly up to the start of the Peasant

War of 1525.

The primary value of the Weistümer for a historian is that there we can hear the voices

of peasants concerned with the defense of their economic and legal interests. In response to

the questions about their dues, the members of a commune had to describe the actual state of

matters inherited from their ancestors. Therefore, the Weistum is a text, which enabled a

specific “dialogue” between the two sides. The lord stated his questions in a certain way in

order to impose upon the members of a commune his own version of the rules they had to

follow. The peasants, on the other hand, tended to express in their answers their own

interpretation of tradition. One can assume that this communication could have been quite

strained, because the lord tried to impose on them his will, and the presence of his armed

retinue served as a silent argument, while the peasants naturally tried to oppose him with such

an understanding of “antiquity” as they considered more beneficial.

The balance of legal norms and customs, established on the basis of such a “dialogue”

expressed the social memory of the members of a commune and, at the same time, formed it

to a high degree. Although the will of the lord, in general, dominated these assemblies, the

peasants participating in the “dialogue” left their imprint on the interpretation of their

relations with the landowner. The records of the Weistümer are the result of the direct

interaction between an oral tradition with a written one, which makes this type of sources

epistemologically significant.

Soviet historians once attempted to analyze the Weistümer, but exclusively in order to

find class antagonisms, while their rich content was left aside.30 As a result, we in fact have to

start anew the study of life in the medieval peasant commune, the views and behavior of

peasants—who participated in assemblies, often accompanied with heavy drinking. The witty

29 See A.Ia. Gurevich, Norvezhskoje obshchstvo v ranneje srednevekovje (Norwegian society in the Early Middle Ages) (Moscow, 1977), 252-74. 30 B. E. Mayer, “Ustavy kak istochnik po izucheniju polozhenija krest’an Germaniji v kontse XV – nachale XVI vv. (The customs as the source for the study of the status of peasants in Germany at the end of 15th to the beginning of the 16th centuries),” Srednije Veka 8 (1956).

21

multifarious study of Gadi Algazi demonstrates how rich are the perspectives promised by

including these “down to earth” legal records into our inquiries.31

The study of the Weistümer thus provides new concrete content to the antagonism

between the landowner and the subjects, and the nature of the so-called “extra-economic

force.” The relations between the lord and a peasant were not limited to the threat (or act) of

violence. The antagonists lived side by side and therefore had to look for a modus vivendi.

“Extra-economic force,” as it appears in the Weistümer, was the force using the elements of

legal consciousness, social memory, and traditions. While the content of records in customs

was primarily defined by the will of the lord asking peasants the questions important for

him—the questions about dues, rents, and the lord’s privileges—the peasants, in spite of their

lower status, nonetheless acted as interpreters of the “law” of a village. In this case the “silent

majority,” was not deprived of its voice; even the silence of the peasants in their talk with the

lord, was revealing.

Since the Weistümer belong to a long period from the twelfth to the seventeenth

century, they allow us an approach to the mental world of commoners across a significant

epoch. No matter how much they were deprived of rights (it is better to speak not of the

“absence of rights,” but rather about “limited rights”), the lords had to consider them not only

as a threatening mass, but also as partners in a legal relationship.32

The “three orders” – a Northern variant

Let us return once more to the corpus of the old Icelandic texts, which are characterized by

such an impressive variety. It is especially surprising considering the small number of the

people, among whom these works originated and functioned. The numbers of authors per

capita is quite impressive.

From the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century comes the

Eddic Rigsþula (The List of Rig),33 which contains a kind of “mythologic sociology” or, more

precisely, “sociogenesis.” In contrast to the “three orders” of [...] Adalbero of Laon and

Gerard of Cambrai, that they [...] describe as the social order existing for ever, The List of Rig

narrates the process of the creation of a somewhat similar yet different social order. Although

31 Gadi Algazi, “Lords Ask, Peasants Answer: Making Traditions in Late Medieval Village Assemblies,” in Between History and Histories, ed. G. Sider and G. Smith (Toronto, 1997), 199-229. I am grateful to K. A. Levinson for the opportunity to see the translation of this article. 32 On the dialectics of freedom and dependence in medieval society, see I. V. Dubrovsky, “Svoboda i nesvoboda (Freedom and unfreedom),” in Slovar’ srednevekovoj kul’tury, 450-61. 33 For the English translation see The Poetic Edda, ed. Larrington, 246-52.

22

this story was written down several centuries after the Scandinavians’ Christianization and is

clearly the product of scholarly culture, it refers to social conditions not affected by

ecclesiastical influence and is therefore most interesting for us.

This is the story line in brief: A certain pagan god called Heimdal, disguised under the

“nickname” Rig—a name not mentioned in any other source—visits three houses. First he

comes to a miserable hut, in which Great-grandfather (Ái) and Great-grandmother (Edda)

live, and spends there three nights. After giving them precepts, he leaves for good. Great-

grandmother gives birth to a child called Slave (Þræll); he is ugly, and his skin is dark and

coarse. He then gets married to a woman called Þúr, which means female slave, and they

have children with peculiar names, or rather nicknames: such as Herdsman, Boor, Stableboy,

Lazy, Loafer, and Fetid for the sons, and Stump, Dirty-Nose, Bawler, Maid, and Ragamuffin

for the daughters. Þræll and his children constantly do dirty household work. “From there are

descended all the race of slaves.”

Thereafter, Rig visits another house, in which Grandfather (Afi) and Grandmother

(Amma) live. These prosperous owners feed Rig well and let him stay with them. The guest

spends there three nights, and in due time Grandmother gives birth to a son Karl. He was

more handsome then Þræll. Karl was a farmer, and his name can be understood as “man,” or

“peasant.” (In early medieval England a free commoner was called kerl!) Correspondingly,

the sons of Karl were named Yeoman, Lad, Free-Born, Man, Smith, Farmer etc, and his

daughters Garrulous, Prideful, Arrogant, Wife, Dame, Housekeeper, etc. “From them

descended all the race of farmers.”

Finally, Rig came to the hall of Father (Faðir) and Mother (Móðir). They live their

lives freely and festively. Rig was fed nobly and stayed for three nights; in due time Mother

gave a birth to a son named Jarl (earl). When he grew up, he became a very handsome man

spending his time in hunting and martial deeds. Rig taught him magic runes and awarded him

extensive estates. Among Jarl’s sons, the youngest named Konungr was the best. He also

possessed magic abilities and even surpassed his father in them.

We have here a tripartite scheme, but in contrast to the tripartitio Christiana it

addresses the genesis of the social whole. A certain god creates first the slaves, then the free

farmers, and finally the noble leaders, including a konung. There is another important

difference between the two: Bishop Adalbero feels pity for the burdensome life of the serf,

that is, the members of the ordo agricultorum. Yet the destiny of the karls, the peasants of

The List of Rig, does not look so gloomy at all. Compared to the thralls, the slaves, the

peasants seem quite prosperous. Their lifestyle is simple compared to the festive lifestyles of

23

Jarl and Konungr, but it does not look socially degraded. Although his dwellings, clothes, and

food do not match the luxury of Jarl, Karl clearly realizes his human dignity: he is a free

man.34

While in the “sociological scheme” of the French bishops the peasants—because of

the first place is given to the oratores—form the third and lowest order, in The List of Rig

they are the second. Those familiar with the Icelandic sagas are not surprised, as in them, the

free farmers stand above the slaves, servants, and dependants, of which there are several in

every independent household. Medievalists studying agrarian history are usually focusing on

dependent and cowed serfs and villains. The Icelandic sources encourage us to widen our

research horizon and include in it the free commoner, a relatively independent householder.

[…]

Surely, a poetic text such as The List of Rig reflects society in very specific

perspective. and, additionally, in a very archaic one. We have here not what “eigentlich

gewesen ist,” but what was created in the mentality of the medieval Scandinavians. Just as

with the three orders of the French bishops—that Duby called an “imaginaire,” here we have

another image, created by the imagination of the people belonging to another society, and

thus an immanent part of medieval reality.

“Class struggle” and peasant pride

What unifies all these examples? They are spread over time and over space; and they belong

to the different layers of historical reality, from a myth and legend to legal records.

Nevertheless, they all point to the existence of a layer of free people, farmers and cattle-

breeders, who cannot be reduced to being simply “direct producers” or the “objects of

exploitation.” They took an active part in legal assemblies and feasts, listened, and perhaps

even composed songs and sagas by which they passed on their image of society. The degree

of freedom of the members of this social stratum was obviously quite variable, and we cannot

often measure this variability, but that much is obvious that not all medieval “peasants” were

unfree subjects of landlords. […]

I am not the first to point out that students of medieval agrarian history, while using

the definitions “peasant” and “serf,” consciously or subconsciously invest them with the

meaning that these definition had in Eastern Europe at the end of the Middle Ages and the

early modern period. This reproach is addressed primarily to the Russian medievalists. They

34 For details see the section “Tripartitio Christiana – tripartitio Scandinavica: Opyt sravnenija dvukh

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have certainly for a long time perceived the social and legal reality of the medieval English or

French countryside in terms of Russian servitude of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as

depicted in Gogol’s Dead Souls... Our mentality has been brought up on the material of

Russian history, and it is very difficult to avoid attaching the modern East European

connotations of those terms to the French and English villains and serfs of the twelfth to

fourteenth centuries. The picture of social life is almost entirely defined by the image of

oppressed laborers without rights, heavily exploited, in perpetual antagonism against the

landowners. As for the spiritual world of the peasants, the importance of studying it has been

dismissed by the famous words of Karl Marx about the “the idiotism of the countryside life.”

Of course, it would be wrong to deny that these phenomena did exist. Yet isn’t it time

for historians brought up on the ideas of class struggle as the main driving force to be more

cautious with such one-sided views? The relations between landowners and dependant tenants

lasted for several centuries, and it seems unlikely that a so long-lasting arrangement was

possible on a volcano. I found it significant that in the famous protocols of the inquisition at

Montaillou, were indeed almost all aspects of rural life were discussed, the lords—the duke,

king, or bishop—hardly ever feature.35

A poem known under the title Mayer Helmbrecht was composed in thirteenth-century

Germany. The father and son Helmbrecht argue which kind of lifestyle is preferable, the one

of a knight, which young Helmbrecht wants to imitate, or honest peasant work, glorified by

the father. The drama ends with the miserable downfall of the Helmbrecht junior, attempting

to become a nobleman. It is noteworthy that the father, a prosperous householder, is proud of

his independence and conscious of his dignity. The anonymous author of the poem does not

mention any lord, who is supposed to be above this peasant.

Historians are accustomed to juxtapose the peasants to their lords, and this is justified.

While studying the texts of leges barbarorum, medievalists tend to look for exploiting

landowners among the nobiles and see in the liberi homines “free commoners” (Gemeinfreie),

facing the threat of losing their freedom and property. This was not the image we received

from the Scandinavian material discussed above […]. There we saw that also prosperous and

average peasants had slaves. The dividing line between the free and unfree was not where we

are accustomed to see it, because the exploitation of the labor of slaves and freemen, as well

as of hired workers, was widespread among landowning peasants as well.

srednevekovykh ‘sociologichseskikh skhem,” in Gurevich, Norvezhskoje obshchestvo, 274-303. 35 See Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (New York: Knopf, 1979). (Transl.)

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Medieval peasants were not like the Russian muzhiks of the sixteenth to nineteenth

century. Some Soviet literary critics inspired by the idea of class struggle were able earlier to

discern in Mayer Helmbrecht the bloody shadows of the sixteenth-century Great Peasant War

in Germany. The reason for such interpretations was probably the belief that the driving

stimulus in feudal society was the “maximalisation of surplus product.” Yet there is another

assumption which I want to point out as a last thought.

Needs and hoards

Medieval economy had specific characteristics. No doubt, the simple reproduction of basic

needs was its basis. But those needs included both the means of subsistence and a certain

“surplus,” designated to address such social needs as the provision of hospitality,36 regular

participation in feasts, and the exchange of gifts. This agrarian society could function well

only by using these forms of social interaction. In other words, those form of social

interaction, which from the modern point of view are considered as auxiliary, excessive, and

redundant for the functioning of society, were required and vital conditions for that stage of

social and cultural development […]. The exchange of gifts, usually at feasts, was both the

most acceptable way of the redistribution of products and, more importantly, the tool creating

and maintaining peace, friendship, and mutual support.

In order to see more clearly the nature of this society and the behavior of its members,

I have to discuss briefly one more phenomenon. From the Viking Age, the eighth to eleventh

century, a great amount of hoards has survived in both Scandinavia and neighboring

countries. Archaeologists and historians do not believe any more that the possessors of hoards

hid them at the time of troubles for later use. Many of those hoards were deposited in such a

way, which excluded their “recovery.” While some treasures were deposited in mounds or

other hidden places, others were placed in bogs or in rivers and seas. Egil’s Saga narrates that

this skald, Egil Skallagrimsson, expecting death, hid in a secret place chests with silver that

he had received from an English king, and killed the only witnesses, the slaves who helped

him hide the treasure.37

The attitude to precious metals and things made of it, such as rings, neck-rings, or

fibulas, can be explained only if we consider the belief in that material valuables embodied

certain qualities for their owners, connected to them, and that the possession of such treasures

36 See “Gostepriimstvo (Hospitality),” in Slovar’ srednevekovoj kul’tury, 120-1. 37 For the English translation see Egil’s Saga, trans. Bernard Scudder, in The Sagas of Icelanders, 3-184. (Transl.)

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guaranteed “success” and “luck” to the person they belong to. There was a close connection

between an individual and the treasure he possessed, and this connection continued to exist

even after his death. Sagas and tales refer to people buried in mounds and sitting on their own

treasures to protect them from possible encroachments. An attitude to treasure and the

perceptions of fate, death, and the afterworld were inseparably intertwined in this mentality.

I have often written about these phenomena, and I return to them here in order

underline the originality of this civilization, which was certainly not limited to the old

Scandinavian cultural circle. Only in other regions of Europe, for many reasons this

civilization is traceable, at best, in disconnected fragments, while in the North its overall

shape can be discerned.38

In summary then, medieval European civilization was by no means limited to its

feudal aspect. I do not question the significance of relationships expressed in vassalage and

fief, nor that of various forms of the dependence of peasants from the “nobles.” At the same

time, we should not ignore those forms of human interaction that were outside feudal

structures. It is important to pay attention to the multifaceted structure of the medieval world

in which slavery and hired labor were wide-spread phenomena, along with feudal military,

political, and legal structures. The city, the nature of which was remote from feudalism, also

played a special role in the functioning and transformation of society, but this is a separate

topic, which I wish not address here.39

* * *

I would like to close this essay with a personal memory, from the time when I was

able to visit the Scandinavian North for the first time. My Norwegian colleagues from the

University of Trondheim kindly offered me an opportunity not only to visit the field of

Frostathing—the place of an ancient popular assembly in northwestern Norway—but also to

get acquainted with the natural environment in which the farmers of this region lived. We

38 To the best of my knowledge, the only attempt to analyze this kind of “’peasant-based’ social system” has been undertaken by Chris Wickham (“Problems of Comparing Rural Societies in Early Medieval Western Europe,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser. 2 , 1992: 221-46). While realizing the peculiarities of Scandinavia, he nonetheless notices—in my opinion, very justifiably—that such self-sufficient peasant communes in one or another way can be discovered in very different regions. The most important is to accept them as an specific form of agrarian society, existing not only in the period preceding the genesis of feudalism, but also coexisting with it. 39 The coexistence of, and interaction between, the countryside and the city is a universal feature of very different traditional civilizations. Nevertheless, it is more important to keep in mind the following feature of the medieval West: agrarian space was covered with a quite dense net of urban and semi-urban settlement. (It was mentioned a long time ago that, for instance, a German peasant, as a rule, had a possibility to visit the nearest city and return home in the course of a day.) We cannot see something similar either in the Byzantine Empire or the Califate, in spite of a high degree of urbanization there. See W. Rösener, Die Bauern in der europäischen Geschichte (Munich, 1993), 45.

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stood on the top of the hill where the estate of one of the leaders of Trondheim, mentioned by

Snorri Sturluson in the Heimskringla, was located a thousand years ago. This farm was many

miles away from the farms of other bonds. Here, for the first time I really understood the

meaning of Tacitus’ words that the Germanic people were accustomed to settle far away from

each other. This small population, spread on large territory, “did not like to have neighbors”

indeed. Even when certain connections existed among separate householders, they were

expressed primarily in the maintenance of the traditional law,40 not in some communal

customs.

While standing on the top of the hill, inside of which archeologists discovered the

traces of an early medieval settlement, I was able to grasp what the “archaic individualism” of

the Germanic people really was like.[…]

40 O. G. Oexle, “Soziale Gruppen in der Ständegesellschaft: Lebensformen des Mittelalters und ihre historischen Wirkungen,” in Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte – Bilder – Objekte, ed. O.G. Oexle and A. von Hülsen-Esch, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, no. 141 (Göttingen, 1998), 9-44, at 25ff, has written recently on the guilds and coniurationes created by local people to maintain peace.