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Abstract
The dissertation considers the social and economic role of the slave in medieval Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of slavery in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It critically examines the available sources including provincial law codes from Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, Icelandic literature, archeological discoveries, diplomatic material including testamentary manumissions, and land registers from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The problems in using legal and literary sources in writing history form the main methodological focus. The legal status of the slave is considered in relation to other medieval European law not to draw conclusions about the comparative social status of the slave but to determine possible sources for Scandinavian legal provisions.
The origins and the economic significance of slavery are placed in the context of slave systems known elsewhere in ancient and medieval Europe. Unlike other slave systems, Scandinavian slavery did not develop into serfdom. The descendants of slaves were not distinguished from other free tenants.
Slavery may have provided a large proportion of the agricultural labor but was not important in most of Scandinavia in determining the structure of the economy. Though the medieval Scandinavian countries were not "slave economies," the main significance of slavery was social. Its end came partly because of economic factors like the availability of free landless labor, partly because of church influence, and partly because it was no longer necessary ideologically to emphasize the freedom of the peasant.
