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An interesting tangential: outlawry in the Viking age was called "skóggangr", literally "going to the forest". (I read about this in https://norse-mythology.org
by xiaq 4y ago
An interesting tangential: outlawry in the Viking age was called "skóggangr", literally "going to the forest". (I read about this in https://norse-mythology.org/outlawry-viking-age/ https://norse-mythology.org/outlawry-viking-age/.)
But in the sagas all the Icelandic outlaws would instead travel overseas (quite literally, since Iceland is surrounded by sea) - which now makes a lot of sense to me knowing that Iceland was already deforested early on, so there wasn't really a lot of forest to go to.
- BurningFrog 4y agoPerhaps related: Sweden is one of the very few European countries that never had serfdom. Swedish peasants were of course dirt poor, but they were free citizens, and had 1/4 of the voting power in the ancient version of parliament¹. The reason I've heard for this is that most of the country was (and is) forest. Enough forest that you can hide from, and/or ambush, anyone coming to mess with you. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riksdag_of_the_Estates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riksdag_of_the_Estates
- selimthegrim 4y agoDidn’t the Vikings have thralls?
- BurningFrog 4y agoThey did, but that era ended a few centuries before there was a country of Sweden. Also, the thralls were mostly taken prisoner in raids abroad, so the local forests were not a factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrall