Trälarnas ekonomiska roll i det vikingatida Skandinavien

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to address key questions concerning the status and roles of enslaved groups (thralls) in Viking-Age Scandinavia. The thesis focuses on the lives of thralls at two levels; first within the local context of the household and farm (described here as the ‘microenvironment’), and second within the wider ‘macroenvironment’ of Scandinavian society. In particular, the study seeks to uncover the different practical and economic roles that were fulfilled by thralls within these contexts, and in doing so to explore how slaveholding communities benefitted from the exploitation of these people. In order to address these issues, the thesis critically examines the archeological material associated with thralls and discusses the various issues associated with the interpretation of this evidence. Given the inherent difficulty of identifying thralls in the archaeological record, this study also utilizes a range of contemporaneous and later medieval textual sources, including the Icelandic sagas and the earliest surviving Scandinavian law codes, as a means of contextualizing the discussion of material evidence. In exploring the diverse range of archaeological evidence and textual sources available to us, the author concludes that thralls played a significant role among Scandinavian communities as a source of both domestic and economic labor. Through this, they also involuntarily helped Scandinavian communities to mount and sustain trading, raiding and settlement activity in Europe and beyond. In reaching this conclusion, the author draws upon a number of sources pointing to a significant need for (unfree?) labor, for example in tasks such as textile production. When combined with a high-level of access to slaves through raiding and trading activity, it seems logical that Viking-Age communities would have exploited thralls in this way. Given the regular appearance of thralls in both the early Scandinavian law codes and sagas, furthermore, it is likely that these people represented a prominent social group within both social and labor-related contexts.