Om uår og ødegårder i Kongespeilet og andre skriftlige kilder fra høymiddelalderen

Sammendrag

The Norwegian scholar Gerhard Schøning wrote in 1761 an article about bad years and crop failure in Trøndelag (Norway). He also pointed out that bad years in early modern times quite often appeared in sequences of three years. The author of the King's Mirror was also well acquainted with bad years and wrote that it was especially bad if they came three years in a row. About the same time (1260) a law amendment was introduced that later became a part of the Frostathing Law.-  We are informed about the problems that arose from deserted farms when it came to passing on messages (by means of budstikka) and moving poor people from farm to farm. Information from the sagas and natural science research suggests severe climatic anomalies in the first half of the 1200s. For this reason, a great many farms had been abandoned long before the Black Death. Thus, the maximum settlement in medieval Norway can go as far back as the first half of the 1200s and that The Black Death was less devastating than previously thought.