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59-412: The first recorded instance of a Norse lething is disputed among scholars. There is considerable evidence that substantiates its existence in the late 12th century. However, there are also written sources and archeological evidence which indicate that the lething system was introduced as early as the tenth century, if not earlier. The age of the lething is disputed among scholars. The Icelandic sagas link

118-580: A "share" in the raid, so one who owned two attung had twice as much chance to go on the raid as one who owned only one. Those who owned less than an attung had to team up with others to form a unit of one attung and share the burdens as well as the profit. According to the Law of Uppland , the hundreds of Uppland , all in all 22 hundreds (Tiundaland; providing 10 hundreds, Attundaland; providing 8 hundreds and Fjärdhundaland; providing 4 hundreds) each of which providing four ships (four ships, each with 24 crewmen and

177-410: A 'family', which may have had an extended meaning. It is uncertain whether it meant the immediate family or a more extensive group. Charles-Edwards suggests that in its early usage it referred to the land of one family, worked by one plough and that ownership of a hide conferred the status of a freeman, to whom Stenton referred as "the independent master of a peasant household". Hides of land formed

236-508: A different origin, signifying the amount of land which could be cultivated by one plough team as opposed to a family holding, but all later became artificial fiscal assessments. In some counties in Domesday Book (e.g. Cambridgeshire), the hide is sometimes shown as consisting of 120 acres (30 acres to the virgate), but as Darby explains: "The acres are, of course, not units of area, but geld acres, i.e. units of assessment". In other words, this

295-712: A district was called styrimaðr or styræsmand , steersman, and he functioned as captain of the ship. The smallest unit was the crew of peasants who had to arm and provide for one oarsman ( hafnæ in Danish, hamna in Swedish, manngerð in Old Norse). In Sweden a hamna was made up of two attung , which was "two eighth parts of a village". One attung seems to have been equal to the land area it took to feed an ordinary family (around 12 acres, see Hide (unit) , Virgate and Oxgang for English equivalents). Each attung also regard as having

354-555: A hide had a tax burden equivalent to three of his oxen and close upon one-third of the annual value of his land. A more normal rate was 2 shillings on each hide. Domesday Book , recording the results of the survey made on the orders of William I in 1086, states in hides (or carucates or sulungs as the case might be) the assessed values of estates throughout the area covered by the survey. Usually it gives this information for 1086 and 1066, but some counties were different and only showed this information for one of those dates. By that time

413-490: A hide of land to be worth £1, or, put another way, for land producing £1 of income to be assessed at one hide." A number of early documents referring to hides have survived, but these can only be seen as steps in the development of the concept of the hide and do not enable us to see the full story. The document known as the Tribal Hidage is a very early list thought to date possibly from the 7th century, but known only from

472-476: A later and unreliable manuscript. It is a list of tribes and small kingdoms owing tribute to an overlord and of the proportionate liability or quota imposed on each of them. This is expressed in terms of hides, though we have no details as to how these were arrived at nor how they were converted into a cash liability. The Burghal Hidage (early 10th century) is a list of boroughs giving the hide assessments of neighbouring districts which were liable to contribute to

531-418: A minimum, arm himself with an axe or a sword in addition to spear and shield, and for every rowbench (typically of two men) to have a bow and 24 arrows. Later 12th-13th century changes to this law code list more extensive equipment for the more affluent freemen, with helmet, mail hauberk, shield, spear and sword being what the well-to-do farmer or burgher must bring to war. In 12th-13th-century sources detailing

590-534: A steersman, each equals 100 men). Also, those of Västmanland two ships and those of Roslagen one ship (the name indicate that this was seen as just one ship's crew but they were not part of a hundred and might have had the same rights/function of whole hundred only fewer people). The older laws regulating the leiðangr (the Norwegian "Older Law of the Gulating" dates to the 11th or 12th century) require every man to, as

649-556: A subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic sagas . They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries, during the so-called Saga Age . They were written in Old Icelandic , a western dialect of Old Norse . They are the best-known specimens of Icelandic literature . They are focused on history, especially genealogical and family history. They reflect

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708-464: A tax on land in 1193-4 to raise money for King Richard's ransom. A hide was usually made up of four virgates although exceptionally Sussex had eight virgates to the hide. A similar measure was used in the northern Danelaw , known as a carucate , consisting of eight bovates , and Kent used a system based on a "sulung", consisting of four yokes , which was larger than the hide and on occasion treated as equivalent to two hides. These measures had

767-535: A territory by the number of families which it supported, as (for instance), in Latin, terra x familiarum meaning 'a territory of ten families'. In the Anglo-Saxon version of the same work hid or hiwan is used in place of terra ... familiarum . Other documents of the period show the same equivalence and it is clear that the word hide originally signified land sufficient for the support of a peasant and his household or of

826-452: Is applied mainly to Norway and western Sweden, which in turn adhered under Norwegian rule at the time), and required every skipreide to deliver one ship and crew. These skipreide were administrative areas in which residents were assigned to outfit a ship for military use. They were collectively responsible to build, maintain, equip and staff a leidangsskip (coastal defense ship), fully provisioned for two or three months. Skipreide were mainly on

885-412: Is based on the equivalent German word Hube , a unit of land a farmer might own. Much work has been done investigating the hidation of various counties and also in attempts to discover more about the origin and development of the hide and the purposes for which it was used, but without producing many clear conclusions which would help the general reader. Those requiring more information may wish to consult

944-462: Is believed by some scholars to have been written by Snorri Sturluson , a descendant of the saga's hero, but this remains uncertain. The standard modern edition of Icelandic sagas is produced by Hið íslenzka fornritafélag ('The Old Icelandic Text Society'), or Íslenzk fornrit for short. Among the several literary reviews of the sagas is the Sagalitteraturen by Sigurður Nordal , which divides

1003-498: Is first mentioned in 985 AD by the Skaldic courtly poets of Jarl Haakon of Western Norway and his son Erik. In each poem, the princes are praised for summoning the ships of the leidangr to the Battle of Hjörungavágr against a Danish fleet. The King of Norway, Harald Hardrada , is later praised by two court Skalds for summoning the leidangr to attack Denmark. Harald is also called king of

1062-516: Is now obscure: different properties with the same hidage could vary greatly in extent even in the same county. Following the Norman Conquest of England , the hidage assessments were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and there was a tendency for land producing £ 1 of income per year to be assessed at 1 hide. The Norman kings continued to use the unit for their tax assessments until the end of

1121-408: Is possible. The Norman kings, after the Norman Conquest , continued to use the system which they found in place. Geld was levied at intervals on the existing hidage assessments. In 1084, William I laid an exceptionally heavy geld of six shillings upon every hide. At the time the value of the hide was approximating twenty shillings a year, and the price of an ox was two shillings. Thus the holder of

1180-889: The Early Medieval Period , the majority of the leidang would have been unarmored. Some of the wealthier men may have worn gambesons and spangenhelms , while the wealthiest might wear mail . As the Viking Age began, the leidang slowly began to improve in terms of armor as their areas became richer. By the ninth century, most members of a Leidang would have had helmets either of the spangenhelm or Nasal Helm design. Drengrs would have worn mail, while wealthier freemen may have worn padded cloth/gambesons. Spears were common to all men, and many would have had short hand axes. Nobles and wealthy freemen would have had swords. Shields were used by all, and were usually round and of wood and leather construction, sometimes with leather or iron binding around

1239-499: The burhs and to help in their initial construction and upkeep. A land tax known as geld was first levied in 990 and this became known as the Danegeld, as it was used to buy off the Danes who were then raiding and invading the country. It was raised again for the same purpose on several occasions. The already existing system of assessment of land in hides was utilised to raise the geld, which

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1298-515: The fyrd as a precursor to a modern national army composed of all ranks of society, describing it as a "ridiculous fantasy": The persistent old belief that peasants and small farmers gathered to form a national army or fyrd is a strange delusion dreamt up by antiquarians in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries to justify universal military conscription. Henry I of England , the Anglo-Norman king who promised at his coronation to restore

1357-452: The fyrd can be traced back to at least the seventh century, and it is likely that the obligation of Englishmen to serve in the fyrd dates from before its earliest appearance in written records . Alfred the Great is credited with the development of the fyrd system together with the building of "burhs", the development of a cavalry force, and the building of a fleet. Each element of the system

1416-437: The 11th century but to charters of the 7th and 8th centuries. Nevertheless, the hide became the basis of an artificial system of assessment of land for purposes of taxation, which lasted for a long period. The most consistent aspect of the hide is described as follows by Sally Harvey (referring particularly to Domesday Book): "Both Maitland and Vinogradoff long ago noticed that there was a general tendency throughout Domesday for

1475-424: The 11th century, Northamptonshire was assigned 3,200 hides, while Staffordshire was assigned only 500. This number was then divided up between the hundreds in the county. Theoretically there were 100 hides in each hundred, but this proportion was often not maintained, for example because of changes in the hundreds or in the estates comprising them or because assessments were altered when the actual cash liability

1534-406: The 11th century, jarls are mentioned as the chieftain of the leiðangr . In the 12th century, a bishop could also be head of the fleet levy, although typically nobles led levies in the 12th to 14th centuries. According to historical register, majority of early Baltic Crusaders in the 12th century were well-armed. During the 13th and 14th, mounted troops were raised from amongst the aristocracies of

1593-451: The 12th century. The hide was divided into four yardlands or virgates . It was hence nominally equivalent in area to a carucate , a unit used in the Danelaw . The Anglo-Saxon word for a hide was hid (or its synonym hiwisc ). Both words are believed to be derived from the same root hiwan , which meant "family". Bede in his Ecclesiastical History (c. 731) describes the extent of

1652-641: The Crown. Where Alfred revealed his genius was in designing the field force and burhs to be parts of a coherent military system. Neither Alfred's reformed fyrd nor his burhs alone would have afforded a sufficient defence against the Vikings; together, however, they robbed the Vikings of their major strategic advantages: surprise and mobility. The fyrd was used heavily by King Harold in 1066, for example in resisting invasion by Harald Hardrada and William of Normandy . The historian David Sturdy has cautioned about regarding

1711-421: The amount of land sufficient to support a household. It was traditionally taken to be 120 historical acres or 48 acres (19 hectares) , but was in fact a measure of value and tax assessment , including obligations for food-rent ( feorm ), maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications, manpower for the army ( fyrd ), and (eventually) the geld land tax . The hide's method of calculation

1770-446: The assessments showed many anomalies. Many of the hide assessments on lands held by tenants-in-chief were reduced between 1066 and 1086 in order to effect an exemption from or reduction in tax; this again shows that the hide is a tax assessment, not an area of land. Sometimes, the assessment in hides is given both for the whole manor and for the demesne land (i.e. the lord's own demesne) included in it. Sally Harvey has suggested that

1829-507: The basis for tax levies used to equip free warriors ( miles ) of the Holy Roman Empire . In 807 it was specified that in the region west of the Seine, for example, a vassal who held four or five hides was responsible for showing up to a muster in person, fully equipped for war. Three men who each possessed one hide, though, merely were grouped such that two of them were responsible for equipping

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1888-429: The coast, but also extended quite far inland along fjords and deep waterways (“as far inland as the salmon runs”), to safeguard the procurement of timber for building of the warships. In the 1200s, each Skipreide consisted of 40 lid, and each lid of 4 farms/hemman; meaning that it took about 160 hemman to supply a ship and a crew. If enemy forces attacked the country, fires (signal beacons) built on high hills would mobilize

1947-606: The crusading nations, but foot soldiers formed the core of armies raised by the ledung system. Each hundare district should have been able to muster up 100 men and four ships and formed a part of a larger region called Svealand , the core of the Swedish Kingdom and able to muster as 2200 warriors. The vessel, called snäcka , was a technological descendant of the Viking age warship . Ledung allows organizing an army to campaign outside its territory, useful for Baltic crusading. During

2006-498: The defence of the borough, each contributing to the maintenance and manning of the fortifications in proportion to the number of hides for which they answered. The County Hidage (early 11th century) lists the total number of hides to be assessed on each county and it seems that by this time at least the total number of hides in a given area was imposed from above. Each county was assigned a round number of hides, for which it would be required to answer. For instance, at an early date in

2065-478: The end of the 13th century, they only existed for these purposes. In about 1660, skipreide were converted into tinglags, court districts that included a bygdeting (community court) or a byting (city court). In Anglo-Saxon times, defences were based on the fyrd . It was a militia called up from the districts threatened with attack. Service in the fyrd was usually of short duration and participants were expected to provide their own arms and provisions. The origins of

2124-489: The expeditions, but as they were often profitable, many prominent magnates and chieftains would vy for the opportunity to join. At its most basic level, the system relied on each hemman or farm supplying one armed man. The leidang divided the land into districts, ship's crews or ship communities, "skipreiða" (Old Norse), "skipæn" (Danish), "skeppslag" or "roslag" and also "hundaland" (Swedish, mainly east coast), "skipreide" or "skibrede" (modern Norwegian, this division/system

2183-547: The farmers to the skipreide. The number of farms in an area determined the size of a skipreide. It did not usually include the entire parish, nor was it confined to a parish; it could include farms from several parishes. The farmers of each district had to build and equip a rowed sailing ship. The size of the ships was defined as a standardized number of oars, initially 40 oars, later 24 oars. In Norway, there were 279 such districts in 1277, in Denmark two-three times as many. The head of

2242-510: The introduction of the lething to King Haakon I (The Good) of Norway in the tenth century. The first known lethings are found during the ninth and tenth centuries when Sea Kings could be elected. These rulers were given provisional authority over men who had to assemble for an allotted time to achieve certain limited and pre-agreed goals. The temporary kingships of early Viking society had no power of enforcement over their men as they exercised authority only by consent. The leidangr of Norway

2301-581: The laws of Edward the Confessor and who married a Scottish princess with West Saxon royal forebears, called up the fyrd to supplement his feudal levies, as an army of all England, as Orderic Vitalis reports, to counter the abortive invasions of his brother Robert Curthose , both in the summer of 1101 and in autumn 1102. Sagas of Icelanders The sagas of Icelanders ( Icelandic : Íslendingasögur , modern Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈislɛndiŋkaˌsœːɣʏr̥] ), also known as family sagas , are

2360-440: The leidangr and the latter is termed almenningr , the duty and right of all men . During the 11th century Danish naval forces, though not termed leidangr , are sporadically praised as led by Danish kings (as Knut in his conquest of England). A Danish royal charter from 1085 stipulates that certain people on the lands of the canons of Lund are liable to pay fines for neglecting expeditio . According to historian Niels Lund, there

2419-413: The number of hides for which an estate should answer. As each local community had the task of deciding how its quota of hides should be divided between the lands held by that community, different communities used different criteria, depending on the type of land held and on the way in which an individual's wealth was reckoned within that community, it is self-evident that no single comprehensive definition

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2478-485: The ploughland data in Domesday Book was intended to be used for a complete re-assessment but, if so, it was never actually made. The Pipe Rolls , where they are available, show that levies were based largely on the old assessments, though with some amendments and exemptions. The last recorded levy was for 1162-3 during the reign of Henry II , but the tax was not formally abolished and Henry II thought of using it again between 1173 and 1175. The old assessments were used for

2537-417: The progress of an enemy army, he would build them. If the enemy struck from the sea, he would counter them with his own naval power. Characteristically, all of Alfred's innovations were firmly rooted in traditional West Saxon practice, drawing as they did on the three so-called ‘common burdens' of bridge work, fortress repair and service on the king's campaigns that all holders of bookland and royal loanland owed

2596-522: The rim. By the 12th century, helmets and padded gambesons were very common, the Kettle hat type of helmet now being used alongside the earlier Nasal Helm and Spangenhelm types. Padded armour and mail were also more common among ordinary men. In parts of the Scandinavian countries, the leiðangr evolved to a tax in the 12th century to 13th century, paid by all (free) farmers until the 19th century, although

2655-472: The sagas into five chronological groups (depending on when they were written not their subject matters) distinguished by the state of literary development: This framework has been severely criticised as based on a presupposed attitude to the fantastic and an over-estimation on the precedence of Landnámabók . It is thought that a number of sagas are now lost, including the supposed Gauks saga Trandilssonar – The saga of Gaukur á Stöng. In addition to these,

2714-531: The ship-levy was frequently called out and used in the 13th–15th centuries, with the Norwegian leiðangr fleet going as far as Scotland in the 1260s. The use of the levy-tax as opposed to the use of maritime forces was more prevalent in Denmark and Sweden than Norway, since the Norwegian kingdom always depended heavily on fleet-based forces rather than land-based ones. Skipreide, originally a defense system, later assumed other powers, such as to legal authority to pass laws and financial authority to levy taxes. Towards

2773-498: The struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the early generations of Icelandic settlers. The Icelandic sagas are valuable and unique historical sources about medieval Scandinavian societies and kingdoms, in particular regarding pre-Christian religion and culture and the heroic age. Eventually, many of these Icelandic sagas were recorded, mostly in the 13th and 14th centuries. The 'authors', or rather recorders, of these sagas are largely unknown. One saga, Egil's Saga ,

2832-458: The system during the 350 years which elapsed between the time of Bede and the Domesday Book remain obscure. According to Sir Frank Stenton , "Despite the work of many great scholars the hide of early English texts remains a term of elusive meaning." The fact that assessments consistently tended to be made in units of 5 hides or multiples of 5 hides goes to show that we are not speaking of fixed or even approximate acreages and this applies not only to

2891-438: The texts often referred to as the "Tales of Icelanders" ( Íslendingaþættir ) such as "Hreiðars þáttr" and "Sneglu-Halla þáttr" of the kings' saga Morkinskinna could be included in this corpus, as well as the contemporary sagas (written in the 13th century and dealing with the same period) incorporated into Sturlunga saga . Hide (unit) The hide was an English unit of land measurement originally intended to represent

2950-415: The third, who would go to war in their name. Those holding half-hides were responsible for readying one man for every group of six. This came about as a way of ensuring that the liege took to the field with a fully equipped and provisioned force. In early Anglo-Saxon England , the hide was used as the basis for assessing the amount of food rent (known as feorm ) due from a village or estate and it became

3009-426: The unit on which all public obligations were assessed, including in particular the maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications and the provision of troops for manning the defences of a town or for the defence force known as the 'fyrd'. For instance, at one period, five hides were expected to provide one fully armed soldier in the king's service, and one man from every hide was to be liable to do garrison duty for

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3068-410: Was a measure of 'the taxable worth of an area of land', but it had no fixed relationship to its area, the number of ploughteams working on it, or its population; nor was it limited to the arable land on an estate. According to Bailey, "It is a commonplace that the hide in 1086 had a very variable extent on the ground; the old concept of 120 acres cannot be sustained." Many details of the development of

3127-416: Was a system organizing a coastal fleet with the aim of defence, coerced trade, plunderings, and aggressive wars. The leidangs were centered upon a ship. The organizational unit was the ship itself with the men providing their own equipment and provisions for the journey. The ship's company agreed to serve for a certain period of time, normally, the fleet levy was on expeditions for two or three summer months. It

3186-474: Was a way of dividing the tax assessment on the hide between several owners of parts of the land assessed. The owner of land assessed at 40 notional (or 'fiscal') acres in a village assessed at 10 hides and paying geld of 2 shillings per hide would be responsible for one-third ( 40 ⁄ 120 ) of 2 shillings—that is, 8 pence—though his land might be considerably more or less than 40 modern statute acres in extent. The surname Huber (also anglicized as Hoover )

3245-428: Was composed of free men that owns farms. The leiðangr differed from conventional feudalism in that the expeditions gathered around leaders based on military merit, rather than noble status. All free men were obliged to take part in or contribute to the leiðangr . All of the leiðangr were called to arms when invading forces threatened the land. Only a fraction of the ships called to the leiðangr would take part in

3304-420: Was levied at a stated rate per hide (e.g. two shillings per hide). Subsequently the same system was used for general taxation and the geld was raised as required. The hide was a measure of value rather than a measurement of area, but the logic of its assessment is not easy to understand, especially as assessments were changed from time to time and not always consistently. By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, it

3363-558: Was meant to remedy defects in the West Saxon military establishment exposed by the Viking invasions. If, under the existing system, he could not assemble forces quickly enough to intercept mobile Viking raiders, the obvious answer was to have a standing field force. If this entailed transforming the West Saxon fyrd from a sporadic levy of king's men and their retinues into a mounted standing army, so be it. If his kingdom lacked strongpoints to impede

3422-460: Was no real leiðangr in Denmark until 1170. Historian Sverre Bagge has disputed Lund's interpretation, pointing to earlier references to a leiðangr, saga mentions of leiðangr, and archeological evidence that indicates the presence of considerable military mobilization. Finland also had some form of ledung system after its conquest by Sweden. It was also used in Denmark as well as in Norway. The leiðangr

3481-403: Was perceived as being too high or too low or for other reasons now unknown. The hides within each hundred were then divided between villages, estates or manors , usually in blocks or multiples of 5 hides, though this was not always maintained. Differences from the norm could result from estates being moved from one hundred to another, or from adjustments to the size of an estate or alterations in

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