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Introduction
One way to approach the problem of medieval
and prehistoric assembly sites is to proceed from
places where we know from late medieval written
sources, or can assume by interpreting place-names,
that justice once was administered (Andersson 1965;
Brink 1998; Dahlberg and Kousgård Sørensen 1979;
Jørgensen 1980; Svensson 2007, 2012).
Activities associated with medieval and prehistoric
assembly sites in Scandinavia have not only
been focused on justice, but also on cult, market,
and chieftainly power concerns, and sometimes
there seems to be a spatial connection between
several of these activities (Brink 1999, Fabech and
Näsman 2012:56, Schledermann 1974:373).1
However,
compared to information on cult, market, and
chieftainly power activities, the state of our sources
is, at least in the case of Skåne, favorable when it
comes to the exercise of justice. Cult activity at assembly
sites, whether we refer to medieval times or
to a prehistoric phase, is, despite of all successful
and interesting work that has been done in this field,
difficult to grasp in content, scope, and locality.2 The
same can be said about markets. Even more difficult
to use in this context are the sites where chieftains
(magnates, petty kings, etc.) exercised power. Power
can be found everywhere, naturally as a part of the
performance of cult activities, the administration
of justice, and the holding of markets, but also—as
regards the locality and manifestation in the landscape—
completely independent of these phenomena
(Brink 1998:300).3
Justice, by contrast, has left us with a rich textual
legacy. Furthermore, one can argue that the process
of justice itself favored a kind of conservatism as a
necessity to recognize what is justice and what is
arbitrary exercise of power. A consequence of this
is that the place where justice is performed is an
extremely important part of the whole concept of
public justice.
Place-names, texts, and archaeology provide
building blocks that aid our understanding of the
emergence of systems of power and administration
in Skåne. By drawing on all of these materials, a better
understanding of assembly in this region can be
achieved.
Names and Justice
The words in place-names that are linked to the
administration of justice may have to do with the
site of the court or thing, instruments of punishment,
the judicial district or its inhabitants, people
associated with the law, or judicial events. More indirectly,
place-names may refer to the administration
of justice by being identical to or containing parts
of hundred-names, names of known court sites, or
names of settlements or their inhabitants with which
the court can be associated.
In bipartite names, it is usually the specific element
that has to do with justice, while the generic
says something about the nature of the geographical
location: Tingshögen (with -hög “mound”),
Tingsåkern (with -åker “field”). It is important to
remember, however, that a name associated with
justice need not necessarily represent the actual
court site; names like *Tingbrobäcken (with -bro-
“bridge”) or Tingsledet (with -led “gate”) may
designate places some distance away from the
site of the court (Dalberg and Kousgård Sørensen
1979:74,76).
Ting “assembly, court” and galge “gallows”
are the most obvious and common of such name
elements throughout Scandinavia. Other words
included in place-names which may (but need not
always) be linked to the administration of justice
are avrättning “execution”, dom “judgement”, folk
“people”, gast “ghost”, hor “adultery”, hund “hundred”,
härad “hundred”, kind “people”, lag “law”,
mot “meeting”, mål “case”, nattman “executioner”,
Place Names, Landscape, and Assembly Sites in Skåne, Sweden
Ola Svensson*
Abstract - The paper discusses a particular type of assembly site in medieval and presumably even older times for the exercise
of justice in the province of Skåne (Scania) in southern Sweden (Scandinavian medieval: approx. AD 1050–1520).
Through a close and detailed consideration of historical and antiquarian research focused around two key landscape case
studies—Torna hundred and Vemmenhög hundred—this study challenges long-established models of assembly formation,
location, and naming. The paper concludes by providing an entirely new perspective on what place-names associated with
legal practice and judicial administration might signal about the genesis and organization of early medieval systems of
power and justice.
Debating the Thing in the North: The Assembly Project II
Journal of the North Atlantic
*Doktorand, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden; ola.svensson@Inu.se.
2015 Special Volume 8:82–92
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rackare “executioner”, stegel “rack”, stämma
“assembly'”*thiudh “people”, and tjuv “thief”. Even
more words such as these have been mentioned in
the literature discussing this topic (See Andersson
1965, 1984:90–100, 2006:64–70; Dalberg and
Kousgård Sørensen 1979:71–83; Hald 1969:37–42;
Jørgensen 1980:37–41).
There are settlements with names associated
with the exercise of justice. These can be old court
sites where a settlement later grew up: Tingbacken
(with -backe “hill”) but also settlements that were
identified early on through the geographical proximity
to the court (Tings Nöbbelöv). But it is among
the field-names that one can find the vast majority
of the names associated with judicial history. In
most parts of Sweden, it is above all the hundred
things and their places of execution, along with the
towns’ execution places, that have left the majority
of onomastic evidence—names of fields, meadows,
hills, roads, and so on—close to old things. The
age of these names is difficult to ascertain, but in
Skåne they are well attested in large numbers from
the Renaissance onwards. Often, however, like
other field-names, they are recorded earliest in landsurvey
documents compiled in connection with the
enclosure reforms in the late 18th century or the 19th
century. It seems likely, nevertheless, that the fieldnames
indicating the administration of justice are to
a large extent medieval and possibly sometimes older,
since in many cases they can be associated with
historically and (more seldom) archaeologically attested
medieval courts and execution places, and/or
prehistoric assembly sites of particular importance
(Andersson 1965:181–189, Brink 1998:301–322,
Svensson 2007:191–219).
Justice in Skåne
The judicial levels documented in the onomastic
material of Skåne are: the provincial thing (in swedish
landsting); the hundred things (häradsting—of
which there were 22 in the Middle Ages; Fig 1); the
town things (stadsrätt), which were independent
of the hundreds (having been broken out of them);
and the birk things (birketing), which were separate
judicial circuits attached to major royal, ecclesiastical,
or noble estates (Andersson 2006, Lerdam 2004,
Svensson 2012). Parish and village councils are
rarely reflected in place-names, and moreover, since
they played a very limited role in the official judicial
system, they are not included in this study (Dahlerup
1971:373–374, Meyer 1957:443–447). Theoretically,
temporary thing meetings dealing with unique
cases, royal thing meetings (rättarting), as well
as certain jurisdictional privileges of the Danish
nobility in early modern times (hals- og håndsret
“neck-and-hand rights”), could have left traces in
place-names, but no indisputable evidence exists.
The large hundreds in northern Skåne (Fig. 1), which
were divided for tax purposes (at least in the late
Middle Ages) into sixths, eighths, etc., may also
have had corresponding judicial sub-levels, but this
remains speculative (Dalberg and Kousgård Sørensen
1979:69–70).
Lund
The beginnings of academic inquiry
Founded around 990, Lund can be regarded in
many ways as the capital of Denmark in the early
and high Middle Ages (Fig. 2). The archbishop of all
the Scandinavian countries, and later of Denmark,
had his seat here, and the town was the pre-eminent
mint in the kingdom. The town and its surroundings
were also important for military strategy throughout
history because of the significance of Lund in power
politics, its location for communication purposes,
and not least because the provincial thing of Skåne
was situated in Lund. The role of the town as the
most prestigious place of spiritual and political
power in Skåne may derive from the prehistoric period
(Blomqvist 1951, 1978).
The reasons for the importance of Lund were
discussed as early as in the Renaissance. In 1598,
the educationalist and clergyman Herman Chytraeus,
who travelled around collecting information
about antiquities in Skåne, presented a work about
the most important monuments: stating the reasons
for the established view of Lund’s high age and
great significance lay in pre-Christian times. He
began with the name Lund, which he connected to
a “delightful grove” with fresh springs that used
to exist there (... a luco, qui eodem in loco fuerat
am?nissimisus multis fontibus limpidissimis exornatus;
Lagerbring 1744: I:287). This claim was a
response to assertions by the Danish historian Mogens
Madsen that the city was named after London
in England (Stjerna 1909:172–173). The dispute
has continued into recent times, but has finally been
resolved by Bengt Pamp’s refutation of the London
theory (Pamp 1990:15–23). Chytraeus’ work was
not printed until Sven Lagerbring included it in his
Monumenta Scanensia (Lagerbring 1744). Chytraeus
goes on to mention that in his time there was still
a market, called “The Market of the Three Mounds”
(Tre högars marknad), held at three mounds east
of the town. In pagan times, he claimed, there had
been images of Thor, Odin, and Freyja on these hills
(Körner 1962:191–196).4 According to Chytraeus,
kings were elected on the slope north of the city
near Allhelgonaklostret, the Monastery of All Saints’
(Stjerna 1909:173).
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The various elements in Chytraeus’ narrative
have left their mark on the discussion of prehistoric
Lund right up to the present day. It may be noted
that Chytraeus’ account is suspiciously like Olaus
Magnus’ earlier history of Uppsala (Blomqvist
1962:413–415, Körner 1962:191–196, Stjerna
1909:173). The divine grove with the idols depicting
Thor, Odin, and Frey, along with the market,
can be found in Olaus Magnus’ account, and this in
turn is based on Adam of Bremen’s 11th-century de-
Figure 1. The hundreds (härader) of Skåne.
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scription of the pagan temple in Uppsala (Blomqvist
1962:413–415, Körner 1962:191–196). Interestingly,
the account of Lund later became significant
in traditions surrounding Gamla Uppsala (Old
Uppsala). The names of the Uppsala mounds that
associated them with pagan gods appears in a late
tradition and was probably a motif borrowed from
Lund (Blomqvist 1962:414).
We do not know very much about Chytraeus, but,
as hinted at above, so far as he can be regarded as
a typical representative of the academic discourse
of his time, it is reasonable to view him as an exponent
of the same historical/antiquarian tradition as
Olaus Magnus: “remarkable things” are noted and
described and fitted into a patriotic discourse. For
Chytraeus, this comprised the relationship of Skåne
to the kingdom of Denmark and the glorious and
ancient history of the Danish people. What is reality
and what is merely discourse is difficult to ascertain.
We can guess that Chytraeus noted and pondered
on existing historical and antiquarian similarities
between Lund and Uppsala within a mindset that
contained not only fascination but also some rivalry
for history and glory between the archbishoprics of
Lund and Uppsala, and between the kingdoms of
Denmark and Sweden. It is interesting that the subject
of assembly sites occupies such a central role
in this context; Chytraeus can be regarded as a kind
of starting point for academic thought about ancient
assembly sites in Skåne (Stjerna 1909:172–173).
Archaeological and antiquarian exploration
The words of Chytraeus have provided a touch
stone for subsequent work. Nils-Henric Sjöborg, active
at the turn of the 18 th and 19 th centuries, argued
that The Market of the Three Mounds was located
on a noticeable rise east of the town (present-day
Linero)—close to the Arendala farm—on a site
where at least the remains of mounds could be seen
in his day, and where according to Saxo Grammaticus
an assembly was held in the early 12th century
(Blomqvist 1951:90–91, Pamp 1998:15).5 In modern
times, a different site has been suggested for this
market: Uppåkra, south of Lund, where the remains
of a huge and rich settlement from the early and late
Iron Age, including a cult house that stood on the
same spot for 800 years, have been partially excavated
(Larsson 2004). Researchers working on the
excavations in Uppåkra have even claimed that the
name Lund initially referred to Uppåkra but changed
its denotation when the present Lund was founded at
the end of the 10th century (Andrén 1998:137). The
suggested location of a pre-Christian Lund and The
Market of the Three Mounds in Uppåkra has been effusively
dismissed by the place-name scholar Bengt
Pamp, yet it has had considerable impact by being
Figure 2. Lund and its surroundings. Places mentioned in the text are marked with arrows and red lettering. On the plateau
on the slope of which the city of Lund was located at the end of the Viking Age there are several assembly sites used for the
administration of justice. The map is based on Skånska rekognoceringskartan from 1812–1820 (Fältmäteribrigaden 1986).
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repeated in various publications about the Uppåkra
excavations (Pamp 1998:9–16, Rosengren 2007:76,
Vikstrand 1999:13–24).
A complete discussion of the origin of Lund and
of the possible locations of a prehistoric market, a
central cult site, a place for the acclamation of kings,
and the site of a provincial and hundred thing is beyond
the scope of this paper. Some main points will
nevertheless be made. It can scarcely be doubted
that there was a market named after three mounds
in or near Lund (Blomqvist 1951:21). The name Tre
högar (“Three mounds”) occurs at several places in
Skåne, but only one place near Lund has that name,
in the Norrevång field of the village of Stora Råby
just east of the town, on the spot pointed out by Chytraeus
and later identified in detail by Nils-Henric
Sjöborg (Ljunggren and Ejder 1950:62, Sjöborg
1824:196–197). The oldest mention of this place
predates Chytraeus’ work; it is in a cadastre, a source
that Chytraeus is unlikely to have had access to
(Ljunggren and Ejder 1950). The place—the heights
around Linero and Arendala—offers a unique view
of the whole plain of Lund. As mentioned above,
a significant medieval assembly appears to have
been held here, or very close by. The topography
is dramatic, and it is easy to imagine a large crowd
of people assembling on the steep slope leading up
from Arendala towards Hardeberga and being able to
hear what was said by one person at the foot of the
slope in the valley at the Arendala farm. The place
has the acoustic conditions necessary for a large
number of people to assemble.
There is also another area to consider as a potential
assembly site in Torna hundred. This is found
some kilometers away from Arendala and Linero,
around the villages of Vallkärra Torn and Östra Torn.
Here, too, the topography provides a magnificent
setting with a view over much of southwest Skåne,
as well as the Sound and the coast of Zealand. The
name Torn, which corresponds to the name of the
hundred, Torna härad, can hardly be anything but
the appellative torn “hawthorn” (Ingers 1971:53–54,
Pamp 1990:22). The uncompounded form suggests
a very special hawthorn or a very special grove of
these trees. The same can be said about the name
Lund; the simplex form indicates a special and wellknown
grove. That three places located very near
each other all bear names relating to a very special
tree or a very special formation of trees suggests that
they may refer to the same natural site, i.e., a special
and well-known grove with hawthorn trees that
originally inspired the names (Pamp 1990:22–23,
Strid 2005:159–161).
At Sankt Hans backar, the hills just north of
Lund, there is a spring named after Sankt Hans
(Saint John) where Midsummer offerings were
documented in the mid-18 th century (Nyman 1801–
1813). For this discussion, what is particularly noteworthy
about this spring, between Vallkärra Torn
and Östra Torn, is that springs dedicated to Saint
John seem to be associated with sacred thorn trees.
The best-known example is the well at the chapel of
Saint John on the island of Öland, where a thorn tree
with the name Rosenkind was documented by 17thcentury
antiquarians (Areen 1934:89–96, Sahlgren
1920:56–57). Thus, there is a geographical as well as
a mythical association between a holy spring and a
special tree or grove of trees that, via the name of the
participants of the assembly, gave Torna hundred its
name. So given the above, this site seems likely to be
an example of an assembly environment including a
grove and a spring.
Sjöborg noted the name Tingshögarna “The
Assembly Mounds” for a location a few kilometers
northeast of Sankt Hans backar (André and
Högstedt 1990:6). On that site there is today one
mound seemingly of Bronze-Age date, but according
to Sjöborg there were two mounds, a square
stone setting, and the remains of a byre (Sjöborg
1814:note 36). Not far from Sankt Hans backar and
Tingshögarna, we find field-names beginning with
Galge- “gallows” and Tjuv- “thief”, indicating the
locations of the 19th-century town gallows (André
and Högstedt 1990:23, 69).
Many places, more or less mythical, that could be
candidates for the sites of judicial assemblies, cult
activities, and royal elections exist in the area north
of Lund, which led the 17th-century scholar Kilian
Stobaeus to believe that the site of the election of
kings had alternated between different mounds in
the vicinity. Above all, it is the mounds Kungshögen
(“The King’s mound”), Lerbäckshög (“Mud brook’s
mound”), and Sliparebacken (“Grinder’s hill”) that
have been suggested as sites for royal elections. The
latter two have been assumed, probably in error, to
be the same mound, and a variety of speculative
forms have been suggested to explain the names
Lerbäckshög and Sliparebacken: Sankt Liberius hög,
Libers hög, Leobards hög, Trelejonborgs hög, etc.;
the latter two imply some connection with the three
leopards or lions in the Danish national coat of arms
(Blomqvist 1951:267, Ingers 1962:74–76, Sjöborg
1815:30).
In conclusion, it seems most likely that the thing
site of Torna hundred was at Tingshögarna, near
Sankt Hans backar in the vicinity of a significant
pre-Christian cult site, and that the assembly site at
Linero/Arendala was, at least at some stage of time,
the site of the provincial thing for Skåne. This seems
a likely scenario as it fits the pattern that can be observed
in southern and western Skåne. It should also
be emphasized that the idea of a site for a thing, a
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doubt to the natural height, which is rather elongated
and not particularly steep, on the site. Despite
its shape, this elevation can be seen from far away.
According to a 17th-century map, a road ran along
this height from northwest to southeast (Buhrmann
1684).
A couple of examples of place-names indicating
thing sites are found elsewhere in the hundred too.
In the parish of Östra Klagstorp there is Tingryllen,
which according to the topography can be interpreted
as “the ridge on which the road to the thing
[at Västra Vemmenhög] runs”. Finally, in the parish
of Lilla Isie in the southwest corner of the hundred,
there is a single, late, oral reference to an old burial
mound named Tinghög. With the present state of our
sources, this place-name can only be regarded as a
piece of local mythology.
Vemmenhög’s place of execution is well attested
in historical sources. Galgbacken, “The Gallows
hill”, is marked on a map of Skåne dating from the
1680s (Buhrmann 1684), and this location was also
where the last executions in the hundred took place in
1811 (Asp 1891:2, 35). On this site, which is the highest
point in the vicinity, there is a sole burial mound,
right on the border between the parishes of Västra
Vemmenhög, Östra Vemmenhög, and Tullstorp, from
where, in good weather, the view stretches out over
the south and middle part of the hundred.
market, and perhaps also cult activities on the hills
north and east of Lund need not conflict in any way
with the view of Uppåkra as a power center in the
Iron Age, with the seat of a chieftain, sophisticated
craft work, trade, and a magnificent cult building.
To illustrate the similarities in the way judicial
sites, the landscape, settlement names, hundrednames,
and field-names indicating the administration
of justice interact, another area in Skåne may be
used as an example: Vemmenhög Hundred.6
Vemmenhög hundred
In 1682, Vemmenhög hundred was amalgamated
with neighboring hundreds (Almquist 1954:401–
402). There is no information about the location
of the thing site of the hundred before the time of
amalgamation, but local tradition points to the three
burial mounds named Vemmenhögarna as the oldest
assembly site (Fig. 3; see Almquist 1954:401–402).
As we shall see below, however, the place-names in
the area instead clearly suggest that the assembly
site was located on a ridge on the border between
Västra Vemmenhög, Tullstorp, Önnarp, and Källstorp
(Fig. 4). The primary name here seems to be
Tingbjär “assembly hill”, attested directly—and indirectly
via secondary names—from the 16th century.
The generic element in bjär “hill” refers without
Figure 3. Vemmenhögarna, the burial mounds in Vemmenhög Hundred (Svensson 2007).
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dred boundary is perhaps the most remarkable thing.
Names with Ting-, Galge-, and Stegel- on hundred
boundaries are found at several places in Skåne
(Svensson 2007:214). This situation is difficult to interpret.
Does it testify to some form of justice dating
back before the hundreds? Or do they reflect traces
of some other kind of assembly than the hundred
things, for example, special assemblies to discuss
matters affecting several neighboring hundreds?
The Established Model of the Development of
Administrative Division
It was noticed long ago by place-name scholars
that the hundreds in southern and western Skåne
mostly have names corresponding to the names of
villages. Jöran Sahlgren (1920) identified different
chronological levels, on the one hand old settlement
districts like the hundreds of Villand and Alesmark
in the northeast, and on the other hand later “artificial”
hundreds in the south and west. The hundreds
with village names, according to Sahlgren, were
named after the villages where the thing sites were
located, and the whole area with hundred-names
At a further two places in the hundred there are
place-names containing the element galge “gallows”,
namely Gallebjär (with variants) in Lemmeströ,
Börringe Parish, and Gallebjär (also with
variants) in Norra Lindholmen in Aggarp, Svedala
Parish. These place-names can be linked to the
historically attested Lindholmen birk (Lindholms
Bierck [unpublished cadastre, 1546/47]) and Börringe
birk (Børringe bierck [unpublished cadastre,
1572]), respectively.
In the parish of Skivarp on the eastern border
of the hundred there is a village named Steglarp
with the word for “wheel” (Stælrup 1470; Erslev
1929:191). Approximately 1 km from that village,
in the neighboring hundred of Ljunits, there is a
Tingaröd (Tingar 1406, Tingære 1472; Hallberg
1975:150). The latter has been interpreted as a compound
appellative *tinggärde “enclosed assembly
site” (Hallberg 1975:150). The fact that Steglarp and
Tingaröd are situated so close to each other could be
taken as corroborating the idea that they reflect the
administration of justice. Yet they cannot be easily
linked to any known hundred thing or birk thing. The
fact that they occur on either side of a medieval hun-
Figure 4. The Vemmenhögarna area in Vemmenhög Hundred. In Vemmenhög Hundred, as in many other hundreds in Skåne,
there are remarkably many names, with a clear tradition since the 16th century, associated with the administration of justice.
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like this was regarded as the area that was originally
called Skåne, which had been a unit on a par
with Villand especially. An indication that the area
had been carved up into hundreds by a central administration
was, according to Sahlgren, that the
hundred boundaries followed rivers, which more
likely reflected a central administrative perspective
than natural historical growth. In Sahlgren’s view,
water united instead of divided people in older times
(Sahlgren 1920:54–62). Sahlgren’s theory has had a
considerable impact which can be seen in the work
of later historians and archaeologists, who often
envisage a chronological development by which
southern and western Skåne was involved in the
consolidation and expansion of the Danish kingdom
earlier than the other parts of the province (Andersson
1947:323, Fabech 1993, Skansjö 1997:36).
Thorsten Andersson has built on Sahlgren’s theory,
above all through an observation of a structural
feature in the linguistic usage: he noticed that some
hundred-names, primarily the names of hundreds
in the oldest districts, include the word härad in the
name, even in the earliest sources, while other hundred-
names, often on the periphery of the province,
only had the härad appended to the name later, during
the Middle Ages (Fig. 1; Andersson 1965:171–174,
1982:67–76.). This observation allowed Andersson
to distinguish between primary hundred-names
(“primära häradsnamn”), which were the names of
hundreds right from the start, and secondary ones
(“ursprungliga bygdenamn”), those which were
first the names of settlement districts and were then
“reused” and, with the later addition of härad, were
fitted into the hundred organization. Andersson likewise
put this into a chronological framework, and
his conclusion was that the origin of the hundred
organization could be found in Denmark (Andersson
1965, 1999:435–440). Andersson’s research has been
influential, like Sahlgren’s, and his view of primary
and secondary hundreds is still the modern accepted
model (Andersson 1999, Hallberg 2009:23).
Sahlgren’s and Andersson’s works should not,
however, be regarded as the end of the discussion
(Andersson 1982:46–50, Jørgensen 1980:33–51).
The main objection to the theory of an ancient Skåne
(the southwestern part of the modern province)
without hundreds, is that the area is too big not to
have been divided into smaller units (Andersson
1982:53–55, Jørgensen 1980:39). The hundreds
have often been dated on the basis of the fact that in
Skåne they are not mentioned in the Deeds of Knut
the Holy from 1085 but have become general by the
time of King Valdemar’s cadastre of 1235 (Bolin
1930:208–214, Christensen 1977). Andersson counters
with a different explanation for this: that the
Skåne estates mentioned in Knut’s charter are close
to the cathedral in Lund and were so well known that
it was unnecessary to specify the hundred in which
they were located (Andersson 1982:55–59).
Thorsten Andersson acknowledged that the division
into primary and secondary hundred-names and
the dating of the hundreds is not without problems,
and pointed out that there are names that include the
word härad that are very old and do not appear to
have anything to do with the hundred organization
that we know from the Middle Ages. Andersson thus
envisages a Norse ancestor of the word härad in
the sense of a “settlement district”, with prehistoric
roots (Andersson 1982:67–74, 1999:435–440).
Revising the Established Viewpoint
The case studies explored in this article demonstrate
a range of shared features that can also be
found in other areas, especially in southern and eastern
Skåne. These can be summarized as follows:
• Close to the thing sites there are prehistoric sites
of special significance, with names corresponding to
the name of the hundred and to the name of one or
more nearby villages.
• Thing sites are located close to old roads.
• Thing sites and execution places are separate but
within sight of each other.
• Thing sites and execution sites related to the
hundred-administration are highly visible in the
landscape.
• Thing sites and execution sites are close to, but
not in, the villages whose names correspond to the
hundred-names.
• Thing sites and execution sites are often on
the boundary between several parishes (Schön
2000:81–82; Svensson 2007:211, 2012:400; Wallin
1951:178).
Assembly sites, judging by field-names with the
element ting, do not lie in the villages whose names
correspond to the names of hundreds. Instead the
names with ting are found in the outlands of these
villages or even in or near other villages in the vicinity.
One may wonder whether the villages that
have names resembling hundred-names have any
organizational or administrative connection at all
with the functions of the judicial assembly and the
hundred. There is not much to suggest that this is
the case, which means that we must ask ourselves
if it is not instead the case that the hundreds and
the villages with similar names were separately and
independently named after familiar, high-status,
archaic natural sites close to which assemblies were
held. Rönneberg Hundred, for example, would then
have nothing to do with the village of Rönneberga,
but would derive (perhaps via an inhabitant name)
from the impressive rise in the land—“rowan
mountain”—filled with large burial mounds between
Journal of the North Atlantic
O. Svensson
2015 Special Volume 8
90
as difficult a pursuit as it is important to distinguish
between the reuse of narratives intended to bestow
tradition and legitimacy on a judicial site and on the
actions taking place there, and actual site continuity
in some form going back to prehistoric time (Sanmark
and Semple 2008, Svensson 2012:400–401).
Finally, it cannot be doubted that the old central
districts in Scandinavia have hundred-names with
the addition of härad earlier than the more peripheral
ones. It has been questioned whether this is
true in Denmark as well, but Thorsten Andersson
has shown, with Halland as an example, that the
same pattern can be seen in Denmark as elsewhere
(Andersson 1982:51–60). Perhaps the reasons suggested
for the observed pattern can be challenged. Is
the distribution of hundred-names really associated
with a development over time? An alternative could
be that the primary hundred-names simply reflect
a settlement structure where population density
was high and villages were close together, and it is
thus highly probable that a well-known place in the
landscape not only became the name of an assembly
site (and hence of a hundred) but also the name of
one or more villages. This development then led to
a need to distinguish between different places with
the same name. Could the main purpose of the primary
hundred names have been to distinguish sites
like Vemmenhög village and Vemmenhög Hundred?
Such names could then have served as models for
analogical formations. To say anything definite
about this would require a more detailed analysis
than I have presented here. But the potential for a
continued discussion certainly seems to exist.
Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks to Frode Iversen, Alexandra Sanmark,
and the TAP-team for inviting me to an interesting workshop
at Utstein monastery in 2011 and to participate in
this volume. Following the TAP-project has added a large
amount of information and inspiration to my own research.
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Endnotes
1Associations like these have also been questioned (Nicklasson
2008:40, 183, Schledermann 1974:373).
2Surveys in Jennbert et al. (2002). Nevertheless place
names related to cult must be seen as a rich source material.
See Vikstrand (2001). A survey of the possibilities
and limitations can be found in Andrén (2002:299–320).
3Brink (1998:300), referring to Gurevich (1985) and
Herschend (1997) stresses “the autonomous role of the
assembly alongside the doings of the social elite”, but
nevertheless points to a number of areas in southern
Sweden where the toponymic evidence seems to indicate
geographical proximity between assembly, cult, and a
magnate’s residence.
4Adam of Bremen and Olaus Magnus described the third
god, Frigga, as a man. For Chytraeus, this deity was
a virgin. Otherwise their accounts are similar (Körner
1962:192–196).
5Further support of an assembly site at Arendala may come
from the fact that some manuscripts of Archbishop Eskil’s
church law from the start of the 12th century say that
this law was adopted in a stone house on a hill between
Dalby and Lund, which would fit the location of Arendala
(Blomqvist 1951:20–21).
6The account of Vemmenhög is based on Svensson
(2007:198–204).
7Andersson (1965). It should be added, however, that the
hundreds were also used, as early as the Middle Ages, as
royal administrative centers and for purposes of tax collection
(Bolin 1930:210).