Appendix B: Agriculture and Forestry
527
Cultivated land: village, farmstead and farmyard
There are a large number of different words denoting a specific area or district, a village or a single farm. Some words include the buildings, others do not. Some include all the land and rights belonging to a farm, others do not. The diagram below roughly illustrates the relations between the different words and their semantic scope although the extension of a single word may vary between laws and/or provinces.
| district (not administrative) | bygd (OSw, ODan), byggð (ON) n. |
| a village, a single or a group of farms, belongings, district | bo (ODan, OGu, OSw), bú (ON) n. |
| village, farm and/or land surrounding the farmstead | bolstaþer (OSw), bólstaðr (ON) n. by, byr (OSw), býr (ON), bær (ON) n. |
| the farm as an economic asset or unclear reference | bol (OSw, ODan, OGu), ból (ON) n. |
| the farmstead, sometimes including land as an economic asset | garþer (OSw), garth (ODan), garþr (OGu), garðr (ON) n. |
| the farmyard or the farm as an economic asset | tompt (OSw), toft (ODan), tóft (ON) tún (ON), bær (ON) n. |
| new settlement from an old village/farm | þorp (OSw), thorp (ODan) n. |
- bygd (OSw, ODan) , byggð (ON) n.
- Inhabited area or district sometimes including the inhabitants and the cultivated land.
- Refs: CV s.v. bygð; Hertzberg's.v. bygð; KLNM s.v. -bygd; ONP s.v. byggð; Schlyter's.v. bygd; Zoega's.v. bygð.
- bo (ODan, OGu, OSw) , bú (ON) n.
- Literally 'dwelling' with many separate meanings in the laws: 1) a farm or a group of farms, a village, 2) the houses themselves and the function of the dwelling as an economic unit sometimes including the people living and working there, 3) the belongings representing a substantial part of its value including livestock. In Iceland a bú might be a farm unity of which two, three or more combined on the land of a larger farm. When two people had a bú at the same bær, they were said to have a bú together (eiga bú saman).
- In SkL and ÖgL a bo could also denote a farm with an administrative function under the control of a king, bishop or jarl, or their bryti. In the Swedish province of Västergötland, albeit not explicitly mentioned in the version of the laws translated into English, but present in a recent edition of ÄVgL (Wiktorsson 2011:II, 160–65), a bo was an administrative district of an unknown function comprising one or several hæraþ, that was probably associated with the royal estates (bona regalia) of upsala öþer.
- See also Appendix A.
- Refs: Árni Júlíússon 2010, 8; CV s.v. bú; KLNM, s.v.v. bo, kronogods; Miller 1990, 115; Schlyter's.v. bo; Wiktorsson 2011:II, 160–65.
- bol (OSw, ODan, OGu) , ból (ON) n.
- Literally 'dwelling' and by extension referring to a farm including its farmland.
- In Danish laws (except in Halland and Blekinge) bol refers to a certain part of the village land and the rights and obligations that followed, but may also be used as a land assessment unit. The details concerning the origin and varying size or value of a bol are unclear, but the number of bol in a specific village seems to have been static and a farm could consist of a whole bol or part(s) of a bol.
- A specifically judicial use of bol in Norwegian laws was as a farming unit of a certain size, which was originally the basis for calculating the lease and later the taxation, and usually specified as to the unit measure, i.e. marker or mánaðarmatr.
- There are several, sometimes conflicting, ideas of the nature of the bol in the Swedish laws and it is unclear whether it also was a unit of a specified size or value, a farm where the owner resided or – possibly later – a new settlement.
- bolskift (ODan) n. is a land division system in Denmark supposed to have preceded the solskift. It is not mentioned in the laws. See Land-division systems below.
- Refs: Andersson 2014, 24; Ericsson 2012, 22, 24, 28, 270; Hoff 1997, 197; KLNM s.v.v. bol, bolskift, hammarskifte, solskifte, tegskifte; Porsmose 1988, 234–36, 270; Rahmqvist 1996, 29; Schlyter's.v. bol; Tamm and Vogt 2016, 25; Venge 2002, 8, 173, 283; Åström 1897, 193–98.
