Borders, Boundaries and Boundary Markers
Strict borders with boundary markers can be found as early as in the Viking Age or the Scandinavian early Middle Ages (after c. 1050; Brink 2008b, 95). Apart from certain rune-stones, the oldest written documentation of borders concerns the borders between Denmark and the Continent and Denmark and Norway. The border between Denmark and Sweden is first documented in 1343. Before that this border was referred to as a landamaeri (border area) marked by stones or using physical land elements, such as streams, roads, mountains or wetlands. Border markers between Sweden and Norway are mentioned in manuscripts of the Norwegian law of the realm (thirteenth century) and other late medieval sources.
The Nordic provincial laws contain a wealth of different words and expressions for borders, boundaries and boundary markers. These may regulate borders between administrative units, provinces, districts or villages, but most rules in the provincial laws regulate boundaries between different landowners, and there seems to be no strict definition for any of the different words. These borders and boundaries may follow streams, roads, significant cliffs or hills, or be marked with stakes, stones, or sometimes even fences, a significant tree or an imaginative boundary off the shore. The form of the boundary marker may be described. The stones may number three to five, one in the middle and the others around it. If the boundary marker contains fewer stones something (for example a bone) would be placed under the stone. What was important was that you should be able to distinguish a boundary marker from an ordinary heap of stones. Boundary markers between strip fields may even be a furrow (for, SdmL Jb4). To move or destroy a boundary marker was heavily punished. Refs: Brink 2008b, 95; Holm 2003, 135–237; KLNM s.v.v. gränsläggning, rigsgrænse, rågång; Tollin 1999, 11–26, 51–63.
- fjórðungamót (ON) n.
- 'Quarter boundary', i.e. the border between quarters in Iceland (Grg ch. 99).
- Refs: CV s.v. fjórðungr.
- landamæri , landamäre (OSw) , landamæri (OIce) n.
- Boundary or border/border area between provinces. In OIce it refers to border land or border marker.
- Refs: CV s.v. land-; KLNM s.v.v.gränsläggning, rigsgrænse; Schlyter's.v. landamæri. (landamærki (OSw) , landamerki , landsmerki (OIce) n.
- Border marker between provinces in VgL. In OIce sometimes between estates.
- Refs: CV s.v. land-; Schlyter' s.v. landamaerki.
- mark (OSw, ODan) , mark , mörk (ON) n.
- The word form mark n. represents three homonyms: 1) mark 'mark, sign; border mark, boundary line', 2) mark 'unit of weight and coinage', 3) mark 'forest, wood; outlying field, outland'. For homonyms 2 and 3 the ON standard form is mörk. The oldest sense of the neuter mark and the feminine variant mark (the latter originally collective plural) was 'border/boundary mark'. Since forests often functioned as borderland the word mark also came to mean 'forest, wood', and (by extension) 'land, field'.
