Resilience and Medieval Crises at Five Rural Settlements in Sweden and Norway

Abstract

In this paper aspects of resilience are used to examine five medieval single farmsteads or small hamlets from Sweden and Norway. Resilience is the ability of the system to absorb stress caused by internal interaction as well as by external factors. The lower the resilience of a structure, the more vulnerable the structure is. Inspired by resilience theory, three theoretical concepts are used to analyse the rural settlements; potential, connectedness and remembering.

The investigated sites were all characterized by a mixed economy, although on a gliding scale. Most of them were somehow affected either by the late medieval agrarian crisis, or, and more severely, by an earlier crisis related to changed trade and production patterns. The settlements appear to have been run in fairly sustainable manner by knowledgeable actors. The possibilities for the peasants to act out their knowledge and accumulated experience for making necessary changes stand out as perhaps the most important factor of resilience.