Manors and states: the distribution and structure of private manors in early modern Scandinavia and their relation to state policies

ABSTRACT

This article explores the development of private manors in Scandinavia between the reformation and the eve of the great agrarian reforms in Denmark ca. 1770 and their relation to state policies. It compares Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Skåne and Schleswig-Holstein. Firstly, it analyses the amount of land held by private landlords and the internal structure of the landholding class. It shows that it changed considerably over time, but in very different ways in the different territories. This is explained by the interaction of the nobility or landholding classes with the state power. Secondly, the article looks at the economic and spatial structure of manors with specific attention to the degree of demesne farming based upon corvee. It is discussed to which degree these manors came to follow the path of Gutsherrschaft or demesne lordship associated with the lands south of the Baltic. Demesnes of Scandinavia were erected and enlarged out of a mixture of agricultural economic considerations, tax evasion and status needs. Also this differed with territory. Part of the explanation is a different structure of the nobility emerging from massive ennoblements in Sweden, but also in other direct or indirect ways the state furthered, hindered or checked the development.