3 The Black Death in : Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger and Hallvard Bjørkvik

3.1 Introduction

The Black Death has long been a central topic in the Norwegian historiography on the late Middle Ages. In the period c. 1920-80, agrarian historians showed that the Black Death caused a tremendous contraction of settlement and a steep fall in rents and taxes, which must reflect a demographic disaster. It must have been an exceedingly important event in Norwegian history. It was known that there were later plague epidemics, but their individual and collective significance attracted scant interest. In his highly regarded History of Norway until the Introduction of Absolutism in 1660, Andreas Holmsen characteristically mentioned only the Black Death, which made incomprehensible the continued deepening of the crisis and its duration.482 The epidemiological and medical dimensions of the Black Death and later plague epidemics remained almost completely ignored before I made this the subject of my thesis for the degree Doctor of Philosophy, Plague in the Late Medieval Countries: Epidemiological Studies (1992).483 In 2002, appeared (in Norwegian) my monograph , The Black Death and Later Plague Epidemics in Norway: The History of Plague Epidemics in Norway 1348-1654. This monograph offers a complete account of Norwegian plague history, numerous waves of plague epidemics over 300 years. Evidently, it focuses on the epidemiological and medical dimensions of plague, but examines also the demographic and economic effects (as far as the sources permit). The great advantage of a complete historical study is that it provides the opportunity to uncover systematic long-term patterns of regularity. These two monographs are the only major studies in Norwegian historiography that make serious and focused primary source research on the Black Death and later

482 * The author’s translation of an article in Collegium Medievale, 19; 2006a: 83-163, with some changes and additions adapting it to an international audience. Some parts at the end of the article, which discuss demographic questions on household size not clearly related to the Black Death, have been left out. Holmsen 1949: 412, 1977: 328-29. 483 It was submitted in 1991, the disputation took place in 1992, and it was formally published later that year in a somewhat revised version, incorporating critical remarks made by committee members and official opponents, Professor Erik Ulsig of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, Professor Øivind Larsen of the University of , and in a formal written statement submitted to the adjudicating committee by the appointed medical plague expert, Professor Thomas Butler of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Centre, School of Medicine. It was reprinted in 1993 and again in 1996, in the footnote apparatus here cited as 1996a. 184 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

plague epidemics.484 The previously prevailing views on these historical events were mainly based on the big, multivolume histories of Norway where the authors could not avoid mentioning the Black Death (but often the subsequent plague epidemics), or were found as incidental information in some works of local history. The unique historical significance of the Black Death as a tremendous demographic catastrophe with huge social repercussions is obvious. Its impact was such that it uniquely functioned as a gateway to a historical period, namely the late Middle Ages, which derived its historical specificity from these conditions. This explains the central position of the Black Death in my two previous monographs (of 1992 and 2002). It is also due to the fact that there is extant a useful, albeit complicated and quite difficult primary source material to the history of the Black Death in Norway. In my subsequent 2004 monograph on plague history, the Black Death was presented in a complete international perspective. That gave the opportunity to analyse again the material on the Black Death’s history in Norway, now in the broadest possible perspective. This included discovery of new Swedish and Danish materials on the spread of the Black Death, which cast new light also on the Black Death in Norway.

484 When the present paper was in its final edited version after comments from referees and editorial remarks, appeared Ole G. Moseng’s thesis for the degree of Doctor of Art, University of Oslo, Moseng 2006. Here he launched the eight alternative theory on the Black Death’s and later plague epidemics’ microbiological nature and epidemiological structure presented in the last 35 years. It is discussed quite thoroughly in Chapter 10, some central points also in Chapter 5. Since then, several other theories have been presented, thirteen in all, see Chapter 1.4, Chapter 9, and Chapter 11. These alternative theories challenge the established view that the plague epidemics of the past were bubonic plague caused by ordinary variants of the contagion Yersinia pestis, transmitted and disseminated by the black rat and its usual flea parasite Xenopsylla cheopis. They are highly disparate and incompatible, at least twelve of them must consequently be untenable, and why not all thirteen? Curiously, Moseng refrains from relat- ing to the Black Death, which is in the focus here and does not test the validity of his theory on it. This is a serious weakness, because the Black Death is by very far the historically most important plague epidemic in Norwegian plague history. It offers also unrivalled opportunity for the source-based study of the countrywide pattern of spread of a plague epidemic in Norway. His decision to refrain from address- ing the topic of the Black Death, can be seen as evidence that he had nothing of significance to add. For the first time, it is thoroughly presented and discussed in my 1992 doctoral thesis. In my monograph on the history of plague in Norway 1348-1654, Benedictow 2002, the Black Death is presented and dis- cussed over 60 pages, far more thoroughly than has been possible for any other plague epidemic. Its pattern of spread, in a wide sense of the concept, is systematically compared with or tested on the basic structures of bubonic-plague epidemiology, as will be seen also from the discussions and analyses of the present Chapter. This account of the Black Death is published above in English translation in Chapter 2. See also below, Chapters 4-5. Preliminarily, it could be useful to refer to the fact that all responsible leading international or- ganizations engaged in the combat of contagious diseases, like WHO and Centres for Disease Control, do not mention the alternative theories on their web sites, but maintain the established identity be- tween modern bubonic plague and the plague epidemics of the past. www.who.int/inf and www.cdc. gov. See above Chapters 1.2 and 1.3. Introduction 185

My account of the Black Death’s history in Norway has been met with quite numerous objections formed in systematic and relatively comprehensive alternative accounts by two historians who had previously not addressed this topic. Firstly, this is the case with Halvard Bjørkvik’s account in his volume of Aschehougs Norges Historie [Aschehoug’s History of Norway] which relates to the account in my 1992 thesis.485 The alternative account is indirect in the sense that Bjørkvik does not state explicitly that he argues against the main lines of my account. He also fails to mention that he argues for an entirely new view of the Black Death’s chronology and dissemination.486 The other alternative account is argued by Birger Lindanger. He is explicit about his intention to give an alternative account, in this case in relation to the one I gave in my 2002 history of plague in Norway.487 It is based on the same basic ideas argued by Bjørkvik but without making this explicit. Lindanger gives both a more systematic criticism of my account and also a more comprehensive alternative account that can be said to constitute an alternative theory. Bjørkvik and Lindanger give two quite closely related radical new accounts of the Black Death’s history in Norway both in relation to previous historiography and to my account. Evidently, these alternative accounts of a uniquely important event in Norwegian history deserve thorough attention. Especially Lindanger takes up questions relating to population size on the eve of the Black Death and the population loss it caused, which raise central issues of historical demography. The discussion of these demographic issues makes it useful to comment also on some related new views by other historians, particularly by Hilde Sandvik and Geir Atle Ersland, which is performed in the Appendix [not included here, because they do not relate directly to the Black Death]. These two alternative accounts are written without a footnote apparatus or scholarly references. In the case of Bjørkvik’s account this is beyond criticism, because it is an ordinary feature of this form of popular historical works. Lindanger’s point of departure is that he has accepted an editorial request to write a review of my 2002 history of plague, but has instead used the opportunity to present a quite comprehensive alternative account on the Black Death’s arrival and spread in Norway and the mortality it caused. This has the unfortunate consequence that these two alternative accounts do not cover the ordinary scholarly requirements for direct testability. This made it quite challenging to relate to much of the discussion with concrete arguments, because it easily assumes the form of an argumentative blind man’s bluff: What is the basis of the alternative assertions, if any? Another problem is that undocumented assertions can be easily stated, but it may take much effort to

485 Bjørkvik 1996: 12-23. Aschehoug is the publisher. 486 An important reason for commenting on this alternative theory of the Black Death’s arrival and spread in Norway is that it apparently may seem significant to scholars with a more peripheral orientation on the subject, see Vahtola 2003: 562. See also below Chapter 3.3.1, n. 583 and Chapter 3.4.2, n. 622. 487 Lindanger 2004: 313-16. 186 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

show that they are untenable. Adequate counterarguments will require sufficiently broad presentation of sources and arguments used in my monographs to reject that there is a tenable empirical basis for the alternative assertions. For this reason, my response here will tend to require quite comprehensive comments in order to provide the necessary broad clarifications. The wish to discuss these two alternative theories or outlines of the Black Death in this way, imply that I disagree fundamentally with these theories, consider them empirically, epidemiologically and demographically untenable and as such potentially misleading. Epidemiological arguments and discussions relating to plague are often challenging because the manifestations of the epidemic process are so diverse and reflect an unusual diversity of interacting causal factors. This makes comprehensive reading of the epidemiological scholarly literature on plague indispensable as well as much experience in handling strongly interdisciplinary epidemiological analyses. One important point is that six weeks elapse in small towns and almost as long in rural districts from the arrival of plague contagion until the development of an incipient plague epidemic, which would have caught the attention of contemporary observers. The reason is plague’s basis in rats and fleas, that infective rat fleas only attacks human beings after the rat colony have been so strongly reduced that they do not find new rat hosts.488 This is the reason that plague epidemics decline in cool autumn weather and disappear in wintry weather. In the entire history of plague in Norway, with some 30 waves of plague epidemics, there was not a single instance of a winter epidemic.489 This raises immediate questions concerning Lindanger’s and Bjørkvik’s view that the Black Death ravaged Østlandet (“the East Country) in the winter of 1350. Because Lindanger’s alternative account is more comprehensive and in my view covers also the main elements of Bjørkvik’s alternative account, I will primarily relate to it and make some supplementary comments on Bjørkvik’s account at the end. In my discussion of Lindanger’s views, I will also discuss demographic subjects concerning mortality effects, household size (multiplier) and population size.

488 When a black rat is infected by plague contagion, this triggers an epizootic among the rats of the colony, which rapidly die off, while their fleas, normally of the species Xenopsylla cheopis, gather on those who are still alive. After 10-14 days, the rat colony will be so reduced that fleas which now leave dead or dying rats will have great and increasing difficulties in finding new rat hosts. After 3 days of fasting, these fleas are so hungry that they attack human beings in their proximity. When human beings are bitten by an infective (blocked) flea, the time of incubation is normally 3-5 days, then, the disease breaks out and is followed by a course of illness of similar duration before the diseased die in 80% of the cases (the lethality rate). From the time the first rat becomes contaminated to a human being dies within the territory of the rat colony, it elapses normally 19-27 days, on the average 23 days. Because this process requires so much time, an additional two weeks will elapse before the endemic phase caus- ing (an increasing number of) episodic cases grows into an early epidemic phase. See Benedictow 2002: 36-37, in English translation in Chapter 2.1, above; Benedictow 2004: 18-19, 57-59, 124-25. See also Benedictow 2010: 279-88. 489 Benedictow 2002: 38-40, 320. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 187

Bjørkvik, Lindanger and I agree that the Black Death was bubonic plague, at least mainly. Analysis of the pattern of spread in time and space will provide the opportunity to test whether there is concordance between the understanding of the disease as bubonic plague and the pattern of spread or there are deviations that may indicate another modality of plague or a another epidemic disease.

3.2. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway

3.2.1 Introduction: Sources and Source-criticism

Lindanger starts by pretending that his project is to defend the Icelandic annals’ account of the Black Death’s arrival and spread in Norway, particularly that it arrived in Bergen in 1349 and spread from there over all Norway. That is a conventional view of Norwegian plague history. However, abruptly he throws this project away. Instead, he launches a sensational, and seemingly new theory to the effect that the Black Death from its starting point in Bergen arrived in Østlandet in the late autumn or November 1349, and that 1350 was the big year of plague in the region of Østlandet. This view corresponds to one of Bjørkvik’s main accounts of 1996 (there are several alternative versions, as will be seen below). Lindanger’s real project is therefore, in fact, completely at variance with the Icelandic annals’ view, because they maintain unconditionally that the year of plague for all Norway was 1349. They do not contain a single word that it should have been plague in Norway in 1350.490 On the contrary, they provide also other important pieces of information which militates against this view (see below). Clearly, Lindanger’s real project is to invalidate my view that the Black Death was not imported only once, to Bergen in the summer of 1349, but that there was also another independent importation of plague to Norway, in all probability to Oslo. This importation must have occurred earlier, namely in the (late) autumn of 1348, and that 1349 was indeed the year the Black Death spread across Norway with these two urban bridgeheads as epicentres. The crucial point in this remarkable turn of the discussion is evidently the sources which are available for deciding the year the Black Death ravaged Østlandet and its spatio-temporal pattern of spread. Most sources to the history of the Black Death in Norway cannot be used in order to determine directly its time and location, because they are retrospective and do not identify the plague year or they provide uncertain

490 Islandske Annaler 1888: 223 (Annal Fragment of Skálholt = Annalbruddstykke fra Skálholt); 275-76 (Lawman’s Annal = Lögmanns-annáll); 354 (Gottskalk’s Annals = Gottskálks Annáll); 403-404 (Annals of the Flatey Book = Flateyjarannáll). Skálholts-Annáll misdates central events by one year, the Black Death to 1348, and the meeting of the Council of the Realm in Bergen to 1349, Islandske Annaler 1888: 213-14. 188 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

information on the year. In most cases, they are dating formulae in later documents that refer to the summer of mortality, the autumn of mortality, or the winter of mortality. In a few sources, deaths in the Black Death are identified with specific day(s) but without specification of year. These datings prove less helpful, because the year of the Black Death now has become disputed and must be identified. Some sources are problematic in other ways, they are not extant in originals but as casual notes or problematic transcripts which are the results of a long chain of transcriptions with a corresponding accumulation of a multitude of slips of the mind or the pen or misunderstandings.491 There are three good sources or combinations of sources for the determination of the year and the spatio-temporal progression of the Black Death’s spread in Østlandet. They are: 1. the Icelandic annals, the most important is the Lawman’s Annal (Lögmanns- annáll); 2. sources associated with the installation of a new bishop of caused by the incumbent’s death from the Black Death; 3. letter from King Magnus [Eriksson of Norway and ] from September 1349.

All serious attempts at identifying the year of the Black Death must be based on these three sources. They are key sources also because determination of the year makes it possible to activate the sources without determination of year but with other forms of dating, which will make it possible to clarify the main outline of the pattern of spread in time and space. As will be clear below, all three sources document individually and with full empirical force, and taken together with synergistic effects, that the great year of plague in Østlandet was 1349. The importance of these sources is underlined in my monographs, and should potentially be well known.492 An important reason that Lindanger can advance his alternative view is that he does not relate to these sources, at least not in this context or perspective. (1) With respect to the first source material, the Icelandic annals, it is predominantly The Lawman’s Annal and Gottskalk’s Annal that give independent accounts of the Black Death in Norway. Some pieces of independent information are also given in Annal Fragment of Skálholt. It is possible to identify the key informants with high probability, because they provide such detailed ecclesiastical information on the ravages of the Black Death in [Trondheim], Bergen, and on Agdesiden

491 Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 44-48, 75-100; Benedictow 2002: 57-67, English translation in Chapter 2.7, above. See especially Chapter 4.4, below. 492 This question is discussed far more directly and systematically in my monographs from 2002 and 2004, because the year of the Black Death was not disputed at the time I wrote my doctoral thesis. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 189

[“Sørlandet” = “the South Country”] in the diocese of . In the focus are Bishop Orm of Hólar who had sailed to Norway on an official business and the new Bishop of Skálholt, Gyrd Ivarsson, who until then had been abbot in St. John’s Priory in Bergen.493 Both had both lived through the Black Death in Bergen and returned to in 1350 and 1351 respectively, which explains why the Icelandic annals are so well-informed also on the time of the Black Death in Norway.494 Evidently, it is I who agree with the Icelandic annals about the year that the Black Death spread across all of Norway, that it was 1349. The Lawman’s Annal provides also an estimate of the mortality rate in the Black Death and links all of it to the same year, namely 1349.495 I also agree with the Icelandic annals that the Black Death was carried to Bergen aboard a ship from England, and have been so fortunate to find a source which with considerable probability identifies the ship and the owners of the cargo of grain.496 Epidemiological arguments based on contemporary sources allow us to encircle the time when the ship must have arrived and, therefore, also the time of the early epidemic phase six weeks later, in the second half of August.497 I also agree with earlier historians’ view that the sources indicate that the epidemic was in intensive development in Bergen during the first half of September.498 This is where Lindanger faces serious problems with his original premise of the Icelandic annals’ absolute trustworthiness. It is inconceivable that the Black Death, with this point of departure in time and space, can have succeeded in spreading from Bergen across all Norway in the autumn of 1349, as the Icelandic annals maintain. This raises questions about the completeness of the Icelandic annals’ information. The reality is that Lindanger and I have different answers to this problem: in my opinion there was an independent importation of the Black Death to Oslo which the Icelandic annals do not know, Lindanger is of the opinion that the Black Death spread in Østlandet in 1350, a spread in time and space they do not know. Lindanger overlooks that the Lawman’s Annal and the Annals of the Flatey Book make it clear that the Black Death ravaged also in Østlandet in 1349. They do so by mentioning that also Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died in the Black Death in 1349:499

By this disease was exanimated Archbishop Arne […] Item [likewise] Bishop Thorstein of Bergen died. Item Bishop Guttorm of Stavanger died. Bishop Hallvard of Hamar also expired then. This disease did not come to Iceland.

493 Benedictow 2002: 67, in English translation in Chapter 2.8, in initio. 494 Islandske Annaler 1888: 276. 495 Islandske Annaler 1888: 275-76. 496 Benedictow 2002: 75-76, in English translation in Chapter 2.8, in fine. 497 See above, Chapter 2.8. 498 See above, Chapter 2.8, pp. 141-42. 499 My translation followed by the original text. 190 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

The original text:

Af þessi sott saladizst Arni erkebiskop. […] Jtem Obitus Þorstein byskop. af Biorguin. Jtem Obitus Guthormr byskop af Stafangre. Halluardr byskop af Hamri saladizst ok þa. Þessi sott kom ecki aa Island.500

Clearly, the Lawman’s Annal states explicitly which of the Norwegian bishops who died in the Black Death, and includes Bishop Hallvard of Hamar, this last fact is additionally made unequivocally clear also by informing immediately after his name: “This disease did not come to Iceland.” Bishop Salomon of Oslo, the only surviving bishop, is not mentioned, which on its own shows that the Lawman’s Annal is well- oriented on the topic. It is, in fact, based on solid information, the Annal can also inform that Bishop Salomon performed several important ecclesiastical ceremonies in association with the meeting of the Council of the Realm in Bergen in June 1350.501 This is solid information that the two Icelandic bishops again could convey, because they attended the meeting of the Council, and one of them at the time was consecrated a bishop by Bishop Salomon, while the other was assistant bishop at the ceremony. The information that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died in the Black Death means unequivocally that the Black Death raged also in the interior of Østlandet in 1349. This concise information has comprehensive effects on our insight on the spread of the Black Death in time and space in this region when it is seen within the pattern of spread outlined by plague epidemiology. Because the Black Death could not have started in Hamar but must have spread there from a port of importation on the Oslofjord, it is clear that the Icelandic annals imply a long and comprehensive pattern of spread across Østlandet in 1349. Historical plague epidemics moved with characteristic spread rates. The available data on the spread rates of plague epidemics of the past have been gathered and presented in all my monographs.502 Bubonic plague has two main forms of spread by land: (1) it spreads slowly between conterminous rat colonies in dense types of settlements as town(ship)s and villages. Norwegian archaeologists have shown little interest in sieving for small bones and specialized training of paleo-osteologistss

500 Islandske Annaler 1888: 276, 404. The Annals of the Flatey Book “contain for the years 1283-1394 much new and independent material”, but it seems quite dependent on the Lawman’s Annal for its account of the Black Death in Norway. It was written at the end of the fourteenth century by two well- informed persons who, on the basis of their good background and knowledge, have accepted the infor- mation in the Lawman’s Annal. This may give some basis for attributing to it an independent, supporting function. With respect to the authors, see the editorial comments by Storm 1888: XXXII-XXXVIII and Jakob Benediktsson 1959: 412. With respect to the translation and detailed discussion of the text see Benedictow 2002: 67-71, in English translation in Chapter 2.8. 501 Islandske Annaler 1888: 276. 502 Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 78-80; Benedictow 2002: 33-38, 61-65; Benedictow 2004: 18-21, 227-31. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 191

been neglected. In recent years, studies of some of the bone material from excavations that have, nonetheless, been preserved and stored, have produced identifications of rat bones from the twelfth century and the following centuries found in Trondheim (Nidaros), Bergen, Stavanger, and Tønsbserg503 [recently also in Oslo504]. [Importantly, there have been made two finds of the skeletal remains of black rats in rural areas, which will be briefly commented on here, because they have been ignored: (1) in Bygdøy, a rural area in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, situated in the then Østre (Eastern) Bærum hundred and parish about 8 km west of the then town of Oslo, and also west of Vestre Aker hundred, the nearest rural district west of the town. For most of the period, it was run as an uninhabited subsidiary farm (“underbruk, “avlsgård” from Hovedøya monastery, and, probably, from the second half of the fifteenth century, it was run as a subsidiary farm under the castellan of Castle.505 (2) In the rural Hof parish, County.506 These two finds undermine Hufthammer and Walløe’s assertion that black rats had only a highly limited presence in urban coastal centres, not in the countryside, so that rat-flee-borne cannot explain epidemic spread of bubonic plague in the countryside.]. In Sweden and Finland, the black rat has been identified as a usual animal also in rural districts in the Middle Ages as well as at the early Modern Period. The black rat was still quite usual in some rural districts in these two countries until the 1920s, and in some localities also later. 507 Skeletal remains of the black rat from the Middle Ages have been found in rural districts also elsewhere in Northern Europe. Evidently, no problems were associated with its presence in the countryside, although the winters are considerably colder in most areas of Sweden and Finland than in Norway (because of the effects of the Gulf Stream). This makes it reasonable to assume that the same was the case in Norway, also because ordinary houses were built in much the same way in the towns and the

503 Personal communications by e-mail from Ann Kristin Hufthammer, Zoological Museum in Bergen, 06.10.2006, presented in Benedictow 2010: 136-37. See now also Hufthammer and Walløe, 2010: 29-43. Unfortunately, this paper is highly problematic, which makes it necessary to comment thoroughly on it, see Chapter 8, below. See also Benedictow 2010: 73-150. In my doctoral thesis, I predicted on epide- miological grounds and the Swedish material on black rats, that finds of medieval skeletal remains of the black rat would be made also in Norway, see Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 159-60. Because the brown rat did not arrive in Norway until some time around the 1750s, older skeletal remains must come from black rats. 504 Hufthammer and Walløe 2010: 36-37, 42. 505 Karlberg and Simonsen 2008. Map in Benedictow 2002: 247. Bull 1922: 56 n. 2, 334, with refer- ence to inventory taken 01.16.1488, Akerhus, Diplomatarium Norvegicum II, No. 949; Nedkvitne 191: 163, 167, 342-43. Se også “Avlsgård” og “Underbruk” Norsk historisk leksikon 1974: 28, 357. 506 Vretemark 2010: 8, 10, 28. cf. Pettersson 2010: 31. See Chapter 8. 507 Nybelin 1928: 851-854; Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 158; Audoin-Rouzeau and Vigne 1994: 129- 31; Benedictow 2004: 22-24. Gustav Malmborg, the zooosteologist at Gotland University, found lots of rat bones from the Middle Ages under his archaeological excavations in Visby. On my question, he responded in an email of 20 June 2006: “Gotland is a small island and I consider it improbable that rats should not have spread all over the island.” My translation from Swedish. 192 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

countryside.508 (3) In all forms of settlement, urban or rural districts, also in areas with dispersed farmsteads, plague is typically spread over distances by human beings who move infected rat fleas with them in clothing, luggage or goods. This means that plague is normally spread over distances by leaps (per saltum). The black rat’s usual flea parasite (Xenopsylla cheopis) is a so-called fur flea which normally rides with its host.509 In the final phase of plague in a rat colony these fleas will, as mentioned, jump onto human beings, bite them or also easily ride with them in their clothing between peasant holdings in local society or to neighbouring local societies. Infected rat fleas can also be transported over longer distances by cart or pack horse, especially in transports of corn or farina, and over long distances by transportation with ship. It has been shown that in temperatures below 15⁰ C highly infected rat fleas can survive for at least 50 days of transportation without loss of infective powers.510 Spread by leaps of this type is often called metastatic spread. Contingent upon variation of intensity of movement along various lines of communication, from riding tracks to high roads, the spread rates of plague over land are normally 0.5-2.5 km a day. Evidently, in practice this occurs mostly by leaps over quite short distances between peasant holdings and local societies, factual statements on spread rates are statistical averages of the spread over long periods of time. Spread by and ordinary but relatively high average spread rate of 1.5 km a day along the busiest main track in Norway between Oslo and Nidaros [there were not any real roads] would presumably reflect an increase of pace due to a strong upsurge in pilgrimages to St. Olav’s. This spread rate implies that the plague would cover the distance of 130 km from Oslo to Hamar in three months. After the arrival of the contagion, about 6 weeks would elapse before the disease had spread sufficiently among the rat colonies and manifested itself in an incipient epidemic development among the inhabitants. It would take at least an additional couple of weeks before the epidemic was in full development and the bishop would be in harm’s way. The temporal perspective of these developments is around 150 days. As the Black Death emerged in Hamar, the epidemic would continue to spread across the country. If one hypothesizes that the Black Death was unloaded with goods in Tønsberg, the distance to Hamar would be longer, the time perspective more challenging, and the distance

508 Much more comprehensive and updated presentation and discussion of this topic is given in Chapter 8. The question of the presence of the black rat in medieval and early modern Europe, and the presentation of the finds of rat bones published by the end of 2008, is comprehensively discussed in Benedictow 2010: 73-150. 509 Most species of fleas are nest fleas which mainly stay in the host’s nest. This is also the case with the so-called human flea, i.e. Pulex irritans, which likes proximity to human beings’ sleeping arrange- ments. The Norwegian colloquial idiom “flea box” for bed or berth is based on the mass of observations by people in the past who knew what they were talking about. Also the brown rat’s usual flea parasite Nosopsyllus fasciatus is a typical nest flea. See Chapter 1.3.3 (B), and especially Chapters 10.4.2-10.4.3, below. 510 Hirst 1953: 324, 330-31. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 193

to be covered on the ground longer. If it is assumed more cautiously for the sake of argument in this phase of the discussion that Oslo was the point of departure of the contagion which brought Bishop Hallvard to his grave, the Icelandic annals imply a radial spread out of Oslo in a time horizon which with moderately high average spread rates of 1.25-1.5 km along the different main tracks correspond to about 190- 225 km. The highest spread rate would occur primarily along the busiest route, namely from Oslo via Hamar to Nidaros. This implies that the Black Death had spread around 100 km farther northwards from Hamar to somewhere in the vicinity of Otta, southwards on the eastern side of the Oslofjord roughly to the middle of Båhuslen [at the time the south-easternmost county of Norway, ceded to Sweden 1658], on the western side of the Oslofjord to eastern Agder and Sørlandet [“the South Country”], while on the road to Vestlandet [“the West Country”] it had reached somewhere in or near . Transportation by ship could lead to metastatic spread along the sea lanes of Oslofjord, which, apparently occurred (see below). As can be seen from these rough estimates of directions and spread rates, the Icelandic annals directly and indirectly inform that the Black Death must have ravaged the entire region of Østlandet in 1349. The key piece of information is that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died in the Black Death in 1349. Because the powers of spread of plague epidemics depend on the presence of quite intact rat populations, it is not possible to assume a new, comprehensive spread across Østlandet the following year, and that the same districts could be covered again so soon. It also not possible to maintain that the great year of plague in Østlandet was 1350 and at the same time assume the position of a literalistic defender of the Icelandic annals’ unconditional, unassailable and faultless information, given the fact that they do not contain a single word the plague being anywhere in Norway in 1350, but all, in fact, maintain that the plague year was 1349. Under the second point on the sources I state that there are extant eastern Norwegian sources that independently confirm the Icelandic annals and deepen their information on the Black Death’s presence in Hamar in 1349. These sources show that the cathedral chapter of canons convened after Bishop Hallvard’s death and elected a successor, and that the Bishop-elect Olav journeyed to Nidaros and was consecrated by Archbishop Arne before the archbishop died from the Black Death 17 October, or, more accurately before he fell ill on about 13 October.511 This independent complementary information makes it possible to perform a retrogressive analysis of the epidemic process in Hamar. The point of departure must be taken in a known event and movement backwards in time must be based on the analysis of sources which permit encirclement of the time of the bishop’s death. In this case, the point of departure

511 Series Archiepiscoporum, in: Monumenta historica Norvegiæ 1880: 190-91, and the comments there by Storm, the editor. Kolsrud 1913: 207. Cf. Benedictow 2002: 61, 77-78, English translation in Chapter 2.7, p. 128; Chapter 2.9, pp. 146-47. 194 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

must be the time-consuming ecclesiastical process set in motion by the bishop’s death in order to give the diocese a new bishop. Firstly, a plenary meeting of the cathedral chapter had to be summoned in order to elect a new bishop. Next, preparations had to be made for the 415 km long journey to Nidaros that the electus would make with an entourage of elderly ecclesiastical dignitaries and attendants who should travel in style and with comfort according to contemporary views. Archbishop Arne died on 17 October, indicating that he fell ill from plague about 13 October. The journey would presumably take about 14 days, and the bishop-elect should arrive in Nidaros with his entourage when there still was time to organize and perform the solemn ceremony of consecration, although it must be taken into account that a messenger had undoubtedly been sent in advance. According to these premises, the journey must have started in the dying days of September, at the very latest, under the extreme assumption that the ceremony of consecration occurred on the same day they arrived which would then be about the last day before Archbishop Arne fell ill. More moderate premises indicate that the bishop of Hamar died some time in the first half of September. Using retrogressive methodology again, we can regress, i.e. go back in time by including the time of the course of illness and incubation of Bishop Hallvard, normally 6-10 days. Taken together this indicates that he was infected some time around the turn of the months August-September. Apparently, the bishops tended to be infected quite early in the epidemic process, this was the case with the bishop of Bergen and Archbishop Arne. This indicates that the Black Death began in Hamar around mid- August and hardly later than the third week of August. It would take almost six weeks from the time when contagion was introduced into one of Hamar’s rat colonies until the outbreak among human beings entered a marked epidemic phase. Consequently, the sources and our knowledge of plague epidemiology indicate that the Black Death arrived in Hamar in the first half of July and quite likely early in this period.512 The Black Death raged at the same time in Hamar and Bergen and the bishops of Bergen and Hamar died at about the same time (the bishop of Hamar, as it may seem, about a week earlier than the bishop of Bergen). This shows that the Black Death in Hamar cannot have been caused by the same importation of plague as in Bergen. These are sources and analyses that Lindanger does not take into account. Now the analysis of spread which was performed on the basis of the Icelandic annals’ information on the time of bishop Hallvard’s death can be carried out with increased accuracy and tenability. The Black Death must have spread from a port of importation on the Oslofjord to Hamar. The port was very probably Oslo about 130 km south of Hamar, which is also the shortest possible distance. Under normal circumstances, plague would need, as mentioned, about three months to cover this along this relatively busy main track at an average pace of about 1.5 km a day. This

512 Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 82-87, 98; Benedictow 2002: 58-61, English translation in Chapter 2.7, pp. 152-32. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 195

spread rate implies that the Black Death would have started its spread out of Oslo in the second half of April if it should reach Hamar in the first half of July. This would allow the usual time span of six weeks it would need to develop into an incipient epidemic outbreak among the inhabitants around mid-August, or in the third week of the month at the latest. It would then have reached a level of intensity that could quite likely have led to the infection of the bishop at the turn of the months August and September. However, also in Oslo, about six weeks would elapse before introduction of plague contagion would develop into an early epidemic form which, with some probability, could occasion its spread out of the town. If retrogressive methodology is applied also in this context, the same epidemiological line of argument would indicate that plague contagion could not have arrived later than early March. This constitutes a sufficient basis for concluding that the Black Death must have arrived many months earlier in Østlandet than in Bergen. The only possible source of importation of plague at the time was south-eastern England. In the fourteenth century, the shipping season hardly began before April, a ship from England cannot have put into Oslo’s harbour until some time in May at the earliest. This implies that plague contagion was transported to Oslo with a merchant ship returning from a south-eastern English port late in the shipping season, in the autumn. In my monograph on the history of plague in Norway, I have shown that it must have been quite common for plague contagion to be introduced in the autumn when the merchant ships returned from abroad. This triggered epidemic outbreaks that soon became suppressed by chilly late autumn or cold wintry weather. However, during the winter months the disease smouldered in the rat colonies and developed epidemic form again with the advent of warmer spring weather, quite typically, as it seems, in April. The complete perspective on Norwegian plague history established in this monograph provides the opportunity to form an empirically based rule of regularity with explanatory power for this pattern.513 Similar analyses of spread can be performed also in relation to the other main tracks out of Oslo. Taken together, they show that the Black Death, with this point of departure in time and space, would have spread over the entire region of Østlandet in 1349. Also the sources mentioned under (2) provide a sufficient empirical basis to determine that the year f the Black Death in Østlandetwas 1349, and it underpins the view that the Black Death was introduced in Oslo in the (late) autumn of 1348. Unfortunately, all this is ignored by Lindanger.

513 Benedictow 2002: 163-67, 187-292 and Table 5A. See also pp. 220-26, the plague epidemic in Østlandet 1583-84; pp. 234-35, the plague epidemic in Bergen 1599-1600; p. 240, the plague epidemic in Trondheim 1599-1600; pp. 243-44, the plague epidemic in Sørlandet [“South Country”] 1602-1603; pp. 270-73, 279-80, the plague epidemic in the county of Bratsberg [present-day county of] ) 1625-1626. These references, cannot refer to the Black Death itself as a single or unique event, but con- stitute the evidentiary power of the reiterations of the seasonal pattern over historical time, and so are not included in the translated part of the book. 196 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

(3) The third of the sources mentioned above as suitable for the dating of the year of the plague in Norway in (the region of) Østlandet is King Magnus Eriksson’s circular on the Black Death to the populations of Sweden’s dioceses issued in i Lödöse (the precursor of Gothenburg) in September 1349.514 In the circular, it is referred to an earlier writ of summons to councillors of the realm and bishops who did not live too far away to journey to Lödöse with all due haste. There they should discuss what could be done to prevent that the Black Death invaded Sweden from Norway and Denmark and wrought similar havoc. The meeting of the Council of the Realm took place at the end of September; the circular letter must be the final document containing the gist of its considerations and decisions. The letter of summons, is, as mentioned, lost, it must have been written, however, within a time horizon which includes that it should be delivered to the summoned with all possible dispatch, and that they should have time to prepare for the journey and cover the , also in all due haste. The writ of summons must therefore be assumed to have been sent in the last days of August, or, at the very latest, in early September, while King Magnus was in or near the town of Jönköping on his way to Lödöse about 140 km away, as the crow flies, significantly longer along bendy and hillocky riding tracks on the ground.515 This indicates quite closely the time King Magnus must have received the information that struck him with such consternation that he immediately took dramatic action to protect Sweden against the Black Death. In his circular letter from the end of September, King Magnus states that there was plague “all over Norway” and in Halland516 whence this big “plaga” was now menacingly nearing Sweden. Here it is evidently stated with all possible clarity that King Magnus in September 1349 knew as a fact, with certainty, that there was plague “all over Norway”. The formulation “all over Norway” must therefore include Østlandet. Only this understanding makes it meaningful that he can issue a circular where it is unequivocally stated that the Black Death was now nearing menacingly Sweden from Norway, he must then have in mind areas close to Sweden’s borders, i.e. Østlandet (and not Bergen). It was the short-term menace that the plague would spread into Sweden from areas of near Sweden, and from Halland, the quite

514 Diplomatarium Suecanum VI 1, No. 4515. 515 Grandison has made a complete study of King Magnus’s itinerary for his entire reign. For the information used here, see Grandison 1885: 99. In Diplomatarium Suecanum, the editors give a com- prehensive source-critical analysis of the document that produced a clear the determination of the time the document was written. I have gone thoroughly through the source material again in Ben- edictow 2002: (60), 96-97, and n. 187, pp. 353-54, and found no objections, English translation in Chapters 2.7, p. 127, ns. 359-360, and 2.14, pp. 170-71, ns. 471-472; and again, Benedictow 2006a: 128 and n. 113. English translation in Chapter 3.3.4, n. 610. 516 In my 2004 monograph on the Black Death, I showed that the outbreak in Halland, which the king refer to, probably occurred in [the town of] Halmstad, and that the contagion must have reached the town around 8 July with a ship from the early outbreak in Oslo, Benedictow 2004: 167-169, 175. The ear- lier spread to Elbing in East Prussia, also probably arrived with a ship from Oslo, see ibid., pp. 196-97. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 197

narrow coastal Danish border area farther south, which struck the king with such consternation in around 1 September that he with all possible dispatch summoned a meeting of the Council of the Realm in Lödöse. This meeting provided the substance of the circular letter issued to the inhabitants of the Sweden’s dioceses at the end of the month about the religious countermeasures that had been decided in the hope that they would mitigate God’s wrath, so that he would spare Sweden. Evidently, also this source provides on its own a sufficient empirical basis for determining the year of the Black Death in the region of Østlandet as 1349. All three sources or source materials on this question, the time Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died given by the Icelandic annals’, the election and consecration of his successor Bishop Olav, and King Magnus’s circular letter establish independently the time of the Black Death in eastern Norway as 1349. Because the sources agree, the dating i also strengthened by strong (but superfluous) synergistic effects. This perspective can be strengthened. I have found a source written in Idd hundred near the south-eastern border with Sweden’s county of Västergötland, which indicates that the Black Death was present there or nearby about 25 August.517 In my 2004 monograph on the Black Death, I succeeded in showing that the Black Death probably had crossed the border from this part of Norway into Västergötland at the end of 1349 (at the latest).518 The dating of the Black Death in Østlandet to 1349 corroborates the retrogressive analyses performed above on the start of the Black Death’s spread in Østlandet, its outbreak in Oslo and spread out of the town in the second half of April. This also underpins the inference that the contagion had been introduced in Oslo the previous autumn at the end of the shipping season. How does Lindanger argue in order to reject my account and clear the ground for his own sensational theory? He must then pass over the sources and the source- critical and epidemiological analyses presented above. Instead, he relates only to the first element in my line of argument leading to the conclusion that the Black Death must first have arrived in Oslo in the (late) autumn of 1348. “A cornerstone of Benedictow’s theory is that the burghers of Oslo in February 1349 established a St. Sebastian altar in St. Hallvard’s cathedral in Oslo […]” It is a misunderstanding that I consider the establishment of this altar a “cornerstone” of my analysis. On the contrary, my discussion of the topic concludes with questions and indications: “This raises new urgent questions: is it really likely that the burghers of Oslo would engage in such a big undertaking only on the basis of what had become known from England, without feeling that they were confronted with a concrete, terrible threat? Do not these indications taken together suggest […]” and so on.519 In the standard terminology of

517 Benedictow 2002: 62-63, and n. 114, p. 351, English translation in Chapter 2.7, pp. 129-30 and n. 368. 518 Benedictow 2004/2006: 175-76. 519 Benedictow 2002: (52-)57; English translation in Chapter 2.6, pp. 123-24. 198 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

the methodology of history and social sciences more generally questions cannot prove anything and cannot underpin anything whether as cornerstones or straw. Questions or indications cannot alone or together constitute a “cornerstone” of a scholarly argument. Questions or indications can only constitute the basis for formulating (working) hypotheses for further research. The methodological point is that the scholar must attempt to find source material suitable for the empirical testing of the (working) hypothesis. At this point of my monograph it is therefore stated emphatically: “It will then be important to uncover whether or not the pattern of spread of the Black Death in Norway in the following year can confirm these indications that the Black Death arrived in Oslo in the late autumn of 1348 and that it was there the Black Death first broke out.”520 It is the empirical testing by ordinary implementation of the historians craft and historical reconstruction, which permits the establishment of the real cornerstone of my account, the epidemiological analysis of spread. It must integrate all relevant knowledge on the mode of spread and the spread rates of bubonic plague with the source material in a way which allows valid inference to the process of the Black Death’s spread in time and space. This means that it must be possible to interconnect the sources according to known epidemiological structures of bubonic plague in a logical and meaningful totality, i.e. an epidemiologically tenable pattern. As I see it, I have performed this ordinary research programme in a thorough and conscientious way. This means that one starts with the best sources that provide the best dating of the main pattern of the epidemiological process and introduces the more uncertain bits of evidence in relation to them. This will show whether or not a meaningful and scholarly tenable pattern emerges which agrees with the basic premises of plague epidemiology. Lindanger fails to mention these three central premises of a tenable account of the history of the Black Death in relation to his revolutionary theory and in his description of my line of argument. Lindanger evidently knows two of the main sources for the dating of the Black Death in Østlandet, namely (1) the Icelandic annals521 and (3) King Magnus’s circular letter,522 while (2) the independent sources associated with Bishop Hallvard’s death remain unmentioned throughout the presentation of his alternative theory. This makes it possible to penetrate deeper into Lindanger’s technique of argument and consider its scholarly character. He fails to comment on and to argue against the usual, and as it seems, only possible understanding of the Icelandic annals’ determination of the year of the Black Death in Norway, namely that it occurred entirely in 1349. He refers to King Magnus’s circular letter with correct indication of the time it was written, probably after the comprehensive rendering and discussion of it in my monograph. This

520 Benedictow 2002: 57; English translation in Chapter 2.6, p. 124. 521 Lindanger 2004: 314. 522 Lindanger 2004: 315. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 199

implies that he unavoidably knows well its extraordinarily important information on the year the Black Death spread in Østlandet, and also that the knows the importance I attribute to it. Normal research practice requires that Lindanger should then either argue why my analysis or argument was, nonetheless, untenable or that he took the circular into account and integrated it in the construction of his own line of argument. However, he chooses a third approach, which, in my view, is untenable: he simply disregards this information with its independent powers of dating of the Black Death in the region of Østlandet to 1349. Instead, he picks out only a small element in my account and discussion of the time of the Black Death, the element which relates to the significance of the establishment of the St. Sebastian altar, and argues selectively and inevitably misleadingly against it.

3.2.2 The Black Death in South-eastern Norway

Lindanger asserts that he bases his views on the Icelandic annals’ information on the Black Death in Norway and maintains that they are superior sources to this event. Lindanger’s alternative theory is that the Black Death spread in Østlandet in 1350 and not in 1349. Lindanger must, consequently, reject my view that Oslo was contaminated by the Black Death in the autumn of 1348 and was the epicentre of the spread across Østlandet in the spring of 1349. This means that he argues also for the following two views: 1. that the Icelandic annals are correct in their claim that the Black Death arrived only in Bergen from where it spread all over Norway in 1349; 2. that they are correct when they relate that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died in the plague of 1349 and that this shows that they were well oriented on the epidemic events in Østlandet.

As I see it, the Icelandic annals provide information which is both self-contradictory and incompatible with his theory, when they maintain that (1) the Black Death was only introduced in Bergen in 1349, and (2) that the bishop of Hamar died in 1349, especially because the outbreak in Bergen cannot have occurred earlier than the end of August. In my view it is simply epidemiologically impossible that the Black Death could have arrived in Bergen and spread all over Norway in the course of a few autumn months, as the Icelandic annals now can be seen to imply (and I will argue that this is the case for all contagious diseases). At this point, Lindanger’s line of arguments should be considered more closely. It is unproblematic that an account of the Black Death’s history in Norway takes its point of departure in the information given by the Icelandic annals, also that the Black Death arrived in Bergen and spread over all Norway from there. However, the normal and more general methodological principle is that a source’s statement or assertion should be tested empirically. Why does Lindanger attribute to me such a misleading 200 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

view on the Icelandic annalists that they only “considered the coastal stretch Stavanger-Trondheim as Norway”?523 I have not at all been interested in the annalists’ knowledge of Norwegian geography, but in their sources of information. What I really have stated is that the annal-writing circles in Iceland primarily had contacts with the urban centres in these western parts of coastal Norway. These contacts occurred partly by shipping, primarily between Iceland and Bergen, partly through the exchange of ecclesiastics between Iceland and Norway within the framework of the Norwegian Church Province. These contacts were the sources of the information which reached the Icelandic annalists. I also pointed out that the accounts on the Black Death in Norway contain so specific ecclesiastical information on the situation or events in the dioceses of Nidaros, Bergen and Stavanger that the informants must have been prominent ecclesiastics with access to such information. Two probable informants were indicated, Bishop Orm of Hólar and the new bishop of Skálholt, Gyrd Ivarsson, who both lived in Bergen during the Black Death.524 I have not written a single word which justifies Lindanger’s assertion about my view on Icelanders’ knowledge of Norwegian geography. I have endeavoured to conduct a thorough source-critical scrutiny of these annals including the social and geographical background of their informants and the information they could provide. They did not give any hint of contact with persons or messengers or summoners from Østlandet or contact by ship from the Oslofjord-area, or detailed ecclesiastical information on the situation or events at the episcopal centres in Hamar or Oslo, nothing. This explains, as I see it, that Icelandic annals generally appear to know little about events in Østlandet and that this is also the case for the Black Death. Remarkably, Lindanger used the information in the Icelandic annals that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died in the Black Death in 1349 to support his theory that the Black Death spread across the region of Østlandet in 1350. He relates to it as it should be a tenable practice of the scholarly craft of historians to pick out of this composite information exclusively the element on Bishop Hallvard’s death and use it to maintain that the Icelandic annals were well oriented on the Black Death and other events in Østlandet. He pretends that it is a tenable scholarly practice of historiography to pass over the context with its dating of the year of the bishop’s death and the year of the Black Death all over the country to 1349. This is the only way Lindanger can avoid to take into account the Icelandic annals’ temporal determination of the Black Death in Norway and Bishop Hallvard’s death to the same year, which constitutes a a sufficient argument or condition for concluding that the Black Death occurred in Østlandet in 1349. If he wishes to hold and posit a different opinion, Lindanger would, under observance of the principles of methodology of history and social sciences, have to argue contrariwise, namely to the effect that the Icelandic annals were poorly

523 Lindanger 2004: 314. 524 Benedictow 2002: 67, 73, English translation in Chapter 2.8, pp. 135, 141. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 201

oriented on the events in Østlandet, especially on the Black Death, and that his theory therefore could, nonetheless, be valid or tenable. He pretends thus again that it should be a valid scholarly practice to pick out a part of the information in a source which, taken out of its context, could suit his theory and to ignore the contextual parts of information which militates against his theory and undermine or invalidate it. Lindanger passes also over the independent Norwegian sources which confirm that Bishop Hallvard’s died in the autumn of 1349, and the election and consecration of a new bishop of Hamar occurred before about 13 October. This evidence provides solid support of the tenability of the Icelandic annals’ view on the timing of the Black Death in Østlandet. Against this backcloth it is unfortunate that Lindanger does not mention my comprehensive discussion of the Icelandic annals with particular emphasis on their knowledge of events in Østlandet. I have conducted a thorough source-critical analysis of these annals’ information on the Black Death over many pages. This analysis was put in perspective by a thorough presentation and discussion also of the Icelandic annals’ information on plague in Norway for the period 1349-1392, for the whole period of time they provide such information, six epidemics in all.525 In order to make this topic more easily comprehensible and facilitate a closer discussion of the Icelandic annals’ knowledge of plague epidemics in Norway, I constructed Table 2C [not included here], which shows the information on plague in each annal according to year.526 This table shows that they do not mention the second wave of plague that broke out in 1360 and ravaged only Østlandet, it is, thus, not known by them. The fact that the annals do not mention the big plague epidemic in Østlandet in 1370 produces a similar evidentiary effect. Our main source, a letter from the Chancellor-to-be Henrik Henriksson to King Håkon VI, gives dramatic information on the events in Oslo in 1370. Archbishop Olav had died the previous night (14 August), Sir Sigurd Havtoresson was ill with inflammation of the eyes (probably a consequence of plague disease), and his wife Lady Ingebjørg Erlingsdatter was dying: “unfortunately, we can do nothing else here than inter dead people.”527 Three Icelandic annals comment on this dramatic third wave of plague, but only in relation to Vestlandet [“the West Country”]. They know that Archbishop Olav had died, but not explicitly that he had died from plague or that he had died in Oslo. They mention indeed his death occurred while there was plague in Norway, but all three annals misdate his death in relation to the epidemic in Oslo, namely to 1371, 1372 and 1373. This shows that even factual knowledge about Archbishop Olav’s death and the third wave of plague were very limited also for clerics in Iceland. It

525 Benedictow 2002: 67-73, 78-79, 81-82, 109-11, English translation in Chapters 2.8, pp.135-41, 2.9, pp.146-47, 2.10, pp. 150-51. [pp. 109-11 are not included in this translation]. 526 Benedictow 2002: 110. 527 DN VI, No. 278, 08.15.1370. Misdated in DN to 1371, see RN VII, No. 56. My translation from . 202 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

was so limited, in fact, that it must almost be excluded that there were informants from Oslo or Østlandet in any part of the chain of communication. It is probable, therefore, that the knowledge of the archbishop’s death was indirect: the news that a new archbishop had been enthroned would be conveyed later by official ecclesiastical communication from the archdiocesan leadership to Iceland as part of the Norwegian Church Province. Taken together, it becomes clear that the Icelandic annals (1) can only give one concrete detail on the Black Death in Østlandet, namely that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died from it in 1349, and the year it ravaged the entire country, i.e. also Østlandet, namely 1349; (2) they know nothing about the second plague epidemic in Norway in 1360, evidently because it only had spread in Østlandet; (3) they have no specific knowledge on the third wave of plague in relation to Østlandet of 1370, and they generally misdate the year it occurred. Clearly, the authors of the Icelandic annals had only little knowledge of the first three plague epidemics in Østlandet, and nothing that requires informants from eastern Norway, only bits of information which could have been conveyed by ecclesiastics in Nidaros or Bergen. The fact that the Icelandic annals are poorly oriented on plague in Østlandet in relation to all the three first plague epidemics demonstrates that this was a systematic feature or situation.528 This study constitutes the empirical basis for my conclusion that the authors of the Icelandic annals do not contain information on the Black Death or the two following plague epidemics in Østlandet, which requires direct personal information from a person living in this wide and important region of Norway. This is vital information on the character of contact between Iceland and south-eastern Norway: it was nearly or virtually nonexistent. However, it is an interesting fact that the Icelandic annals have acquired one piece of concrete information on the events in Østlandet, namely that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died in the Black Death in 1349. This raises yet another source-critical question, namely its origin, because it could not be based on informant(s) from eastern Norway, as Lindanger maintains. Could it instead have a different, accidental or particular origin, as was the case with the annals’ knowledge of Archbishop Olav’s death? There is a conspicuous difference between the Icelandic annals’ level of information with respect to the episcopal centres in eastern Norway and the episcopal centres in Vestlandet and those in central Norway. They give detailed accounts on the tragic events in the ecclesiastical institutions of Nidaros, Bergen and Stavanger but say nothing about such events at the episcopal centres in Oslo and Hamar.529 The highly detailed type of ecclesiastical information and its geographical distribution must reflect that the informants were prominent ecclesiastics with close contacts in and Nidaros. This indicates strongly that main sources were the two Icelandic

528 Benedictow 2002: 109-117. [These pages are not included in the translation in Chapter 2.] 529 Islandske Annaler 1888: 276, 354; Benedictow 2002: 68, 71-73, 78-79, 81. English translation above: 139-41, 146-50. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 203

bishops. They could evidently, as we shall see, convey this information to Icelandic clerics after their return from Bergen, directly or indirectly also to the author of the Lawman’s Annal, their prominent clerical colleague and annalist Einar Hafliðason. The point is that we know more about the events in Hamar, because other sources show that a new bishop was elected and that this bishop-elect could journey with his entourage the long to Nidaros and be consecrated the new bishop of Hamar before Archbishop Arne fell mortally ill about 13 October 1349. This must have been generally known by ecclesiastics in Nidaros. Some of them were present at the meeting of the Council of the Realm and the king’s retinue [“hird”] in Bergen in June 1350, which also these Icelandic prelates attended. Almost inevitably they would have met and exchanged information about the tragic events the previous year. This means that the annalist or his episcopal informant(s) did not have an independent source from Østlandet for the news on the death of the bishop of Hamar. It could have been part of the information provided by ecclesiastical informants from Nidaros. Also on this point, Lindanger’s argument appears untenable. Instead, my analysis tends to corroborate the strong impression that the Icelandic annals mainly received Norwegian information from contacts in Bergen, Nidaros, and Stavanger, and that this strongly formed and restricted the information they were able to convey on the Black Death and later plague epidemics in Østlandet. Against this backcloth it is difficult to see the empirical basis for Lindanger’s assertion that the Icelandic annal(ist)s’ had good knowledge on the epidemic events in Østlandet. Without such evidence, it seems difficult to that his criticism of my monograph on this point is justified. Lindanger’s argument in support of his view that the Icelandic annals were well- oriented on the events in Østlandet is rather peculiar:

They provide, in fact, the names of people who died in the Black Death also in Hamar. They knew thus well that there was plague also in Østlandet and could even name people who perished. This makes it unreasonable [to assume] that they did not consider this region as a part of the country.530

Admittedly, I do not understand Lindanger’s consistent use of plural form about the annals’ knowledge of “people” who died in Hamar. It is an indisputable fact that they exclusively mention Bishop Hallvard. Lindanger has also noticed that the annals do not mention the bishop of Oslo as dead and sees this as knowledge about events in eastern Norway. However, I do not understand why this must be based on concrete information of Østlandet, when it instead could reflect that they had not learned anything, and, therefore, on the contrary could represent “unknowledge”. As mentioned above, this is knowledge the two Icelandic bishops could have conveyed, because they attended the meeting of the Council of the Realm and the king’s retinue

530 Lindanger 2004: 314-15. 204 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

in Bergen in 1350. They must also have met the only surviving bishop, Bishop Salomon of Oslo, who on this occasion consecrated Gyrd Ivarsson Bishop of Skálholt (and also the new bishop of Bergen).531 The point is that Lindanger has so far wished to defend the Icelandic annals’ knowledge of only one importation of plague to Norway, namely to Bergen. It is crucially important for him to uphold this view because it is a necessary condition for his alternative theory of spread: if there was only one importation of the Black Death to Norway, namely to Bergen, and so late that it apparently was not in full outbreak until September, it must be excluded that the Black Death could have spread over all Norway in 1349 as, in fact, the Icelandic annals maintain. This is the origin of the theory that the Black Death spread in Østlandet in 1350. For reasons I do not understand, it is important for Lindanger to defend the Icelandic annals’ knowledge of only one importation to Norway as correct, while he does not think it is important to defend their assertion that the Black Death spread over all Norway in 1349. This gives rise to the peculiar, self-contradictory constellation of views that Lindanger thinks that he can establish himself as the valiant defender of the Icelandic annals’ reliability and at the same time must pass in silence by that he rejects important parts of their account, especially in relation to Østlandet, which is at the heart of the matter here. Importantly, my analysis of the Icelandic annals and other documentary evidence relating to the waves of plague that followed the Black Death shows that there must have occurred independent importations of plague directly to Oslo also in 1360 and in 1370. The complete analysis of all Norwegian plague epidemics provided in my monograph on the Norwegian plague history reveals that this was a long-term phenomenon. It was a systematic feature of Norwegian plague history that Oslo was especially exposed to importation of plague, considerably more than Bergen. I have also shown that the plague epidemics in Bergen and the region of Vestlandet in 1371 were probably imported from Oslo. This perspective also uncovers that most importations of plague to Oslo arrived from England. Oslo had stronger trade connections with England than Bergen, which gave a special exposure to the importation of plague. In fact, the evidence indicates clearly that England was the origin of most importations of plague to Norway up to 1599. Within the framework of a complete history of plague in Norway, it has been possible, therefore, to put the outbreak of plague in Oslo in the autumn of 1348 (as it seems) in a long-term pattern. This pattern manifests itself with typical outbreaks in the late autumn due to importation of contagion with ships returning at the end of the shipping season. This is long-term empirical information with system and structure which provides the basis for construction of rules of regularity.532

531 Islandske Annaler 1888: 276. 532 See Benedictow 2002: 102-11, 129-43, 228-29, 253. Only pages 102-04 are included in the Eng- lish translation above in Chapter 2, Appendix 1. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 205

3.2.3 The Chronicle of Hamar: A Source-critical Analysis

At this point of the discussion, it useful to emphasize an important issue on which Lindanger and I so far seemingly agree, namely that the Icelandic annals state that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died in 1349 and that he died in the Black Death and that this is trustworthy information. I have also shown that these two pieces of information can be corroborated and supplemented by other sources which make it possible to determine the time the bishop of Hamar fell ill and died to about the first week of September 1349. This activates the work historians call The Chronicle of Hamar [“Hamarkrøniken”], which calls itself On Hamar [“Om Hammer”]. This is an account of Hamar’s history authored in the 1540s by a person whom the scholars have not succeeded in identifying.533 Evidently, the author had full access to the bishops’ archives and was, therefore, presumably a prominent ecclesiastic. The author’s emphasis on basing his account on sources and his quite critical use of them were quite advanced for its time. This approach reflects the mind of a person who had acquired the humanistic and Renaissance-inspired currents and impulses of his time. This attitude increases greatly the value of The Chronicle of Hamar as an historical source because it uses and renders sources that a few decades later were lost [in a fire]. This is also the case because its assertions and elements of account are often empirically anchored in a credible way. Some of the assertions or data have been questioned, for instance, on the number of inhabitants and related matters, but the problems probably arise because the territorial delimitations which the author had in mind and were evident to him have not been correctly understood by historians. The determination of the time of Bishop Hallvard’s death to about the first week of September agrees with the fact that the Chronicle’s author states that the Black Death started in the Hamar-area on 8 September and ended on 1 November (the year will soon be discussed). This is especially the case when we take into account a dating technique the author often used; he gathered dating formulae in documents, account books and registers in the diocesan archives. This was also the case with respect to the Black Death. 200 years later, he did not have any alternative. However, this dating material does not give certain delimitations of time, it must be assumed that the Black Death started somewhat earlier and ended somewhat later. Lindanger considers The Chronicle of Hamar a trump card in his argument for re- dating of the Black Death, because it apparently dates the Black Death in the Hamar- area to the period 8 September-1 November 1350.534 This is obviously a problem that must be addressed. Unfortunately, Lindanger’s does not exercise source-criticism, especially with respect to problems arising from the fact that the author of the Chronicle is not known, or when it was written, and most importantly, that is not

533 Pettersen 1986. 534 Om Hammer 1895: 136. 206 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

extant in original but only in late transcripts. He also neglects to take into account the comprehensive research history on the Chronicle, in which the dating of the Black Death has been much in the focus. However, the complicated history of the source and its research history are thoroughly presented in the discussion of its dating of the Black Death both in my doctoral thesis and in my monograph on the history of plague in Norway. It is the thorough presentation and intensive discussion of this source which provides the basis of my conclusion that the dating is a scribe’s error.535 Because Lindanger takes this source out of the context of its research history, it is concealed from the readers that my conclusion is not at all original but as old as scholarly research and editorial work on The Chronicle of Hamar. Professor Gustav Storm, its highly regarded editor, stated this clearly in his first presentation of the source in a long paper in HT in 1890 and again in his publication of the Chronicle in 1895.536 Because Lindanger takes my conclusion out of the context of the research history on the Chronicle, he can pretend that my view is arbitrary, a stratagem, which enables me to defend a preconceived view of the time and place of arrival of the Black Death:

Benedictow raises doubts about the correctness of the year of dating and claims that 1349 must be more correct. This fits also better into the theory that the plague arrived in Oslo as early as the late autumn of 1348.537

Against this backcloth, it can be useful to take a closer look at the problem. Because Lindanger ignores Storm’s unique contribution to our knowledge on The Chronicle of Hamar as a source, important questions are not raised. As an ambitious editor with high standards, also the editor of the Icelandic annals, Storm could not date the Black Death in Hamar both to the autumn of 1349 and the autumn of 1350. He subjected therefore this question to thorough source-critical and historical analyses which ended in a clear conclusion: the year of the Black Death in The Chronicle of Hamar was a scribe’s error, while the year given in the Icelandic annals is correct.538 Again it is evidently I who agree with the Icelandic annals, while Lindanger implicitly and tacitly disagrees with them. Storm’s view has been explicitly or implicitly accepted by all Norwegian medievalists who have addressed this dating in the century after Storm’s presentation of it in 1890 and after the publication of The Chronicle of Hamar in 1895. Contrary to the impression given by Lindanger, on the point of dating I have only agreed with the common opinion among Norwegian medievalists.

535 Benedictow 2002: 58-60, English translation in Chapter 2.7, pp. 124-28. Cf. Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 82-87. 536 Storm 1890a: Om Hammer 1895. 537 Lindanger 2004: 315. 538 Om Hammer 1895: 136, n. 20. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 207

Lindanger’s direct and uncritical use of the Chronicle’s dating of the Black Death means that all source-critical and factual factors which have convinced other Norwegian medievalists that it misdates the Black Death with a year remain unmentioned and uncommented. Lindanger does not mention, for instance, that The Chronicle of Hamar is not extant in the original from the 1540s. The edition of the source is based on transcripts from the 17th and 18th centuries, they are transcriptions of transcripts produced over a long time, forming various branches of transcriptions. Storm’s paper in HT was met with a spontaneous critical reaction from Professor L. Daae, which encouraged him to be more specific in his response to the problems. Storm provided, among other things, the following information:

Among the extant manuscripts 2 or 3 are thus from the 17th century, most of them are from the 18th […] The earliest manuscript is from c. 1630-34, but also this relates quite distantly to the original; it contains distortions as well as omissions which even appear to presuppose that it is a transcription of a transcript and several of these errors can be corrected from the later transcripts which thus reaches further backwards in time than the earliest extant manuscript.539

The fact that there are numerous scribe’s errors [or typos] is also reflected in a comprehensive and complex footnote apparatus with textual variants. The problem is, in fact, so enormous that Storm this time has used a double set of footnote apparatuses, one which renders and comments on textual variants, scribe’s errors, and so on, and another which provides scholarly comments. Also the best manuscripts teem with errors of numbers. This is also the case with dating of years, as is usual with Roman numerals where series of Is, Xs and Cs mean that the smallest slip of the mind can lead to omission or addition. In Storm’s first footnote apparatus, it can be seen that in most of the used manuscripts the variant MCCL (1250) is indicated at the time of the Black Death in Hamar. Here a C has thus been left out. I mention in my monographs that similar errors about the year of the Black Death is usual in chronicles all over Europe, and that this is especially the case with German chronicles and Russian chronicles.540 Professor Erik Ulsig, the Danish historian, points out the remarkable fact that the Chronicle of Zealand [“Sjællandske Krønike”], which was written only a few years after the Black Death, misdates the year it had occurred.541 Professor G. Karlsson, the Icelandic historian, who is a specialist on the Icelandic annals (≈ chronicles) states that “mistakes in writing Roman numerals are common in medieval manuscripts”.542 Such a scribe’s error can occur very easily exactly with the digits of the year 49, written

539 Storm 1890b: 279. 540 Benedictow 2004/2006, Chapters 20 and 23. 541 Benedictow 2002: 60, English translation in Chapter 2.7, p. 127; Benedictow 2004: 159-60, 188- 94, 212-13. 542 Karlsson 1996: 269. 208 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

in Roman numerals as IL: the scribe starts to write I, but a momentary lapse slip of the attention could mean that the hand moves directly into the foot of the L. In my 1992 thesis was presented another quite generally overlooked, but also problematic source, with an even more distant relationship with the original source. In a footnote in a book from 1754, C.U. Schøning mentions (out of place really) that he has knowledge of an old missal of [the district of] Toten which contained a small note stating that the plague in this area “began in the last days of September, Anno MCCCL, lasted six weeks, while it had been raining all the time”.543 Again the year 1350 is indicated, again Lindanger fails to exercise source criticism, consider its highly problematic to the original and to put this source into the context formed by all relevant sources. He uses it directly to support his argument that the Black Death ravaged Østlandet in 1350. According to ordinary source-critical principles historians should, in my opinion, take into account that we do not know that Schøning had seen the missal or ha received the information from some other person(s) or the circumstances under which it occurred. The missal has been lost, so we do not know that this was the year stated in the missal and we cannot check whether or not a scribe’s error has occurred, and in what part of the process it may have occurred. It may even have happened at the printing shop, proofreading could be quite casual at the time. Such a problematic second-hand or third-hand source must also be seen in the light of what we know about the history of the Black Death and the general social circumstances in 1349 and 1350.

3.2.4 Spread Rates of the Black Death from Oslo, and the Epidemics in Stavanger and Agder

The dating of the year of the Black Death in Østlandet must be decided on the basis of the complete information provided by all relevant sources, epidemiological knowledge and historical knowledge. Against this background, it can be seen how this information can be integrated into a holistic and scholarly tenable pattern. One must start by establishing a foundation with the best sources. Then one can see if the other more uncertain and interpretable pieces of sources can without difficulty be integrated with their bits of information into a holistic pattern comprising the Black Death’s arrival and spread in time and space. Under my work with three monographs, I have been led to the tentative laying of a jigsaw puzzle of sources under the premise that the Black Death arrived in Oslo in the (late) autumn of 1348.

543 Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 87-88; Benedictow 2002: 63-64, English translation in Chapter 2.7, p.130. My translation from Latin. A missal is a book containing the texts used in the Catholic Mass throughout the year. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 209

There, it was suppressed shortly later by cold wintry weather, but broke out in April 1349 and started the spread out of Oslo, especially along the main tracks along both sides of the Oslofjord, the main track northwards via Hamar to Nidaros on the eastern side of Lake Mjøsa and the main track that via Hadeland and crossed Filefjell to Lærdal in the region of Sogn [ in the West Country]. From Lærdal it could be transported to Bergen by land or sea. Several times, I have expressed my surprise over how readily all the pieces fell into place under the condition of ordinary spread rates of about 1-1.5 km/day along important tracks. Based on these premises, the Black Death would have spread to Eiker approximately 70 km south-west of Oslo in time to explain the use of the expression “the summer of the great mortality” there; it would have spread to Idd in Østfold or thereabouts around 100 km south-east of Oslo in time to explain the likely reference to the presence of the Black Death there on 25 August, and in time to understand King Magnus’s deep consternation one or two weeks later. With a spread rate of about 1.5 km/day along the especially busy main track to Nidaros, the Black Death would have spread the approximately 130 km from Oslo to Hamar in time to cause an epidemic outbreak by the middle or the third week of August. Under the dramatic circumstances, there would certainly have been a stream of pilgrims moving along the track on their way to St. Olav’s cathedral in Nidaros, which would have tended to increase the epidemics’ pace of spread. Along the somewhat less used main track from Oslo to Lærdal, the spread rate would have been somewhat slower. In [the districts of] Hadeland and Land this main track ran along the Lake Ransfjord whence the Black Death branched off from the main track along narrow local side tracks and bridle paths to Toten, around 115 km in all. This fits nicely with an epidemic outbreak there at the end of September. It also fits remarkably well with later references to the autumn of the great mortality both in Valdres situated along the continuation of the track from Hadeland. Similarly, it fits well with the death of a named person on 31 October “in the autumn of the great mortality” on the farmstead of Hammer in [the district of] Vågå situated along the continuation of the main track from Hamar via Otta and an important side track from there to Vågå. It is not possible that the Black Death could have spread from Bergen to Vågå, as it has been claimed, because the epidemic outbreak did not start in Bergen until the second half of August and took on the character of a full outbreak towards mid- September. By mid-September the contagion must already have been in Vågå in order to have developed into an epidemic form six weeks later, at the end of October. However, this leaves no time for covering the very long from Bergen to Vågå. So far, it has been presupposed that Hammer was the first farmstead to be visited, but this is quite a far- fetched point of departure for analysis of the epidemic. Vågå is situated around 300 km from Oslo and 170 km north of Hamar, which again confirms the quite high spread rate 210 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

of at least about 1.5 km/day along the main track from Oslo to Hamar, and perhaps of 1.75 km/day northwards from Hamar towards Nidaros, which is well within the limits of the spread rates of bubonic plague. A somewhat higher spread rate northwards from Hamar than from Oslo to Hamar is explicable: chilly spring weather in April-May would tend to reduce the spread rate in its early phase of spread, while summer weather increased the pace. It can also have been affected by an increasing stream of pilgrims with heartrending and deeply devotional matters to present to St. Olav in Nidaros. The spread rate along the track Oslo-Valdres-Lærdal [to the “West Country”] was, as should be expected, somewhat lower, because there was less traffic along it. The expression “the winter of the great mortality” was used a couple of times as dating formulae in documents, in both cases referring to the end of December (1349). In one case it concerned a plague death in the mountain parish of Mæl in Tinn hundred [Telemark County], a predictable locality for the final phase of the Black Death on the rather inaccessible outskirts of Østlandet.544 In this way, it is shown that the sources with their indications of time and space for the Black Death constitute a meaningful and completely integrated pattern of spread under the given premises of importations and spread rates for bubonic plague. “The very last person known to have died in the Black Death is, in fact, the bishop of Stavanger who died on 7 January 1350”, it is stated in my monograph.545 Lindanger makes the following comment: “Objections readily come to mind when Benedictow on the basis of - among other things the fact that Bishop Guttorm died on 7 January 1350 - dates the outbreak of plague in Stavanger to the winter of 1350.”546 This is, as can be seen, misleading on at least three important points: (1) that I should hold the opinion that the Black Death had broken out in Stavanger in the winter and that this should be an unproblematic view; (2) on the significance of the bishop’s death; (3) in relation to the lines of reasoning that can be argued on the time perspective of the epidemic developments in Stavanger. These three questions will now be put in the focus. I have not suggested that the Black Death broke out in Stavanger in the winter, not by the reference to Bishop Guttorm’s death or any of the other arguments implicit in Lindanger’s words “among other things”. On the contrary, in the presentation of plague in the monograph I explained why epidemics of bubonic plague generally are associated with the warmer seasons, wane in chilly autumnal weather, and disappear with cold wintry weather.547 I have underlined that this was a feature of the plague

544 Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 78-102; Benedictow 2002: 57-80, in English translation in Chap- ters 2.7-2.9; Benedictow 2004: 149-58. 545 See also above Benedictow 2002: 81-82, English translation in Chapter 2.10. 546 Lindanger 2004: 315. 547 Benedictow 2002: 38-41, English translation in Chapter 2.4, pp. 111-13; Benedictow 2004: 24, 60, 97, 162-69, 175, 186-87, 190-92, 195-202, 233-35; Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 100-02, 161-71. The reason for this seasonal pattern is deeply rooted in the way plague is transmitted, by fleas which Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 211

epidemics that people in the Nordic countries noticed and commented on, and that this, therefore, was a feature that should be found also in the studies of the Norwegian plague epidemics, if they were bubonic plague. As work on the monograph progressed, I have commented systematically on all observations with relevance for the seasonal aspects of plague’s epidemiology. In the final chapter, I summarized the observations and emphasize that, in the history of plague in Norway which comprises about or over thirty waves of plague epidemics, there is not a single instance of a winter epidemic.548 This means that the death of the bishop of Stavanger from plague on 7 January 1350 must, in all likelihood, be associated with the final phase of the Black Death in the cathedral city. I have made it clear that this is my understanding: “no source supports that the Black Death continued in epidemic form through the winter months of 1350, as has been claimed.”549 The information on the time of the bishop’s death makes it instead possible to resolve the question of the time the Black Death arrived in Stavanger by epidemiological lines of reasoning. According to ordinary epidemiological requirements, the Black Death would need about three months in order to spread across Stavanger and complete the epidemic process. In the normal climate of western Norway sporadic cases of endemic plague could, of course, still occur at the turn of the year. This can be seen in Absalon Pederssøn Beyer’s registrations day by day of plague deaths in the Cathedral parish during the epidemic in Bergen 1565-66.550 This line of retrogressive epidemiological analysis takes us back to the second half of September and not later than quite close to the end of September. However, next we must take into account that about six weeks would elapse from the importation of the contagion to Stavanger and the development of an incipient epidemic phase. Thus, the importation occurred probably between roughly 4 August and the following week, and certainly not later than around mid-August. This means that plague contagion was introduced into Stavanger before the Black Death broke out in Bergen. It could also just possibly have occurred at the same time, if the latest possible time plague contagion could have been introduced into Stavanger is linked with the earliest possible outbreak in Bergen, namely around mid-August. Such strained premises contain big margins of uncertainty that are multiplicatively related. It is, therefore, almost excluded that

have become infective by ingesting highly bacteraemic rat blood. Fleas procreate poorly in the winter and their number decline strongly. In chilly or cold weather, plague-infected rats frequently do not develop bacteraemia or much lower levels of bacteraemia. Fleas which suck blood from rats under cold or wintry conditions will strongly tend to remain non-infective. 548 Benedictow 2002: 320. With respect to the Black Death more generally, see Benedictow 2004: 233-35. 549 Benedictow 2002: 82, English translation in Chapter 2.10, p. 151. 550 Benedictow 2002: 197. [Not included in the translation of the history of the Black Death in Chap- ter 2.] 212 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

Stavanger was contaminated by plague from Bergen. This shakes the very foundations of Lindanger’s theory. How can this situation be concealed? In the immediate continuation, Lindanger writes unreservedly:

He [Benedictow] argues that the contagion could have come from Agder with clerics returning back home. He brushes aside contact with Bergen, because only few people had any reason to sail between the two cities […] This is a grave underestimate of the contact between the two cities, a connection that has always been close. If not for any other reason, great amounts of grain paid in rents from tenancies in the surroundings of Stavanger were shipped […] to Bergen! Perhaps as likely, the plague came to Stavanger at about the same times as to Oslo and Tønsberg - and probably from Bergen, but it is also not inconceivable that it came via commercial contacts with England. In the case of Agder, plague could have arrived directly from abroad as well as from Bergen.

This is a very special cluster of arbitrary assertions which Lindanger does not underpin by empirical evidence. He does also not test their epidemiological tenability. My view that the Black Death could have come to Stavanger “from Agder with returning clergy” is presented as groundless and arbitrary. It is, in fact, based on an Icelandic annal, namely Gottskalk’s Annal where it is related in the opening paragraph on the Black Death:

Big killer disease came to Norway and Shetland. Died Dominus Archbishop Arne and Abbot Torkell of Helgafell [monastery]. Seven parishes in Agder were desolated in a short time. The bishop sent many priests, deans and retainers, and they all died in a short time.551

This shows that I have indeed presented evidence for why the Black Death could have arrived in Stavanger from Agder with surviving clergy or retainers of the bishop’s staff or household. This evidence is based on an Icelandic annal with known informant on the matter and would appear reasonable to most historians. In my opinion, Gottskalk’s Annal conveys interesting information. It gives me the opportunity to conduct several substantial lines of arguments that Lindanger ignores:

Firstly, it is a conspicuous feature that the bishop of Stavanger had a surplus of qualified per- sonnel who could be sent in haste to these parishes in Agder: priests, deans and retainers. This indicates that the Black Death came to Agder before it arrived in Stavanger. It is almost inconcei- vable that the bishop would have had a reserve of qualified personnel at his disposal, if the Black Death had ravaged the small cathedral city.552

551 Islandske Annaler 1888: 354. Benedictow 2002: 71, English translation in Chapter 2.8, p. 139, n. 398. 552 Benedictow 2002: 81-82, English translation in Chapter 2.10. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 213

This raises two urgent questions: from where could the Black Death have come to Agder? And whence could the Black Death have come to Stavanger in the first half of August? In order to answer these central questions some temporal perspectives of plague epidemics must be clarified. Transportation of contagion from Bergen in the first half of August, i.e. before or just possibly contemporaneously with the outbreak in Bergen, and several months before (or alternatively long after) corn rents (“landskyld”) would have been ready for transportation from the Stavanger area to Bergen, must for all practical purposes be excluded. Lindanger’s comments on the contacts between Stavanger and Bergen in this context are more than questionable. Corn from rents and tithes were collected after the grain fields had been harvested was and delivered to ecclesiastical and lay owners for sale in this time horizon. In my view, it is evident that the most concrete fact must be that the bishop of Stavanger would not have had any surplus of clerical personnel and retainers to assist the population in the seven parishes on the coast of Agder, if the Black Death had ravaged or was ravaging Stavanger. Presumably, these seven parishes were the original area of the Black Death’s outbreak in this part of the country and the diocese. The tale of the dramatic events starts with a situation that was so grave that the population had sent a messenger in all haste to the bishop of Stavanger in order to ask for help with essential spiritual services administered by priests or deans. This must mean that their parish priests had died and none could administer the last rites to dying parishioners whose salvation depended on it. This would presumably occur when the epidemic developments in the area had reached quite an advanced stage and a high level of intensity. The epidemic outbreak and the dramatic development of the Black Death in Agder outline an important temporal perspective: the Black Death would use nearly six weeks in order to develop an incipient epidemic form in these rural societies, and several more weeks in order to reach an intense dramatic phase in seven parishes. Then, the population should send a messenger in all haste to Stavanger who had arrived before the Black Death broke out in the cathedral city, so that there would be personnel to spare. With a high degree of probability, all this indicates that, on the coast of Agder, the Black Death had its epidemiological beginnings in May 1349. Importation of contagion from Bergen or Stavanger is excluded. This shows that Lindanger’s assertions are not only hypothetical or speculative, they are simply untenable. The two central questions which were raised in the preceding paragraph can now be answered. With respect to the first question there are, as shown, good arguments with substantial evidential powers for the view that the Black Death was introduced on the coast of Agder in May 1349. This means that there either could have been another original importation to Norway from England to this area or more likely that it was an introduction by ship transport from the early outbreak in Oslo (or possibly secondarily from other locations in the inner parts of the Oslofjord area in the early 214 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

phase of spread). This also answers the second question, namely that the contagion could have been transported from Agder to Stavanger with clerics or retainers from the bishop’s staff or household who returned alive (one in five survives plague disease). In this case, we know concretely that there were close connections of persons between Stavanger and an area where it is known that the Black Death was raging, in all likelihood before it broke out in Stavanger. Now we can see that, if we trust the Icelandic annal’s account of the Black Death in Norway, with the reservations that are embedded in general source-critical and methodological premises, one will also in this case find answers at a substantial level of tenability. Clearly, the Icelandic annal’s account of the Black Death’s ravages on the coast of Agder and of the bishop of Stavanger’s heartfelt wish to help the population strengthens the arguments for an outbreak of the Black Death in Oslo in the early spring of 1349. Again, epidemiological analyses based on the premise that the Black Death was ordinary bubonic plague interconnect the information contained in the disparate sources in a well-integrated general pattern of the Black Death’s spread in time and space in Norway. No source contains information at variance with this general pattern or requires extreme, highly unlikely or rare epidemiological premises. The concordance with the ordinary manifestations of bubonic plague reflects that the pattern of spread is based on the black rat, its usual flea parasite, and the bacterial contagion Yersinia pestis. Recently, it has been asserted that the ordinary rat flea on the brown rat (which arrived in Norway shortly before the mid-eighteenth century), namely Nosopsylla fasciatus, should have played the central part in the spread of bubonic plague in Norway.553 There are many serious counterarguments to this proposition, which are thoroughly presented and discussed in Chapter 10.4.554 In the scholarly literature, it is emphasized that Nosopsylla fasciatus can only play a weak contributory role in plague epidemics and that not a single plague epidemic has been observed in areas where only this species of rat fleas is present and not also X. cheopis.555 Systematic testing of the observed epidemic process of spread against various dangerous contagious diseases produces consistently the same answer, that it corresponds to the characteristic features of usual bubonic plague based on the black rat and its ordinary flea parasite and no feature is at variance with this combination of epidemic factors.

553 Moseng 2006: 209, 223 and elsewhere. Moseng also contends that the human flea can have been an important factor in the infective process by so-called mechanical transmission, which is untenable and without factual basis in the scholarly literature. Chapter 10.5; See also Chapters 11.3, 12.6-12.7. 554 See Chapter 10. 555 Hirst 1953: 179, 339: “[…] plague epidemics have never occurred in communities where fasciatus existed alone and were not associated with cheopis […] The chief role of N. fasciatus is doubtless to prolong an enzootic initiated by X. cheopis; such an enzootic is seldom reflected in significant human mortality.” N. fasciatus “seldom or never plays a significant part in the spread of epidemics of human plague”. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 215

3.2.5 How Lindanger Relates to Problems Arising from His Theory

At the end of his discussion Lindager appears to acknowledge what I have pointed out, that it is not possible for any contagious disease to break out in Bergen in the second half of August and succeed in spreading across all Norway in the remaining months of 1349, as all the Icelandic annals maintain. Lindanger accepts that a spread across Østlandet must have occurred which began in the spring and gradually reached Hamar, Toten, Gudbrandsdalen and Valdres, and was completed in about nine months. His solution is to move the process one year forward in time and abruptly admit that there had very likely been more than one introduction of plague in Norway:

Oslo and Tønsberg had about the same contact with areas hit by the Black Death abroad and with Bergen. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that both towns were hit at about the same time and that the plague next spread inland, reached Toten in the late summer and Gudbrandsdalen in the autumn [1350] […] It could be that the Icelanders were right, that the plague established only one bridgehead - in Bergen. However, because the plague spread metastatically across the sea, plague could conceivably have established two, three or more bridgeheads? Perhaps the discussion of this topic would have gained from a deeper analysis of the problems?556

Admittedly, I am a little mystified when Lindanger now presents as his view and as a critical remark to my monograph that there could have been two or more independent importations of plague. He considers it even “reasonable”, which is an assertion at quite a high level of tenability and not only a working hypothesis, and he asks for a deeper analysis of the problems associated with this scenario. The indisputable fact is that this is a view I have originally argued for in my doctoral thesis of 1992, and, subsequently developed in several monographs. I have demonstrated that the spread of the entire epidemic agrees with and can be explained on the basis that there was one more independent introduction than the one in Bergen, visually in Oslo in the autumn of 1348. Lindanger’s point of departure is that, on the contrary, he would contest this in favour of the Icelandic annals’ account that there was only one importation, namely to Bergen. He does not now reject outright the Icelandic annals’ assertion on this point, but states only cautiously that it could be that they were right. Several of the parts of the wording of this text are unclear or ambiguous. However, Lindanger is clear on the point that he considers it “reasonable” that Oslo and Tønsberg were hit at about the same time by introductions of plague from abroad and for the same reason as Bergen. As far as I can understand, he now holds also the opinion that according to this premise the Black Death could have been imported to Bergen, Oslo and Tønsberg roughly at the same time. He also seems to hold the opinion that the contagion could have been shipped from Bergen to Oslo and Tønsberg, which would explain that he retains as a possibility the Icelandic annals’ assertion that

556 Lindanger 2004: 315. 216 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

there was only one importation of the Black Death to Norway. As we now can see, at the end of the day Lindanger relates quite freely to the Icelandic annals’ account and dating of the Black Death in Norway: he rejects obviously their assertion that the Black Death spread over all Norway in 1349 and that Bishop Hallvard of Hamar died from the Black Death this year, and he accepts that there could have been several importations of plague from abroad, also to Oslo and Tønsberg, and also, as it seems, that Oslo and Tønsberg could have been contaminated by ship(s) from Bergen. All these new views and ideas which Lindanger introduces at the end of his construction of an alternative theory belong naturally to the early phase of research on the subject. I have related quite thoroughly to them in my monographs, most comprehensively in the monograph on the history of plague in Norway which Lindanger addresses in his “review”. Against this backdrop I will comment only briefly on them. The assertion that Oslo and Tønsberg had about the same contact with areas abroad where the Black Death raged, is not supported by evidence. It is at variance with my quite broad account and discussion of the trade connections of Norwegian port towns at the time,557 which he ignores completely. Tønsberg and Bergen had, for instance, much stronger ties with Hanseatic trade than Oslo, where trade with England was quite strong. Tønsberg was a much smaller town than Oslo and, as it seems, with quite little shipping abroad of its own, i.e. by its merchants and traders. Oslo was a significantly smaller town than Bergen which reflected also the relative intensity of their foreign trade, but not their relative risk of exposure to plague contagion.558 While the Black Death could have reached Oslo from south-eastern English ports in the autumn of 1348, the Hanseatic cities along the Baltic Sea and the North Sea were not contaminated until the late autumn of 1349, that is one year later, as shown in my monograph. Shipping between Bergen and England related mainly to ports situated north of those in south-eastern England which were engaged in trade with Oslo, in areas where the Black Death did not spread until 1349. It is, as could be expected, that Bergen was contaminated in the summer of 1349, in the first half of July, as indicated by normal plague epidemiological analysis. Probably, the infection arrived with an identified ship which left King’s Lynn in June, an area [on the Wash] where the Black Death broke out in the spring of 1349.559 This has been corroborated in more recent research on the arrival and spread of the Black Death in the Fenland region.560 It means that sales contracts of grain for collection or delivery from the preceding harvest entered into in the pre-plague period with merchants of Lynn for export in the late spring or early summer would quite likely be contaminated by

557 Benedictow 2002: 102-11, page 103 is available in English translation in Chapter 2, Appendix 1. 558 Benedictow 2002: 108-11. Not in English translation in Chapter 2. 559 Benedictow 2004: 133-34, 137-38, 154-56, and Map 1: xviii.; Benedictow 2010: 393, 401. 560 The Black Death broke out on the manor of Downham 30 km south of Lynn and on the manor of Wisbech 20 km south-west of Lynn in late March and early April, and peaked in May and June. Stone 2012: 221-30. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 217

plague infected rats or their fleas.561 It all fits nicely with the fact that the merchants Thomas de Melchebourn and William de Melchebourn received the royal licence for shipment of 1000 quarters of grain from Lynn to Norway on 8 May;562 the application for royal permission to export a specified quantity of grain must have been submitted at least several weeks earlier and reflect the indicated time frame of such preceding contracts. This point is discussed quite comprehensively in my monograph, and it is illustrated by maps.563 It puts in perspective Lindanger’s assumption that plague was imported to Bergen, Oslo and Tøsberg at much the same time and that it should have occurred in the autumn of 1349. Admittely, Lindanger should, in my view, have related conscientiously to this discussion of provenience before he launched his alternative theories and criticism of my quite thorough account of the topic. This point can be usefully enlarged on: Lindanger refers now very imprecisely to “abroad”, which implies alternative foreign proveniences of the contagion arriving the autumn of 1349. It can be seen from my 2004 monograph on the Black Death that the Black Death cannot have come from the Hanseatic cities in northern Germany in the autumn of 1349. It could also not have come from England where the epidemic faded away in northern England in the same autumn in a movement of spread towards the inland areas, nor could it have come from the Netherlands or from Norway’s neighbouring countries.564 This obliges Lindanger to specify which alternative provenience(s) “abroad” in the autumn of 1349, which he has in mind. In the present context, the assertion seems arbitrary and untenable. On the contrary, the transfer of contagion to the Hanseatic cities on the North Sea and the Baltic Sea are difficult to explain without taking the opposite course, namely that the contagion had come from Norway with returning Hanseatic ships. The introduction of plague contagion in Ribe [in south-western Jutland] and in Friesland in the autumn of 1349 would rather appear to imply Dutch ships homebound from Norway. The same is the case with the outbreak of the Black Death in Halland which King Magnus referred to and which presumably reflects an introduction in Halmstad in early July. The same is the case for the introduction of plague contagion in the eastern Prussian city of Elbing [today Elblag] on the south-eastern corner of the Baltic Sea. This must have occurred in the second week of July, and, therefore, presumably with a ship that left Oslo in the first week of June, i.e. presumably with a ship returning from Oslo where it had laid up

561 Spring sowing seems to have been disrupted and thus completed on some manors, such as Wisbech, but not on other manors, such as Downham, but this grain would not have been ready for export in the time perspective discussed here. Stone 2012: 221-27. 562 Benedictow 2002:76-77, and n. 147. In English translation, Chapter 2.8, pp. 145-46. 563 Benedictow 2002: 46-51, Map 1 on the inside of the front page, and Map 3: 48; in English transla- tion in Chapters 2.5-2.6, pp. 111-18, without Map 3. 564 Benedictow 2004: 138-78, 194-201, 205-06. 218 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

during the winter.565 This shows that there are, on the contrary, substantial reasons to maintain that the early outbreak of the Black Death in Oslo played an important part in the further spread of the Black Death in the northern parts of Europe. As such, they constitute independent support for the view that the Black Death broke out in Oslo quite early in the spring of 1349. Also this data puts in perspective Lindanger’s assumption about a more or less contemporaneous importation of plague contagion in Bergen, Oslo and Tønsberg in the autumn of 1349. Lindanger’s assumption that trade continued as usual under the ravages of the Black Death, quite undisturbed by the disaster, likewise cannot be supported by any data, which was also pointed out in my monograph on the Black Death.566 In my view, none of these premises are tenable. Conspicuously, the hypothesis that plague arrived in Oslo in the autumn of 1349 has now become a fact in Lindanger’s argument without support from any empirical evidence to this effect. The evidential question will be commented on also below. In the entire plague history of Norway of over 300 years with probably over 30 waves of plague, I have not found a single instance where plague has been conveyed from Bergen to Oslo or Tønsberg. This is an observation I have attempted to explain, but it has not caught Lindanger’s attention. His suggested view of a possible spread from Bergen to Oslo or Tønsberg, which is in the focus here, is thus without basis in fact and has the character of speculation. One may also miss Lindanger’s explanation of how it could be that the Black Death approached menacingly the border with Sweden in early September 1349, if it had broken out in Oslo in the same autumn. One may also miss Lindanger’s explanation of how the Black Death could have spread into western Sweden in the late autumn of 1349. Taken together, this puts in perspective Lindanger’s assertion that the Black Death broke out in Oslo and Tønsberg quite late in the autumn of 1349, was suppressed by wintry weather, broke out again in the spring of 1350, from where it spread across Østlandet so that the great year of plague there was 1350. Explicitly, he mentions that the Black Death broke out in Hamar and Toten in September 1350; the chain of sources with indications of time in the year but without specification of the year itself is pieced together in the same pattern as in my account, but moved one year forward in time. This is possible only because he does not relate to the three extant original sources or source materials with clear dating that I have gathered and discussed and which, unequivocally and with a very high level of tenability, date the ravages of the Black Death in Østlandet in 1349. This is also only possible because he does not relate to the question of potential areas of origin of the importation of the Black Death to Norway in 1349. Highly extraordinarily, he opines that the Black Death broke out in Hamar and elsewhere in eastern Norway in the autumn of 1350 and spread eastwards

565 Benedictow 2004: 161-63, 167-69, 172, 175, 196-97, 205-06. 566 See, for instance, Benedictow 2004: 177. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 219

across Sweden to break out on the Baltic coasts also in the autumn of 1350 [see now also Lunden’s similarly absurd argument in Chapter 4, below]. Consequential analysis is too often neglected. It is only because Lindanger does not conduct epidemiological analyses that he can consider as a fact that a couple of extant wills issued in Tønsberg on 2 and 14 November 1349 strengthens his claim that the contagion must have been imported at this time and that it can have arrived by ship from Bergen.567 Again it must be underlined that it takes normally (at least) six weeks, in chilly or cool autumnal weather quite usually longer, from the time plague contagion is introduced in a small town until the development of plague reaches an incipient epidemic phase. Two-three more weeks will elapse before the epidemic would reach a wider and more intensive phase. Only then would the substantial and affluent burghers feel menaced and start making their last wills in order to avoid dying intestate.568 Again retrogressive analysis can be usefully performed based on the assumptions that the extant wills reflect a usual phase of a plague epidemic when the well-off burgers would be induced to make their wills, and that in cool autumn weather this phase will begin about three weeks after the epidemic phase started. The retrogressive analysis indicates the turn of the months August-September or the early days of September as the time when the contagion was introduced. The normal duration of a voyage between Bergen and Tønsberg in the early 1300s was slightly over two weeks. This corresponds well with the more general gauge of average distance sailed per day along the coast at the time of around 40 km (ships sailed only in daylight, were still only square rigged and needed quite favourable tailwind).569 This implies that the ship that Lindanger imagines could have sailed from Bergen to Tønsberg with the Black Death on board, must have put out of the harbour before the Black Death had broken out in Bergen or perhaps and just conceivably in the initial endemic phase there. This makes Lindanger’s assertion improbable on the basis of a simple analysis of spread alone. This is also shown in my monograph.570 The hypothesis that the outbreak in Tønsberg should have originated abroad has also been discussed above and was likewise shown to be improbable.

3.2.6 Social and Political Evidence on the Aftermath of the Black Death

Another category of arguments has been important for historians when they date the Black Death in Østlandet to 1349, which also I have used and reached the same conclusions. Historians must raise the question whether there were aspects of the

567 Lindanger 2004: 315. 568 Benedictow 2004/2006: 81, 106, 119, 121, 136-37, 197-98, 227, 336. 569 Benedictow 2002: 50-51 and n. 77, English translation in Chapter 2.6, pp. 117-18, and p. 327. See also Benedictow 2004/2006: 102-103 and n. 20. 570 Benedictow 2002: 65. English translation above: 132. 220 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

social conditions that indicate whether the Black Death was widely present in the region in 1350 or a process of normalization was going on in the wake of the Black Death. It shows that in 1350 the normalization of social conditions and reconstruction of the administrative structures had commenced also in Østlandet and in a way which excludes that the Black Death was raging in the region. A good example is the beginning of the Grand Old Master Andreas Holmsen’s booklet on the Black Death:

On 20 July 1350 a hearing of witnesses was conducted on the farmstead of Vad in with the objective of establishing in a legally binding way ‘who died last of those living on Hoffar, Vad’s neighbouring , presumably because of a dispute of inheritance […] ‘in this exceptional mortality’. This ‘exceptional (fátidelega) mortality’ was the Black Death or ‘the great mortality’ as it was called after another epidemic had spread across the country in 1359-60 […] The document that records the hearing of witnesses 20 July 1350571 shows that the plague had ended at least some months earlier: the hearing of witnesses was conducted by a representative of the ‘fehirde’ [ regional royal treasurer] or the commander of [the castle of] Tønsberg and it took its time to put in motion such a public authority at that time as today.572

Holmsen concluded that, in July 1350, the Black Death must have been over for at least some months in order to give the public administrative machinery time to recuperate and take on the challenging task of normalizing the social conditions after the tremendous demographic and social catastrophe. In this case, it was the public authorities on Tønsberg castle, roughly 90 km south of Sigdal. There is no reason to assume that this was the first time the castellan’s ombudsman had organized a judicial hearing about legal disputes caused by the Black Death in the area. We have only an extant source that or less accidentally has survived through the centuries. This puts in perspective also Lindanger’s assertion that the dating formula “the summer of the mortality” used in a letter of 1359 associated with the Lunde in Øvre (Upper) Eiker,573 the hundred adjacent to Sigdal in the south and to Sandsvær hundred in the west, should refer to the summer of 1350. In another legal inheritance case concerning the of Kjørstad in Sandsvær hundred, immediately to the west of Lunde: a witness was heard who stated that Margrete Jonsdatter Hæth was the only surviving child and the last living inheritor on Kjørstad in the Ember Days (the three days of fasting in the week between the third and fourth Sundays of Advent) in the year of the great mortality. Furthermore, Thorunn Hallkjellsdatter took an oath to the effect that she “stayed on Kjørstad in these days before Christmas”.574 This must imply that the Black Death was over at the time, because the witness dared to stay on the

571 DN VIII, No. 156. 572 Holmsen 1984: 7. The costs of juridical services and the payment of amercements were generally the castellan’s or sheriff’s incomes, which confirms that, in this case, the regional treasurer and the castellan was the same perosn, 573 DN III, No. 298, 01.22.1359. 574 DN III, No. 420, 12.20.1378. Lindanger’s Views on the Black Death’s Arrival and Spread in Norway 221

farmstead. This is corroborated by a notice document in which it is stated that the peasant on (southern) Darbu in Øvre Eiker, immediately to the east of Kjørstad, had travelled to Oslo in order to pay rent on the day before Christmas Eve in the winter of great mortality.575 The peasant holdings Lunde, Kjørstad and Darbu are situated quite closely and roughly 40-45 km south of Hoffar as the crow flies. Seen in this context, it becomes clear that all these sources refer to the Black Death in a small longish territorial triangle which stretched from the southerly parts of Sigdal to the northern ends of Sandsvær and Øvre Eiker. Evidently, the Black Death had raged in this area over quite some time, in the period June-December 1349, which is as should be expected when it should spread between farmsteads with rat fleas. Clearly, it had quite generally petered out at the end of the year, so that the peasant of Darbu dared to go to Oslo and Thorunn Hallkjellsdatter to enter the farmstead of Kjørstad before Christmas. All the documents relate to the same situation, the early phase of normalization after the Black Death had ended. The duration of the epidemic in this quite small area, from the introduction in early June at the latest to the end of November or early December, is compatible with the slow and lingering pattern of spread of bubonic plague within a locality. A disease spreading by cross-infection with droplets or some other form of direct contact which will normally produce much higher spread rates and would cover the area in a much shorter time.576 The peasant who went to Oslo in order to pay rent entered a town where the process of normalization was in full swing. If the Black Death had not been over in the local area where he started and all the way to Oslo, it is quite difficult to imagine that he would have dared to set out on this journey. This is the case also when he quite likely had other objectives than the payment of rent of the quite insignificant amount of 2 øre in money for the use of a tiny patch of land of 1 øresbol.577 Bjørkvik and I underline that the sources reflect that this had been the situation for quite some time. We document this especially by an inheritance case that was conducted in Thoragården [Thora House] in Oslo on 20 November 1349 which demonstrates that the Black Death was over and that the survivors had taken on the task of normalizing their lives (see below).578 Remarkably, this occurs in November 1349, at the time when Lindanger maintains that the Black Death had quite recently begun raging in Oslo.579

575 DN II, No. 478, 02.03.1383. 576 This is normally the case, with the principal exceptions of diseases caused by retroviruses, as HIV/AIDS and diseases caused by prions like Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, scrapie (of sheep) and mad cow disease. 577 These units of valuation are explained in Benedictow 2002: 52, n. 80 on pages 349-50, English translation above Chapter 2.6, p. 119, n.330. 578 Bjørkvik 1996: 21-22; Benedictow 2002: 66-67, English translation in Chapter 2.7, p. 135. 579 Lindanger 2004: 315. 222 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

The Icelandic annals are the main sources to the representative nationwide meeting of notables, prelates, members of the king’s retinue (“hird”) and the Council of the Realm, which convened in Bergen in the summer of 1350 after having been summoned by King Magnus. At this occasion, Prince Håkon was recognized king and received his own retinue (and court). Also this event shows that there was a broad turnout of noblemen and the knights and squires of the shires who could do homage to the king- to-be before he had come of age. If the Black Death was raging, if only in Østlandet, it would be difficult to imagine that the king and his close advisors would have dared to send messengers who should travel across large parts of Østlandet with writs of summons to the meeting of the Council of the Realm and a general meeting of the court in Bergen without profound concern for their lives (if volunteers could be found) and with certainty that they would not return with the contagion. Likewise, it is difficult to imagine that notables, councillors of the realm and members of the gentry would fearlessly set out on their way to Bergen and meet in numbers under such circumstances. Among the participants from Østlandet was Bishop Salomon who had come from Oslo and consecrated bishops who had been confirmed by Archbishop Arne before he died. Also many new priests were ordained, some under the legal age, in order to reduce the lack of priests.580 Thus, forceful action was taken to restore the functional capabilities of both the ecclesiastical and secular parts of the ruling machinery of the country. On the way back to Oslo, on 3 August 1350 in Tønsberg, Bishop Salomon got a circular letter [to the general population] from Orm Øysteinsson, the new regent [“drottsete”], on behalf of the king to the peasantry of the , but undoubtedly drafted by the bishop himself. They had not paid the tithes due the preceding year and had defended this by claiming that they could not find workmen to thresh the corn.581 In contrast to Lindanger, I will for my part point out that the letter does not contain a single word which suggests that the Black Death was raging anywhere in the big diocese at the time. Conversely, if the Black Death had been raging, the bishop could hardly have demanded that the peasants threshed and carried the tithe (in Norway payable predominantly on the corn harvest). It appears also quite incomprehensible that the tithe had not been threshed and delivered to the parish churches, including the bishop’s one-fourth of it, the preceding autumn according to old custom, if something disastrous had not occurred that prevented normal husbandry and payments of rents and fines. Also, why would the peasants defend themselves by lack of workmen, if it was not a meaningful argument, that something had, in fact, occurred that had made it difficult to find labour. In my view, one should also take notice of the bishop’s assertion that people now were drinking much heavier than before. This makes sense

580 Islandske Annaler 1888: 276, 354, 404. “Hirdmøte” = meeting of noblemen and gentlemen who had done personal homage to the king and were members of the king’s retinue or court, in Old Norse called “hird”. 581 DN VI, No. 196. Bjørkvik’s Views on the Black Death’s Routes of Spread and Mortality in Norway 223

if one accepts that the survivors were profoundly distraught over the loss of spouse, children, neighbours and friends, all that made life really meaningful. The process of social normalization after the plague catastrophe can be enlarged upon more detail than I have done here, but have performed in my monograph.582

3.3 Bjørkvik’s Views on the Black Death’s Routes of Spread and Mortality in Norway

3.3.1. The Black Death’s Spread to Norway

It is a surprising aspect of Lindanger’s comprehensive argument for his sensational new theory that the Black Death spread in Østlandet in 1350, that he does not mention that Emeritus Professor Halvard Bjørkvik presented also such a theory in the fourth volume of Aschehougs Norges Historie [Aschehoug’s History of Norway].583 In Norwegian historiography, it is a long established convention to start with a presentation of the topic’s research history and clarify why it is important to address it again.584 When Bjørkvik’s volume appeared, I was asked by Dagbladet [a major Norwegian newspaper] to review it, and I emphasized in this connection the largely untenable character of his account of the Black Death, also the theory of the spread in Østlandet in 1350. Moreover, Liv Marthinsen, Research Fellow at the Institute of Local History, commented in a long and generally well-founded critical review paper on the evident untenability of Bjørkvik’s account of the spread of the Black Death. She also mentions that she “misses active use of more recent plague research in dissertations for the degree of Cand. Philol. [≈ the degree of Master of Arts] and a doctoral thesis, which are generally available in the circles of historians”.585 The comprehensive and profound problems of Bjørkvik’s account of the Black Death meet the oriented reader head on at the very beginning. He cites with quite a number of errors of translation and textual inaccuracies the Lawman’s Annal’s account of the Black Death’s geographical origin and spread from North-Africa across Europe and to Norway, and as tenable matter-of-fact information. Even the idea that persons in a small isolated island far out in the North-Atlantic Ocean around 1350

582 Benedictow 2002: 89-91, English translation in Chapter 2.12. 583 Bjørkvik 1996: 11-35. [Aschehoug is the publisher of this multivolume popular history of Norway.] Another reason to comment more closely on Bjørkvik’s account is, as mentioned, that it apparently can make an acceptable impression on scholars with a peripheral association with the subject, see Vahtola 2003: 562. See above Chapter 3.3.1, p. 185, n. 486 and below Chapter 3.4.2, n. 622. 584 The research history of the Black Death is presented in my doctoral thesis, Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 34-44. I refer to it in my monograph on the history of plague in Norway, Benedictow 2002: 9, 15-17. It must now be much expanded on the basis of information presented and discussed in the present monograph, and to some extent on the basis of Benedictow 2004/2006. 585 Marthinsen 1997: 197. My translation from Norwegian. 224 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

should have received correct information on the Black Death’s long route of spread to Norway is surprising. It could, of course, be presented as a working hypothesis which would have to be tested in relation to relevant research and the sources. It is stated in the Lawman’s Annal (my translation) that

The disease started in Babylon in “Serkland” [= the land of the Saracens = the land of the Arabs] in Africa. Thence, it went to the “Land of Jerusalem” and Jerusalemburg [= fortified city of Jerusa- lem] and desolated almost the burgs [= fortified towns and cities]. Next, it went northwards across the Jerusalem Sea [the Mediterranean] and across all “Romania” [= (Eastern) Roman Empire/ Byzantium] and then further northwards across the countries and to the papal city [“pavegard” = Avignon]586 and the area around and desolated almost all of it. The pope consecrated the R. Rhône [which runs through Avignon] and dead people were thrown into it [.] Then, the disease went across all France and Saxony [= the land of the Saxons = Germany] and then to England, and almost all England was deserted, and as a proof of that not more than 14 people survived in the city of London. At the time a cog sailed from England with a lot of persons on board and it put into the bay [of the harbour] of Bergen.587

The only piece of information which (in all likelihood) is correct in this account of the spread is, as should be expected according to the rule of proximity, that the Black Death was carried on a ship from England to Bergen. It is evidently a “tall story” that only 14 persons survived in London, 20% of plague cases survive the disease, and London had probably around 80,000 inhabitants.588 Should not this absurd assertion inspire source criticism? Among the more bizarre pieces of the annalist’s account of the spread is that the Black Death started in Babylon in the land of the Saracens in Africa. This absurdity has been lost in Bjørkvik’s mistranslation of the opening statement: “The disease started in Babylon and spread over the land of the Saracens to Africa.”589 The annalist asserts, in fact, completely erroneously that Babylon was situated in North Africa and that the Black Death started there. It is impossible for the plague to spread from North Africa to Africa; Babylon was situated in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, and had been deserted for about 1500 years at the time.590

586 “Pavegard” can either mean the Papal city (cf., e.g., Miklagard for Constantinople) or the Papal Court, i.e. the Papal Curia. Both expressions refer here to Avignon where the popes had been residing for several decades; also the ruling Pope Clement VI. 587 Islandske annaler 1888/1977: 275. 588 See Benedictow 2004: 135. 589 Bjørkvik 1996: 12. 590 [Recently, I discovered that I may not have been entirely fair to Einar Hafliðason’s account in my original comments. In his chronicle, Gabriele de Mussis made some related comments. He did certainly not state that the Black Death originated in Babylon. However, in his wide-ranging account of the Black Death’s spread from Kaffa, he also gives a graphic description, purportedly based on “Saracen” ac- counts, that, in the “city of Babylon (alone) (the heart of the Sultan’s power), 480,000 of his subjects” died from the disease in less than three months – and this is known from the Sultan’s register, which records the names of the dead, because he receives a gold bezant for each person buried”. Horrox 1994 20-21. Also in this case, many parts of de Mussis’s account are typical of the gross unreliability of medi- Bjørkvik’s Views on the Black Death’s Routes of Spread and Mortality in Norway 225

Bjørkvik’s account is illustrated by two maps showing the spread of the Black Death along the lines of communication and the territorial spread respectively.591 One must ask why the map on the spread along the communication lines shows also a route for the Black Death via the Crimea to Europe which is not suggested in the Icelandic annals. However, all modern scholarly accounts and discussions of this topic have in common that this was the route of spread to Europe, the only route of spread. The fact is that the Black Death spread across Mesopotamia where Babylon is situated from the west, via the “Land of Jerusalem”. This occurred 1349, at the same time as the Black Death raged in Norway! This makes it clear that, even if we endeavour to understand the annalist in the best possible meaning, that he did not mean Babylon but Babylonia as an alternative regional name of Mesopotamia (which actually has been in use since Hellenistic times), he is still wildly astray in his geographical notions and his assertions on spread. The map on the territorial spread indicates that all France and Spain and southern Germany592 was ravaged in 1348, which is completely erroneous and epidemiologically impossible, as it is also erroneous in the case of Denmark that all Jutland and Funen Island, Samsø Island and Ærø Island was ravaged in 1349 and that only the islands east of Zealand Island were visited in 1350, and so on. It is completely wrong to present a route of spread to Norway as if it ran through Italy and France to “Belgium” and from there to London. However, in this case the Lawman’s Annal’s account is incomprehensible, because it also completely erroneously states that the Black Death made its way across Germany on its way to England which could then hardly have been contaminated before 1350. The north-western parts of France and the southern parts of “Belgium” were ravaged by the Black Death in 1349, at the same time as Norway. The correct account of this subject is that the Black Death was carried by ship from Bordeaux to the town Melcombe Regis, today (within) Weymouth in southern England. There the outbreak occurred shortly before the Feast of St. John the Baptist 1348, shortly before the Black Death began spreading in south-eastern Germany (Bavaria) and a year before it spread in south-western Germany (Baden-Württemberg),

eval rhetoric style; in Hatcher’s wording, “the overwrought imaginings and hopelessly inaccurate quan- tifications of the chroniclers”. Hatcher 1977: 21. Mussis’s reference to Babylon, could, however, be to the medieval town of Bābalyūn outside Cairo, now a part of south-eastern Cairo called the Old City. The purported population loss and the reference to the Sultan make it clear that the city in question was Cairo, where the Black Death certainly did not originally break out, but is much closer to Alexandria, where it started in North Africa, than Babylon in Mesopotamia, , and is, in this limited respect, less er- roneous. This is, of course, only a possible alternative interpretation.] 591 Bjørkvik 1996: 17. 592 A new, thorough study of the sources on the Black Death‘s spread in Bavaria, makes it quite clear that the Black Death spread in large parts of this region from the summer of 1348. See the forthcoming (2017) 2nd edn.. of Benedictow 2004. 226 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

and long before it spread across northern, western and central Germany.593 Bjørkvik’s account is completely out of chronological co-ordination with the outbreak of the Black Death in southern England. It is also incompatible with the annalist’s assertion that the contagion was imported to Norway by a ship from England. From Weymouth the Black Death spread in southern England both inland and by leaps with ships along the coast and reached London and port towns in south-eastern England in time for producing outbreaks in September 1348. This is the reason that the evidence indicates that the Black Death was in all likelihood transported to Oslo this autumn, while the transportation to Bergen in the summer of 1349 appears to have occurred with a ship from King’s Lynn on the big bay of the Wash where the Black Death raged in the spring and summer of 1349. For the sake of brevity, I will here refer only to my complete account of the Black Death’s origin and spread in my 2004 monograph.594 I cannot see it otherwise than that Bjørkvik misinforms his readers with respect to the background of one of the most important events in Norwegian history, the history of the Black Death’s arrival and spread to Norway.

3.3.2 Medical and Clinical Problems

Some remarks must be made about medical and clinical aspects. One example of Bjørkvik’s incomprehension of plague epidemiology is demonstrated when he states as follows:

There are some isolated areas where rats and fleas can live peacefully together, but under certain circumstances this balance can be broken and a wave of plague becomes the consequence. In Europe, there appears to be only one such natural centre of spread, namely a rat colony on the north-western coast of the Caspian Sea […]

There is much that is incomprehensible here, especially that plague epidemics break out when the peaceful co-existence between fleas and rats is broken. It is also incomprehensible that there should only be one rat colony on the north-western coast of the Caspian Sea. I will tend to presume that Bjørkvik relates to the presentation of the concept of plague focus in my doctoral thesis, i.e. an area with a great density of rodents where plague transmitted by fleas can circulate continuously. Such a plague focus stretches from the north-western coasts of the Caspian Sea into southern Russia.

593 See preceding n. 594 Benedictow 2004: 48-67, and map on pp. xviii-xix. See the short account in Benedictow 2002: 44-47, English translation in Chapter 2.5, with the map on the inside of the front cover. Brief presenta- tions with maps of the first phase of spread in Benedictow 2005: 44-49; Benedictow 2006b: 47-51. The subject of the Black Death’s arrival and spread in England is thoroughly studied also in my subsequent monograph, Benedictow 2010: 436-84. Bjørkvik’s Views on the Black Death’s Routes of Spread and Mortality in Norway 227

In this area, there are multitudes of rodents called susliks which function as carriers of plague. A plague epidemic can arise through contact between susliks diseased by plague and house rats.595 The territorial origin of the Black Death was not as far away as possible, in China, where not a single plague epidemic is documented between 610/652 and 1642 A.D.596 Very likely, the origin was in this plague focus in an area in the vicinity of the Crimea whence it was shipped out, also according to his own map. Several contemporaneous Russian and Byzantine chroniclers locate the origin of the Black Death there. There is no basis in the sources for Bjørkvik’s assertion of spread from China to Baghdad, further to Palestine and Alexandria whence it was shipped to Europe. It is, as shown above, also contrary to the facts.597 I read with disbelief that Bjørkvik in his account of the mortality maintained that [the Nobel Laureate in literature] “Sigrid Undset’s vivid account in [the novel] Kristin Lavransdatter [a character who died in the Black Death] shows that she also on this point knew the facts well”. Undset builds on Boccaccio’s literary account in the opening chapter of The Decameron (written 1348-1353). Critical scholarly reading of this account will show that Boccaccio (unsurprisingly), and therefore Undset indirectly from him, does not know modern scientific research on plague’s epidemiology, case mortality and clinical manifestations of bubonic plague. Boccaccio bases his account on classical miasmatic theory of contagion and on hearsay which are in both case, obviously, unscientific and untenable.598 This also means that they do not have realistic notions of the reasons for the various clinical forms of manifestations of plague disease. Boccaccio, Undset or Bjørkvik do also not differentiate between primary pneumonic plague and secondary pneumonic plague. Boccaccio’s account is literary an dramatic with many untenable assertions, also assertions which show

595 Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 21-22. 596 Benedictow 2004: 40-42. 597 Benedictow 2004/2006: 48-54. 598 According to classical Greek medicine, epidemic disease was caused by miasma. Miasma was a sort of noxious vapours that were supposed to be caused by rotting putrid biological matter in the ground from where they were released and, then, disseminated by wind, thus coming thus in contact with and contaminating people. In the High Middle Ages, this understanding of epidemic disease spread among intellectual circles and was a non-religious alternative to the then predominating no- tion of epidemic disease as God’s punishment of people for their sins. It was then also expanded by astrological and geological notions, that particularly dangerous constellations of planets could cause such noxious vapours to stream out of the ground, and also that erupting volcanoes and earth quakes could produce the same effect. In addition, we now also meet the quite new notion that miasma was not only spread by wind, but also attached to objects used by diseased persons. These objects be- came purportedly contagious and by contemporaries technically designated “fomites”. In Norwegian sources, the notion of fomites is for the first time met with in 1525, in the form of plague clothes, i.e. clothes which had been used by plague diseased and therefore were contaminated by miasma and dangerously contagious. It is also significant that this notion was held by ordinary people in the coun- tryside at the time. Similar notions were held also by prominent noblemen and prelates a few years later. Benedictow 2002: 148-49, 179-86. 228 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

that he has probably not seen plague victims himself and did not stay in Florence during the Black Death in 1348. He probably did as the young people he writes about, left Florence and isolated himself from the surroundings, so that he renders hearsay.

3.3.3 Mortality of the Black Death in Norway

In order to estimate population mortality from an epidemic disease one must either know how many people who live within a given territory and how many of them who died or, as Bjørkvik attempts to do, use morbidity rate and case mortality rate, i.e. how large proportion of the population which fell ill, and the proportion of them who died. Bjørkvik maintains that it is “also established that nearly half of those who were infected in a bubonic plague epidemic might survive - in the Middle Ages the mortality was presumably somewhat higher - while a pneumonic epidemic swept the table almost clean”.599 Bjørkvik uses here obviously the concept of mortality with the meaning of the proportion of those who fell ill, who died. In demographic studies, this is designated by the scholarly terms case mortality or lethality in contrast to population mortality, i.e. the proportion of a population which dies in an epidemic. Bjørkvik’s assertion that about half of those who contract bubonic plague dies/survives is not known from scholarly studies. However, it is correct that case mortality among patient with (primary) pneumonic plague is almost total, nearly 100%, if this is what the idiomatic expression “sweep the table clean” refers to.600 The assertions on this point resemble Andreas Holmsen’s account in Norges historie fra de eldste tider til 1660 [= The History of Norway from the Earliest Times to 1660] which appeared in 1939, and the formulation is retained in all subsequent editions: “This disease was partly bubonic plague which finished off its victims after a couple of days of suffering, partly pneumonic plague with a mortality of 50 percent within a week.”601 Here, Holmsen has evidently mixed up bubonic plague

599 Bjørkvik 1996: 16. 600 It is correct that primary pneumonic plague normally kills their victims within two days (1.8 days), but this mode of plague occurs normally rather sporadically,and constitutes a marginal part of epidemics of bubonic plague, about 3% of all cases. Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 25-32, 214-27; Benedictow 2010: 518-27; Chapter 12.3, below. No scholarly study has documented an epidemic of primary pneumonic plague in the Middle Ages or the early Modern Period. As shown in my mono- graphs, this was also not the case in Norway (and Iceland). Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 214-223; Benedictow 2002: 30-33, 40, 93-94, 320, English translation in Chapters 2.2, 2.4, pp. 112-13, 2.13 (p. 320 is not included, where this systematic observation is commented on ); Benedictow 2004: 27-31, 236-41; Benedictow 2010: 493-552. 601 Holmsen 1949: 412, or Holmsen 1977: 328. Cf. Bibliography. Bjørkvik’s Views on the Black Death’s Routes of Spread and Mortality in Norway 229

and pneumonic plague, one will then find the notion of a mortality rate of 50% in cases of bubonic plague. Under the circumstances it appears justified to presume that Bjørkvik has been influenced by this (mis)information.602 However, a few pages later Bjørkvik states surprisingly and inconsistently that the case mortality rate was slightly above 80%.603 In this case, it appears likely that he has taken this rate from my doctoral thesis in which all known studies of lethality rates in plague epidemics are gathered and synthesized.604 Bjørkvik relates this lethality rate to an assumed infection rate (“smittesannsynlighet”), he probably means morbidity rate,605 among the population of between one-third and two-thirds. In this way he purportedly produces a crude estimate of a population mortality rate of nearly 50%. More accurately, this produces a mortality rate of 26-53% and not an average of nearly 50% but of nearly 40%. The premise or assumption on morbidity rate is taken out of thin air, because there are not any sources for estimation of morbidity rates in the Black Death in any area (and not for a long time to come).606 It has not It has not been possible to estimate an infection rate at any time in the history of plague. His subsequent account of population mortality is closely related to my doctoral thesis which he thus knows. At the same time, it is clear that his first assumption of a lethality rate of 50% would give much lower mortality estimates for the population of 16.5- 33.5, on the average about 25%. Bjørkvik’s discussion of this topic is not only based on arbitrary assumptions, it is also in several ways inconsistent and incongruent. It is unfortunate that he operates with arbitrarily chosen morbidity rates and widely disparate case mortality rates which lead to highly inconsistent fictitious estimates of population mortality rates. The Lawman’s Annal gives a mortality estimate for Norway, namely that over two- thirds of the population died. This is incompatible with Bjørkvik’s assertions on the case mortality rate and the morbidity rate, particularly because he confirms that the Black Death was bubonic plague. One may miss Bjørkvik’s comments on that.

602 This case mortality rate in bubonic plague could also have been taken from Walløe 1982: 39, who uses it for hypothetical model-based estimates of mortality in the Black Death. Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 149. Quite likely, also Walløe has taken this lethality rate from Holmsen’s unfortu- nate assertions, it is not based on research or medical standard works. 603 Bjørkvik 1996: 21. 604 Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 26, 146-49. 605 Not all those who become infected fall ill, some will be infected with so low doses of the conta- gion that the immune apparatus succeeds in preventing illness from breaking out (subinfective doses of contagion). The infection rate, in the meaning of the proportion of a population which has been in- fected, is thus higher than the morbidity rate in the population, but also hardly possible to measure. 606 Benedictow 1987: 401-31. 230 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

3.3.4 Closing Comments on the Topics of Arrival, Spread and End of the Black Death in Norway

Bjørkvik is, as mentioned, the first Norwegian historian who presents an alternative theory of the arrival and spread of the Black Death in relation to the account that I give in my monographs of 1993 and 2002. Centrally, he opines that the epidemic arrived in Østlandet late in 1349 and mainly spread there in 1350.607 This view is based on much of the same untenable use of sources and ends in the same self-contradictions which characterize Lindanger’s later endeavours. Lindanger does not refer, as mentioned, to Bjørkvik’s account. His account appears therefore as independent while it instead should be near to presume a certain scholarly contact or inspiration. Many of the problems in Bjørkvik’s account on the Black Death have been covered by my comments to Lindanger’s account. I will therefore comment only briefly on some other aspects here. Bjørkvik starts with the following assertion: “The only firm piece of evidence we have is the late summer of 1349 which is mentioned by the Icelandic annals.” This is erroneous, nothing specific is said about the time of the year the Black Death arrived in Bergen. It is only related that it came with a ship from England and therefore (implicitly) in the sailing season, but then one has, of course, many months to choose from. It is even more misleading when he maintains (implicitly) that I should have written that the Black Death had entered Numedal in January 1349 and use this to argue that it must have arrived in Oslo the preceding autumn. Nobody has claimed what Bjørkvik states and argues against here, that the Black Death should have arrived in Oslo in the summer of 1348 or in the early winter of 1349.608 This is groundless. The untenability of Bjørkvik’s views surfaces immediately both with respect to spread rates and the assertion of a winter epidemic: “And when sources of eastern Norway speaks about the winter, summer and autumn of the year of the great mortality, it must refer to the winter of 1349-50, and the summer and autumn of 1350. This presumes a horrifyingly rapid spread, but this is something we must accept.”609 As also Marthinsen points out, Bjørkvik’s closing appeal is untenable, it is evidently an unscholarly practice to appeal to the readers just to believe an assertion. The scholar’s task is prove the credibility of a view or assertion based on sources and source-criticism, here also linked with correct medical and epidemiological knowledge of plague. In this case, it can also be pointed out that a similar formulation about enormous pace of spread is found in P.A. Munch’s account of the Black Death in Det norske Folks Historie [The History of the Norwegian People] of 1862, however, without an appeal to the readers that is should be uncritically accepted (because it

607 Bjørkvik 1996: 12-23. 608 Bjørkvik 1996: 16-17. My translation from Norwegian. 609 Bjørkvik 1996: 18. My translation from Norwegian. Bjørkvik’s Views on the Black Death’s Routes of Spread and Mortality in Norway 231

was not incompatible with the miasmatic epidemiological theory of his time).610 Also other elements of Bjørkvik’s account are evidently inspired by this soon 150 years old proto-scientific account. The expression “the winter of the mortality” is used in two documents to which Bjørkvik apparently refers, but in both cases the dating formulae refer to the last two weeks before Christmas and therefore the Black Death’s final phase.611 The references are thus to the forewinter of 1349. The last person who is mentioned as dead in the Black Death in Norway is, as mentioned, the bishop of Stavanger who died on 7 January 1350. No sources show that the Black Death raged in Norway after this time, in the winter of 1350, correspondingly Bjørvik does not underpin with any source his assertion of spread in the winter of 1350. In my monograph on the history of plague in Norway, I have, as mentioned, shown that that there was not a single instance of a winter epidemic of plague in Norwegian plague history. This is also the case with the Black Death. This agrees with all international research which shows the (bubonic) plague’s strong association with the warmer seasons all over Europe.612 Against this backcloth, it is not possible to accept Bjørkvik’s account of the spread of the Black Death in relation to King Magnus’s circular letter: because the plague had not yet entered Sweden in the autumn of 1349, “we must also assume that it had not raged long in the border areas to the west”.613 It must be beyond dispute that King

610 In his pioneering work on early Norwegian history, Munch produced also the first breakthrough of a scholarly account of the history of the Black Death. It is, unavoidably, based on pre-scientific miasmatic theory of contagion and the process of infection, so-called miasmatic-contagionistic the- ory which was developed in the Renaissance on the basis of classical Greek medicine. Furthermore, Munch could not build on a specific knowledge of the mechanisms of infection with which plague bacteria and plague disease were disseminated and their properties of spread. The miasmatic theory of contagion gives general theoretical premises with respect to spread of contagion over land which are not supported by modern plague research, except episodically in the form of long(ish) metastatic leaps. Cf. Chapter 3.3.2, n. 598. Munch’s account of spread becomes therefore completely unten- able, as I respectfully but definitely show in my doctoral thesis, Benedictow 1992/1993/1996a: 35-37. Bjørkvik’s use of Munch’s pioneering work produces, therefore, fatal consequences for his own ac- count. I have also succeeded in finding a number of sources to the the Black Death’s spread in Nor- way which Munch, under the circumstances of his time, had not succeeded in tracking down. It was therefore not so evidently untenable for him, as it ought to be for Bjørkvik, to maintain that the Black Death spread in the winter of 1349-50. This view is incompatible with the sources as well as with plague epidemiology. 611 DN I, No. 355, 07.14. 1358; DN II, No. 478, 02.03.1383. cf. DN III No. 420, 12.20.1378. 612 See above Chapter 2.4, pp. 38-40, and especially n. 303. Benedictow 2004/2006/ 233-35; Ben- edictow 2010: 396-436. 613 Bjørkvik 1996: 17-18. There are important grounds for commenting on Bjørkvik’s understanding and use of King Magnus’s circular letter to the populations of Sweden’s dioceses on the Black Death and the decisions made by the Council of the Realm, discussed quite intensively also above,Benedictow 2002: (60), especially 96-97, and n. 187, pp. 353-54, English translation in (Chapter 2.7, p. 127, ns. 359- 360), and especially Chapter 2.14, p. 170, ns. 471-472. See also above Chapter 3.2.1, p. 195-97, ns. 514- 16. The circular letter, refers in some detail to an earlier writ of summons to members of the Council of 232 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

Magnus asserted that the Black Death neared Sweden menacingly from the west at end of August, or just possibly, in early September 1349, because the writ of summons cannot have been dispatched later. Admittedly, I also do not understand the logic of Bjørkvik’s formulation, but if we take his wording literally and presume that the Black Death “had not raged long in the border areas with Sweden” in the autumn of 1349, he accepts that it had raged there for some time. However, I cannot understand how an outbreak in Bergen which had not reached a significant level of intensity until the first half of September, could have had time to spread to the peripheral easterly parts of Østlandet along the border with Sweden and have raged there the same autumn, in fact, most likely at time in August, which made it possible for someone to ride in all haste to find King Magnus while he was on his way to Jönköping and inform him at the end of the month about the epidemic disaster. However, it fits well with my analysis: arrival of the Black Death in Oslo in the late autumn of 1348, [renewed] outbreak of the Black Death in Oslo in

the Realm to meet in Lödose in all due haste. In view of the conditions of communication and travel at the time, it must have been written at least three weeks earlier, probably at the end of August, in order to provide time for the summoners to reach the summoned to the meeting and give them time to travel to Lödöse with all due dispatch (see above). In his discussion of the document, Bjørkvik demonstrates knowledge of the research on the meet- ing of the Council of the Realm and the king’s itinerary, but does not use it for the dating of it. Instead, he uses a piece of information in the letter that it has been decided to levy a general poll tax of one penny which the king, the bishops and the council will use for religious measures in the hope of mitigat- ing God’s wrath. This money should have been paid by 30 November at the latest. Bjørkvik infers from this that the letter must have been written “a few weeks before 30 November, but hardly many months earlier”. Regesta Norvegica, VI, No. 1. (The similarity of the dating there in n. 1, Bjørkvik’s use of it, and Bjørkvik’s role as editor-in-chief of this volume of RN, see the “Preface” [“Forord”], makes it reasonable to assume that he has authored the dating there. He must at least have accepted this alternative ap- proach to the dating of the document.) The wording of Bjørkvik’s dating is not entirely clear, but it must apparently mainly be understood to the effect that the circular letter was presumably written 3-5 weeks earlier, which takes us to the turn of the months October-November. King Magnus was then back in the vicinity of (the town of) Jönköping about 150 km from Lödöse, as can also be seen from Bjørkvik’s remarks on the king’s itinerary. The king had left Lödöse and was on a long journey eastwards in Swe- den. It is excluded that the meeting of the Council of the Realm occurred around the time indicated by Bjørkvik. Bjørkvik’s temporal perspective differs also strongly from my notions of how time-consuming it was to organize and implement full taxation of Sweden (or Norway) in the Middle Ages. Presumably, it would take several months and this takes us at least back to the time of the king’s known stay in Lödöse at the end of September, so that the circular letter’s various pieces of temporal information appear quite consistent. In my view, Bjørkvik makes an unfortunate choice of element for dating when he takes his clue from the information on the poll tax. Instead, the central information must be the writ of summons to a meeting of the Council of the Realm in Lödöse and the time of the meeting. Bjørkvik’s own listing of locations along King Magnus’s route of travel this autumn shows that the king stayed in Lödöse only at the end of September. There is no alternative occasion when the Council of the Realm could have met there. One would have liked to know Bjørkvik’s reason(s) for rejecting the dating of the Swedish editors in Diplomatarium Suecanum and in Grandison’s study of the king’s itinerary. Bjørkvik’s Views on the Black Death’s Routes of Spread and Mortality in Norway 233

April 1349, outbreak in Hamar at the end of August and that the bishop of Hamar and the bishop of Bergen apparently died at about the same time, namely in the first half of September. After Bjørkvik has asserted unreservedly that the Black Death spread in Østlandet in 1350, he presents an inheritance case which was conducted in Thoragården [Thora House] in Oslo on 20 November 1349:614 “The circumstances when the document was written are clear as daylight: […] the plague had just raged in the town and three of those who had been swept away were the brothers […] and now it had to be decided what should be done with what they had left [i.e. their property and goods and chattels].”615 According to Bjørkvik, This source documents indisputably, “clear as daylight”, that the Black Death had ended in Oslo some time before 20 November 1349. It shows also, therefore, that his assertion that the Black Death raged in Østlandet in 1350 is untenable. Such self-contradictions should according to the historian’s craft occasion revision of explanatory theories and efforts to reach tenable and integrated accounts. There is, of course, no reason to assume that this is the first document which reflected the process of normalization, only that it has more or less fortuitously been preserved through the centuries. How soon (“just”) after the Black Death had finished raging this meeting took place is not clear. The epidemic must have ended significantly earlier, so that people could take on the task of sorting out the problems the catastrophe had caused and clear the ground for a new good daily life. Because the Black Death was over in Oslo some time before 20 November 1349, it must have raged from the summer at the latest. If it is correct that Oslo had about 3000 inhabitants at the time, about the same as in 1654, the town would also have consisted of basic wooden houses covering about the same area that the Black Death should spread across. In the plague epidemic of 1654, the first recorded death from plague occurred 27 or 28 July, which must reflect that the contagion had been introduced in the house of the deceased in the first days of July; the last death from plague occurred about mid-November. The time frame fits well with the outline of the pattern in Oslo in the Black Death.616 This said, two small reservations must be made. Firstly, in 1654 there could have been a sprinkling of endemic deaths from plague before the first cases were explicitly recorded. Secondly, in 1349 the Black Death appears to have ended at least a couple of weeks earlier than in 1654, around the turn of the months October-November. This is indicated by the fact that the townsmen had started the process of normalization and had agreed on such meetings which are described in the document of 20 November. This indicates that the outbreak in Oslo in 1349 occurred somewhat earlier in the year than in 1654. Also this

614 DN V, No. 269. 615 Bjørkvik 1996: 21-22. My translation from Norwegian. See also Benedictow 2002: 66-67, English translation above in Chapter 2.7, p.135. [In the original paper, Benedictow 2006a: 119]. 616 Benedictow 2002: 306-07. Not translated in Chapter 2, which relates only to the Black Death. 234 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

point shows that there must have been an independent importation of the Black Death in Oslo, and that it must have been earlier than in Bergen. Finally, in this discussion of the Black Death’s arrival, spread and epidemiology in Norway I will emphasize how well all data, arguments and discussions on spread, in relation to towns as well as to rural areas, agree with rat-borne bubonic plague. All epidemiological manifestations, the pattern of spread, spread rates, seasonality and metastatic leaps are without exception compatible with the premises of a basis in the black rat and its ordinary flea parasite Xenopsylla cheopis. As shown above, this understanding of the Black Death’s epidemiological basis permits integration of all information in the sources, also those which otherwise could seem unrelated or difficult to interconnect. No other plague epidemic in the history of plague in Norway can be studied so closely and comprehensively.

3.4 On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death

3.4.1 Introduction

Lindanger addressed also the question of the mortality in the Black Death.617 His point of departure was a critical discussion of my tentative estimates of the mortality in the Black Death and the demographic premises on which it was based. This provides the occasion to make a more comprehensive discussion of the central problems and premises associated with this type of demographic estimates in Norwegian historiography. Comments on Lindanger’s discussion of these questions require a brief introduction to Norwegian medieval demography, because estimates of population mortality require that reasonably tenable estimates of population size are available. Norwegian historical research on medieval population size takes its point of departure in the fact that in the first half of the 1300s around 95% of the population lived in the countryside and lived of primary agricultural industry in a wide sense of the notion. Against this backcloth, estimates of population size have mainly been based on the multiplicative constellation of the number of peasant holdings in operation and the average size of the households, or more accurately, of the populations living on them. Conversely, estimates of the population which lived outside peasant society and the agricultural system of peasant holdings [“gardskipnaden”] like townspeople, fishing households settled in fishing villages, nomadic hunter-gatherers of the Saami people,

617 Questions on household size, farm population size and national population size in the Middle Ages and the ,early Modern Period are also discussed in an Appendix: 147-57, that is not included here, because it does not relate so directly to the Black Death. On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 235

and so on, appear to have constituted around 5% of the population in all before the Black Death.618 It is also possible to make an independent estimate of population size before the Black Death by use of retrogressive methodology in which one takes the point of departure in known facts, in this case the population size and composition in the 1660s, and descends in time taking into account historical changes which have affected the development of this estimate so that it becomes possible to assess an earlier condition. Norwegian medieval demography has been neglected in many respects, there is hardly anyone else than this author who have focused on this scholarly discipline. On this background, I tend to think that views and comments on problems of Norwegian medieval demography often display deficient knowledge of historical demography. I comment on some of this also in the Appendix [which is not included here, because it does not relate directly to the Black Death]. Also Lindanger’s discussion of this topic demonstrates poor basic knowledge of the methodology of social science, historical demography and medieval demography more specifically. In my view, solid competence in these disciplines is evidently required for the launching of an alternative theory on household size and population size in Norway prior to 1350. In contrast to other historical disciplines, for instance, agricultural history it is evidently possible to assume that specific competence is not needed in order to put forward new theories on the history of diseases or historical demography in the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period. Hard work over three decades in order to acquire the scholarly competence to operate in these scholarly arenas and to develop them by comprehensive research efforts do not give me the least advantage in relation to Lindanger’s approach to them without any specific competence.

3.4.2 Historical Sociology and the Specificity of Medieval Demography: Some Important Perspectives and Consequences619

As the basis for my objections, I would like to mention that I have written the first complete account of the medieval demography of the Nordic countries, the monograph The Medieval Demographic System of the Nordic Countries, especially the significantly expanded second edition of 1996.620 True, it focuses on Norway, but for the valid reasons that the sources are best and that the scholarly basis is most developed through the preliminary efforts of Norwegian agrarian historians. Also in 1996, I published a brief presentation of parts of this monograph with a certain change of the temporal perspective backwards in time out of the Middle Ages in order to be

618 See the discussion of the composition of the population in Benedictow 1996c: 153-56. 619 See Benedictow 2012: 3-42, where this question isdiscussed at some length. 620 Benedictow 1996b. 236 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

able to include a new part on the demography of the Viking Age, “The Demography of the Viking Age and the High Middle Ages in the Nordic Countries”.621 In 2003, my chapter on Nordic demography of the Viking Age and the Middle Ages to 1350, “Demographic Conditions”, appeared in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia.622 My big monograph on the Black Death of 2004 contains a systematic presentation of European medieval demography in the chapters “The Medieval demographic System” and “Problems of Source Criticism, Methodology and Demography”, the first such endeavour since Russel’s pioneering effort of 1958.623 The first chapter relates to demographic structures, the second chapter presents the available categories of sources for the study of medieval demography and the specific source-critical and methodological problems associated with them. These chapters emphasize problems and opportunities relating to estimation of population size and mortality. This focus should be particularly relevant in the present context and includes the question of the composition and size of households. Because these synthetic works are (among) the earliest of this much neglected demographic discipline, they have unavoidably acquired a certain pioneering character. I have noted, therefore, with satisfaction that some important perspectives have found broad international acceptance. This is, for instance, the case with a recent important paper by John Hatcher (Corpus Christi, Cambridge) where he takes to task The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure and this long prominent demographic school’s use of data from the 1500s and 1600s as valid data also for medieval demography and usable for interpolation. Hatcher demonstrates with powerful evidence that the basic structures of medieval demography in England were clearly different from the demography of the early Modern Period, particularly

621 Benedictow 1996c: 151-86. 622 Benedictow 2003: 237-49. [Although at the time I was the only Nordic historian who had writ- ten extensively on plague epidemics in the Nordic countries, I was not asked by K. Helle, the editor, to write the chapter on plague. Instead he had given the a topic to a Finnish historian. This is quite remarkable, because Finland was not visited by medieval plague epidemics, at least not before the mid-1490s, so medieval plague history is not a noticeable subject of Finnish historiography. Finland was probably the only country in Europe that had substantial population growth in the late Middle Ages. See also Vahtola 2003: 559-80. Cf. Benedictow 2006a: 84, n. 5., in English translation above Chapter 3.1, p. 185, n. 486, 3.3.1, p. 223, n. 583. Although Sigvald Hasund, a Norwegian agricultural historian, discovered the late medieval agrigultural crisis, and medieval and early modern agricultural history have since had a hugely stronger focus in Norwegian historiography than in any other Nordic country, also this subject was given to this Finnish historian, in which the history of plague was su- perficially integrated. For those in the know, this might reflect some interesting features of Helle’s postitioning in contemporary Norwegian historiography, and his narrow focus on Norwegian high medieval political history, especially on the kings and the Council of the Realm. This can explain that there could also be concerns about the balance of subjects. See also some other comments elsewhere in this monograph (see the Name Index)]. 623 Benedictow 2004: 245-72. [See also the recently published paper on the medieval demographic system, Benedictow 2012.] On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 237

that mortality was much higher (and life expectancy correspondingly lower). He also points out that this has profound consequences for the understanding of the basic demographic conditions more generally which can be subsumed in the concepts of demographic system or demographic regime.624 A specific medieval demographic system was in operation, as can be seen also from the title of my monograph on Nordic medieval demography. In the general account of medieval demography in my monograph on the Black Death mentioned above, I have presented and discussed the available European data on mortality, life expectancy and household size; they concord completely with Hatcher’s views. The data is also in full agreement with the last general work on French medieval demography.625 This brings to the fore the basic historical-sociological premises of historical periodizations. The scholarly divisions of history into periods are not arbitrary chronological divisions but are based on notions of basic qualitative differences between social formations [social systems]. Social formations are determined by the observation that the basic societal structures, such as economy, technology, politics, government, culture and mentality, social stratification and demography are characterized by fundamental qualitative dissimilarities from the preceding and subsequent historical periods. They are also defined by the fact that these structures interact in the production of the historical process in a specific way which also produces specific dynamics and direction of development. There is then comprehensive conceptual concordance between the concepts of historical period and social formation. This makes it clear that to project historical data as valid from one historical period/social formation onto another historical period/social formation is a fallacy of the methodology of history and social sciences. Historical data from one period can only be used to hypothesize that a social phenomenon might perhaps be unchanged since the preceding period and lead to a search for sources from that period which could serve as a base for the testing of the hypothesis. This form of hypothesis construction is fundamentally based on a sort of reasoning by analogy which cannot be used to produce valid inferences about factual conditions or circumstances but only to generate working hypotheses. It means that valid inferences or assertions on factual conditions in the Middle Ages, also demographic conditions, can only be based on medieval sources. If no sources from the historical period in question are extant for the topic that one would like to study, the historian has lost. Against this theoretical backcloth, it is possible to discuss Lindanger’s historical line of argument according to demographic considerations:

624 Hatcher 2003: 83-130. See also Loschky and Childers 1993: 85-97. [This subject is now much enlarged on in Benedictow 2012: 13-39]. 625 Biraben 1988: 424-29. See also Benedictow 2004: 250-51. 238 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

Some comments can also be made on the reconstruction of the high medieval population size. Benedictow uses thus for the whole country an estimate of average family size of 4.5 persons shortly before the Black Death. These figures can be correct for Østlandet, but they should have been problematized with respect to Vestlandet [“the West country”]. Here, population size at the end of the high Middle Ages is assumed to have been high in relation to the resources and the divisions of peasant holdings may have reached the limit for livelihoods. In later periods with better sources for the study of how many people were associated with each peasant househol- der, we can observe that when population size reached a certain level, the establishment of new peasant holdings mostly came to an end. In its turn, this entailed an accumulation of people on each farmstead and in each household. Age at marriage increased and children were staying longer by the hearth while the opposite occurred when population size declined. In Jæren, appa- rently around 5 persons lived in each household in the mid-1600s. However, as population size increased during the 1700s, also average family size increased, to over 8 persons. Perhaps, one should have made a reservation in order to take into account that it could have been like that also in the Middle Ages? If this was the case, population size before the plague must have been substantially higher than the 350,000 estimated by Benedictow, and the subsequent population loss even much higher.626

Lindanger moves his data and arguments without reluctance between centuries and historical periods and different social formations. Four centuries separate his data from the advanced 1700s and the Black Death. The second half of the 1700s saw the final phase of the early Modern Period on the way to a social transformation which around 1800 takes on the character of a new historical period and a new social formation, the Modern Period. It is a clear breach of the methodology of history and social sciences to maintain, as Lindanger does, that conditions or circumstances in the eighteenth century should have empirical powers to affect inferences on factual conditions or circumstances in the first half of the fourteenth century based on contemporary medieval source material. As a matter of methodological principle, it also raises the fundamental question of why this type of inference across centuries should stop with demography? Why would it not also be a valid type of inferences with respect to economy, politics, technology, social-class relations, culture and mentality? If this was acceptable historical methodology, one could easily show that high medieval society was identical or similar with eighteenth-century society. And why should this type of inference only be usable for projection of social conditions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onto the Middle Ages? Why would it not as well be allowed to go the other way and make inferences on the social conditions or the social system of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the basis of medieval conditions? Lindanger pretends or presumes that it is legitimate, i.e. methodologically valid, to base assertions on household size on transfer of data over wide spans of time which contain several historical periods or social formations. He does so without raising the question of whether or not structural changes in agriculture, trade, technology,

626 Lindanger 2004: 315-16. On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 239

history of medicine, politics, and social-class relations could have affected the size and social composition of the households and more generally the populations living on the peasant holdings. He refers to household size in the mid-1600s without mentioning the enormous transformations of basic economic structures which had occurred since the early fourteenth century. These transformations were the dynamic basis of the emergence of a new big social class of rural proletarians living on subtenancies or “undersettles”. Huge new industries had become established by the middle of the seventeenth century, forestry and sawmilling with log driving and carrying services, and a substantial mining industry, in addition strong growth of fisheries and fish exports; in the eighteenth century arose a significant Norwegian shipping industry. This economic revolution formed the material basis for the social formation of the early Modern Period and its new social-class system. It was technological developments and change which made this possible, for instance, the water-driven saw mill and new big types of ships with a new system of sails. This formed the basis of the enormous increase in international shipping and trade which characterizes the early Modern Period. This made it possible to sell on international markets tremendous amounts of varied wooden products and much higher amounts of fish products than before, and now also products from the mining industry which was something entirely new. In return, it became possible as early as the mid-1600s to import over one-third of the Norwegian population’s consumption of grain and farina which could feed a correspondingly larger population. This historical context and the analytical premises of methodology and social science have been comprehensively presented in my history of plague in Norway.627 The crucial part of this social and economic transformation is that the production of the new industries and the more intensive use of old resources occurred mainly within or in association with the peasant holdings. This produced the basis for increasing the number of people on them, the farm populations as they will be designated here. Many people could now combine various types of work and production within the confines of the peasant holdings into livelihoods or also, in many cases, combine this with work and production outside them, into composite livelihoods. It was this new production by export-driven industries centred on the peasant holdings which was exported in amounts that could finance the importation of great amounts of corn and farina feeding the big new classes of proletarian workers. In this way, the new basic material conditions caused comprehensive changes or transformations of the patterns of settlement and basic demographic structures including the composition and size of the farm populations. In the Middle Ages, the population of Norway had to secure the necessary access to grain-based products by their own production for

627 Benedictow 2002: 125-63, 169-87, 202-09, 211, 228-31, 233-34, 244, 253-54, 261-67, 282-83, 290-91, 293-95, 315-27, and the scholarly studies referred to in the footnote apparatus. Not included in Chapter 2, above. 240 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

roughly 98 percent of their consumption. The opportunities available in the mid-1600s were generally unavailable in the Middle Ages, which implies (because the number of peasant holdings in operation was about the same) that the average size of the farm population living on the peasant holdings in operation was correspondingly smaller. The questions of household size and its various types of composition are generally so neglected in Norwegian historical research that I have chosen to enlarge on the problems in an Appendix “On Family Size and Household Size, Distribution of the Population on Peasant Holdings, and Population Size in Norway c. 1300-1670” [not included here]. The point of departure is taken in G.A. Ersland’s and H. Sandvik’s views in the new history of Norway from 1999 published by Samlaget. All discussions of household size begin with the simple fact that in order to maintain a stationary population size, as was the case in the decades preceding the Black Death, families must on the average reproduce and raise to adult age 2.1 children. It is also a basic fact that at any point in time, the population’s constituent families would, on average, as recorded by a population census, have performed only two-thirds of their reproduction. Consequently, in a situation with a stationary population size they would, on average, contain only 1.4 children at any time. This must roughly have been the situation in Norway in the decades preceding the Black Death when the population had stopped growing. Technically, in a stationary population the basic family of the simple family household consists of a pair of spouses and 1.4 children, that is 3.4 persons in all. At this point of my discussion I state something on family size and household size which Lindanger ignores but should have commented on:

All assertions that, on average, 6-8 persons lived on Norwegian peasant holdings in the period 1200-1600 are arbitrary. They are arbitrary in the fundamental meaning that they are without basis in the sources and are demographically unexplained, because they do not identify the various social elements which purportedly raised the average from the basic level of 3.4 per- sons.628

This passage is followed by a presentation of the various structural elements which should be added according to adduceable evidence and take average household size up from 3.4 to c. 4.5 persons.629 As one can see, Lindanger does not present sources which can document that the countrywide average of persons living in the households or constituting the farm populations was higher than 4.5 persons. He also refrains from identifying the social elements which should be included in the households or farm populations which would increase their average size above 4.5 persons. He attempts neither to meet these requirements in relation to local conditions nor via his data of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His assertion that it is probable or likely that the households were, on average, larger in Vestlandet at the end of the

628 Benedictow 2002: 88, English translation in Chapter 2.11.3, p. 162. 629 A more exhaustive presentation and discussion is given in Benedictow 1996b: 155-76. On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 241

high Middle Ages remains without empirical support or structural explanation. It is based on fallacious inferences across chronological borders of historical periods and between social formations. It is also based on the methodological fallacy of using an unsubstantiated working hypothesis to support an assertion about factual conditions or some aspect of historical reality. In my 1996 monograph on medieval demography, I have performed a consequence analysis in order to illustrate the untenability of such imaginary constructions. The point of departure is Holmsen’s view based on information given by witnesses about the family on Hoffar in Sigdal (see above) that it contained four children at the time the Black Death arrived and that this was representative of the normal pre-plague number of children in families. This implies that married couples should, on the average, have succeeded in raising 6 children to adult age as a net reproductive outcome. Thus, when pre-plague generations of children reached adult age they would be three times more numerous than the parental generation, and this should also have been normal throughout the high Middle Ages. Norway’s population would have to grow at the same rate. Every parental generation would have tripled the size of the next generation through the number children they succeeded in raising, i.e. in maximum 30 years. This would correspond to a yearly population growth of 3.75% and not, as I have shown, that it actually was in the order of 0.2% (which produces a doubling of population size in the course of the high Middle Ages).630 This means that if two persons in the form of a newly married couple settled in Sigdal in 900 CE and we presume that there was no immigration or emigration from the area (a closed demographic system) and that the population increased at a yearly rate of 3.75% in the 15 generations up to the Black Death, 9 million persons would live on the 135 peasant holdings there on the eve of the Black Death.631 Lindanger’s view that there could have been an average household size of 8 persons in Vestlandet at the time is therefore obviously completely unrealistic. All demographically oriented scholars would immediately understand that this would have to reflect that on the average nearly two households lived on each peasant holding. In other words, a systematic two-family structure or joint-family structure or some other system of multiple households would have been established in Vestlandet or at least parts of Vestlandet at the end of the high Middle Ages (at the latest). This must have been the case in the eighteenth century according to the data which is the basis of Lindanger’s fallacious use of analogy. However, Norwegian agrarian historians have consistently

630 Benedictow 1996c: 180-81; Benedictow 2003: 248-49. 631 Benedictow 1996b: 149-53. The elementary untenable statistical consequences of this alleged average medieval househokd size of 6 persons have, thus, been repeatedly demonstrated. Nonethe- less, for a more recent instance of an arbitrary, irresponsible and grossly misleading assertion of a medieval average household size of 6 persons, see Helle 2013: 63. It is used for similar, but perhaps even more pedagogical demonstration of the inherent absurdity of this statement by consequence analyses above in Chapters 2.11.2 and 2.11.3. 242 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

maintained that the simple family household was the predominant type of household on Norwegian peasant holdings in the period c. 1200-1600, i.e. after the end of slavery and before the development of the system of undersettles or subtenancies (see above).632 This consequence analysis have uncovered that demographic hypotheses on medieval household size without basis in adequate medieval source material imply completely unrealistic outcomes and are basically arbitrary.633 This is also a built-in structure in Lindanger’s description of a purported process of interaction between unexploited resources on peasant land and demographic change in the high Middle Ages. Younger sons left their paternal farmsteads and settled on unoccupied tenancies or cleared their own tenancies until there were not more unused resources which could be taken into cultivation. He writes, in fact: “Here [in Vestlandet], population size at the end of the high Middle Ages is assumed to have been high in relation to the recourses, the divisions of peasant holdings had perhaps reached the lower limit for livelihoods.” According to Lindanger, the consequence of this situation should have been an accumulation of people on the individual peasant holdings, because there were not unused agricultural resources that made it possible to leave the paternal hearth. However, despite what he writes he must, nonetheless, imply that there should not have occurred also an intensive process of division of peasant holdings, which is a thoroughly documented fact by much good research.634 This denial of fact is the basic premise permitting him to imagine that there would be unused resources on the peasant holdings which would make possible the development of a systematic or predominant two-household system, at least on the average. This is self-contradictory, because it can either have been a lot of unused [agricultural] resources in Vestlandet, namely within the social system of peasant holdings (“gardskipnaden”), and that would make it incomprehensible that the process of division of peasant holdings could not continue. Alternatively, there were not any unused resources which could serve as a base for livelihoods on the holdings. This alternative makes it hard to understand what the basis of subsistence was for the people who purportedly should have accumulated on the holdings. If there were not available unused resources suitable for the establishment of more peasant holdings, then the population must nolens volens stop growing. There would be a development towards a stationary population. This development would be mainly caused by increasing difficulties in acquiring the necessary resources

632 Benedictow 1996b: 150-51. 633 See also above, Chapters 2.11.2-2.11.3, and the discussion of Helle’s similarly absurd assertions on household size. 634 Over some decades, publication of new studies has increased the average historical division rate (the general division quotient) of all peasant holdings cleared before the end of the High Middle Ages from 1.5 in ’s original estimate of 1968 to 1.85 and the estimated number of peasant holdings in operation from 51,000 to 64,000 within Norway’s modern territory. Sandnes 1968: 276- 77; Sandnes 1977/1987: 100; Sandnes 1978: 72; Marthinsen 1996: 156-57. On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 243

for livelihoods for more families in the form of tenancies or work opportunities: (1) by increase in mortality due to a big proportion of marginal peasant holdings with critically limited production capacity for meeting bad years in agriculture; (2) by reduced fertility caused by increased age at marriage and increasing proportion of permanently unmarried [celibate] persons in the population. Stationary or also a short- term decrease of population are characteristic of populations which have reached the limit of the number of people which can subsist on the basis of available agricultural resources and technology, the well-known Malthusian population ceiling. A thorough discussion of Lindanger’s views on the development of household size in Vestlandet at the end of the high Middle Ages demonstrates thus that they are arbitrary, untenable and self-contradictory. It is Lindanger’s account of a highly pressured resource situation at the end of the high Middle Ages which agrees with the ordinary and well-argued view by agrarian historians. In the pre-plague period, there were not unused resources for further divisions of holdings or for accumulation of people on the individual peasant holdings. The strong increase in the average number of persons on peasant holdings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to which Lindanger refers is real; however, it is due to the rise of new industries after the Middle Ages. These industries provided the new opportunities for work and livelihoods which allowed the rise of new proletarian social classes of undersettlers or subtenants. On this basis multiple households are established on the peasant holdings which typically are not joint families635 (i.e. co-resident biologically related households) but reflect the rise of new rural proletarian classes and a new social-class division. The social structure on many peasant holdings becomes the new constellation between peasant households and households of labourers. This new social-class division is associated with the ability to exploit hitherto unused or underused parts of the holdings’ resources in interaction with related new opportunities of production and work outside them. This development within the perimeter of the peasant holdings has great consequences for the social composition and demographic structure of the resident populations. As can be seen from Lindanger’s own figures for the parts of Vestlandet to which he relates, the great breakthrough of the new industries came relatively late there compared with other parts of the country. Only this can explain that the average size of farm populations was on the average 5 persons in the mid-1600s, that is well below the countrywide average of 6 persons at the time, while the average size of the farm populations there should have reached an average of over 8 persons in the eighteenth century.636 Under the assumption that the new industries had only made modest growth in the parts of Vestlandet under discussion in the mid-1600s when mean household size

635 Benedictow 1996b: 95-120. 636 Above, pp. 238-41. 244 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

was 5 persons, this indicates that average household size used to be correspondingly smaller. Using retrogressive methodology, a classic technique in Norwegian agrarian history, here in the form of socio-economic analysis related to livelihoods or means of subsistence offered by the new industries, also Lindanger’s line of argument will in fact support an average household size of 4.5 persons under the demographic and economic systems of the Middle Ages. In fact, it is implied that the average was rather somewhat smaller, but that is a problem which must be discussed more thoroughly on the basis of a thorough presentation of the economic structures in the areas under discussion and that must be performed in another context.

3.4.3 Estimation of Population Size and the Mortality Wrought by the Black Death in Norway

Lindanger is occupied by average household size for the legitimate reason that it is one of two crucial elements of the established way of estimating population size in Norway in the Middle Ages. The point of departure of population estimates is the number of peasant holdings on which 95% of the population lived. This makes it possible to perform quite good population estimates if the average size of the farm populations is known. A good estimate of the number of peasant holdings in operation in the decades preceding the arrival of the Black Death has been worked out (see above). This is due to the great efforts of research and development made by representatives of the so-called Norwegian school of agrarian history throughout a long part of the twentieth century, to which Liv Marthinsen made the last important contribution so far in 1996. She concluded that the number of peasant holdings in operation before the Black Death was approx. 64,000 within Norway’s present territory.637 Within the medieval territory it would have been about one-eight (12.5% higher). The question of household size has been somewhat more difficult to handle, because in this case Norwegian medievalists could not build on a developed demographic discipline. It has been usual to use as average household size the estimation of about 6 persons on the farmsteads based on the male censuses of the 1660s.638 In recent years even higher household sizes have been used, without being related to research or sources, as shown in the Appendix [not included here]. However, this implies the transfer of data between historical periods/social formations from the highly developed early Modern Period across the late Middle Ages as a historical period to the end of the high Middle Ages. This is, as pointed out, a methodological fallacy. It is also historically

637 See also Benedictow 2006a: 139 with n. 138, English translation above, Chapter 3.4.2, pp. 235- 36, and n. 619. 638 See the topic’s research history in Benedictow 1996b: 129-54. On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 245

erroneous. In the 1660s, the composition of the farm populations were no longer identical with the individual peasant households which ran the holdings, but was affected by numerous establishments of households of undersettlers or subtenants, a development which appear to have started on the “matriculated”639 peasant holdings around 1620. This development was due to the new industries that had arisen (see above) and to the fact that all attractive peasant holdings deserted by plague had been taken up. In this situation, young people who wished to establish a family were increasingly confronted with the choice between taking up poor or marginal deserted holdings cleared at the end of the high Middle Ages or to take up subtenancies/ undersettles within the territories of the good peasant holdings and form livelihoods by taking into use the opportunities offered by the new industries. In the 1660s, many peasant holdings included, as the male censuses show, two or more households which did not live under the same roof but were distributed on independent houses: the average of 6 persons does not represent household size, but average size of the farm populations. The account of the research history given in my doctoral thesis shows that the agrarian historians, for instance, Steinnes, Holmsen, and Lunden agree that the simple family holding predominated after slavery had been abandoned in the early 1200s, throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages and until the rise of the social class of subtenants in the early 1600s, i.e. roughly in the period 1200-1600. In relation to this period, these scholars evidently hold the view that the concepts of family, household, and farm population can ordinarily be used synonymously in medieval agrarian historiography.640 Assertions of an average household size of 6 persons in a predominant demographic single-family structure would produce the same unreal population growth rates and estimates of population size which have been exemplified above by the demographic consequence analysis of Holmsen’s similar view. If the perspective is expanded from the local society of Sigdal to the nation, it would produce the outcome that Norway’s population size on the eve of the Black Death was around 5.7 billion people. Lindanger’s view of an average family size of 8 persons, also if only in Vestlandet, would produce even more spectacular estimates. In chapter 10 of my monograph on medieval demography, I have shown that it is possible to relate responsibly to the question of average medieval household size on the basis of medieval sources in three different ways.641 All three models are also

639 Nationwide official cadastres were called matricules, which recorded peasant holdings in opera- tion as independent taxable farmsteads. Hence recorded peasant holdings are in Norwegian technical parlance called “matriculated holdings”. See also Chapter 2, Appendix 2. Subtenancies were integral parts of the matriculated peasant holdings and would affect the tax assessment. 640 Benedictow 1996b: 150-52. 641 Benedictow 1996b: 155-72. 246 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

described in my monograph on Norwegian plague history,642 although Lindanger does not mention it: (1) The retrogressive methodology developed by the agrarian historians can be used also for this purpose. In this case, the point of departure will be the known average [farm population size] of the mid-1660s of 6 persons. One must then move backwards in time and make the additions or subtractions indicated by known changes in family- or household structure [on the farmsteads]. Quite soon it will be necessary to make a subtraction of 1 person from the average, or rather slightly more, for the subtenants’ households, in order to take into account that the growth of this social class started around 1620. No new social classes or other categories of social elements have been identified which could substitute or compensate for this subtraction. Especially in the late Middle Ages after the Black Death and far into the sixteenth century there were vacant good peasant holdings everywhere. In the wake of the Black Death, also the relatively few live-in farmhands [field hands or dairy maids] or farmhand households moved out and established themselves as substantial, independent tenant households. Average household size must therefore actually be presumed to have fallen slightly in relation to the previous social conditions also for this reason.643 This point can be tested. According to the Law of the Realm [“Landsloven”], householders were legally responsible not only for the actions of their family members but also for all live-in farm hands (and their families), also responsible for paying amercements on their behalf. Such live-in social elements of the peasant households should be reflected in the registers of amercements [very meticulously kept by the sheriffs, “sysselmenn”, or their representatives, because amercements were almost without exception the sheriff’s income]. My thorough examination of the registers of amercements from the first decades of the sixteenth century (the earliest extant registers) uncovered a minimal incidence of cases where householders paid amercements on behalf of living-in labourers,644 and corroborated empirically the superordinate historical societal analysis. One must also take into account that in a historical perspective, there was substantial population growth in the mid-seventeenth century which would on the average give somewhat larger households than in the decades prior to the Black Death, when population size is assumed as a rule to be stationary. Also this factor will give a small subtraction. The outcome of this application of retrogressive methodology is an average household size of about 4.5 persons at the time before the Black Death. (2) I have analysed Andreas Holmsen’s pioneering study of the maximum high medieval settlement and agrarian production in hundred [in inland

642 Benedictow 2002: 86-87, English translation in Chapter 2.11.3, pp. 159-61. 643 Benedictow 1996b: 172-76. 644 Benedictow 1988: 183-85; Benedictow 1996b: 172-73. On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 247

Østlandet/“East Country”] with the objective of estimating how many people which could live of the normal production result over time. Clearly, the division of peasant holdings in the high Middle Ages and the increasing establishment of inferior cottages and crofts on the outskirts of local society meant that the number of holdings which had at their disposal the material resources for sustaining additional families or households over time diminished radically after the Viking period. This was also the case also in this local society with relatively good agricultural resources. The outcome confirmed the agrarian historians’ general view that peasant holdings in the high Middle Ages predominantly must have been settled and run by nuclear/conjugal families, in more accurate demographic parlance, were run by simple family households. It can readily be shown that of the 225 units of peasant holdings of every size in Eidsvoll at the time, not more than 30 had sufficient agrarian resources to sustain continuously a household in addition to the householder’s own household. There is, of course, no reason to assume that all these peasant holdings actually contained two households at all times. Additional households would usually be associated with the life cycle of peasant families, so that if the material conditions were available, they could engage live-in farmhands [field hands or dairymaids] while the children were young. As they grew up, the children would gradually take over their work roles. More importantly, the multitude of crofts and cottages on the outskirts of local society represented a permanent supply of cheap labour which could be engaged ad hoc in the high seasons of agriculture and other work intensive periods of production on the peasant holdings. This meant that long-term wage costs could be kept at a minimum and householders could easily avoid altogether to become exposed to the risk of paying amercements on behalf of live-in farmhands. If the population on this maximum number of peasant holdings which could potentially contain more than one household is distributed on the total number of peasant holdings and cottages in local society and thus was integrated in average household size, this would occasion only quite a small addition to the estimate of average household size. Average household size on the farmsteads would amount to 4.6 persons for this local society with relatively good agrarian resources. 4.5 persons will be a cautious adaptation to a more realistic assumption of the proportion of the 30 peasant holdings which actually contained two households at any time.645 (3) I made estimates of household size with demographic techniques on skeletal populations excavated in medieval cemeteries in Norway and other Nordic countries with osteologically determined composition of age and gender and supplementary use of life tables. Under the assumption of a predominant one-family structure, this approach produced nearly the same outcome, namely 4.25.646 It is important to take into account that these cemetery populations included inhumations from the late

645 Benedictow 1996b: 163–72. 646 Benedictow 1996b: 155–62. 248 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

Middle Ages and reflect the increased mortality of this period as demonstrated by the dramatic contraction of settlement and corresponding decline in population size. For this reason, also this estimate indicates an average household size of about 4.5 persons before the Black Death. These are the only ways of estimating household size in Norway in the Middle Ages which are based on medieval sources and only these estimates satisfy this fundamental methodological requirement. Only these estimates on household size in Norway in the Middle Ages are scientifically valid because they meet the condition of testability. They are also the only estimates on household size that have a scientific form because the social elements which constitute the households are specified and testable also at this basic level of analysis. Each of these three methods of estimation involves substantial margins of uncertainty. According to usual methodological principles, the close concordance of the outcomes of the estimates produces a significant synergy effect which strengthens their individual trustworthiness and also the level of tenability of the resultant estimate when taken together. The outcome of these estimates is also strengthened by its close similarity to the results of international medieval demography which are, among other things, presented in a short summary in my Europe-wide monograph on the Black Death.647 This is as should be expected, that the medieval social formation produces great similarity of basic social conditions, also with respect to the demographic structures. The fact that Norwegian historians, for instance, Lindanger, Ersland, Sandvik, Rian, and Helle, generally use average household sizes that are completely out of touch with European medieval research without giving specific reasons or arguments, could put Norwegian historical research in a special and quite likely unfavourable light. It is remarkable that these estimates have not been commented on or used during the many years that have elapsed, since they were published. As commented above, it may perhaps be due to the view that demographic competence is not required for relating to medieval demography. One can then do, as Lindanger does, ignore these estimates and use more or less incidental and unhistorical figures from the advanced or late early Modern Period. The subtenants and undersettlers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are given a new imaginary life in the Middle Ages. The availability of scientifically tenable estimates of average household size makes it possible to estimate population size in Norway at the end of the high Middle Ages, because the number of peasant holdings is known and stationary. In this connection, Jørn Sandnes’s pioneering work must be praised. His first estimate of 1968 of around 51,000 peasant holdings [of all sizes and types of possession or ownership] was met with constructive criticism which especially focused on the settlement structures in western Norway and south-western Norway where settlements of village type

647 Benedictow 2004: 269-270, 288-89, 332-33; Dubois 1988a+b: 261-264, 347-353; Klapisch- Zuber 1988: 491. On Household Size, Population Size, and the Mortality Caused by the Black Death 249

[“klyngetun”] had been insufficiently taken into account. This entailed that Sandnes twice increased his estimate, up to 60,000 peasant holdings. In an outstanding article, Liv Marthinsen increased this estimate to 64,000 peasant holdings on the basis of a broad material of data from local histories.648 These estimates relate to the present territory of Norway. In order to comprise the territory of medieval Norway, an addition must be made of about one-eight or 12.5%, in order to compensate for the loss of settlements and population inherent in the territorial cessations to Sweden in the mid-1600s, which gives an estimate of 73,150 peasant holdings. Multiplication of these figures with an average household size of 4.5 persons produces an estimate of the rural population within Norway’s present territory before the Black Death of nearly 290,000 persons, for the territory of Norway at the time of nearly 330,000 persons, which probably constituted around 95% of Norway’s population. Inclusion of the urban population and population elements living outside the settlement structures of peasant society produces estimates of Norway’s pre-Black Death population of about 303,400 and 346,500 respectively, which must be rounded off to 300,000 and 350,000 inhabitants. Only this estimate is completely based on medieval sources, only this estimate has a scientific form and satisfies the condition of testability. Fortunately, there is also an independent way of testing the outcome of these population estimates, namely by applying retrogressive methodology. In the discussion above of the basic economic structures around the mid-1600s it was pointed out that, at the time, it was possible to import on a regular basis over one- third of the Norwegian population’s consumption of corn and farina. In the Middle Ages, the peasant population had to base their supply of corn and farina on their own production and internal barter of products for presumably about 98% of their consumption. Because large-scale consumption of imported grain and farina, high caloric food, did not occur in the Middle Ages, it implies a correspondingly smaller maximum population at the time, more specifically around 1300 or slightly later. After the cession of territories to Sweden in the mid-1600s, the population of Norway was about 440,000 inhabitants, within the territory of the medieval state about 500,000 inhabitants. The significance of the importation of grain as a proportion of the country’s nutritional basis at the time makes it possible to approach the question of the maximum population size without it. Subtraction of the nutritional effects of imported grain indicates an estimate of maximum population size before the Black Death of roughly 330,000 persons within Norway’s modern territory and 375,000 persons within the territory of the medieval state. In addition must be taken into account the nutritional significance of new or more intensive developments of the fishing industries in the early Modern Period, particularly of the herring fisheries, and also the new mining industry, and so on, which will reduce the population estimate by

648 Marthinsen 1996: 157. 250 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

the retrogressive method.649 Furthermore, in the mid-1600s the population (for these reasons) grew quite briskly, while estimates of the maximum population at the end of the high Middle Ages necessarily are produced under the assumption of a stationary population. This means that the pre-plague households contained on the average significantly fewer children, the household size was correspondingly smaller, and that population size was correspondingly lower. Population estimation which takes into account these facts indicates a maximum population before the Black Death of 300,000 persons within Norway’s modern territory and 350,000 persons within Norway’s medieval territory. The similarity of the outcomes of these two independent methods of population estimation is remarkable and provides a significant synergy effect which strengthens the results beyond the factors of uncertainly associated with each of them. This means that we can approach the question of how many people who died in the Black Death in Norway by using a European perspective. If the mortality in the Black Death in Norway was around the same as in the countries and regions of Europe for which we have good data, that is around 60 per cent,650 this is quite near the estimate by Einar Hafliðason, by the author of the Lawman’s Annal, of over two-thirds. This approach implies that 210,000 persons died within the territory of the medieval state, 180,000 within the territory of the modern state. Because the available source material hardly will change, it is, in my view, unlikely that it will ever be possible to produce a significantly better underpinned estimate, although the number of peasant holdings or average household size may be adjusted.

Bibliography

Annal Fragment of Skálholt. 1888/1977. See Annalbrudstykke fra Skálholt. Annalbrudstykke fra Skálholt. 1888/1977. In: Islandske Annaler: 217-2x29. Annals of the Flatey Book. 1888/1977. See Flatøbogens Annaler. Annals of Skálholt. 1888/1977. See Skálholts-Annaler Audoin-Rouzeau, F. og Vigne, J.-D. 1994. “La colonisation de l’Europe par le Rat noir (Rattus rattus)”, Revue de Paléobiologie. 13: 125-145. Benedictow O. J. 1987. “Morbidity in Historical Plague Epidemics”, Population Studies. 41: 401-431. Benedictow O. J. 1988. “Breast Feeding and Sexual Abstinence in Early Medieval Europe and the Importance of Protein-Calorie Malnutrition (Kwashiorkor and Marasmus)”, Scandinavian Journal of History. 13: 167-206. Benedictow O. J. 1992/1993/1996a. Plague in the Late Medieval Nordic Countries. Epidemiological studies. Oslo: Middelalderforlaget. Reprinted 19931996.

649 For this reason alone, I find it very difficult to understand that Ersland can assert that population size was as high as, or higher, before 1349 than in the min-100s, 500,000 within the medieval territory of Nor- way, while it was 440,000 in the 1660s. Ersland 1999: 63. See Appendix: 147-57 [not included here]. 650 Benedictow 2004/2006: 243-384. Bibliography 251

Benedictow O. J. 1996b. The Medieval Demographic System of the Nordic Countries. 2nd edn. Oslo: Middelalderforlaget (M Press) Benedictow O. J. 1996c. “The Demography of the Viking Age and the High Middle Ages in the Nordic Countries”, Scandinavian Journal of History. 21: 151-182. Benedictow O. J. 2002. Svartedauen og senere pestepidemier i Norge. Pestepidemienes historie i Norge 1348-1654 [= The Black Death and Later Plague Epidemics in Norway. The History of Plague Epidemics in Norway, 1348-1654]. Oslo: Unipub. English translation of the first part on the Black Death in Chapter 2. Benedictow O. J. 2003. “Demographic Conditions.” In: The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. Vol. 1: 237-249. Cambridge. Benedictow O. J. 2004. The Black Death 1346-1353. The Complete History. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2nd edn. forthcoming 2016. Benedictow O. J. 2005. “The Black Death. The Greatest Catastrophe Ever”, History Today. 55, (3): 42-49. Benedictow O. J. 2006a. “Svartedauen i Norge: Ankomst, spredning, dødelighet” [= The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality], Collegium Medievale. 19: 83-163. Here, in English translation in Chapter 3. Benedictow O. J. 2006b. “Svartedauen. Europas største massemorder”, Levende Historie. Nr. 1: 46- 53. Benedictow O. J. 2010. What Disease was Plague? On the Controversy over the Microbiological Identity of Plague Epidemics of the Past. Leiden: Brill. Benedictow O. J. 2012. “New Perspective in Medieval Demography. The Medieval Demographic System.” In: Town and Countryside in the Age of the Black Death: 13-39. Benediktsson J. 1959. “Flateyjarannáll.” In: Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder. 4: 412- 413. Biraben J.-N. 1988. “L’hygiène, la maladie, la mort.” In: Histoire de la population Française. Bd. 1: 421-462. Bjørkvik H. 1996. Folketap og sammenbrudd 1350-1520. Aschehougs Norges Historie. Vol. Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co. Bøhm, T. 1999. En demografisk analyse av bondehushold og gårds­be­folk­ningenes størrelse og sammensetning på Østlandet 1520–1660. Postgraduate thesis in History. Department of History, Universitetet of Oslo: Oslo spring 1999. Bull, E. 1922. Kristianias historie, Vol. 1. Oslo: J.W. Cappelens Forlag AS.The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. 2003. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Danielsen R., Dyrvik S., Grønlie T., Helle K., Hovland E. 1991. Grunntrekk i norsk historie fra vikingtid til våre dager. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Desertion and Land Colonization in the Nordic Countries c. 1300-1600. 1981. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. See Sandnes 1981. Diplomatarium Suecanum. 1878-1959. Vol. 6. Stockholm: National Archives of Sweden. Diplomatarium Norvegicum. 1847, 1851, 1855, 1861, 1864, 1874, 2011. Vols. I-III, V-VI, VIII, XXIII. Christiania (= Oslo): P.T. Malling Forlagshandel, and Riksarkivet. DN = Diplomatarium Norvegicum Dubois H. 1988a. “L’essor médiéval.” In: Histoire de la population Française. Bd. 1: 207–266. Dubois H. 1988b “La dépression (XIVe et XVe siècles).” In: Histoire de la population Française. Bd. 1: 313–366. Dyrvik S. 1979. “Jordbruk og folketall 1500-1720.” In: Norsk økonomisk historie 1500-1970: 16-33. Dyrvik S. 1991. “1536-1814”. In: Grunntrekk i norsk historie: 108-181. Ersland G.A. 1999. “Inn i unionen”. In: Norsk Historie 1300-1625. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. Ersland has written the period 1300-1500, H. Sandvik the period 1500-1625, see below. Flatøbogens Annaler. 1888/1977. In: Islandske Annaler: 397-426. 252 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

Gottskalk’s Annals. See Gottskalks Annaler Gottskalks Annaler. 1888/1977. In: Islandske Annaler: 297-378. Grandison K.G. 1885. Bilaga: ”Magnus Erikssons itinerar.” In: Studier i hanseatisk–svensk historia. Vol. 2: 75-121. Hamarkrøniken. 1895. See Om Hammer Hamarkrøniken. 1986. New edn. by E. Pettersen. Øvre Ervik. cf. Pettersen. Hamre L. 1970. “Setesvein.” In: Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, 15: 161-164. Hasund S. 1934. Det norske folks liv og historie gjennem tidene. Tidsrummet 1280 til omkring 1500. Vol. 3. Oslo: H. Aschehough & Co. Hatcher J. 2003. “Understanding the Population History of England 1450-1750”, Past & Present, No. 180: 83-130. Helle K., Dyrvik, S., Hovland E., og Grønlie T. 2013. Grunnbok i norsk historie fra vikingtid til våre dager. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Helle, K. 2013. “Samfunn og rike fra vikingtiden til 1536.” In: Helle, Dyrvik., Hovland, og Grønlie. 2013. Grunnbok i norsk historie: 25-129. Hirst L.F. 1953. The Conquest of Plague. Oxford. Clarendon Pess. Histoire de la population française. 1988. Vol. 1. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Historisk-topografiske Skrifter om Norge og norske Landsdele, forfattede i Norge i det 16de Aarhundrede. 1895. Utg. G. Storm. Det norske historiske Kildeskrift­fond: Christi­ania. Holmsen A. 1939. Eidsvoll bygds historie 1. Oslo. Vol 1. Oslo: Eidsvoll bygdebokkomité. Holmsen A. 1949. Norges historie. 1st repr. Oslo: gyldendal Norsk Forlag. Holmsen A. 1976. Nye studier i gammel historie. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Holmsen A. 1977. Norges historie. 4th repr. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Holmsen A. 1984. Den store manndauen. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Horrox R. 1994. The Black Death. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hufthammer A.K and Walløe L. 2010. “Om utbredelsen av rotter i Norge i Middelalderen og tidlig nytid”, Historisk tidsskrift [Norway], 89: 29-43. Imsen S. and Sandnes J. 1977/1987. Norges historie 4. Avfolkning og Union. 2. utg. 1987. Oslo: J.W. Cappelens Forlag. Innsikt og Utsyn. Festskrift til Jørn Sandnes. 1996. K. Haarstad (ed.). Trondheim: Historisk institutt, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet/ Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Islandske Annaler indtil 1578. 1888. Reprint 1977. G. Storm (ed.). Christiania: Det norske historiske Kildeskriftfond. Karlberg I. and Simonsen Figenschou M. 2008. Rapport: Arkeologisk utgravning. Kulturlag fra middelalder og rensessanse. Bygdøy Kongsgård, Gnr 1, bnr. 1, Oslo kommune. Vol. 1. University of Oslo, Museum of Cultual History. Karlsson G. 1996. “Plague without Rats: the Case of Fifteenth-Century Iceland”, Journal of Medieval History, 22: 263-284. Klapisch-Zuber C. 1988. “La famille médiévale.” In: Histoire de la population Française. Vol. 1: 463- 511. Kolsrud O. 1913. “Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper indtil­ Reformationen.” In: Diplomatarium Norvegicum. Vol. 17, Part 2: 177-360. Kristiania: Diplomatarieommisjonen. Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder. 1956-1978. Vols. 1-22. Oslo: Gyldendal Forlag. Lawman’s Annal, see Lögmanns-annáll Lögmanns-annáll. 1888/1977. In: Islandske Annaler: 231-296. Lindanger B. 2004. “Anmeldelse [Review]” av Benedictow 2002, Heimen, 41: 313-316. Loschky D. og Childers B.D. 1993. “Early English Mortality.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 24: 85-97. Bibliography 253

Marthinsen L. 1996. “Maksimum og minimum. Norsk busetnadshistorie etter DNØ.” In: Innsikt og Utsyn. Festskrift til Jørn Sandnes: 144-182. Marthinsen L. 1997. “Lokalhistorisk søkelys på den nye Noregs-historia. Band 4. Halvard Bjørkvik: Folketap og sammenbrudd 1350-1520”, Heimen 34: 193-202. Monumenta historica Norvegiæ. Latinske Kildeskrifter til Norges Historie i Middel­alderen. 1880. G. Storm (ed.). Etter offentlig foranstaltning: Kristiania. Moseng O.G. 2006. Den flyktige pesten. Vilkårene for epidemier i Norge i seinmiddelalder og tidlig nytid. Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Art. University of . Oslo. Munch P.A. 1862-1863. Det norske Folks Historie. Anden Hovedafdeling. Unionsperioden. Vol. 1. Del 1-2. Christiania: Chra. Tønsbergs Forlag. Nedkvitne A. 1991. Oslo bys historie, Vol. 1. Chapters 6-18: 133-435, 444-454. Norsk Historie 1300-1625. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. See G:E. Ersland and H. Sandvik (authors) Norsk historisk leksikon. 1974. Oslo: J.W. Cappelens Forlag A.S. Norsk økonomisk historie 1500-1970. 1979. Bd. 1. Ståle Dyrvik (ed., and co-author). Bergen: Universitetsforlaget. Naturens liv i ord och bild. 1928. L.A. Jägerskiöld och T. Pehrson (eds.). Vol. 2. Stockholm. Norsk stadnamnleksikon. 1980. J. 2nd edn. Sandnes og O. Stemshaug (eds.). Oslo: Det norske Samlaget. Norsk Historie 1300-1625. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. Ersland has written the period 1300-1500, Sandvik the period 1500-1625. Nybelin O.1928. “Den svarta råttan och den bruna.” In: Naturens liv i ord och bild. Vol. 2: 850-857. Olsen M. 1939. “Stedsnavn”. In: Nordisk Kultur. Vol. 5. M. Olsen (ed.). Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co. Om Hammer. 1895. In: Historisk-topografiske Skrifter om Norge og norske Landsdele: 117–146. See G. Storm. “Fortale”. Pettersen E. 1986. “Innledning”. In: Hamarkrøniken: 9-20. Pettersson S. 2010. Rapport : Arkeologisk undsökning Heierstadstua 2009,: 1-117, with 7 Appendices. See also M. Vretemark, Bilaga [= Appendix] No. 7: 1-31. Pollitzer R. 1954. Plague. Genéve: WHO. Pollitzer R. and Meyer K.F. 1961. “The Ecology of Plague.” In: Studies­ in Disease Ecology.” 433-590. Regesta Norvegica. Oslo 1993 and 1997. Vols. 6-7. Oslo: Riksarkivet. Rian Ø. 1995. Den nye begynnelsen­ 1520–1660. Aschehougs Norges historie. Vo. 5. Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co. RN = Regesta Norvegica Russell J.C. 1958. Late Ancient and Medieval Population. (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol., 48, Part 3, 1958). Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. Sandnes J. 1968. “Garder, bruk og folketall i Norge i høgmiddelalderen,” Historisk tidsskrift, 47: 261-292. Sandnes J. 1980 “Gårds- og andre bustadnavn.” In: Norsk stadnamnleksikon: 28-33. Sandnes J. 1978. “Bosetningsutviklingen ca. 1300–1660.” In: Ødegårdstid i Norge. Det nordiske ødegårdsprosjekts norske undersøkelser: 47‒108. Sandnes J. 1977/1987. “Mannedauen og de overlevende.” In: S. Imsen og J. Sandnes, Norges historie. Vol. 4: 148-312. Sandnes J. 1981. “Settlement Developments in the Late Middle Ages (approx. 1300-1540).” In: Desertion and Land Colonization in the Nordic Countries: 78-114. Sandvik H. 1999. Norsk Historie 1300-1625. Oslo. Ersland has written the period 1300-1500, Sandvik the period 1500-1625. Sars J.E. 1882. “Til Oplysning om Folkemængdens Bevægelse i Norge fra det 13. til det 17. Aarhundrede”, Historisk Tidsskrift, 2nd Series, 3: 341-407. See also subsequent entry. Sars J.E. 1911. “Til Oplysning om Folkemængdens Bevægelse i Norge fra det 13. til det 17. Aarhundrede.” In: Samlede Værker. Vol. 3: 363-429. 254 The Black Death in Norway: Arrival, Spread, Mortality. Discussions with Birger Lindanger ...

Sars J.E. 1911. Samlede Værker. Vol. 3. Kristiania: Gyldendalske boghandel, Nordisk Forlag. Series Archiepiscoporum. 1880. In: Monumenta historica Norvegiæ: 187-192. Skálholts-Annaler. 1888/1977. In: Islandske Annaler: 157-215. Stone D. 2012. “The Black Death and its Immediate Aftermath: Crisis and change in the Fenland Economy, 1346-1353.” In: Town and Countryside in the Age of the Black Death: 213-244. Storm, G. 1888. “Forord.” In: Islandske Annaler indtil 1578: ­I–LXXXIV. Storm G. 1895. “Fortale.” In: Historisk-topografiske Skrifter om Norge og norske Landsdele: 1-41. Comments on Om Hammer: 24-41. Storm, G. 1890a. “Om det gamle Hamar og den gamle ‘Hamars beskrivel­se’ fra 1553”, Historisk tidsskrift [Norway], 3rd Series, 1: 113-140. Storm G. 1890b. “Om de Hamarske Krøniker”, Historisk tidsskrift. 3rd Series, 1: 277-308. Studier i hanseatisk-svensk historia. 1885. Vol. 2. Stockholm: Kungl. Boktryckeriet. Studies in Disease Ecology. 1961. J.M. May (ed.). New York: Hafner Publishing Company. Town and Countryside in the Age of the Black Death. Essays in honour of John Hatcher. M. Bailey and S. Rigby (eds.). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. Vahtola J. 2003. “Population and Settlement.” In: The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. Vol. 1: 559-80. [- Vretemark M. 2010. “Osteologisk analy av djurben från Heierstadstua, Hof kommune i Vestfold Norge”, Rapport. Västergötlands museum: 1-65.] Walløe L. 1982. “Pest og folketall 1350–1750”, Historisk tidsskrift: 1-45. Ødegårdstid i Norge. Det nordiske ødegårdsprosjekts norske undersøkelser. 1978. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. See Sandnes 1978.