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THE NORWEGIAN KING's TRIBUTARY LANDS in The CHAPTER TWO THE NORWEGIAN KING’S TRIBUTARY LANDS In the period from the 1170s until 1264, the Norwegian kings estab- lished direct rule over the Faroes, Shetland, Orkney, Iceland, and Greenland, which go together under the term “tributary lands” (skatt- land) in the sources from the 1260s on. We shall now look more closely at how this establishment took place and view it in connection with the development in Norway. Both the change in the status of Orkney and Shetland after 1195 and the establishment of the king’s lordship in Iceland have previously been examined in detail. I will make considerable use of the results of this research in my study, but my primary aim is to focus on the fol- lowing problem. What was the significance of the relationship between the king and the Orkney earls and between the king and the Icelandic chieftains for the establishment of direct royal lordship? In addition to developments in power politics, we shall also examine whether the king established a judicial foundation for direct lordship or if it was exclusively based on the existing overlordship as regards the original tributary lands. But first let us take a closer look at the term “tributary land”. The designation “tributary land” There are several definitions of the Old Norse wordskattland : “Land that pays tax to a foreign prince or realm [. .] especially about the lands that lay outside Norway proper but belonged to the Norwegian Empire”, “Land with an obligation to pay tax to the ruler of another land; about the Norwegian tributary lands”, or “Land obliged to pay tribute to the crown of Norway”, including “all the old outlying Norwegian areas in the west”.1 1 Johan Fritzner, “skattland” in Ordbog over Det gamle norske Sprog (Ob), III, 1954 [Kristiania 1867], p. 294; Ebbe Hertzberg, “skattland”, NgL V, Glossarium, 1895, pp. 562–63; Blom 1970. (Quotations translated from Norwegian by Alan Crozier). 70 chapter two If we discount the corresponding Latin expression insula tributaria in Historia Norwegie, the term skattland first occurs in the written sources in Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar from 1264–65. Here we read that the Norwegian earl Skule Bårdsson received all of the tributary lands as part of his earldom in 1217.2 In other sagas, however, the term is absent.3 Skattland is most frequent in the normative sources starting in the 1270s, when it is used as an umbrella term for the Norse island communities to the west and south-west of Norway which belonged to the king’s realm. Conforming with this, public documents around 1300 refer to “The realm of Norway’s king and his tributary lands”. For the rest of the fourteenth century the word skattland is employed, with few exceptions, only in diplomas regulating trade in the king’s realm.4 The term skattland was probably coined in the thirteenth century in the milieu of the national kings. It was originally used in politico-legal contexts, for in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the kings did not use the word to refer to individual tributary lands. On the other hand, we have examples showing that representatives of the tributary lands used the term about their own lands.5 From the fifteenth cen- tury the king’s person moves more into the background in connection with the tributary lands, which are termed “Norway and her tributary 2 HsH, ch. 22, “[. .] at Skula Jarli uar iattaðr þriðiungr af Noregi ok aullum skat- tlondum.” Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar is dated to 1264–65 (Håkon Håkonssons saga (HsH 1979), Noregs kongesoger vol. 4, transl. and ed. F. Hødnebø and H. Magerøy, Oslo 1979, p. 8). 3 The term is not used in Heimskringla, Sverris saga, BοglungaÍ sοgurÍ , Sturlunga saga, or in the fragment of Magnus Lagabøtes saga (MLs). 4 Magnus Lagabøtes landslov (ML): NgL II, p. 4 (1274) and NgL III, p. 3, n. 13; Byloven: NgL II, p. 4 and NgL III, p. 3; Jónsbók (Jb), ed. Már Jónsson, Reykjavík 2004, p. 91 and H, p. 81. “Skattland” is found, for instance, in the following amendments: NgL III, 53/DI II 176 [1302–1313]; DI II 522 (1348), III 150 (1361), 315 (1383). The term also occurs in many amendments and royal letters about trade from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, e.g. DI III 643; IV 380, 687, V 115. See also DN VII 100 (1323) where the proclamation about the government of the kingdom concerns “framleidis vm allt rikit; Norege oc sua skattlondom”, and DN III 477 (1388), where the issuers of the charter electing Queen Margrete address “ollum monnum ifuir ændalangan Noregh oc þæs skatlandæn”. Interestingly, there is no Latin version of the term in the source material apart from “insula tributaria” in HN. The lands are instead listed separately by name (DI III 643, IV 578). The “tribute” in HN probably refers to the fee paid by a vassal, not to tax (Johnsen 1966; Andersen 1991; Imsen 2000). In the Icelandic annals the term is used in connection with the coronation of King Erik of Pomerania (IA, p. 418 (1391)). In 1495 the term occurs for the first time in a non- dispositive diploma (DI VII 315). In the sixteenth century the Icelanders used the word skattland in petitions to the king (DI VIII 348, 540). 5 DI VIII 348, 540..
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