Taxes, Tributes and Tributary Lands in the Making of the Scandinavian Kingdoms in the Middle Ages ed. by Steinar Imsen (review)

This volume is the second installment in a proposed four-volume series about “The Realm of Norway and its Dependencies as a Political System c. 1270–1400.” The purpose of the project is to analyze state formation in the kingdom of Norway from a multinational comparative perspective by carefully scrutinizing tributary lands, analogies as well as aberrations. Another important aspiration is to shed light on both the nature and the historical development of the realm of Norway. An important corollary of the project is the rejection of colonial typologies as relevant to the analysis of the relationship between the Norwegian crown and the tributary lands. To cast the project in a wider framework, lands in the Eastern Baltic and in the North are then studied in comparison to the Norwegian system. Apart from a brief Introduction by the editor, Steinar Imsen, there are four articles on the “Old Norwegian taxlands” in the British Isles, by Barbara E. Crawford, Richard Oram, Ian Beuermann, and Brian Smith. The second part, on the “New Norwegian taxlands,” is devoted to the case of Iceland with contributions from Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Helgi Þorláksson, Már Jónsson, and Patricia Pires Boulhosa. The third section of the book deals with Eastern and Southern Scandinavia and the Baltic, which serves as a field of comparison with the Norwegian realm. There are five chapters in this section, by Nils Blomkvist, Marika Mägi, Tryggve Siltberg, Thomas Lindkvist, and Bjørn Poulsen. The final section, which deals with the Scandinavian frontiers, has contributions from Lars Ivar Hansen, Jukka Korpela, and Magne Njåstad. Their articles are devoted to the Sami and their relation with the Norwegian, Swedish, and Russian realms, and also the inland periphery of Jämtland. This chapter goes well past the medieval period and up to the seventeenth century.

The keywords in this volume are the words “tribute” and “tax,” which constitute a single term (skattr) in Old Norse. There is, however, a marked contrast between tributes and taxes, as tributes were a form of external appropriation, usually a symbolic contribution, given as a token of submission, whereas regular taxes were a prerequisite for the running of a certain social and political order, an aspect of state formation. This distinction is emphasized by both Thomas Lindkvist (p. 265) and Lars Ivar Hansen (p. 296) in their articles. The payment of taxes obliged the lord to render different services, such as upholding the peace or guaranteeing the rule of law. According to this definition, taxes were introduced in Norway around 1200, gradually replacing an older system of tribute payment (pp. 14–15). The terminology, however, gets a bit confusing when the annual tithe paid to the Church is classified as a tax (p. 15), since this was a tax that did not go toward the running of the state and had nothing to do with state formation. In fact, the existence of the tithe throughout the medieval period illustrates one of the main weaknesses of the medieval state system: states were not the only institutions with the power to raise taxes or appeal to their subjects’ loyalty.

Another important term is the term “tributary land” (Old Norse skattland), allegedly unique to the realm of Norway, which “expresses official opinion about the Norse lands in the Atlantic” (p. 13). Interestingly, in Norwegian royal charters and laws, the term skattr was only used in connection with outlying areas, such as Iceland, Jämtland, and Finnmark. It seems that in Norway proper, the only taxes were so-called extraordinary taxes, at least until the introduction of the víseyrir in parts of southeastern Norway, and that annual tax was only levied in parts of the country. There was thus a difference between the lands (individual parts of Norway...