reconstruct a communal focus, with cultic and judicial indications. One example may be
the bygd Ockelbo in the province of Gästrikland in Sweden (Figure 6. 2 ). Here we have a
small late Iron Age (probably Viking Age) bygd, surrounded by deep forests. The name
of the bygd is a compound of a lake name OSw Okle and bo ‘settlement district’. In the
very centre of the bygd, where a land route (an esker) and a watercourse (a river) crosses,
we find the place name Vi, denoting a pagan cult site (cf. German weihe ‘consecration’,
weihen ‘consecrate, make holy’, weihnachten ‘Christmas’, i.e. ‘The Holy Nights’). In this
hamlet a church has also been erected for this parish. It seems more than probable that
this place was the communal gathering place, as well as for social and judicial matters,
for this district.
Also in eastern central Sweden, but with traces in Denmark and Norway, we find
some really interesting place-name milieus, which obviously indicate some political
power in the landscape. I have called these milieus ‘Central Place Complexes’ (Brink
1996 : 238 ), and they seem to be from the Vendel/Merovingian period and the Viking
Age, hence the second half of the first millennium. Normally we find as a focus in these
districts a place name with tuna or husa, probably denoting a king’s or a chieftain’s farm
or ‘manor’. Close by we nearly always find a place name Husby (< Husaby), which was the
name of a farm belonging to the king’s bona regalia during the Middle Ages (Brink
2000 ). The plausible assumption is that the husaby has taken over the administrative
function from the older ‘estate’. Also in the centre of the district we find one or several
place names indicating cultic activities: theophoric names, such as Torsåker ‘the arable
land dedicated to the god Þórr’, Ullevi ‘the cult site dedicated to the god Ullr’, Fröslunda
‘the grove dedicated to the god Freyr’ etc., names containing a cultic element or
obviously associated with cultic activities, Vi, Hov/Hof, Vang, Åker, or sometimes the
actual focus, the ‘estate’, has a theophoric qualifier, as in Ulleråker ‘the arable land
dedicated to the god Ullr’ and Torstuna ‘the “estate” dedicated to or in some way linked
to the god Þórr’. Moreover, in these milieus we nearly always find place names such
as Kar(le)by (< Karlaby), Rinkeby/Rickeby (< Rinkaby), Svenneby (< Sveinaby) or Tegneby
(< Tegnaby), hence with the qualifier in the plural. It has been assumed, with Anglo-
Saxon parallels (ceorl, rinc), that these words, karl, rinker/rekkr, sveinn and þegn, denoted
some warriors who were obviously placed in the district. Finally we very often find one
place name, Smedby (< Smiþa(r)by), obviously denoting one or more blacksmith(s), who
could forge weapons or jewellery, and one Gillberga in these milieus. No one has hitherto
been able to explain the background to this last name, but I would tentatively see this in
the context of a prehistoric guild (gille or gill) institution, hence a kind of social unit, a
communal grouping, of which we know very little, but which could have been similar to
the Icelandic hreppr institution (see Brink 2008 ). (For examples of districts of this kind
see Hellberg 1979 ; Brink 1997 : 418 – 31 ; 1998 : 301 – 22 ; 1999 .)
In the Viking Age we are for the first time faced with administrative districts, in
southern Scandinavia called hærað, around Lake Mälaren in central Sweden called
hundare, and in Norway called fylki. The hærað institution is mentioned in a letter from
1085 and hundare is mentioned on one of the Jarlabanki runestones in Täby (U 211 ),
Sweden, dated to c. 1050. The word fylki is a derivation of the word folk ‘people’,
originally probably ‘the armed men’; hærað is disputed regarding its etymology, but
the first element seems to be the word hær ‘a group of warriors, warband’, and one of the
interpretations of hundare is that it is a compound of hund ‘hundred’ and hær ‘army,
warband’. These administrative districts are thus the Scandinavian equivalents to the
–– Stefan Brink––