the buildings of the smaller farms amounted to about 200 – 350 m^2. The collected floor
area for the many buildings of the large farms was considerably greater and varied
between about 550 – 1 , 090 m^2. The largest of these magnate farms seem all to belong to
the late Viking Age. To date, the largest Viking Age farms found in Scandinavia are
those excavated in Old Lejre and Tissø on Zealand, Denmark, in Järrestad in Scania,
Sweden, and at Borg in Lofoten, Norway (Hvass 1988 : 86 ff.; Christensen 1999 ;
Jørgensen 2001 ; Ethelberg 2003 : 345 ff.; Herschend and Kaldal Mikkelsen 2003 : 67 ff.;
Söderberg 2005 ).
During the late Roman Iron Age, and the Migration and Merovingian periods, there
were similar differences between different-sized classes of farms as during the Viking
Age. The farms of the aristocrats from these periods could be of the same considerable
size as the Viking Age farms. This has up to now most clearly become visible at the
excavations in the south Scandinavian area, in south-west Norway and on Öland and
Gotland in Sweden (Herschend 1988 , 1993 , 1997 ; Hvass 1988 ; Kaldal Mikkelsen
1999 ; Myhre 2002 ; Ethelberg 2003 ; Fallgren 2006 : 26 ff., 143 ff.). On Öland, where a
very large number of houses and farms from these archaeological periods are still visible
today, one can establish that the floor areas of the existing four different farm sizes varied
between 110 – 834 m^2. The total floor area of the magnate farms varied between 558
and 834 m^2 (Fallgren 1998 : 66 ff.; 2006 : 26 ff., 143 ff.). In comparison with the
great majority of the largest known Viking Age magnate farms, it is actually only the
magnate farm at Tissø, with its total floor area of over 1 , 000 m^2 , that is larger than any
of the magnate farms on Öland from about ad 300 to 700. The fact that we can find
approximately the same classes of farm sizes during the Viking Age as earlier, and that
the majority of the largest farms during the Viking Age were of the same size as during
the three preceding periods, indicates that the social structure in force and the hierarchy
of society was the same during the Viking Age, at least in its main features.
The above-mentioned pit-houses could also be found earlier in the Iron Age on
several farms in southern Scandinavia, but became more common in all of the northern
territory during the Viking Age. Usually there was only one or at most a few on the
farms, but on the largest farms, where particular crafts were practised, as in Lejre and
Tissø on Zealand, in Övra Wannborga on Öland and in Järrestad in Scania, they could
be found in greater numbers. These farms are also distinguished by archaeological
excavation through a considerably greater variety of animal species in the bone waste,
with for example more bone from game than on the ordinary farms (Christensen 1993 ;
Fallgren 1994 ; Jørgensen 2001 ; Söderberg 2005 ).
The groupings of the separate farms whether within villages or separate in the
landscape could be very different within the different Scandinavian regions during the
Viking Age. The same was even true in the way the different buildings within the farms
were grouped in relation to each other and to enclosures or other boundaries of the
farms. In southern Scandinavia, especially in the south of Jutland, the farmhouses often,
but not always, were grouped within very regular-shaped tofts, which were delimited
by dug ditches or wooden enclosures. During the Viking Age these tofts become con-
siderably larger than they had been before in this region. The smaller farms in these
villages had a plot acreage of about 3 , 600 m^2 , while the plot acreage of the larger farms
could amount to 10 , 000 – 15 , 000 m^2. At the end of the Viking Age the tofts in this
region became even bigger and acquired the same proportions as the tofts in the later
regulated villages during the medieval period. In that period the plot acreage of the
–– Jan-Henrik Fallgren––