2004 : 187 ). Without doubt this structure was strongly influenced by the very regularly
formed Waldhufendörfer, Angerdörfer and Strassendörfer within Frankish and German areas,
which were the result of the standardised measurements of peasant holdings. But such
regulated villages seem only to have existed in an extremely limited quantity during
the Viking Age in Scandinavia. Later on in the medieval period, during the twelfth–
fourteenth centuries, they became more common, but only in the regions that were
totally or partly dominated by the great landowners: the nobility, the Church and the
monasteries (Fallgren 2006 : 171 ff.).
In the rest of Scandinavia the villages seem in general to have had a totally different
and more irregular character, where the farmsteads were placed longer or shorter dis-
tances from each other, totally lacking limitations of the plot or with irregular frames of
the farmstead yards. The farmsteads in these villages were connected with each other
and the common, the grazing area, through cattle paths. The villages with this type of
structure lasted long into modern times, particularly in the regions of Scandinavia
dominated by self-owning peasants (Figure 7. 4 ). The enclosures that still survive from
the Viking Age, or the ones we have found at archaeological excavations, show that the
enclosed area of the farmsteads, the arable land and meadows in these villages had been
separately enclosed. Every farm had one or several irregularly formed enclosures/infields,
which led out directly from the buildings at the farm or the borders that were possibly
around the farm. The enclosures of one farmstead adjoined the enclosures of neighbour-
ing farms, which resulted in the farms usually being separated about 50 – 200 m from
each other, and the settlement was spread out over a large area. Some common enclosures
or subdivided fields seem not to have been in existence before the Middle Ages in
Scandinavia (Fallgren 1993 , 2006 : 87 ff., 171 ff.). There are no indications of the more
regularly formed villages from the Viking Age in southern Jutland having any common
fields or enclosures. On the contrary, every farm seems to have had individual infields
Figure 7. 4 Examples of villages with irregular fields and farms () with irregular yards. This irregular
structure lasted from the Iron Age long into modern times. (A) The village of Enerum 1761 , Öland,
Sweden, (B) The village of Tällberg 1826 , Dalarna, Sweden.
–– Jan-Henrik Fallgren––