This is a paper I have to deliver tomorrow for my studies. It is about cities in Scandinavia. I would appreciate some opinions, as I do not know much about the subject.
The composition of the town plots in medieval Scandinavia and the origins of houses with the gable facade and Aristocratic town house
In this article a short description of changing forms of dwelling of city inhabitants will be described. The focus will be placed on a changing position of the “main” living house on the plot, and explanation of changes in ownership of the city plot will be proposed. Other problems, such as affiliation of the building materials to the status of its inhabitants will be also addressed. The problem of the origins of two types of the residence known from the late medieval urban environment will be addressed. The explanation presented will be however very focused and narrow, and some of the most obvious factors like foreign influence for example, will be omitted. The reason for this not very detailed approach is the limited amount of time and space that could have been used in creation of this paper.
At first the subject of research must be defined – we must determine what is a city house. The concept, even though it appears to be quite self explainable, is actually more complicated matter. We should try to move our research beyond the plain analysis of form in the pure technical sense, and try to push ourselves to more modern approach in which the function and symbolic meaning would be included in the research. In Ordering The World: Perceptions Of Architecture, Space And Time C. Richards and M. Pearson (1997, 6) observed that nowadays house has similar meaning to majority of people as home – a place with more familiar and warm connotations. Analysis of houses of past societies must be completely detached from this kind of concepts. We cannot extrapolate our feelings towards our modern living space on members of past societies. We must also remember that this kind of feelings are strongly subjective and cannot be studied by archaeology.
Instead we can analyze architecture as a material representation of the social order (Pearson, Richards 1997, 5), a very convoluted and mysterious symbol, that can never be deciphered completely as we will never be able to understand the past societies sufficiently. In this entangled discourse there is a problem with differentiating between the agent and the structure, as some scholars are convinced that the house is the image of its inhabitants (Thomasson 1997, 699), others are convinced that people living in the house are shaping it, but at the same time are shaped by the space in which they are living (Pearson, Richards 1997, 5). The approach used in this work will be much more simplistic, but closer to the second approach. People generally shape their surroundings according to their needs and the possibilities they have. This change is mostly influenced by the norms taken from their culture which are expressed and transferred to them, among other means by architecture. It is a kind of feedback, in which the agent cannot be differentiated from the structure, however its actions can bring some change in it in the long term perspective.
One of the most important problems seems to be the location of the main living building on a town plot, which will be treated as an arena for display of power between the plot owner and the burgher/craftsman. To simplify the discussion, a town house will be defined as a building with mainly residential functions located on a defined plot in a town.
A crucial part of making this rather broad term is a difficult task of defining the medieval town. Here, the town will be treated as an outcome of process of urbanization which can be defined according to Thomasson as a concentration and materialization of autocratic and allocative resources in the special places. As autocratic resources mentions ideological, legislative, administrative and military functions, as do allocative trade, craft production and other activities than farming (Thomasson 2008, 278). However, urbanisation defined as that kind of process would also produce sites that are not cities in the modern, common understanding of the word, such as Uppåkra. To make the definition more accurate a criteria of regular and well divided buildings and development must be added (Bitsch Christiansen 2004, 15). However this still wont be a definition that fits every site, as concepts of planned architecture may vary in different parts of the world (Smith 2007, 3-4). It is, however, sufficient for the purpose of this paper.
To understand changes that took place on a micro scale on the plot in danish medieval city we must first analyze the development, and changes of status of the towns themselves. They can be divided according to Andrén in three phases, in the first phase form around 1000 to 1200 AD cities can be seen as a base of kings power in the region, a tool to control the local population in the struggle with older pre-christian structure. In the second phase, dating to 1200 to 1350 AD king shared his power over the cities with aristocracy by granting them profits from the town plots and whole towns. During that time the magnates used city based craftsman to convert products obtained on the countryside to more valuable goods. In the third phase, dating to 1350 – 1550 AD, the character of the relation between the overlords and burgher/craftsmen changed. The towns were mostly places in which products of the countryside were traded, and this trade was controlled by burghers. The magnates and higher strata of society made profit out of this relation by placing tariffs and duties on the city dwellers (Thomasson 1997, 701). Other way of perceiving the same process is adapting the ideas of consuming city and commercial city. The transformation of danish towns from places where most of the goods were just consumed to places were intensive trade and production occurred was a process that took place from around 10 to 13 c. (Bitsch Christiansen 2004, 22). The phases in the process can be seen as more or less arbitrary, the most important is the outcome – a new group of people – burghers, that was gaining power as an outcome of change of role of the cities in the middle ages. This process has been however stopped in the Renaissance, when the introduction of mercantilism and absolutism decreased the role of cities in the foreign trade, and strengthened the royal superiority over burghers (Thomasson 1997, 701).
The perspective outlined above, focusing on emancipation of burghers as a driving force of changes in the domestic architecture of cities is a main reasoning behind this paper, however it is also a flawed perspective. Burgherdom is presented here as a strata in feudal system (Thomassen 1997, 701). This doesn’t correspond with the reality of life in the medieval city, in which different social groups existed. There were more wealthy burghers, that were active participants of the city council but also a large number of poor people lived in the cities. (Bitsch Christiansen 2004, 35). Information about how different was the income of burghers can be found in tax list form Lübeck in Germany from around 1460 AD. It is believed that around 22000 – 24000 people inhabited the town that point living in around 5500 households. Around 60% of total income form tax was payed by around 850 wealthiest citizens. In the same document around 3000 to 3500 people had been described as living in the back buildings or basements and shads, and not paying any tax at all. This poorest class of people was around 14% of the city residents (Selch Jensen 2004, 309). This large group of people is completely excluded from archaeological record and investigation. Their houses, build form perishable materials, probably in the parts of the cities that were later rebuilt or treated as an area for new development, are gone. However there are some ways in which building archaeologists are trying to investigate social differences among the burghers.
The most of the houses in the cities, especially in the earlier phases of their development were made of wood. This is well confirmed for different cites, as for example Lund (Carelli 2001, 660), Uppsala (Anund 2001, 635), Oslo (Molaug 2001, 769), Bergen (Reimers 2001, 783). Wood was a material that could have been obtained locally, and also was a main building resource during the viking age, however it had some disadvantages, it was flammable and not as durable as bricks and stone. The homogeneous town substance of pre 13th c. cities is a basis for assumption that until that age people living in the cities were more or less unified group, and that the first stone houses are the sign of emancipation of some of their representatives and growing inequality among the classes (Thomasson 1997, 722). For example it is known that in Stockholm, the now called gammla stan was mostly inhabited by wealthy merchants and goldsmiths – in this area there were many stone houses built. However the eastern area of the town did not produced any remains of stone houses, and from historical account it is known that it was mainly inhabited by dockers and fisherman (Söderlund 2001, 703). Generally the stone buildings are perceived by archaeologists as monumental and connected to the elite, as first buildings in which these kinds of material was used were churches and castles. Notwithstanding I would argue that the lack of the stone buildings does not mean that the elite and aristocracy wasn’t present in the cities during the earliest phases of their existence.
One ofthe most crucial points of the discussion is the question – who owned the city, and how it was created? Generally in Scandinavian archaeology there are two main theories – an evolutionist theory and a genitive theory. In light of the recent studies, it seems that cities must have been started by some sort of authority, most often the king, proving the genitive theory more accurate. However, for the action of establishing a city the monarch needed some support. The act of founding city by a king is known from two Icelandic king sagas. In Saga of Olav Trygvasson there is a fragment that describes the beginnings of Trondheim, in which is written that king gave the plots to the people. In the saga about the other King - st. Olav, it is written that after the Trondheim had been burned down he had it rebuilt but again, the king is responsible for the division of the land and he gives it to owners (Tesch 2001, 734-735). To assure cooperation with local nobleman he needed to share his Kongelev [1], to which the cities in the first phase of urbanization belonged, with them. Noblemen, for example in Bergen (Hansen 2008, 15- 39) or Lund were given plots in the established city area to ensure the development of the town. The plots were pieces of land, roughly rectangular in shape, that were sometimes marked by ditch or fences to ensure that the boundary is clear, they were located by a right angle to the street. The understanding of function of buildings on those plots is a crucial subject to comprehend the emergence of the town house located just by the street.
Joakim Thomasson in article entitled Private life made public. One Aspect of the emergence of the Burghers in the medieval Denmark describes the functional division of houses on the early medieval town plot. In his idea the building located just by the street was used as an workshop or a shop, then followed a house used as a main dwelling for the family, and then the rest of the plot was empty. He describes the early living house as consisting of a one room that had at the same time the function of kitchen, a living room and a bedroom for the whole household. Following British researchers he interprets this kind of disposition as an expression of collectiveness and some sort of equality of the master and the servants. He sees the later clearer indication of dwelling houses right by the street as an result of merging of the living quarters from the back of the plot with the workshop (Thomasson 1997, 705). A very similar interpretation of the town yards in Lund is put forward by Careli – he claims that the house in front of the plot was used for trade and handicraft activities, and the house of the back was used for living (2001, 664). Those interpretations can be challenged on the ground of the research done in Trondheim, Sigtuna and Oslo.
In Sigtuna similar plot arrangement was discovered at the site of Trädgårdsmästaren in its two phases, one form 11 c., and a second form the early 12 c. to beginning of 13 c. In the zone I, adjacent to the street, workshops and shops are located, in the zone II right behind the first one small multipurpose buildings for storage have been found. Then in the zone III, the main dwelling building has been located, that consisted of one room serving the functions of living room kitchen and bedroom, with a small corner fire place and with small wooden benches along the walls. In the zone IV other dwelling building probably of the serving functions of the hall used for festive occasions has been located (Tesch 2001, 731). On a basis of the interpretation of the building in the zone IV as a festive hall it is argued that it is a trace of ownership of the plot by the ruling elite settled in the country side, that just delivered goods for the craftsman that were working on “theirs” plot (Tesch 2001, 732). However a place where would they live during their visits in the town is not indicated by the researchers.
Almost completely the same functional division of areas in the town plot is proposed for plots known from medieval Oslo. It is argued that for fully developed town yard during the 13th c. three functional areas can be distinguished. Area one was a place near the street where one or two stalls or workshops were built. In the area further in the back part of the yard a dwelling house called stue was located – the houses of this type had usually two rooms, in one of them there was a fire place in the corner. In the third area it is unclear what exactly was located in Oslo, but probably it could be another dwelling house or a storage room (Molaug 2001, 778-779). The general concept of later development of the houses put forward by the researchers is similar to Thomassen’s, that the later form of dwelling house that was placed by the street was achieved by combing the functions of zones I and II (Molaug 2001, 778).
To find an alternative explanation for the development of the dwelling houses located by the street we must re-interpret the finds form Oslo and Sigtuna, using the functional interpretations of the building on the plot put forward by Axel Christophersen. By comparing the access diagrams made for longhouse buildings built in the later part of the viking age and the stue buildings found in Oslo and Trondheim, he arrived to conclusion that they express the same attitude towards space and function – they represent the same social practice. The multifunctional room that was a bedroom, a kitchen and a living room is present in both type of buildings. Moreover Christophersen argues that the placing of the building in the middle of the plot, with the side entrance is significant for stressing the independence of the commercial activities that have taken place on the front part of the plot. He is convinced that this kind of buildings belonged to social elite with another main dwelling in the country side (Christophersen 2001, 55-61). The attribution of the building from the zone II (or III in case of Sigtuna) to the plot owners rises however a new problem. Where did the craftsmen and the merchants that inhabited the city live? The solution to this problem is quite simple, but hard to prove on archaeological basis. Christophersen is convinced that the houses build in the front of the plot might had had a second floor and on this storey the craftsmen could have lived (Christophersen 2001, 58-61). The residentail functions of that kind of building would be hard to prove, as the fireplace would be located at the upper floor. There is however one historical source that might speak in favor of this interpretation. In one of the Icelandic sagas, describing an attack on Bergen, that took place in 1155, mentions people defending themselves by trowing rocks from their fireplaces from the galleries attached to their at least two floored buildings (Reimers 2001, 790). In light of this interpretation, the development of the house with its gable at a right angle to the street, in the front part of the plot could be seen as an emanation of rising wealth of city craftsman and traders, who could afford to build more complex houses, as their economical and political situation has changed during the second phase of development of cities in the northern Europe.
This kind of evidence can be perceived upon as speculative, however there is more evidence that can tie the position in front of the plot with the new class of burghers. Thomasson, in his article describes also buildings interpreted as Aristocratic town houses. As a characteristic feature of this buildings he mentions their position - “a little way back from the street”. The oldest examples of this kind of buildings can be dated to the 14 c. As an example of this kind of residence a house discovered at von Conow quarter in Malmo could be listed (Thomasson 1997, 710). There, at the site on which in previous phases from the 13 th c. houses simply built with oak planks and with gable facing the street were located, in the layers dated to the 14 c. an interesting arrangement of houses was discovered. It consisted of two houses of timber frame construction, built to face the street, around 13 m long, and 6 m width and a brick house, measuring around 12 x 6 m located deeper in the plot. One of the timber framed houses was interpreted as consisting of two living rooms and a store room, and a second as a kitchen building with a workshop for glass-working. The brick house is interpreted as a main living quarter, an it is reconstructed as a two storeys high building with a small entrance hall, external staircase and a vaulted storage room/basement (Reisnert 2001, 678-681). On the example of the von Conow site it can be seen that there were internal division of status on the same plot, that might have been occupied at the same time by its formal owners living in the brick house in its middle part, and the craftsmen dependent form them, living in the front part of the area near the street in a wooden gable facade houses.
As an example of similar high status building located in the city, another building should be mentioned - the located at Lund Krognoshuset. During the middle ages it was probably a main building on a plot that was owned by Krognos family, one of the wealthiest noble families in Denmark (Pedersen 1998, 5). The house, which, despite many renovations and alterations [2] is still standing today, was probably a main living quarter on the property at least to the 14 c. when another, bigger brick house was built on the plot. The area belonging to the town manor generally meets Thomasson’s criteria of Aristocratic town house. As a distinctive features he mentions a square shape of the plot, the presence of surrounding of the building, and the location of the main house in the middle of the yard (Thomasson 1997, 710). Only this last trait is missing, as the Krognoshuset is located in a small distance from the place in which the course of the medieval street is presently reconstructed. However It must be stressed, that it is not located right by it [3]. Also, there is a possiblity that this street was not fully functional during the erection of the building, and was rather a pathway to it (Johannson et al 2001, 49).
To sum up Thomason’s idea about the development of a house with a gable facing the street with a right angel, he is convinced that it was caused by merging of function of the building from the zone I and II, as he believes that the plot was built up from many single function constructions. It seems however that he makes a mistake, and treat the household as an almost familiar unit, similar to the nuclear family. A single living house is an indicator of some sort of equality among the people living on one plot. A traces of only one fireplace and dwelling house indicate that a single “family” occupied the plot. These are all concepts connected to understanding the early house buildings in the “home” category.
We should dismiss this kind of thinking as an 19 c. relict and start to think about the household as an economic unit not necessary bounded by familiar ties. In this case there is a very probable eventuality that two dwellings were located on one plot. One for the owners, and another for the craftsman family actually living in the city. In this light we should see development of the burgher house as more evolutionary expansion of the multifunctional building (dwelling functions and trade/craft production) in the front part of the plot. Coincidentally the gable faced houses, located in the font part of the plot, and the houses described as aristocratic houses with the house located further from the street both appear for the first time in Denmark in the 14 c (Thomasson 1997, 707-710).
The explanation put forward by Thomasson for the appearance of the aristocratic buildings is that the nobility moved to towns as there were more money to be made from trade and fishing than from farming (1997, 710-711).
I would argue that nobility did not have to move to the towns, they were already there from the beginning, as towns had not only economical but also central functions connected to power and law. The increasing importance of towns meant more money for the traders and craftsmen, but also more money for their overlords. They were able to have each plot for themselves, on which they built their houses, according to different social norms and orders. The nobleman house was concentrated on privacy, located on a bigger plot[4], and far from the busy and noisy street of medieval town. The street which however was an important point for a trader or a craftsman, who located his house in the area where it has always been, right by it, but in new monumental form, that showed his growing rights and importance.
References:
Andrén, Anders (1987). Medeltida tegelhus i Lund - en kort översikt. Hikuin 13. s 278-282
Anund, Johan (2001). The Curses and Possibilities of Wooden Architecture: Domestic buildings in Medieval Uppsala. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III. s 635-658
Bitsch Christiansen, Søren (2004). De danske middelalderbyers fremkomst, udvikling og udforskning - et bud på nogle hovedlinjer. Middelalderbyen. s 13-61
Carelli, Peter (2001). Building practices and housing culture in Medieval Lund: A Brief Survey. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III. s 659-676
Christophersen, Axel (2001). Bóndi, bæjarmađr, burghere. Om folk, hus og fremveksten av urban identitet i norske byer ca 1000-1700. Från Stad Till Land. En medeltidsarkeologiska resa Tillägnad Hans Andersson. s. 51-62
Hansen, Gitte (2008), Kongen i byfolk i det eldeste Bergen - byoppkomst i et aktørperspektive. De første 200 årene : nytt blikk på 27 skandinaviske middelalderbyer. s 15-39
Johansson, Conny, Goksör, Sebastian, Larsson, Stefan & Lundberg, Anders (2001). Mårtenstorget i Lund: arkeologisk undersökning 1997 : en kulturhistorisk redogörelse. Lund: Kulturen i Lund, enheten för kulturhistoria och kulturmiljö
Molaug, Petter (2001). Medieval house building in Oslo. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III. s 765-782
Parker Pearson, Michael & Richards, Colin (1997). Ordering The World: Perceptions Of Architecture, Space And Time. Architecture and Order. s 1-33
Pedersen, Birthe (1998). Krognoshuset - en familjesaga utifrån ett murverk? C-uppsats i medeltidsarkeologi. Arkeologiska institutionen. Lunds Universitet.
Reimers, Egil (2001). Medieval Domestic Architecture in Bergen: A Sample of the Archaeological Material. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III. s 783-810
Reisnert, Anders (2001). Houses and Yards in Malmö During the Medieval Period and Renaissance. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III. s 677-702
Selch Jensen, Carsten (2004). Byerne og de fattige - den internationale baggrund for den danske udvikling. Middelalderbyen. s 295-316
Smith, Michael (2007). Form and Meaning in the earliest cities: a New approach to ancient urban planing. Jurnal of planning history vol. 6 No. 1. s 3-47
Söderlund, Kerstin (2001). Domestic Architecture in Stockholm. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III. s 703-721
Tesch, Sten (2001). Houses, Town Yards and Town Planning in Late Viking age and Medieval Sigtuna. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäologie im Hanseraum III. s 723-742
Thomasson, Joakim (2008). S'Villanorvm de Malmøghae: landskap, urbanitet, aktörer och Malmö. De første 200 årene : nytt blikk på 27 skandinaviske middelalderbyer. s. 277-302
Thomasson, Joakim (1997). Private life made public. One Aspect of the emergence of the Burghers in the medieval Danmark. Visions of the past. Trends and Traditions in Swedish medieval archaeology. s 697-728
[1] This is valid for both understandings of Kongelev (Bitsch Christiansen 2004, 23), it could either be land, or right to incomes form rent for plots in the cities or taxes.
[2] The great number of events left a lot of marks on the outer surface of the building, as I had a chance to see by myself by participation in the pre-investigations of its northern facade.
[3] Andrén, however, interprets the location of the brick buildings in Lund in the places near the street intersections as an display of power by the local elite - mostly landlords with sources of income located also outside the cities limits (1987, 280-282)
[4] Thomasson mentions square plots as indicators of a dwelling of elite (1997, 710). As plots were generally rectangular it must be an effect of buying two or more and combining them.
