Salmon Wars: Medieval through Early Modern Land Tenure and Social Change in Northern Conflict Landscapes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Property Regimes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Into the earlier, local common pool resource systems of Iron Age and early medieval Scandinavia, the increasingly incompatible taxation and land tenure concepts of developing state governments were imposed on Arctic and peri-Arctic populations. This paper examines the archaeological and historic record of conflicts, disputes, and uprisings that unfolded around fishing rights along rivers and coasts, as royalty, aristocrats, priests, and commoners of both Indigenous and Nordic extraction squabbled and clashed over control of salmon and salmon-fishing infrastructure. The Swedish tradition, in which legal negotiation between peasants and the state was the norm, persisted through periods of extreme autocracy and militarism as well as eras in which property and other rights were more equitably apportioned.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Property Regimes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38556.0