Farmyards
“Now, if someone moves away from a land, there are to be three doors standing, even though there were none when they arrived. That is, the living room door and the storage door and the kitchen door.”
Land Tenancy section, chapter 9
The farm and farmyard were the main setting of everyday life for the vast majority of people in the Middle Ages. It was the most important social arena, where one primarily related to family and neighbours. The Gulathing Law states that a farm could consist of several farm units located in the same yard. Designations such as “upper”, “lower”, “inner”, and “outer” found in charters also indicate that the different farmsteads could lay relatively close to each other. In contrast to the Iron Age farmyards with fewer and functionally divided longhouses, the medieval west Norwegian farmyards often had several smaller buildings with specific functions. These were either completely detached or arranged in rows.
Especially from the 17th century onwards, the partition of farms led to the individual farmers’ buildings being scattered throughout the farmyard – the typical west Norwegian cluster farm – where the houses were co-located more by function type than by owner. It is conceivable that freeholders, not least peasants with allodial land, who lived in the same place for generations, had a different relationship to both land and buildings than tenants, who perhaps lived and operated on a farm for a short time.
The Laws of the Land required tenants to keep the buildings in the farmyard in good condition, especially the most important ones: the dwellling, the storehouse, and the kitchen house. The householder was master of his own kingdom, and everyone connected to the farm and household was under his protection – and that of the Laws of the Land. To kill someone in their yard or infield is among the unforgivable crimes listed in the Human Inviobility section.
