What the Giske estate owned and produced

The Giske estate was a tenant estate. The farmers leased the farms and paid their rent in what they produced themselves, and the owner sold it on. The account of 1563, the deed of 1582, the land register of 1642, the report of 1647 and the letters in Diplomatarium Norvegicum show what the estate consisted of: fish from the sea, boards from the fjords, salmon, seals, eggs and game, butter and homespun, and marble for the church on Giske.

The farms, from 40 freehold farms to nearly 200

c. 1300 to 1657

Around 1300 Bjarne Erlingsson of Bjarkøy acquired the Giske estate through his marriage to Margrete Nikolasdatter, the heiress of Giske. The estate then had some 40 freehold farms and scattered land in Sunnmøre and Romsdal, and the historian Knut Helle considers it probably the largest connected estate in the country at the time. Erling Vidkunsson, drottsete (steward of the realm) and owner of Giske and Bjarkøy, bought more land close to Giske: the island of Humla in 1344, land at Mo in Ørskog in 1350 and at Gudøy in 1351 and 1353 (DN 5/171, DN 2/306, DN 1/326, DN 1/338).

The estate was densest on the islands from Ona to Herøy and on the coast inside them. In 1563, 104 properties in Sunnmøre and 50 in Romsdal paid land rent, the fixed yearly rent, and Andreas Holmsen considered it the largest single estate in the country in the 16th century. In 1620 the estate is said to have had 196 farms: 126 in Sunnmøre, 57 in Romsdal and 13 in Nordlandene. When it was sold in 1657, Giske main farm came «med 113 bondegårder på Sunnmøre» (with 113 farms in Sunnmøre). The sources count in different ways, so the figures cannot be compared directly.

At times land in Nordfjord, in Sogn, in Senja and on Shetland also belonged to the estate. The Nordfjord land went to another heir at the division of 1490, and the Senja part was probably absorbed into the crown's estate after 1582.

Sources: Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); SNL, «Bjarne Erlingsson»; Hans Strøm 1766; Lokalhistoriewiki, Giskegodset; Diplomatarium Norvegicum

Fish was the money

1563 and 1642

In Sunnmøre and Romsdal nearly all rent was paid in stockfish. The account of 1563 converts everything into fish: an øre was half a våg, a kyrlag two and a half våger, a hide one våg and a pound of butter half a våg. A våg is about 18 kilos. Sunnmøre gave 309 våger and Romsdal 123, 432 våger in all, roughly 7.8 tonnes of stockfish. In the land register of 1642 the total is about the same, around 460 våger, because land rent was fixed and seldom changed.

The biggest fish farms lay furthest out towards the sea. In 1642 Haram paid 22½ våger, Ulnes 18, Fjørtoft and Myklebust 14½, Sinnes 12, Runde 11, and Sandøy and Smoge in Romsdal 10 each. Haram alone delivered roughly 400 kilos of stockfish a year to Giske. The fjord farms in Norddal, Tafjord and Muldal paid in butter.

In the autumn of 1563 the estate bailiff (gardsfut), the estate's manager on Giske, shipped the fish by jakt (cargo boat) to Bergen. The freight cost 7 daler, and he sold 493 våger at 4 guilders a våg, 1,762 daler in all. Much was settled without money: for two våger of fish he got three oxen, two scythes and two sickles. Late in the 16th century Bergen exported over 4,500 tonnes of stockfish a year. What Giske sold was roughly 0.2 per cent of that.

Sources: Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Digitalarkivet 76953; Helle 2019

The Hansa and the fish

c. 1280 to 1582

The fish from Giske ended up on Bryggen in Bergen. German merchants had settled there in the 1240s, and around 1360 the Hanseatic Kontor was set up. The Hanseatic merchants controlled the grain from the Baltic, and through the grain they also controlled the export of stockfish. In 1563 the estate bailiff sold 493 våger in Bergen. The buyers are not named in the account, but they were probably merchants on Bryggen.

The family wanted a foothold in the town. Bjarne Erlingsson owned his own property in Bergen, Bjarnegarden, and during the blockade by the Hanseatic towns in 1284 to 1285 he helped negotiate a settlement. As commander of Akershus from 1440 at the latest, Sigurd Jonsson carried out the council of the realm's policy of weakening the Hanseatic position. After the Black Death the Germans nevertheless bought up the properties on Bryggen, and by 1522 there were no Norwegian owners left there. The profit from reselling the fish in Europe went to Lübeck.

The sources do not show that the Hansa drained the estate directly. What hit hardest was the Black Death. More than 60 per cent of the farms in the country were abandoned between 1350 and 1500, and around 1500 land rent was down to about a quarter of its level before 1349. Until the 1500s the fishermen were well paid in flour for their stockfish. Later they got less and less grain for the same fish, and that probably hit the tenants harder than the owner. Rent in fish protected the owner, for when prices rose across Europe in the 1500s, the same fish brought in more daler.

Historians disagree about how much harm the Hansa did. In «Hanseatene og Norges nedgang» (The Hanseatic merchants and Norway's decline, 1935) Johan Schreiner gave the Hansa much of the blame for Norway falling behind. Newer research puts more weight on the Black Death and the fall in land rent, and sees the Hansa as the trade network that tied the coast to the markets of Europe.

Sources: SNL, «hansaforbundet», «Norge i senmiddelalderen», «landskyld» and «norsk fiskerihistorie»; Norgeshistorie.no, «Fiske i middelalderen»; Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Schreiner 1935, Hanseatene og Norges nedgang

The fishing stations in the north

1490 to 1611

The Bjarkøy family brought land and fishing stations in the north with them when they inherited Giske. On outer Senja, in Torsken, Gryllefjorden, Mefjorden and Øyfjorden, the ground under some 20 fishing stations belonged to the estate. Anyone who wanted to row out from the station paid landvare, a fee per boat, to the landowner. In 1520 it was 10 «sperrer» of fish per boat in Torsken and Gryllefjord.

Per-Øivind Sandberg, who edited the account of 1563, reckons that the landvare was then worth about four times as much as the land rent from all the estate's farms in Northern Norway. He also thinks the Bjarkøy estate probably gave income from sealing and whaling in the High Middle Ages. In 1582 Gjørvel Fadersdatter deeded the landvare from the four fjords to the king, 21 våger of fish a year. In 1611 the king's bailiff entered the fishing stations as «uncertain» income, because they varied with the fishing. The fish from there was rotskjær, cod split along the back and dried on racks.

Sources: Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Norske Rigs-Registranter bd. 2; Digitalarkivet 77105; Lokalhistoriewiki, Landvare

Sawmills and forest

1330 to 1647

Giske had no forest. The timber came from the fjords. In 1330 the farm Valaberg in Sogn paid three barrels of tar a year to Erling Vidkunsson (DN 1/207), and in 1378 farms are mentioned «med skogene som hører til» (with the forests that belong to them) (DN 1/448).

The water-powered sawmill reached Norway around 1500. In 1563 the sawmill at Solnør in Storfjorden cut 123 tylfter, that is 1,476 boards. The boards were sold for 72 daler to buyers in Trondheim and Copenhagen, and two tylfter went to building the parish church. The land register of 1642 lists between 25 and 30 sawmills under Giske, in Sunnmøre and Romsdal, and about half are marked as abandoned.

The report of October 1647 explains why. Of the 14 sawmills in Romsdal only five had a little forest left, and they could run «3 eller 4 Uger i det höyeste» (three or four weeks at most) in autumn and spring, when there was water in the streams. At the others the forest was «nu mesten gandske udhugget» (now almost entirely cut down). The farmers used the boards mostly to improve their own farms and sold a little to pay their taxes. In less than a hundred years the sawmills went from a trade for the estate owner to the farmers' household needs.

Sources: Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Digitalarkivet 76953; Diplomatarium Norvegicum

Salmon, seals, eggs and game

1354 to 1647

When Erling Vidkunsson gave Giske to his daughter Ingebjørg in 1354, the islets Ekni and Havstein went with it, and also «sæluær ok æguær. ok laxa fiski», seal islands, egg islands and salmon fishing (DN 2/323). The source does not say where the seal and egg islands lay, and no source puts a number on the eggs.

The salmon trap on Festøya gave 6 barrels of salmon in 1563. The same year the bailiff sent 3 barrels of salmon, 1 barrel of seal blubber, 4 barrels of red deer meat and 2 barrels of Bergen fish to the owner in Copenhagen. In 1642 two salmon traps are listed at Festøya, one of them used by Giske farm itself, and in 1647 the trap gave 2 or 3 barrels of salmon «till spisnings fornödenhed», for the household. The red deer meat is the only trace of hunting in the accounts. The sources do not say who hunted, or where.

Salmon also belonged to other parts of the family estate. Sigurd Havtoresson received the salmon fishing in Soknedalen in 1343 (DN 1/284), and Sigurd Jonsson was to deliver five barrels of salmon to Akershus in 1445 (DN 2/766).

Sources: Diplomatarium Norvegicum; Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Digitalarkivet 76953

Grain, livestock and homespun on the main farm

1563

The account of 1563 gives a rare picture of the farming on Giske itself. The farm harvested 28 sold of grain. Ten sold went for seed and one in tithe to the priest, while 37 sold were eaten by the people on the farm, at the sawmill and at the salmon trap. The grain did not stretch, and the bailiff wanted grain from the farms near Giske. For slaughter went 4 old cows, 2 oxen from Ertenøya, 15 sheep and lambs and 5 pigs. They wove 42 ells of white and 14 ells of grey homespun (vadmel) and made a new rya rug, and the farmhands caught 30 våger of fish during the year.

Six farmhands and five women worked on the farm, and all are named. Gutorm Olsen got 3 daler a year, Iver Arnesen, Arne, Anders, Lille Knut and Erik 2 daler each, and each of them also got homespun, linen and a tanned hide. Berit «radzkonne», Anne «bodey», Kjersten, Margrete and Syrre Arnesdatter were paid in cloth and shoes. The bailiff bought bay salt for the fish, barrels, hops, hemp, linen, axes, scythes, sickles, millstones, tar and flax.

The tithe shows what the whole fief harvested. In 1647 the manager gave it as «Korn 80 Tdr., Fiske tiender 35 Woger, Ost tiender 8 Woger» (grain 80 barrels, fish tithe 35 våger, cheese tithe 8 våger), adding that it varied «effter som Wor herre giffuer sin welsignelse» (as Our Lord gives his blessing). The tithe roll of 1641 shows that the biggest grain producers, Sinnes and Haram, were also among the biggest fish farms.

Sources: Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Digitalarkivet 76953

Butter, hides and salt from western Norway and Shetland

1563 to 1642

Gjørvel Fadersdatter also owned the Finne estate, 59 properties on Voss, in Hardanger and in Ryfylke. There the rent was paid in butter and grain, in Hardanger also in salt, and in 1642 in butter, hides, skins, salt and money.

The estate on Shetland belonged under Giske in 1563 and then gave 66 daler a year. A land register of 1582 shows 71 farms with 136 lispund 12½ marks of butter and 1,121½ ells of homespun in land rent. How the estate came to Giske is disputed. The land register of 1642 also lists the leidang, the old naval levy that had become a fixed tax, farm by farm for the Giske farmers.

Sources: Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Norske Rigs-Registranter bd. 2; Digitalarkivet 76953

Marble for the church

c. 1130 to 1170

The church on Giske is built of large, carefully dressed blocks of marble. An isotope study from 2026 points to Magerholm at the head of Borgundfjorden as the probable source of the marble that has been sampled. The sea route from there to Giske is 25 to 30 kilometres.

Roughly 450 to 550 tonnes of rough blocks had to be shipped. With a knarr of the same type as Skuldelev 1, a cargo ship carrying about 20 tonnes, that means 21 to 25 loads for the dressed blocks alone, and a round trip with loading and unloading usually took three to four days. No source says whether the quarry belonged to the estate, or who worked in it. The millstones the farm needed in 1563 were bought.

Sources: Heldal m.fl. 2026; SNL, «Giske kirke»; Christensen 2002; Vikingeskibsmuseet, Ottar

The money, and who got it

1563 to 1647

In 1563 the estate brought in 2,131 daler. Besides the fish came bygsel, the fee for the right to lease a farm, 39 daler from Sunnmøre and 27 from Romsdal. Fines gave 27 daler: one tenant paid 3 daler for moving a house off the estate without permission, and another 10 daler for sowing land he had no right to. The property «Dregenn» in Bergen gave 2 daler, and Shetland 66. After expenses the owner was left with 2,089 daler.

Gjørvel Fadersdatter lived in Scania and was in Norway only once, in 1552. The account was sent to «mynn herre i Københafn» (my lord in Copenhagen), her husband Lage Brahe. Gutorm Olsen, the best-paid farmhand on Giske, got 3 daler. In 1647 the king had no income from Giske fief, because it was «frii forlehnit», granted as a free fief to the treasurer in Copenhagen.

Sources: Sandberg (ed.), Gørvel Fadersdatters regnskap over Giske og Giskegodset 1563 (1986); Digitalarkivet 76953