Timeline · In the government of the realm

Giske passes to Ingebjørg

1354

On 24 January 1354 Erling Vidkunsson, former drottsete and owner of Giske and Bjarkøy, sits at Nes in Romsdal and has a deed of gift written. «At the request of Sir Bjarne, my son, in his last hour, and out of love for Ingebjørg, my daughter», he gives her Giske «whole and undivided as her own for ever».

Nes lay in Romsdal, north-east of Sunnmøre, in the fjord country where there was forest and arable land, far from the treeless islands out by the sea. Giske itself was probably treeless, and an owner on the island had to fetch both building timber and ship timber from the inner fjords. The Gulating Law, the old law of western Norway, said that a new leidang ship (naval levy ship), the ship the farmers provided for the king, should be built on crown land if possible, otherwise in a man's forest. The water-powered sash saw came to Norway around 1500, long after Erling's time. In 1563 the saw at Solnør by Storfjorden east of Ålesund cut 1476 boards for the owner of Giske, sold to buyers in Trondheim and Copenhagen. In 1647 there were 14 saws under Giske in Romsdal, and at most of them the forest was «nu mesten gandske udhugget». Erling had gathered land in Romsdal for many years, and the family's town house lay on Veøy, a small island in Romsdalsfjorden and the old trading and church site in the fjord. It was midwinter, with short days, and on the outer coast the spring cod fishery in Borgundfjorden, between Ålesund and Sula, was due to begin at Candlemas on 2 February. Erling was around 62, and the letter says that he set his seal to it «whole and healthy».

His son Bjarne was dead, and without a son the estate was by law to be divided among the daughters. Erling had several daughters. Gyrid was married to Eiliv Eilivsson of the Naustdal family, and Gyrid's daughter Margrete in 1422 made Sigurd Jonsson, Ingebjørg's grandson through her daughter and later drottsete, her heir. With the deed of gift Erling wanted to keep Giske together in the hands of one of them. In the original language it says that the gift was given at Bjarne's request «j hans yttazsta tima», in his very last hour.

The letter lists what belonged to it: Ekni and Havstein, seal-hunting and egg-gathering grounds, the salmon fishery, the grain, the livestock and the horses, and everything else «small and great» that had belonged to the farm of old and of late. The seal and egg grounds were islets and skerries where seals were caught and eggs gathered. Salmon fishing was carried on from Giske in the centuries that followed. In 1563 the salmon trap on Festøya by Storfjorden gave 6 barrels of salmon, and 3 barrels were sent to the owner in Copenhagen together with a barrel of seal blubber. That is the only quantity of seal blubber given in the sources, and no source puts a figure on the eggs. In 1647 the trap gave two or three barrels for the household. Where the seal and egg grounds lay has not been established, and Ekni and Havstein were probably among them. Giske lived off the sea and the shores as much as off the fields. The accounts from the 1500s and 1600s show that the land rent from the estate was paid almost entirely in stockfish, 432 våger (c. 18 kg each) or about 7.8 tonnes in 1563 and an estimated 460 våger in 1642, while the fjord farms in Norddal and Tafjord, at the head of Storfjorden, paid in butter.

Erling asked King Magnus Eriksson and «all other good men» to support Ingebjørg in the gift if anyone should speak against it, «which I do not believe». Should his sons-in-law or daughters nevertheless not accept it, Ingebjørg was instead to have the quarter gift and the tenth gift of everything he owned. The law gave a man the right freely to give away a quarter and a tenth of his property outside the ordinary inheritance. The letter survives as a certified copy, and on the back a much later hand has written: «Letter that Giske was given as a soul gift».

Ingebjørg was married to Sigurd Havtoresson of Sudreim in Romerike, north-east of Oslo. He and his brother Jon were sons of Havtore Jonsson and Agnes Håkonsdatter, daughter of King Håkon V, and belonged to the king's closest kin. How near the throne they stood is shown by Jon's son Håkon Jonsson, who in 1388 promised Queen Margaret, who then ruled Norway and Denmark, that he laid no claim to the crown of Norway. Jon's descendants became the Swedish family Roos. Sigurd had had a turbulent youth. In 1333 he had stopped the bishop of Hamar on the road, and in 1338 and 1339 he took part in the rebellion against King Magnus and held Akershus, the castle in Oslo. At the truce of Skara in Västergötland in Sweden on 13 February 1339 he promised not to build new castles or take the king's revenues, and to hand over Akershus to a Norwegian-born man. Bishop Håkon in Bergen sent greetings to «maiden Ingebjørg» in a letter to Erling in 1338. In 1342 the two were betrothed, and because they were related in the fourth degree, the pope in Avignon in southern France had to grant a dispensation. The petition says that the parents, kinsmen and other great men had negotiated the marriage to preserve the peace between the parties.

Through Ingebjørg the Sudreim family gained a foothold in western Norway. With her Sigurd got Giske, Bjarkøy and Tjøtta, and he became the largest landowner in the country after the king and the Church. He also got a share in the estate of Herdis Torvaldsdatter, which reached all the way to Shetland. Sigurd became a knight, was lawman, judge of the law province, in Oslo and later commander at Bergenhus, the royal castle in Bergen, where in 1365 and 1366 he was in open conflict with the Hanseatic League, the league of German trading towns. Bergen was by then the town where the German Kontor had its grip on the stockfish, and the owner of Giske held fish that was to be sold there. In 1381 an ordinance restricted «unpropertied farmers» to vessels of four lasts, an estimated 5.6 tonnes. The Hanseatic merchants gave the northerners goods and equipment on credit against the next year's fish, an arrangement known as the nordfarer debt. The fisherman was thus bound to the merchant through the debt and to the landowner through the land rent, which had to be paid whatever the catch. Measured against the flow of fish through Bergen, Giske's share was small. The fish sold from the estate in 1563 made up an estimated 0.2 per cent of the town's exports.

Erling died the following year, in 1355, according to an Icelandic annal. The same year Magnus Eriksson's son Håkon VI became king in Norway. When Ingebjørg died is unclear. Bjørkvik in Norsk biografisk leksikon thinks she probably died in 1370, most likely during a new plague in Oslo, while a case about a ship debt before the lawman in Tønsberg in 1400 is also linked to her. The sources disagree, and it may concern two different women. Through Ingebjørg Giske passed to the Sudreim family, and her daughter Agnes became the mother of Sigurd Jonsson, who later won the inheritance dispute over Giske. In France and England the Hundred Years' War went on.

People: Erling Vidkunsson, Ingebjørg Erlingsdatter

Sources

DN 2/323; DN 6/166; DN 6/145; DN 7/163; DN 8/116; DN 1/683; Gjørvels regnskap 1563 (Sandberg 1986); Digitalarkivet 76953 (rapport om Giske len 1647); Gulatingsloven, utgjerdsbolken; Store norske leksikon (jekt); Helle 2019 (AmS-Skrifter 27); prosjektnotatene «Giskegodset og produksjonen», «Fiske og fiskeredskap» og «Båtbygging, seil og leidang»; Norsk biografisk leksikon (Bjørkvik, «Sigurd Havtoresson»; Helle); prosjektnotatene «Giskebrevene 2», «Giskefolket i arkiver og kilder», «Slektsoversikt» og «Giske: landskap, beliggenhet og jordbruk»; nettsidens sider «Makten i riket» og «Slektsbånd»; prosjektnotatet «Giskefolket i arkiver og kilder» (SBL, Roos).