Hundred (country Subdivision) - Scandinavia

Scandinavia

The term hundare (hundred) was used in Svealand and present-day Finland. Eventually that division was superseded by introducing the härad or Herred, which was the name in the rest of Scandinavia. This word was either derived from Proto-Norse *harja-raiðō (warband) or Proto-Germanic *harja-raiða (war equipment, cf. Wapentake). Similar to skipreide, a part of the coast where the inhabitants were responsible for equipping and manning a war ship.

Hundreds were not organized in Norrland, the northern sparsely populated part of Sweden. In Sweden, a countryside härad was typically divided in a few socken units (parish), where the ecclestial and worldly administrative units often coincided. This began losing its basic significance through the communal reform of 1862 . A härad was originally a subdivision of a landskap (province), but since the government reform of 1634, län ("county") took over all administrative roles of landskap. A härad functioned also as electoral district for one peasant representative during the Riksdag of the Estates (Swedish parliament 1436-1866). The häradsrätt (hundred court) was the court of first instance in the countryside, abolished in 1970 and superseded by tingsrätt.

Today the hundreds serve no administrative role in Sweden, but are occasionally used in expressions, e.g. Sjuhäradsbygden.

It is not entirely clear when hundreds were organised in the western part of Finland. The name of the province of Satakunta, roughly meaning hundred (sata=100), hints at influences from the times before the Northern Crusades, Christianization, and incorporation into Sweden.

As kihlakunta, hundreds remained the fundamental administrative division for the state authorities until 2009. Each was subordinated to a lääni (province/county) and had its own police department, district court and prosecutors. Typically, cities would comprise an urban kihlakunta by themselves, but several rural municipalities would belong to a rural kihlakunta. Following the abolition of the provinces as an administrative unit, the territory for each authority could be demarcated separately, i.e. police districts need not equal court districts in number.