Thrall - Background

Background

Thralls were the lowest-class workers in Scandinavian society. The Scandinavian thralls were Northern Europeans brought into slavery due to debt, children of previously enslaved thralls, or the losers of war. The Thralls living in Northern Europe had no rights and the living conditions were variable depending on the master. The trade of thralls as prizes of plunder was a key part of the Viking economy, but this trade went through a transformation with the coming of Christianity that leaves the thrall trade looking entirely different.

While there are some estimates of as many as thirty slaves per household, most families only owned one or two slaves.

Because the enslavement of "heathens" was sanctioned by the Catholic Church whereas the enslavement of Christians was a sin, when Christianity arrived in Northern Europe, there arose an increasing demand for non-Christian slaves. With the end of the Viking Age around 1100 AD, the thrall population became composed of fewer Christians and more Slavic and Scandinavian pagans. The Catholic Scandinavians had a de facto monopoly on trading thralls because of the large pagan populations that remained in Scandinavia. In 1043 Hallvard Vebjørnsson, the son of a local nobleman in the district of greater Lier, was killed while trying to defend a thrall woman from men who accused her of theft. The Church strongly approved of his action, recognizing him as a martyr and canonizing him as Saint Hallvard, the patron saint of Oslo.

Despite the existence of a caste system, thralls could experience a level of fluidity not seen in other ethnic groups. Thralls could be freed by their masters at any time, be freed in a will, or even buy their own freedom. Once a thrall was freed he became a "freedman"—a member of an intermediary group between slaves and freemen. He still owed allegiance to his former master and would have to vote according to his former master's wishes. It took at least two generations for freedmen to lose the allegiance to their former masters and become full freemen. If a freedman had no descendants his former master inherited his land and property.

While thralls and freedmen did not have much economic or political power in Scandinavia, they were still given a wergeld, or a man's price. There were monetary consequences for unlawfully killing a slave.