Landscape, trade and power in Early-medieval Frisia

Gilles de Langen, J. A. Mol

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Early-medieval Frisia is presented as a rich, long stretched out but in itself coherent, region along the North Sea coast boasting much trading activity. Its landscape between Bruges and Bremen is thought to have been highly maritime, with many local trade settlements having access to the sea. In this paper, we venture to question both its coherency and its maritime character for the period AD 650–850 by adopting a spatial approach. This approach is threefold. First we reconstruct Frisia in the geographical sense. We describe the main types of landscape and define the boundaries of the districts or pagi that together constituted Frisia. Against this background, we then take a look at the supposed trade settlements, to discover that outside the well-known emporia in border positions along major rivers and coasts, no such ever existed. Up to the tenth century, trade transactions that fed the day-to-day economy apparently did not need permanent separate trade centres. This absence of a real hierarchy of settlements strongly suggests that Frisia in its early days was a rural society building its welfare on agricultural production. Our third objective is to get some grip on the political coherency of the Frisian lands and their population groups in the seventh and early eighth century. We do so by focusing on the conditions for the development of large landownership, which are found to have been more favourable in the sandy coastal area of the later Holland than in the clay or terpen districts east of the Vlie. This then gives at the end room to develop a few thoughts on the possible West Frisian or ‘Holland’ power base of the heathen Frisian king Radbod (Redbad) and his predecessor, Aldgisl.
Originele taal-2English
TitelFrisians of the Early Middle Ages
RedacteurenJohn Hines, Nelleke IJssennagger-van der Pluijm
Plaats van productieWoodbridge
UitgeverijBoydell & Brewer
Hoofdstuk4
Pagina's79-136
Aantal pagina's58
ISBN van elektronische versie9781800101326
ISBN van geprinte versie9781783275618
DOI's
StatusPublished - jun.-2021

Publicatie series

NaamStudies in Historical Archaeoethnology
UitgeverijBoydell Press

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