The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present

[Erpingham]

Another DNA meta study, this time from Scandinavia.

"Highlights

    •
    British-Irish ancestry has an impact on Scandinavia from the Viking period onward
    •
    Eastern Baltic ancestry is more localized to Gotland and central Sweden
    •
    Modern Scandinavians have less non-local ancestry than Viking Age samples
    •
    The north-south genetic cline is mainly due to differential levels of Uralic ancestry "

I found this study remarkably coy as to how all these British-Irish and Baltic people got to Scandinavia.  While doubtless some arrived via intermarriage in far flung outposts, the large scale Viking slave trade might have had an influence.

[Anton]

Yes, slaves mainly I'd say.  Migration is doing a lot of work there.  Is the concept of "Involuntary Migration" a thing yet?

[Jim Webster]

Yes, slaves mainly I'd say.  Migration is doing a lot of work there.  Is the concept of "Involuntary Migration" a thing yet?

I think the term used for the great Empires of the Middle East who did so much (Assyrians and others) was Deportation. Whether this would include informal movements via the slave trade is another question. We never talk about Slavs and others being deported to Egypt and North Africa, so I suspect we've got three terms.
Migration (you decided on it yourself)
Deportation ( you moved as a result of a government directive)
Slave trade  (you moved as a result of private enterprise against your will)

Actually you also have various schemes of indentured labour which can have aspects of all three, and convicts exported as a judicial sentence.

Jim

[Anton]

That's interesting Jim.

The Sassanians liked to deport whole populations to elsewhere.  I've never been sure if once there said populations were free or not legally speaking.  Not free to leave anyhow. 

You're right about the Slavs, a very important commercial transfer of people over generations.  Heather's very good on it I think.  I wonder if it would show up in Egyptian or Syrian DNA studies?

We also have Slave trade via Governments either directly or by license.

Indenture and transportation -temporary slavery?  Not that those subject to it were well placed to say their time was up.

[Jim Webster]

That's interesting Jim.

The Sassanians liked to deport whole populations to elsewhere.  I've never been sure if once there said populations were free or not legally speaking.  Not free to leave anyhow. 

You're right about the Slavs, a very important commercial transfer of people over generations.  Heather's very good on it I think.  I wonder if it would show up in Egyptian or Syrian DNA studies?

We also have Slave trade via Governments either directly or by license.

Indenture and transportation -temporary slavery?  Not that those subject to it were well placed to say their time was up.

It's interesting, many societies have had different ideas to what 'freedom' and 'slavery' were and they were very much at the ends of a spectrum.
For an Athenian, as a free man and a citizen you were expected to play your part in the city, attend the assembly and vote. The fact that you'd get a minimum wage to do this showed how important it was. But an employee wasn't able to fulfil this duty because he needed the permission of his employer. So Athens had a lot of day workers and slaves did much of the 'factory' work, replacing employees. Whether an Athenian would regard an employee as fully, properly free is moot. Even we use the term 'wage slave'.
Similarly, the Parthian army was described as being composed of slaves by some observers. But a lot of feudal systems impose strict limits on the rights of people, and impose strict duties. So at the bottom some might be serfs, or semi-free. But further up the chain, there would be responsibilities and duties both ways and your superiors would expect you to fulfil them. Further up the chain you might live better, perhaps longer, but was your life any more 'your own' when you needed permission to marry, might have somebody foisted on you, and you could be asked to put your life at risk in war, private war, or other quarrels, none of them particularly your own.

I think our view of the spectrum may be too coloured by the American Civil War and 'Gone with the Wind'. I suspect my 10th century Anglo/Saxon/Norse/Danish ancestors probably saw things differently 

[Erpingham]

I think our view of the spectrum may be too coloured by the American Civil War and 'Gone with the Wind'. I suspect my 10th century Anglo/Saxon/Norse/Danish ancestors probably saw things differently 

While I have no doubt our ancestors saw things differently to ourselves, the fact that the Viking slave trade consisted of seizing people from their homes by force, transporting them to a foreign country and either putting them to work or selling them on to others to do so does seem more like both classical and colonial models of slavery than, say, serfdom or semi-free status.

[Andreas Johansson]

I think our view of the spectrum may be too coloured by the American Civil War and 'Gone with the Wind'. I suspect my 10th century Anglo/Saxon/Norse/Danish ancestors probably saw things differently 

Let me quote my review of Brink's Vikingarnas slavar I read back in 2019:

A study of slavery in Viking Age Scandinavia. This is a rather brave undertaking, as the written sources are either distant in time or space (foreign annals, Icelandi[c] sagas, high medieval legal codes) or brief and cryptic (runic inscriptions).

Anyway, Brink's main conclusion is that Scandinavian society of the era didn't know any simple dichotomy between free and slave, rather collection of different types of dependence, where the dependent of a great man could be the social superior of a humble free man, and thraldom could be a temporary punishment for crime. It was apparently found natural and useful that the semantic range of the Old Norse word sveinn included such to us disparate meanings as "slave, servant, boy, young man, warrior", with connecting notion apparently being that they're all dependent on a master such as the owner, father, or warlord.

This, if accurate, should not be very surprising - knifesharp distinction between free and slave, as in the Antebellum US South, seems to be rather the exception anthropologically speaking.

Think also of the variable fate of PGmc *kneht, which gives us both English knight and German Knecht "farmhand, serf".

While I have no doubt our ancestors saw things differently to ourselves, the fact that the Viking slave trade consisted of seizing people from their homes by force, transporting them to a foreign country and either putting them to work or selling them on to others to do so does seem more like both classical and colonial models of slavery than, say, serfdom or semi-free status.

In terms of slavery and dependence being multifaceted phenomena not necessarily incompatible with high social status, I'd think classical slavery tended to be more like the Viking Age version than the colonial one. Think e.g. of the Greek tendency to consider all subjects of the Persian king his slaves, even though some of them clearly were great men in their own right, or of Roman complaints about slaves and freedmen being set over free men in the early Empire. Or for that matter the very idea that there's such a thing as a freedman, someone who is neither a slave nor wholly free.

[Anton]

If we know what legal rights and responsibilities a person had we can usually determine their status. 

A slave isn't a dependent he or she is a chattel to be retained or traded as suits or on occasion killed as part of funeral rights. 

Some people owned a small number of slaves as a permanent investment.  Others traded large numbers of slaves as an occupation. We are talking about huge numbers of people taken in violence and sold.

Their does seem to a clear requirement in societies of our period for people to know their own status and that of others.  Those enjoying the various degrees of Free status are demarcated from the servile population.  Heather talks about the routine castration of male slaves in the trade.  No society routinely castrated their male free or semi free dependents.  That's a big difference.

[Jim Webster]

If we know what legal rights and responsibilities a person had we can usually determine their status. 

A slave isn't a dependent he or she is a chattel to be retained or traded as suits or on occasion killed as part of funeral rights. 

Some people owned a small number of slaves as a permanent investment.  Others traded large numbers of slaves as an occupation. We are talking about huge numbers of people taken in violence and sold.

Their does seem to a clear requirement in societies of our period for people to know their own status and that of others.  Those enjoying the various degrees of Free status are demarcated from the servile population.  Heather talks about the routine castration of male slaves in the trade.  No society routinely castrated their male free or semi free dependents.  That's a big difference.

We have to be careful when discussing this because different cultures did it differently.
So the right to kill a slave would seem very different to us, to what it would to the Romans with the right of paterfamilias which meant that 'free' sons were effectively on the same level as slaves in some circumstances.

Mind you with castrating free and semi free, it depends on the purpose, it appears that castrati first appeared in Italy in the mid-16th century because musical fashion demanded them. Hardly routine, but it does show an interesting attitude to the 'rights' of the 'free'

[Anton]

We do have to be careful, different folk did different things. 

The Islamic World had its own system.  They wouldn't castrate slaves on religious grounds.  They got the Copts to do it for them or bought them ready maimed.  Post manumission the freed became part of the household/family even if they didn't reside with them.

Consider the children of slaves.  Some remained slaves, others depending upon paternity could be free.  It depended on where you were a slave.

Castration was a potential punishment faced by the free.  A rare one at that. Castrating slaves was merely to render them them docile and so more marketable.  It was an economic consideration not a judicial outcome.

I don't think we should elide the crucial differences between free and unfree.

A Roman father couldn't kill his children once they attained majority.  His slaves were a different matter.

The ferocity of most slave revolts and the penalties for doing so should tell us something.

[aligern]

An awful lot goes back to land rights and inheritance. Only men with testicles could give legally binding evidence. In societies in which the right to land was not guaranteed by bits of paper, but by the elders , or a jury recalling who owned or donated what,nthe right to give evidence was important. Thus castration would disbar a slave from from ownership.
Roy