Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

By using pollen analysis, 14C-dating and historical sources, I studied the history of vegetation and land use at an abandoned forest settlement near the Lade summer farms in the parish of Mora, Dalama. The aim of this paper is to investigate the agricultural establishment and development, the effects of this on forest vegetation, and the origin and development of summer farming.

The analysis of pollen in a peat core revealed that a settlement was established at Lade around 1000 AD. Cereal cultivation, hay-making on the mire and extensive forest grazing were intro-duced as a complete agricultural system. Pollen analysis and the presence of ancient fields suggests that cultivation took place on permanent fields. Barley was the main crop, but rye and hops/hemp were also grown at the settlement. Hay production, particularly from sedges, was most likely improved by deliberate flooding of the mire. Deliberate burning of the forest was performed to prepare and maintain good pastures. This type of management changed the forest vegetation: juniper, grasses, sorrels and herbs increased while alder, birch and spruce decreased, and the forest came to be dominated by pine. At the end of the medieval period, an agricultural regression occurred, probably a result of a more general medieval agricultural crisis. After tempo-rary abandonment, agriculture re-established for a few hundred years in this area, and the settle-ment was finally deserted during the 18th or early 19th century. It is also discussed as to whether the abandoned forest settlement was a farm or a summer farm, but no firm conclusion was reached from the palaeoecological evidence.

Lade is mentioned as a small hamlet in the taxation books from the 16th and 17th centuries. It is absent in the register of summer farms from 1663, but from the 1670s and onwards it is recorded as consisting of summer farms. Despite these indications of a transition from a hamlet to an agglomeration of summer farms in 1660s and 1670s, I suggest that Lade has been used as summer farms or as a combination of summer farms and regular farms since the 16th century. In the middle of the 19th century, summer farming was intensive at Lade, due to the importance of animal husbandry. The organisation of ownership and use was complicated; the number of cows, sheep and goats brought to Lade was very large. Half a century later the organisation was more simple and the animals held were reduced to less than half their earlier number. The decrease of numbers of grazing animals, and the fact that this reduction was mainly due to declining sheep and goat numbers, probably had positive effects on forest regeneration and development during the 20th century.