The institution known as leiðangr (Old Norse), leidang (Norwegian), leding, (Danish), ledung (Swedish), expeditio (Latin) or sometimes lething (in English language), was a public levy of free farmers typical for medieval Scandinavians. It was a form of conscription to organise coastal fleets for seasonal excursions and in defence of the realm. In Anglo-Saxon England, a different system was used to achieve similar ends, and was known as the fyrd.
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The leiðangr was established in the medieval era, and not the Viking Age.[1][2] It has been considered the maritime version of the Germanic system of hundreds which was described as early as 98 A.D. by Tacitus as the centeni. Since Tacitus also said the Suiones had a powerful fleet, it might have been based on the leidang. However, since all our sources on the leidang are medieval (the earliest, the Older Law of the Gulating, is 11th century at the absolute earliest, and might well be 12th century) this is highly uncertain. Before the establishment of the leidang, the defence of the realm was probably based on voluntary contribution to a defence-fleet. With the rise of the monarchies, the contribution became a duty.
The leiðangr was a system organising a coastal fleet with the aim of defence, coerced trade, plunderings, and aggressive wars. Normally, the fleet levy was on expeditions for two or three summer months. All free men were obliged to take part in or contribute to the leiðangr. All of the leiðangr was called to arms when invading forces threatened the land. In the expeditions only a fraction of the ships were taking part, but as expeditions often were profitable, many magnates and chieftains tried to join with their people as often as possible.
The lands were divided into districts, ship's crews, "skipreiða" (Old Norse), "skipæn" (Danish) or "roslag" (Swedish). The farmers of the district had to build and equip a rowed sailing ship. The size of the ships was defined as a standardized number of oars, initially forty oars, later the standardized size of 24 was increased. In Norway, there were 279 such districts in 1277, in Denmark two-three times as many. The head of a district was called "styrimaðr" or "styræsmand", steersman, and he functioned as captain of the ship. The smallest unit was the crew of peasants who had to arm and provide for one oarsman ("hafnæ" in Danish, "manngerð" in Old Norse).
According to the Law of Uppland, the hundreds of Uppland provided as many as four ships each, those of Västmanland two ships and those of Roslagen one ship.
The older laws regulating the leiðangr (the Norwegian "Older Law of the Gulating" dates to the 11th or 12th century) require every man to, as a minimum, arm himself with an axe or a sword in addition to spear and shield, and for every rowbench (typically of two men) to have a bow and 24 arrows. Later 12th-13th century changes to this law code list more extensive equipment for the more affluent freemen, with helmet, mail hauberk, shield, spear and sword being what the well-to-do farmer or burgher must bring to war.
In 12th-13th century sources detailing the 11th century, jarls are mentioned as the chieftain of the leiðangr, in the 12th century the bishop could also be head of the fleet levy, although typically nobles led levies in the 12th to 14th centuries.
In parts of the Scandinavian countries the leiðangr evolved to a tax in the 12th century to 13th century, paid by all (free) farmers until the 19th century, although the ship-levy was frequently called out and used in the 13th-15th centuries, with the Norwegian leiðangr fleet going as far as Scotland in the 1260s. The use of the levy-tax as opposed to the use of maritime forces was more prevalent in Denmark and Sweden than Norway, since the Norwegian kingdom always depended heavily on fleet-based forces rather than land-based ones.
In Anglo-Saxon times, defences were based upon the fyrd. It was a militia called up from the districts threatened with attack. Service in the fyrd was usually of short duration and participants were expected to provide their own arms and provisions. The origins of the fyrd can be traced back to at least the seventh century, and it is likely that the obligation of Englishmen to serve in the fyrd dates from before its earliest appearance in written records.
Alfred the Great is credited with the development of the fyrd system together with the building of "burhs", the development of a cavalry force, and the building of a fleet. Each element of the system was meant to remedy defects in the West Saxon military establishment exposed by the Viking invasions. If under the existing system he could not assemble forces quickly enough to intercept mobile Viking raiders, the obvious answer was to have a standing field force. If this entailed transforming the West Saxon fyrd from a sporadic levy of king's men and their retinues into a mounted standing army, so be it. If his kingdom lacked strongpoints to impede the progress of an enemy army, he would build them. If the enemy struck from the sea, he would counter them with his own naval power. Characteristically, all of Alfred's innovations were firmly rooted in traditional West Saxon practice, drawing as they did upon the three so-called ‘common burdens' of bridge work, fortress repair and service on the king's campaigns that all holders of bookland and royal loanland owed the Crown. Where Alfred revealed his genius was in designing the field force and burhs to be parts of a coherent military system. Neither Alfred's reformed fyrd nor his burhs alone would have afforded a sufficient defence against the Vikings; together, however, they robbed the Vikings of their major strategic advantages: surprise and mobility.
The fyrd was used heavily by King Harold in 1066, for example in resisting invasion by Harold Hardrada and William of Normandy.[3]
The historian David Sturdy has cautioned about regarding the fyrd as a precursor to a modern national army composed of all ranks of society, describing it as a "ridiculous fantasy":
The persistent old belief that peasants and small farmers gathered to form a national army or fyrd is a strange delusion dreamt up by antiquarians in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries to justify universal military conscription. [4]
Henry I of England, the Anglo-Norman king who promised at his coronation to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor and who married a Scottish princess with West Saxon royal forbears, called up the fyrd to supplement his feudal levies, as an army of all England, as Orderic Vitalis reports, to counter the abortive invasions of his brother Robert Curthose, both in the summer of 1101 and in autumn 1102.[5]
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