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Thrall (Old Norse þræll) was the term for a serf or unfree servant in Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age. Thralls were the lowest in the social order and usually provided unskilled labor during the Viking era.[1]
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Thrall is from the Old Norse þræll meaning a person who is in bondage or serfdom. The Old Norse term was loaned into late Old English, as þræl. The corresponding native term in Anglo-Saxon society was þeow or esne.
The term is from a Common Germanic root *þreh- "to run" and the Old Norse term in origin referred to "a runner". Old High German had a cognate, dregil "servant, runner".
The English derivation thraldom is of High Medieval date. The verb to enthrall is of Early Modern origin (metaphorical use from the 1570s, literal use from 1610).[2]
Thralls were the lowest class workers in Scandinavian society. When Christianity arrived in Northern Europe, there was increasing demand for non-Christian slaves, and the Scandinavians had a de facto monopoly on trading them because of geographic access to large non-Christian populations. In 1043 Hallvard Vebjørnsson, the son of a local nobleman in the district of Lier, was killed while trying to defend a thrall woman from men who accused her of theft. The Church strongly approved of his action, recognized him as a martyr, canonized him and venerated him as Saint Hallvard, the Patron Saint of Oslo.[3]
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.[4] If a freedman had no descendants his former master inherited his land and property.[5]
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.[6]
While there are some estimates of as many as thirty slaves per household, most families only owned one or two slaves.[7]