I'm confused by the term "Heortlending": at first I thought this was being used, as distinct from "Heortling", to mean someone from the Hendriki kingdom of Heortland, but if so, where do the (Sartarite) Varmandi fit in? So I don't know if Jeff is taking about Orlanthi-all Orlanthi, or just the Hendriki-ruled lot.
> A temple should have land assigned to it, which is worked by the initiates as
> part of their cult service. [...]
> Again using the Colymar tribe as a
> reference, I believe that the House of the Earth Mother in Ernaldori land
> has around 25-50 hides assigned to it.
This could be true -- an area of the land near Clearwine is marked as "sacred" on one of Greg's maps, so this could well be temple-owned arable land. I could even try to work out how much it amounts to...
I'm not so sure this is the usual pattern, though. I suspect that it's more common for temples to be supported from a more conventional tithe, of grain and other produce farmed by individual steads.
> Lesser animals such as sheep and pigs are usually owned outright by a
> family - IMO many Orlanthi families who raise sheep practise transhumance
> from Winter to Summer.
This would depend very much on local geography; Sartar doesn't look very alpine from published maps. I disagree about sheep being personal property (I don't think "family property" is a legally recognised concept), for the fairly practical reason that they'll usually all be in one dirty great herd (or a small number of herds, at least). Pigs will be personal property rather often, though, I agree.
> Why adopt such a complicated tradition? [cattle raids and]
> The second is that many Northern European cultures
> (the Celts, the later Germans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandanavians) had
> complicated pastoral patronage systems and I think the Orlanthi should too.
I personally would follow G:G, and say that in a "traditionalist" Sartarite clan, the land is all formally odal property. But it is of course the case that most of this is covered by steads; or particular people's rights of use of that land. Only a small portion of the arable land will be in any practical sense "communual". Though much of, say, the pasture may be.
So I basically agree with what Jeff is saying, expect that I would say that there's a hideously-complicated right-of-use situation, rather than a hideously complicated question of ownership.
In more "feudalised" areas of Heortland, odal property may not exist at all. Instead, only private and enfoefed property is recognised. In such clans, what would otherwise be odal property is the chief's personal property (or for land, his fief), which would then be "loaned" (or subenfeudinated) to members of his clan in return for certain duties, in much the way Jeff descibes. Private property would be more common in such a system, since only land can't be, and the chief can hardly personally own ever brass tack. More rural parts of Heortland may have a sort of half-way-house approach, where the chief is a "feudal" vassal of the King, but inside the clan, things are organised as if the land were odal property.
Alex.
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