There is a good essay on the web on the position,
rights etc of thralls in Viking society
at:http://www.vikinganswerlady.org/ (look under daily
life)
For example IMG, like Viking thralls, Orlanthi thralls are distinguished by haircut and collar.
There is some good material on the 'slavery' in 'The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of the millenium' by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger. Some key points for this discussion may be:
"The purpose of war from the 5th to the 10th centuries
was as much to capture bodies as it was to capture
land.."
This is not about capturing warriors, raiding would try to bring back laborers. I'm certain the Exiles, who have some religious prohibitions on agricultural activity, indule in raiding for thralls to perform their agricultural and domestic labour. The Sambari are probably similar i using thralls for labour. But Warriors are probably ransomed (or sacrificed if cruel or desperate), thanes and nobles are almost certainly ransomed.Where the ransom cannot be paid slavery might be the result.
"But was not the only source of slaves. Anglo-Saxon
law codes cited "slavery" as the penalty for offences"
Though I can't immediately find anything in the Orlanthi law codes of this order, bootless crimes usually involve capital punishment. Perhaps thrall taking tribes have thralldom as an alternative.
"People also surrendered themselves into bondage at
times of famine or distress when they simply could not
provide for their families any more... [it] was a
basic transaction heads for food"
KoDP renders this choice, do you accept destitute outsiders as thralls or cottars.
KoS has this to say about the major sources of slaves:
"Most of the thralls we know about are either debt
slaves, other criminals, and occasionally the
recalcitrant war prisoner."
So the report on the Orlanthi seem to believe that most (I forget is that 45% <g>) thralls are the destitute.
The term thrall is translated as 'unfree servant'. Like any property a thrall is valuable, and sensible owners will care for them. IMO Orlanthi recognise that they are human beings, but they are human beings who do not share in the cooperative ownership of the tula. He is property, and is treated like a cow or alynx only in the sense that those are his/her irghts under the law, has no weregild, and no legally recognised kin. A thrall is dependant. One question is whether an owner is held responsible for their actions, presumably for many infractions, but what about secret murder or rape?
But, the thralls material position is not that much worse than the cottar. Both are a labour pool that works for the land owning classes, both are dependant on that labour relationship for survival and shelter. The dark ages 'free peasant' was free by his ownership of land, those that did not own land, the bondsmen, were not slaves, but not entirely free either.
Lacey and Danziger again "Almost everyone was beholden to someone more powerful than themselves and the men and women who had surrendered themselves into bondage lived in conditions that were little different to those of any other member of the labouring classes."
While the thrall does not share in the tula's wealth, I would allow thralls to own private property that is surplus to their labors for their masters (in the same way that a free man earns private wealth from his labour to the clan).
As for relations with a thrall by the free the seven types of marriage make provision forbed-wife or bed-husband i.e. she/he brings no property which I assume covers a poor cottar marrying a carl, so I would guess that the pragmatic Heortlings regard the situation as a variation of that set-up (without an attendant ceremony but potentially with some increased status for the concubine). If she/he does not belong to you, well that is covered by the laws of property, if you take without permission its theft , does she/he have to consent, I expect the prohibitins on rape to apply. The law still applies to the free man even if the thrall has no status.
I think that made some sense, please excuse any loss of 5 hours of time incomprehensibility.
Ian Cooper
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