david.boatright wrote:
Can anybody make a rough calculation as to the amount of land
> available around a stead?
The Berkshire Doomsday Book entry states:
'If the king sent an army anywhere, one soldier went from five *hides*, each
hide providing four shillings towards his wages and subsistence for two
months.'
Although written later this may show how the Anglo-Saxon fyrd was recruited
and paid for. A hide is an administrative term for the amount of land
considered necessary to support one man and his family. In actuality the
exact size of a hide was not fixed as different terrain and soil types would
affect the amount of produce. In Berkshire a hide was measured as about
forty acres.
The men living in five hides had to club together to equip and pay for one
of their number to go on campaign. A *hundred* is formed by recuiting men
from twenty units of five-hides, giving twenty warriors equiped and supplied
for a summer campaign.
The Vikings used a similar system, one hundred and fifty *carucates* having
an obligation to provide and raise thirty men.
A capitulary of Charlemagne c.807 A.D. state: 'Each freeman who seems to
hold five *mansi* shall likewise come to the army.' A mansi being the
equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon hide.
If we take that sixteen carls and their families live and work a stead, a
stead will have sixteen hides as its cultivated lands. With forty acres per
hide that is 640 acres per stead.
One acre equals 4046.9m2 so a steads holding will be 2590016 square metres
or 1000 square miles. That is one hell of a lot of land. (if my maths is
correct?).
That also means that three warriors from that stead can be sent out on fire season campaigns and raids (1 warrior per five-hides). These wariors will be equiped and supplied to be away from their homelands for the majority of the season. The rest of the carls would fight and protect their lands should a raid or attack happen.
... Aeolia, where the storm-clouds have their home, a place teeming with furious winds from the south. Here Aeolus is king, and in a vast cavern he controls the brawling winds and the roaring storms, keeping them curbed and fettered in their prison. Resentfully they rage from door to door in the mountainside, protesting loudly, while Aeolus sits in his high citadel, sceptre in hand, taming their arrogance and controlling their fury.
Virgil. The Aeneid.
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