Grainlands : the landscape of open fields in a European perspective

Abstract

Landscape history is still mainly studied in local or regional projects and within national research traditions. However, an international perspective becomes ever more necessary, not just for scientific reasons, but also in the light of the increasing internationalisation of landscape politics; see for example the European Landscape Convention. Tbe present article will focus on one particular type of landscape: the open fields, the grain-growing landscapes that were the backbone of medieval European agriculture. Tbe landscape of open fields can (or at least could) be found over large parts of Europe in regions with very different legal and organisational structures, soil conditions and agricultural systems. Some of the lengthiest and most thorough discussions in landscape history were on the origin of the open fields. Tbe present article stresses the necessity to treat the different components of open fields (land use, landownership, agrarian techniques) separately. Many of the explanations offered are based on research in limited areas. An international perspective is helpful by putting local developments into a broader perspective. Since the Late Middle Ages, the open field landscapes have moved north-eastwards, following the moving geography of grain cultivation. Whereas open fields gradually disappeared through enclosure in Britain, Scandinavia and other regions, elsewhere, especially in the Eastern Baltic, new open fields were being developed during the sixteenth century. Tbis changing geography of open fields is probably related to changes in the European economy, in which the regional markets for grain gave way to a panEuropean market during the sixteenth century and to a world market in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Each phase offered new opportunities, as well as threats, to the open field regions.