| Abstract: | It has been common to view the Icelandic economy either from the perspective of the individual farm in terms of its productivity or at the national scale in terms of trade and the role of imports/exports. Given the fact that the economy was largely a tenant-based system with a small number of landowners, there is an important middle ground between the household economics of individual farms and the state-sanctioned trade structures that needs to be explored. The objective of this paper is to examine this middle ground and the way the economy was structured in relation to property ownership and tenancy using the case study of the bishopric of Skálholt during the 17th and 18th centuries. Adopting a modified system of provision approach, three scales of analysis are adopted: the settlement itself, the immediate environs and finally the wider regional property network. Tracing the connections outward at successive scales reveals the complex nature of the economic infrastructure behind one of the largest landowners in Iceland at this time. |
