The Black Death in Norway (Svartedauden): population collapse, social change—and how we glimpse it in the sources

The Black Death is often described as a single, terrible event. In Norway, it was both an event and the beginning of a long, uneven era of recurring plague. The Black Death reshaped Norway’s population, land, and power in profound ways.

The first wave of the Black death reached Norway in 1349–1350, and later outbreaks continued to shape society for centuries (Store norske leksikon, n.d.; Lille norske leksikon, 2026). What makes Svartedauden so important for Norwegian history is not only the loss of life. It is also the way that loss rewired the relationship between people, land, and power. It also explains something genealogists learn quickly: before about 1600, sources are comparatively scarce, yet there are earlier source types that can still give us meaningful glimpses into families, farms, and local communities. I will come back to these sources in a future article.

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When the plague arrived—and why the shock was so profound

Norwegian historians often regard Svartedauden (1349–1350) as a turning point because it struck a society that had been built up over centuries of growth in the High Middle Ages. Norway had expanded settlement, brought more farms into use, and pushed cultivation outward—often into less forgiving terrain where survival depended on a delicate balance of manpower, seasonal work, and local cooperation. When a large share of people died in a short time, that balance broke. The result wasn’t just “many deaths,” but a systemic disruption that affected farms, inheritance lines, labor, and the ability of communities to sustain themselves (Norgeshistorie.no, 2015).

The arrival story also explains part of the severity. Norway was not isolated: coastal shipping and trade tied the kingdom closely to the wider North Sea world. Norgeshistorie.no describes how the wider pandemic (1346–1353) reached Norway in 1349 and then spread rapidly through the country. With medieval travel and commerce moving people (and pests) between ports and settlements, containment was not realistic in the way it can be imagined today (Norgeshistorie.no, 2025).

Just as important: Norway’s plague experience did not end with the first wave. Modern reference works emphasize that Svartedauden was the first of many plague outbreaks that returned at irregular intervals for centuries. Store norske leksikon notes repeated plague epidemics affecting Norway from 1349 to 1654, and Lille norske leksikon similarly frames Svartedauden as one of several deadly plague pandemics reaching Norway during that long period (Store norske leksikon, n.d.; Lille norske leksikon, 2026).

That long “plague era” is a big reason the shock was so profound. Even when communities began to recover, renewed outbreaks could cut down working-age adults, interrupt family lines, and keep settlement and farming patterns unstable. In other words, the first catastrophe in 1349–1350 created the initial collapse—but the recurring returns of plague helped make the consequences long-lasting, shaping Norway’s demographic recovery and social development well into the early modern period (Store norske leksikon, n.d.; Lille norske leksikon, 2026).

Population collapse and the “age of deserted farms” (ødegårder)

One of the clearest, long-run fingerprints of Svartedauden in Norway is not a single document or dramatic story, but a landscape pattern: ødegårder—farms that fell out of regular use as independent units. Norgeshistorie.no calls the ødegård phenomenon one of our strongest “witnesses” to the plague’s effects, because it reflects large-scale abandonment and a reshaping of the late medieval countryside (Norgeshistorie.no, 2015a). Ødegård is also a commonly used surname today.

In practical terms, an ødegård is a farm that no longer functioned as a full, working holding—often because the people who lived there died, because there were too few heirs, or because there simply weren’t enough hands to keep marginal land productive. Store norske leksikon explains that the concept of an ødegård is a farm out of operation as an independent unit, and notes that the term becomes common in written sources after the mid-1400s (Store norske leksikon, n.d.).

This matters for population growth because the Black Death reshaped Norway’s population land and power, and recovery after a demographic catastrophe is not just “time passing.” When many farms go deserted, the consequences multiply:

• Production drops and local resilience weakens. A farm is not only a household; it is part of a local economy—fields, grazing, seasonal labor exchange, and obligations. When multiple farms in an area fall silent, it reduces the productive base and disrupts the everyday systems that kept communities stable. (Norgeshistorie.no, 2015a).

• Some “big men” lost households, tenants, and income—and ended up operating closer to the level of ordinary farmers, while capable survivors could step upward by taking over land, and local influence left vacant by the dead (Norges Bank, n.d.; NDLA, n.d.).

• Networks fracture. Marriage patterns, neighborhood cooperation, and local leadership (including church life and legal routines) all depend on people being there. Fewer households means fewer connections—and fewer reasons for records to be created locally.

• Resettlement favors the best land first. After a population collapse, it makes sense—economically and physically—to prioritize the most productive soil and the most accessible farms. Marginal holdings are more likely to stay abandoned longer or be absorbed into larger units.

In other words, demography reshapes geography: population loss changes where people live and what land remains in use. Then geography reshapes demography: a countryside reorganized around fewer, stronger holdings influences how quickly and where population can grow again.

A society rebalanced: land, labor, and bargaining power

The social and economic logic after Svartedauden was brutally simple: there were suddenly fewer people to work the land. That single fact rebalanced power in rural Norway. Landowners—whether church institutions, elites, or other holders of rights—needed tenants and labor to keep farms productive. In this context, when people are scarce, landowners must compete to attract and retain them. Survivors, therefore, could gain leverage in ways that were hard to imagine in the pre-plague growth period.

Norgeshistorie.no describes how rural conditions and agriculture changed after the plague, emphasizing that the countryside adjusted structurally rather than snapping back to pre-1349 “normal.” One striking indicator is that burdens could fall sharply: tenants could end up paying much lower dues than before, reflecting the new reality of scarce labor and abundant land (Norgeshistorie.no, 2015b).

This shift did not mean life became easy. A society can be “better positioned” in bargaining terms and still be deeply wounded: households were smaller, skills were lost, local institutions were strained, and the fear of new outbreaks lingered. But it does help explain why late medieval Norway developed under different conditions than the High Middle Ages:

• Consolidation and reorganization of holdings. Where farms were deserted, neighboring farms could take over parts, rents could be renegotiated, and production strategies could shift toward what made sense with fewer workers. (Norgeshistorie.no, 2015b).

• A “tenant’s market” in many places. When the limiting factor is labor rather than land, those who can farm become valuable. That changes the tone of rural society—more mobility, more negotiation, and often lower effective burdens for those still able to work holdings.

• A slower, uneven return of growth. Because the countryside reorganized around fewer active farms and altered obligations, population recovery was shaped by these new structures—not simply by births balancing deaths.

Seen together, ødegårder and the land–labor reversal are two sides of the same coin: the plague reduced the population so dramatically that Norway’s rural world had to find a new equilibrium—and that new equilibrium left traces in settlement patterns, farm continuity, and the long-term development of Norwegian society.

Why this belongs in a blog about Norwegian genealogy

Svartedauden is not just a story about death; it is a story about how Norway became a different kind of society. The Black Death reshaped Norway’s population land and power. Settlement patterns shifted, ødegårder became a defining feature of the countryside, and recovery was slow and uneven over many generations (Norgeshistorie.no, 2015b; Store norske leksikon, n.d.).

For genealogy, this matters because the demographic recovery took a very long time—Norway did not approach 300,000–400,000 inhabitants again until the 1600s, and that renewed growth began to change everyday life: land became harder to come by. Farms were split into smaller units to give a livelyhood to more households. Communities grew denser, and administration and record-keeping gradually became more systematic (Norgeshistorie.no, 2015c; Lokalhistoriewiki.no, 2024). Discussion on Norwegian demography are often referencing the Black death and it’s consequences.

References (APA)

Lille norske leksikon. (2026, February 2). Svartedauden.

Norgeshistorie.no. (2015a, November 25). Svartedauden.

Norgeshistorie.no. (2015b, November 25). Ødegårdene.

Norgeshistorie.no. (2015c, November 25). Livet og pesten.

Store norske leksikon. (n.d.). Svartedauden – pest-pandemi 1346–1353.

Store norske leksikon. (2025, December 16). Øydegard.